European fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) penetration continues to rise steadily, but the gap between leaders and laggards is growing, FTTH Council Europe said at a press briefing at the FTTH conference in London. Russia is a clear fiber leader in the region, with 2.2 million new subscribers added in the second half of 2012, more than all of the 27 EU members combined, it said. Across the EU27, the number of subscribers grew 15 percent during that same period, adding 820,000 new subscribers and bringing the number of fiber-connected homes to 6.24 million, it said. The top five “dynamic” economies, with high subscribership growth and where new 2012 subscribers represented the highest proportion of total subscribers at end-2012, were Turkey, Ukraine, Spain, Bulgaria and Russia, it said. Lithuania remains the dominant fiber nation in terms of household penetration, with 100 percent coverage and over 31 percent of homes connected. Sweden came in second, it said. But many major western economies are still “dragging their feet,” the council said. Italy and Spain are at the bottom of the ranking, and Germany and the U.K. once again failed to qualify, it said. To be included in the FTTH ranking, a country must have more than 1 percent of households connected and more than 200,000 households.
Britons can expect 4G services within six months after five mobile operators won spectrum in the 800 MHz/2.6 GHz auction, the Office of Communications said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/boh68e). After more than 50 rounds of bidding, Everything Everywhere, Hutchison 3G UK, Niche Spectrum Ventures (a British Telecom subsidiary), Telefónica UK and Vodafone all won spectrum, it said. The auction raised more than £2.3 billion ($3.6 billion). A total of 250 MHz was auctioned in the two bands, equivalent to two-thirds of the frequencies currently used by wireless devices, it said. The 800 MHz lots come with a coverage obligation, so winning bidder Telefónica UK will have to provide a mobile broadband service for indoor reception to at least 98 percent of the population (at least 99 percent outdoors) and at least 95 percent of the population of each of the U.K. nations -- England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales -- by the end of 2017, it said. Although the main part of the auction is over, there will be a final stage to determine where in the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz bands each winner’s new spectrum will be located. Bidding in this assignment stage will take place shortly, Ofcom said. Once license fees have been paid, Ofcom will grant licenses and operators can begin rolling out their networks, with consumer services expected in the spring or early summer, it said. It will then measure the average mobile broadband speeds received by 3G and 4G customers and publish results next spring. Ofcom is now planning to support the release of more spectrum for possible future 5G services, it said. “Despite all the noise being made about the UK’s 4G auction, what you can’t hear is the sound of champagne corks popping over at the Treasury” as the amount raised was £1 billion less than expected, said Ovum analyst Matthew Howett. Mobile operators must be relieved that the amount paid is a “mere fraction” of the £22.5 billion they were asked to cough up during the 3G licensing process, he said. The fact that they paid so much less for 4G may be a good thing, because the relatively poor 3G coverage may be partly the result of operators having little money left to spend on building out networks, he said. Things should be different this time, especially given the ability of 800 MHz airwaves to cover large distances and penetrate buildings well, he said. The government, Ofcom and operators themselves deserve at least some of the blame for the U.K.’s late start in the 4G race, he said. But today is just the beginning, he said. The hard part now for operators is to convince customers to upgrade and take out 4G mobile subscriptions.
A new Communications Act would be a nice thing to have, but “it’s going to be very difficult to achieve,” former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley told a Hudson Institute event in a wide-ranging discussion Tuesday (http://bit.ly/Xj9V2P). Smaller pieces of legislation are more likely, although a “big new statute” would “make sense for the country,” he said. Siloed regulations don’t make sense anymore, he said: Broadcasters are regulated as public trustees; telcos as common carriers; and multichannel video programming distributors, cable and satellite are somewhere in between. “As we see in the marketplace today, all of them are providing functionally equivalent digital services,” Wiley said. He supported proposals to eliminate cross-ownership restrictions that prevent broadcasters from owning newspapers in the same market. “It would be great to have the journalistic tradition -- more news and local affairs -- available to radio stations,” he said. “People have come out of the woodwork” to say that lax cross-ownership rules are “going to end Western civilization as we know it,” he said. “I don’t think so. I think it would be very good.” Wiley criticized commission plans to crack down on joint sales agreements in TV as the agency has in radio. A draft order would attribute such ownership to the TV station doing the brokering, when it brokers more than 15 percent of another station’s ads (CD Nov 15 p1). That attribution is unfortunate, Wiley said, because those agreements help bring news into smaller markets where stations otherwise don’t have the independent financial ability to provide the news. Wiley’s law firm, Wiley Rein, represents some media companies supportive (http://bit.ly/15t0663) of ending the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban (http://bit.ly/12J7Fpx). He lamented the “relatively low minority ownership of broadcast stations” in the country, pushing for “incubator programs” and tax deferment for minority ownership, that “could help minorities get started.” Wiley said the definition of MVPD -- and whether it applies to online providers -- is an important one that can’t be decided in a single complaint brought by Sky Angel. It’s such an important issue because so much programming is going to be delivered on the Internet, he said, pointing to Netflix outbidding the big networks for access to House of Cards. “It’s obvious there’s a new force out there,” Wiley said. “Over-the-top online programming and the carriage of programming is going to be increasingly important.”
