The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comment on a request by Assist 123 for review of a Universal Service Administrative Co. decision rejecting its August and November FCC Forms 499-Q as untimely (http://bit.ly/14oW5ka). Comments on the telecom provider’s request are due April 26 in WC docket 06-122, with replies due May 13.
July 2013 annual access charge tariff filings will be effective July 2, the FCC Pricing Policy Division said in an order Wednesday (http://bit.ly/15VIflA). The division also established dates for filing petitions to suspend or reject an ILEC tariff filing. Price cap ILECs must file the short-form Tariff Review Plan by May 17, the division said, with comments due May 28 and replies June 4. Fifteen-day tariff filings are due June 17, with petitions due June 24 and replies by June 27 at noon. Seven-day tariff filings are due June 25, with petitions due by noon on June 27, and replies by noon June 28.
Triveni Digital said it’s collaborating with Xstream on video streaming services for the North American broadcast market. The two companies plan to create customized tools and applications local broadcasters can use to provide their content for Internet streaming, Triveni said. Xstream’s tools and technologies make it a “perfect fit” for the project, Triveni said. “Rather than reinvent the wheel for core video streaming tools and services, we have elected to work with a leader in the category and to extend their technologies into the broadcast environment,” said Triveni CEO Mark Simpson in a news release. “We think this joint effort allows us to bring the optimal solution to the broadcast market.” The collaboration includes tools that broadcasters can immediately deploy, as well as extensions of Triveni initiatives, including Open MediaHub, GameBuilder Plus and the Avisor local news viewing system, Triveni said.
A group of aspiring low-power FM broadcasters urged the FCC to adopt a proposal from Public Media of New England, in support of the group’s petition for reconsideration. The group, Let the Cities In (LTCI), filed the petition in December urging the FCC to limit LPFM licenses in “urban core” areas within 18 miles of the center of the top-20 Arbitron markets to stations below 50 watts (http://bit.ly/YUlBFY). Public Media proposed either lowering the low end of wattage for new urban LPFMs or raising the low end for translators to 50 watts (http://bit.ly/XHxQq7). LTCI supports “greatly increasing the number of urban LPFM stations by allowing the licensing of LPFM stations below 50 watts,” it said in a reply in docket 99-25 (http://bit.ly/YUlKcC). It’s time to decide that vital portions of the radio spectrum “will be either equally accessible, or equally inaccessible, to both new LPFMs and new translators,” it said.
CBS said it bought a 50 percent stake in the TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com, with Lionsgate taking the other half from One Equity Partners. “This is a strategic way for CBS to use its content brands and gain access to a highly distributed basic cable network that has a lot of upside,” CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said.
Cloud computing has “adversely impacted” demand for traditional managed hosting, according to privately held hosting providers, Wells Fargo analyst Gray Powell said Wednesday in an email to investors. Powell said he and associate analyst Priya Parasuraman spoke with several contacts in the collocation, managed hosting and cloud space in recent weeks to get a sense of how cloud computing had impacted traditional data center services. Those contacts believe managed hosting business will grow between 8 and 12 percent year-over-year -- lower than the up to 20 percent growth previously expected, Powell said. “We do not see customers taking existing applications out of managed hosting environments and moving them into the cloud,” he said. “However, the bulk of new growth is going to cloud environments as businesses are increasingly willing to put new apps in the cloud or move existing apps to the cloud on the back of a technology refresh.” It may be difficult, for example, for Rackspace to “drive a meaningful improvement” in managed hosting growth from the 14 percent growth in Q4 back to the 20 percent level, Powell said. However, retail collocation demand remains consistent with levels found during Q4, he said.
International Launch Services carried the Satmex 8 satellite into orbit on an ILS Proton launch vehicle. The satellite, built by Space Systems/Loral, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, ILS said in a press release (http://bit.ly/14niHRV). The satellite will replace Satmex 5 and will provide enhanced performance and capacity in North America, Central America and South America at 116.8 degrees west, it said. It has 24 C-band and 40 Ku-band transponders “and will improve the current continental and regional services for video contribution and distribution, broadband, cellular backhaul and distance learning,” it said.
Payphones must not be forgotten as the nation transitions to an all-IP communications network, the American Public Communications Council (APCC) told the FCC in a letter Tuesday (http://bit.ly/XHiqSV). In order to fulfill Section 271 of the Communications Act, which requires that payphone service providers be “fairly compensated” for every call, the commission “needs to address how the requirements of its regulations and orders will be implemented as part of any transition to next generation IP networks,” the payphone association said. Of particular concern are “dial-around” calls, which are generally those dialed by an end-user without depositing a coin. APCC petitioned in 2005 for a declaratory ruling that completing carriers were required to pay dial-around compensation for calls converted to IP format for long haul traffic, but the FCC has not yet ruled, it said. “Even if the commission ultimately decides that some forms of IP-enabled communications are not telecommunications in some other context, a dial-around call made from a payphone is a ‘call’ subject to compensation under Section 276,” the association said, “regardless of whether, or to what extent, the communications traverses an IP network after it leaves the payphone.”
NetCompetition Chairman Scott Cleland criticized the FCC’s latest Mobile Wireless Competition Report Wednesday in an op-ed posted on the conservative website The Daily Caller (http://bit.ly/YzITI0). In the report, released last week, the FCC declined to conclude that the U.S. wireless industry is effectively competitive -- the third consecutive report to do so (CD March 25 p7). The FCC “is not formally acknowledging the obvious because that would undercut any justification for its regulatory plans to artificially constrict the supply of spectrum to leading wireless competitors via its proposed ’spectrum screen’ rulemaking,” Cleland said. Evidence within the report indicates the U.S. market is “as competitive as it has ever been,” he said, saying it’s “more competitive than virtually any wireless market in the world.” The biggest long-term threat to the U.S. wireless market is not insufficient competition, Cleland said -- it’s the government’s “wasteful hoarding” of 85 percent of auction-suitable spectrum between 400 MHz and 3 GHz. The federal government’s spectrum management is in “scandalous disarray,” including a lack of a transparent spectrum inventory and a lack of formal spectrum oversight by Congress or the Office of Management and Budget, he said. There is also confusion about the future of the government’s spectrum auction plans given the “stark dissonance” between the Obama administration’s commitment to auctioning off 500 MHz within 10 years and the report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that recommended “curtailing” the auctions, Cleland said. The FCC would be “laser-focused” on fixing “the government’s hoarding, waste and mismanagement of spectrum and its dysfunctional spectrum auction pipeline” if it was “really focused” on promoting wireless competition, adoption and innovation, Cleland said. The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.
The FCC Media Bureau granted Time Warner Cable’s petition for a determination that it’s subject to effective competition in five Kentucky communities. TWC submitted sufficient evidence demonstrating “that both prongs of the competing provider test are satisfied and petitioner is subject to effective competition in the communities,” the bureau said in a memorandum opinion and order (http://bit.ly/109ZcqM). The bureau found that TWC also provided sufficient evidence supporting its assertion that potential customers are reasonably aware that they may purchase the service of DirecTV and Dish Network. The bureau also found that TWC demonstrated the percentage of households subscribing to its cable service is less than 30 percent of the households in the counties of Caldwell, Hopkins and Webster, it said.