A permissive dialing period for area code 570 began Thursday in Pennsylvania, the Public Utility Commission said (http://bit.ly/11SgopL). Callers can dial with either 10 or seven digits and complete their calls. That will change Sept. 21, the date when all 570 residents will need to dial the area code to complete the calls, the PUC said. After that date, customers who try to dial just seven numbers will hear a recorded message, “available permanently,” alerting them of the error. The PUC is making these changes as part of a broader overlay plan, which will add a 272 area code beginning in October.
Nevada legislators introduced a bill that would restrict state regulation of VoIP and Internet Protocol-enabled services. Several states have already introduced bills of this sort this year, and more than two dozen states have passed laws with this policy. Assembly Bill 486 proposes, in its third section, to forbid any state agency from regulating those services, with some exceptions related to broader consumer protection law or taxation (http://bit.ly/14zaoCR). Other sections of the bill would relieve providers from offering basic service when “alternative services” are available if companies file a notice with the Nevada Public Utilities Commission and propose removing what it calls outdated telecom language. The bill allows the state to charge VoIP providers in some ways.
The number of visitors to “search navigation sites” via mobile device has jumped 25 percent in the past nine months, Neustar and local-search provider 15miles said, citing a “target sample” of 3,000 users of local business Internet search provided by comScore’s U.S. consumer panel. Neustar and 15miles said more than half of those who use local search to find local business information use such sites “on a weekly basis across all devices” (http://bit.ly/YGXFdg). In March 2012, 90.1 million users visited search or navigation sites or apps from their phones, compared to 113.1 million in December, and tablet searches grew 19 percent between April and December, the study said. Tablet searchers are “placing more importance on the depth of content over time” and find consumer reviews and online promotions most helpful, while phone searchers cite “maps, driving directions and distance as key information,” they said. Local business searchers using a phone or tablet have 78 percent and 77 percent likelihood to make a purchase as a result of their last search, with tablet searchers “skewing toward more expensive purchases,” they said. The study found application-based local search nearly doubled in the past two years; 35 percent of mobile phone searchers who say they use apps said they used Google Maps; and 92 percent of those searching for local businesses via social media said they used Facebook. In healthcare searches, 86 percent of consumers are looking for a specific pharmacy, followed by 75 percent searching for doctors and hospitals, the study said.
The FCC took actions in three enforcement cases regarding broadcasters’ public inspection files Thursday. The commission adopted a consent decree between the Enforcement Bureau and KCETLink, the licensee of KCET Los Angeles, to settle concerns raised when an FCC inspector was denied access to the station without an appointment. The station had been under heightened security after receiving threats from anonymous individuals following its decision to drop carriage of PBS programming, the consent decree said (http://bit.ly/WZq3Xv). The station agreed to pay $6,000. Separately, the Media Bureau issued notices of apparent liability against Carolina Rays’ Class A station WLNN-LP, Boone, N.C. (http://bit.ly/YJsEYR) and Denver Digital TV’s Class A station (http://bit.ly/170Zx40) KSBS-LP Denver for public file violations. The bureau proposed a fine of $23,000 against Denver Digital TV for missing 14 quarters of its issues/programs list and 15 quarters of its Children’s TV programming Reports. The bureau proposed a $3,000 fine against Carolina Rays for failing to file electronically its Children’s TV Programming Reports.
The introduction of the BlackBerry 10 “has been worth the wait,” CEO Thorsten Heins said Thursday during a conference call with investors. The company said it shipped more than 1 million of its BlackBerry Z10 smartphones outside the U.S. during Q4, which ended March 2. “That shows a huge trust,” Heins said. “It’s not in one single market. It really goes into the global market.” The Z10 shipment figure doesn’t include shipments in the U.S.; sales of the device in the U.S. began last week, BlackBerry said. U.S. sales of the Z10 have met early expectations, Heins said. The BlackBerry 10 rollout has been phased and will continue to ramp up over the next several quarters, with lower-cost BlackBerry 10 devices expected to go on sale later this year, Heins said. The Q10, which will include a QWERTY keyboard, is set to go on sale next month, but will not appear in the U.S. until May or June, he said. About 55 percent of BlackBerry Z10 sales have come from consumers who are migrating from competing devices. Overall BlackBerry device sales dropped from 6.9 million in Q3 to 6 million in Q4, the company said. BlackBerry ended Q4 with a net profit of $98 million, up from a $125 million net loss for the same period last year. The company’s total revenue for the quarter was nearly $2.7 billion. BlackBerry said it expects to “approach break-even” in its results for Q1, which will end June 1. The company continued to lose subscribers during Q4 -- it ended the quarter with 76 million subscribers, down from 79 million at the end of Q3. Most of the subscriber losses occurred in Europe and North America, though the company gained customers in Asia and Latin America. BlackBerry also announced that Mike Lazaridis, who co-founded BlackBerry under its former name -- Research In Motion (RIM) -- will retire as the company’s vice chairman and director on May 1. Lazaridis had previously been RIM’s co-CEO with Jim Basillie before Heins took over in January 2012 (http://bit.ly/10kq2fu).