NASA restored communication with the International Space Station Tuesday after the Expedition 34 crew experienced a temporary loss during a science and maintenance mission. Communication was down for nearly three hours, NASA said in a news release (http://1.usa.gov/WLXLym). The loss occurred when flight controllers were updating the station’s command and control software and “were transitioning from the primary computer to the backup computer to complete the software load,” NASA said. “All systems are now back up and running as expected."
Nexstar said it completed the acquisition of three California TV stations for $35.4 million from High Plains Broadcasting and Newport TV: KGET-TV and KKEY, a low-power TV station, both in Bakersfield; and KGPE Fresno. “Together with our announcement earlier this month to acquire the Fresno NBC affiliate KSEE(TV), Nexstar is creating new duopoly markets in both Fresno and Bakersfield,” CEO Perry Sook said in a news release Tuesday.
NAB praised a House resolution that signaled the opposition of 74 lawmakers to any proposals to require terrestrial radio broadcasters to pay royalties to music performers. Reps. Michael Conway and Gene Green, Republican and Democrat of Texas, introduced the resolution Friday with 72 additional cosponsors (http://1.usa.gov/132lOOC). “NAB salutes lawmakers for recognizing that a new performance fee on broadcasters threatens the financial base that sustains America’s hometown radio stations,” a spokesman for the association said. The resolution is identical to one Green and Conway introduced in the previous congressional session.
The “One” smartphone that HTC bowed Tuesday will help the company “differentiate its brand” from the many rival Android offerings on the market, but HTC needs to “get the pricing right” for it to succeed, said Informa analyst Julian Jest. The One will be available via more than 185 mobile operators and major retailers in more than 80 regions and countries starting next month, HTC said. But it didn’t give the device’s price. The One is “undoubtedly a striking device, with an industrial design rivaling any handset previously released by the Taiwanese company” and the current bunch of “high-end smartphones on the market,” Jest said. The phone’s new “Blink Feed” home screen “bears some resemblance to the live tiles layout” on the Windows Phone OS, but is “unique” otherwise, he said. “The only caveat” of the device is “power consumption” because using the device’s added functionality “could shorten the battery life quite significantly,” he said. The phone’s introduction has “come at an ideal time” because iPhone sales are “slowing down and advanced users are now desperately looking for more innovative devices to satisfy their appetite to explore the new technology horizons,” he said. But it’s “unlikely that network operators will give their support to a device that they will need to subsidize heavily -- and from a vendor which has struggled to compete with Samsung, the market leader on the Android OS,” he said. A “speedy delivery” of the One to a wide variety of mobile operators “will be vital, and may just give it the head start it needs to grow its market share ahead of the latest” Samsung Galaxy device, he said. The One features a camera that HTC said includes a “best-in-class f/2.0 aperture lens and a breakthrough sensor with UltraPixels that gather 300 percent more light than traditional smartphone camera sensors.” The device’s front-facing camera supports 1080p video capture, while multi-axis optical image stabilization on the rear camera “helps ensure video footage smoother whether stationary or on the move,” it said. Other camera features include enhanced 360-degree panorama. The device’s BoomSound introduces, “for the first time on a phone,” front-facing stereo speakers, it said. The Sense TV feature “transforms” the One into an interactive program guide and remote control for “most TVs, set-top boxes and receivers,” HTC said.
NTIA formally recommended that the FCC reallocate the 1695-1710 MHz band for commercial use, in a report released by NTIA Tuesday. Last year’s spectrum law required NTIA to identify 15 MHz between 1675 MHz and 1710 MHz for reallocation from federal use to non-federal use. “This recommendation reaffirms NTIA’s January 2011 (CD Jan 20/11 p12) conclusion that the FCC should repurpose the 1695-1710 MHz band for wireless broadband use on a shared basis,” NTIA said (http://1.usa.gov/Vu1cdK). The report said the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee likely will recommend “a regulatory framework for sharing in the 1695-1710 MHz band that will allow flexibility for and coordination of actual commercial system implementation within the protection zones around federal meteorological-satellite receive sites” at its February meeting. “NTIA will assess the final CSMAC recommendations and provide additional information to the FCC that will be used in the rulemaking proceeding called for” by the spectrum law, NTIA said. CSMAC is scheduled to meet Thursday.
NAB said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will participate in an on-stage conversation with Paul Karpowicz, president of Meredith’s local media group, at the association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. The session will take be April 10 at 9 a.m. PT.
Harmonic said it agreed to sell its cable networking equipment unit to Aurora Networks for $46 million in a cash transaction. Harmonic said the sale of its “Cable Access” unit, which markets transmitters, nodes, optical receivers and optical amplifiers, reflects its strategy of focusing on video production, video playout, video processing and cable edge products. The cable access unit reported $52.9 million in 2012 revenue. “Cable Access was Harmonic’s lowest margin product line,” Harmonic CEO Patrick Harshman said.