barring Aereo from streaming broadcast programming in New York City could prompt Congress to intervene on retransmission consent, said a Medley Global Advisors analyst. Such a development “might not be necessarily totally beneficial to TV broadcasters,” Jeff Silva said in a research note. Monday’s decision was on a pending trial over whether Aereo can distribute New York City TV stations’ signals to online subscribers (CD April 2 p8). Pay-TV critics of retrans fees, like Dish Network and Time Warner Cable, could use any new legislation as a platform “to pursue rebalancing of the must-carry/retransmission consent framework in a way that could diminish broadcasting negotiating leverage,” said Silva. The Aereo litigation is likely headed to trial, he said. In the meantime, Silva said that TV broadcasters can seek a full-court review from the 2nd Circuit “or even try their luck with the U.S. Supreme Court.” For now, Aereo can move full steam ahead and “perhaps even use its winning glow to make the addition of new channels more possible in the near term,” he added. Another analyst said that she thinks Aereo poses a low risk to Nexstar. (See separate report above in this issue.)
The FCC’s Mobile Wireless Competition Report shows sector competition is alive and well in the U.S., said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi Wednesday on the company’s blog. “At bottom, the FCC’s own data decisively rebuts the argument that the U.S. is somehow falling behind other countries,” Cicconi said (http://bit.ly/Z9uEK9). “That Big Lie has been peddled and pushed by some in order to justify more government control over the wireless industry -- a goal rooted more in ideology than in any competitive concern or consumer outcry. It is also an argument pushed by some businesses that would rather compete through regulatory fiat than with investment and innovation. No longer can either argument withstand the overwhelming facts to the contrary.” Cicconi asked why the commission continues to decline to conclude that the U.S. market is effectively competitive (CD March 25 p7 ). “My own worry is that the Commission continues to refuse to draw the obvious conclusion because it fears that, by deeming the wireless market competitive, it will limit its own rationale for regulatory intervention,” he said. “Indeed, if the FCC acknowledged the reality of the wireless market -- that consumers have the best wireless services and the widest range of competitive choices on the planet -- the Commission would be compelled to defer to the decisions made by consumers in that marketplace rather than push its own preferences.”
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce objected to a provision in HR-933, a continuing resolution bill passed last month, that would restrict U.S. federal acquisitions of Chinese manufactured technologies, according to a statement this week (http://bit.ly/14F6o3J). The law forbids the U.S. departments of Commerce and Justice, NASA and the National Science Foundation from using federal money to buy Chinese IT products with any “risk of cyber-espionage or sabotage.” The law sends “a wrong message to the outside world” and “impaired the interests of the U.S.,” said Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang. “The misuse of [a] ‘national security’ measure, the unfair treatment to the Chinese enterprises and the discriminatory conduct of presumption of guilt against Chinese enterprises strongly go against the fair trade principle[s], seriously undermine the mutual trust between China and the U.S., and impede the communication and cooperation in the field of high-tech products between the two sides. China is strongly dissatisfied with it and opposes it.” U.S. House lawmakers had previously warned that the U.S. government and American companies shouldn’t do business with Huawei and ZTE, two China-based telecom equipment makers, due to their long-term security risks(CD Oct 10 p3).
The American Cable Association spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau officials Monday to discuss the Connect America Fund Phase II cost model, it said in an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/10zjrNi). ACA discussed how the model accounts for the tax shield associated with interest payments on debt, it said.
FCC Media Bureau officials heard a presentation on new technology for detecting signal leakage, according to an ex parte filing Friday. In January, representatives of Martech Engineering and ICF Inc. discussed their companies’ airborne method of measuring and reporting signal leakage. “This capability offers the advantage of revealing signal leakage levels in sensitive overlapping off-air bands and offers the potential of much greater accuracy pinpointing the leak source,” said Martech President Daryl Rosenberger in the filing. He said cable signal leakage can interfere with handsets that use LTE wireless technology, and measuring it from the air can prevent interference by vertical structures and yield more accurate results. ICF measures signal leakage using a “post-recording process” that makes high-speed recordings of the overall spectrum and then checks it for leakage, rather than detecting radio signals, the filing said. “Analyzed signals can be correlated according to their content, RF signatures, signal formats, and spectral organization,” it said. “This allows us to produce a report identifying all interference sources according to their type at each point of origin and each specific power level within a geographic area.” Rosenberger said the greater detection capability would give the cable industry more time to acquire enhanced ground-based monitoring systems while remaining in compliance with existing signal leakage requirements (http://bit.ly/12hX6ql).
Hughes partnered with African Development Bank to help AfDB expand managed satellite services and provide multiprotocol layer switching (MPLS) connectivity in the Ivory Coast. Under the contract, Hughes will provide MPLS circuits at four AfDB sites “with backhaul services to Tunisian headquarters from a teleport in Germany,” Hughes said in a press release (http://bit.ly/10rAkMr). Hughes also will offer major applications including VoIP, video conferencing and high-speed Internet access, it said.
FairPoint urged the FCC to grant its petition for a waiver to exclude Interstate Access Support, Local Switching Support and Interstate Common Line Support from the requirement to repurpose frozen high-cost support toward broadband deployment. The plea came in reply comments filed Tuesday (http://bit.ly/Z8X0NT). FairPoint had objected to new rules requiring its LECs to demonstrate that at least one-third of their frozen support was spent on deployment and operation of broadband (CD Feb 12 p10). Denial of the petition would leave FairPoint with “inadequate support,” making it impossible to maintain current service levels in high-cost areas unserved by other carriers, FairPoint said in its reply comments. FairPoint rejected NCTA arguments that all frozen Connect America Fund Phase I support was intended to go toward broadband infrastructure. In adopting its CAF program, the FCC “explicitly recognized that it was not working with a ‘blank slate’ but with a ‘decades-old regulatory system’ that included substantial legacy obligations ‘including state carrier of last resort obligations for telephone service,'” FairPoint said, quoting the USF/intercarrier compensation order.
Pandora said the amount of listener-hours it delivered in March 2013 increased 40 percent from a year earlier to 1.07 billion. It said it had 69.5 million active listeners at the end of the month, a 36 percent increase from a year earlier. The musicFIRST Coalition took the opportunity to criticize Pandora’s efforts to lower the royalties it pays to songwriters and performers. “Pandora is choosing to limit revenue for now by keeping advertising low and attracting customers to its free service tier,” the coalition wrote on its blog (http://bit.ly/10z8Y4z). “That’s not an uncommon or unwise choice for many Internet firms ... but it’s no reason to plead poverty in the face of massive audience growth,” it said.
NameJet and Afternic will handle the initial auctions and provide name distribution for domain names for .build top-level domain (TLD) applicant Plan Bee, the companies said. Additionally, Plan Bee’s principals have applied to operate two other TLD registries: .construction and .expert, they said.
Nielsen said it will expand its Online Campaign Ratings service to more countries. The ratings, which track online ad campaigns alongside traditional TV campaigns, are already available in the U.S. and U.K. Nielsen said it plans to expand service to Australia, Canada, Germany and Italy within weeks. “These markets represent the majority of ad dollars spent online annually,” said Steve Hasker, Nielsen president-global product leadership. The service is already helping marketers in the U.S. move “toward an audience-centric buying and selling approach,” and should do the same in other markets, said Brad Smallwood, vice president-measurement and insights at Facebook (http://bit.ly/16oNElv).