State telecom deregulation may not be leaving consumers behind, National Regulatory Research Institute Principal Telecom Researcher Sherry Lichtenberg told us. “The dog did not bark in the night,” she said, describing her efforts in recent months to study the states where deregulation has taken place. NRRI is the research arm of NARUC, where Lichtenberg presents her research and is a member of the NARUC Telecom Task Force formed last November. She acknowledged some people’s great fears that reducing telecom regulation would causes prices to spike and create other problems with service quality and availability. She produced an initial study of telecom deregulation throughout the states last summer examining some of these bills. “I'm not sure any of the horrible predictions have come true,” she said. “That said, it’s really, really early.” Deregulation began over the last five years or so, with states like Florida deregulated for the longest periods, she said. But in Florida price increases have been “minor” and complaint levels haven’t changed, she said. She noted the Florida Public Service Commission has somewhat shrunk due to a attrition but that’s a broader trend. The results may suggest multiple possibilities, that consumers are learning to fend for themselves, or that companies are being good citizens, she said. Lichtenberg is putting the final touches on the paper now, which will go through a peer review process in the coming weeks and then will likely be posted online on the institute’s website around mid-April or a little after, she said. “I used to be very worried about this stuff -- I'm not anymore,” Lichtenberg told us.
News Corp.’s FX Networks will introduce a new pay-TV network in September called FXX, it said. The new network will be the third under the FX brand including FX and FXM, a movie channel. FX Networks General Manager John Landgraf said the networks are boosting program development and production capabilities to fill up all three with quality programming. Some of FX’s most popular shows such as It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League will move to the new network, the company said. The Parents TV Council criticized the move. “The Fact that News Corp. can secure 74 million monthly subscribers for a new cable network without spending a single penny on consumer marketing demonstrates just how broken the marketplace is,” said Tim Winter, the council’s president. “It underscores the urgency of adjudicating the allegations in the Cablevision v. Viacom antitrust lawsuit,” he said.
Proposed changes to Forms 473 and 474, filled out by carriers participating in the E-rate program, “may unnecessarily, and perhaps inadvertently, increase the burden on service providers,” Sprint Nextel warned in a filing at the FCC. “These ... forms are central to the E-rate program, as they are the basis of the process by which schools and libraries can obtain their universal service support for their E-rate eligible devices and equipment,” Sprint said (http://bit.ly/16kHtRc). “Thus, it is extremely important that the forms are very clear and make the process of reimbursement as efficient as possible, so that service providers will participate in the program."
Two of the top Democrats on the House Committee on Ways and Means urged the U.S. Trade Representative in a letter made public on Friday (http://1.usa.gov/Xey5y8) to reprimand China for engaging in cybertheft of U.S. trade secrets. Based on China’s “breach of its [World Trade Organization] obligations,” Acting USTR Demetrios Marantis should designate China a “priority foreign country” in the USTR’s Special 301 list of countries with inadequate IP protections, the letter said. The letter was sent by Ranking Member Sander Levin, D-Mich., and Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade Ranking Member Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. “It looks very much as though the Chinese government is stealing our companies’ trade secrets and passing them along to their [state-owned enterprises] and possibly other Chinese companies,” the letter said. “We have known for some time that the government of China does not do enough to enforce the intellectual property of U.S. innovators in China. But government-sponsored theft of trade secrets would put China in an entirely different category.”
The U.S. Air Force chose Space Systems/Loral to study the feasibility of accommodating next-generation U.S. military weather systems on commercial polar orbiting satellites. SSL will examine options for the Space and Missile Systems Center “to lower its cost to replace the legacy Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, through the use of alternative architectures such as equipping commercial satellites with advanced meteorological sensors,” SSL said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YLTLg4). The study will include examining the technical feasibility of hosting a third-generation meteorological instrument on an SSL commercial bus platform and quantifying “the value proposition for performing the mission in this non-traditional fashion,” it said.