Eutelsat and skyDSL Global signed a five-year agreement for multiple spotbeam capacity on Eutelsat’s KA-SAT satellite. With selected service areas of KA-SAT, the contract “equips skyDSL to step up broadband deployment across Europe,” Eutelsat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YdRV8y). Prior to the agreement, SkyDSL has delivered broadband service through the satellite for 18 months, it said.
Telesat ended 2012 with revenue of about $830 million, a 5 percent increase from 2011. Revenue growth was partly due to the deployment of the Nimiq 6 satellite in Q2 2012 and “a full year of revenue from the Canadian payload on the ViaSat-1 satellite,” it said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YdBFnY). Revenue increased 11 percent to about $223 million for the three-month period ending Dec. 31, it said. Operation expenses rose to nearly $60 million, a $12 million increase from 2011, it said. The increase was primarily due to increased equipment sales costs, special compensation payments and “an increase in revenue-related expenses associated with the lease of transponders on Nimiq 1,” Telesat said.
Leap Wireless said Wednesday it lost a net 337,000 subscribers in Q4, marking three consecutive quarters of net customer losses, which was a drop from the carrier’s net 179,000 subscriber gain a year earlier; the loss was larger than the 269,000 net loss in Q3. Leap said its Q4 subscriber losses stemmed from its decision in October to stop new sales of its PAYGo service, its shift away from broadband and its move to work with fewer retailers. Leap reported a net loss of $73.8 million, slightly better than its $78.7 million net loss at the same time in 2011. The carrier generated $756 million in revenue for Q4, down from more than $767 million a year before (http://bit.ly/135nhDE).
The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) said Wednesday that several of the world’s largest carriers have participated in network assessments for the WBA’s Interoperability Compliance Program. The operators include AT&T, Boingo Wireless, BT, China Mobile, KT, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Portugal Telecom, PCCW, Shaw Communications and True, WBA said. The program is meant to develop a “common set of technical and commercial frameworks for Wi-Fi roaming,” WBA said. Operators have been “extremely receptive” to the program since it will make it easier to enter roaming agreements, WBA said. The group is also continuing its advanced trials of Next Generation Hotspot. WBA said it expects the first public NGH deployments to occur this year (http://bit.ly/11UWtXC).
Several companies asked the Wisconsin Public Service Commission Tuesday for more time to respond to a request from the city of Milwaukee (http://1.usa.gov/Y8MucC) in a proceeding involving a proposed Milwaukee streetcar route and how it will affect utilities’ facilities. The joint parties include AT&T Wisconsin, Time Warner Cable, the Wisconsin Cable Communications Association, tw telecom of Wisconsin, PAETEC Communications, McLeodUSA Telecom, and Norlight Telecommunications. Milwaukee submitted a request for interlocutory review that originally called for Thursday responses. “It is not reasonable to respond to the City’s filing in less than ten business days,” the companies said. The stakeholders want to delay the deadline to March 4. The city of Milwaukee questioned much of the proceeding, including what rules apply to its streetcar project and the authority of these companies to bring their objections forward: “The City anticipates that the parties will soon start engaging in very extensive discovery, including discovery requests that ask the Utilities to identify each and every facility that will need to be relocated to accommodate the streetcar project and the year in which those facilities were installed,” Milwaukee said in its request. It noted that if the companies are “not properly in this case, then all the parties, Commission staff, and the PSCW itself will waste considerable resources in dealing with facts that are of no consequence."
Disney attorneys met with top FCC Media Bureau and Incentive Auction Task Force officials to push for protections for its VHF TV stations in any repacking of the TV band that occurs after the incentive spectrum auction, an ex parte notice shows (http://bit.ly/15vRICL). The company wants to make sure certain authorizations for its WABC-TV New York and WLS-TV Chicago that were granted after Feb. 22, 2012, are protected, the ex parte notice said. Disney lawyers also asked the commission to protect certain VHF stations that operate in excess of standard FCC power limits in order to reproduce their analog coverage area, the notice said.
A recent Kansas House bill proposing to restrict state regulation of IP (CD Feb 20 p5) was not a direct reaction to a January ruling of the Kansas Corporation Commission, Pioneer Communications CEO Catherine Moyer told us. “AT&T is the initial author of the bill,” she said. “This is something they had been aiming to do for a long time.” AT&T circulated a draft of the bill text among other companies in Kansas for months before it was introduced, she said, referring to such telecom coalition activity as more common in recent years. Few changes occurred along the way and some parties are still making friendly amendments to clarify language in places, but the consensus is that it'll pass through the Kansas Legislature easily enough, she said. The proposed law would potentially have prevented the Kansas Corporation Commission ruling, which asserted authority over fixed interconnected VoIP, and would likely have a bearing on that ruling if it passes into law, but the timing is coincidental, she said.
TV analog broadcast auxiliary service licensees don’t need to file a change in emission designator when using encoding-decoding equipment to deliver a digital signal over an analog link, Stephen Buenzow, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s Broadband Division, wrote in a letter released Wednesday (http://bit.ly/XNeI91). The letter was in response to a request for a declaratory ruling on the question made by the Engineers for the Integrity of Broadcast Auxiliary Services Spectrum. Some TV stations use the practice to deliver digital signals from their studios to transmitters and from the field to the studio using microwave links, the letter said. “We find that when a transmitted emission continues to be frequency modulated and is contained in the bandwidth limits specified for frequency modulation, and there are no modifications to transmitter circuitry, a change in the emission designator is not necessary,” the letter said.
A congressional push to change the royalties webcasters pay to the recording industry has a chance of passing this year, but is still an uphill climb, Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant wrote in a note to investors. A hearing in November laid the groundwork for a new push in 2013 and 2014, he wrote. Already, broadcasters are lining up opponents to any effort to force terrestrial stations to pay a performance royalty, he said. A resolution introduced last week was aimed at preventing such legislation and has gathered 74 cosponsors so far, he noted. More are likely to follow as 179 representatives signed an identical resolution during the last congressional session, he said. Such maneuvering could keep new royalty legislation focused on webcaster rates, which could be a boon for Pandora because it would likely lead to lower royalties after 2015, he said. “We expect additional hearings to be scheduled on this issue,” he said. “And given [House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob] Goodlatte’s [R-Va.] openness to compromise at the November hearing, it is possible a revised webcaster bill will be introduced either before or after those hearings begin,” he said. Making the legislation more acceptable to the record labels, who have opposed the bill in the past, could be a big part of any revisions, he said.
Domain registrar Namecheap launched an online campaign to raise donations to fund the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) advocacy campaign against the newly reintroduced Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), HR-624, which the groups say would threaten online privacy (http://bit.ly/YC4pW3). Namecheap pledged to donate $1 to EFF for every tweet and Facebook post about the campaign, up to $100,000, according to the site. “CISPA is just another re-hashed version of [the Stop Online Piracy Act], which was vehemently opposed by the entire internet community,” Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall said in a statement, calling the bill “another attempt by congress to backdoor this anti-privacy and pro censorship legislation while everyone is sleeping.” In a statement, EFF Executive Director Shari Steele thanked Namecheap users “for their much-needed support and generosity."