Motorola Solutions is providing its PremierOne next-gen command and control platform to Prince William County, Va., it said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bogq57). The technology will offer a “future ready, enterprise-wide incident management system that streamlines 9-1-1 workflows and intelligently correlates voice, data and multimedia information so operators can speed decision making, enhance resource tracking and management while improving citizen and officer safety” and will help agencies share information more easily, the company said. It has worked with the county since 1999. Motorola will maintain the service for five years as part of a contract with the county, it said.
In a Tuesday order, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission dismissed some of stakeholders’ worries and acknowledged others regarding its new set of telecom rules, adopted in December after months of debate. CenturyLink, the Colorado Telecom Association, PUC staff and the Colorado Office of the Consumer Counsel appealed the order in January (CD Jan 16 p11). The December order caps the state’s high-cost fund at $54 million, maintains limited regulation of IP and proposes judgments of which parts of the state are effectively competitive or not, which would influence levels of support. It denied the Colorado Telecom Association’s request for a waiver of these rules for RLECs, which the association argued would create financial burdens, because the request was too vague, it said (http://bit.ly/12yz7BE). “We will endeavor to administer the processes and proceedings resulting from the proposed rules efficiently, including consideration of the RLECs’ particular circumstances,” the PUC said. “We also will consider any request for waiver filed at the appropriate time and with the appropriate supporting information from individual carriers.” The PUC did clarify, at the request of CenturyLink and PUC staff, the order’s language to make clear that judgments of effective competition will take place on the wire center serving area. The association of RLECs didn’t want wireless to be considered a landline substitute, a concern the PUC disregarded: “The Commission fully reviewed the issue of considering a wireless carrier as a competitor to wireline service and determined that, where wireless coverage exists, it is a competitive alternative to wireline.” It also denied the association’s request for lightened regulation in areas deemed effectively competitive and asserted the provider-of-last-resort obligations it maintains.
The FirstNet board’s resolution approving a path forward for seven partially suspended broadband stimulus grantees (CD Feb 13 p1) “is welcome news to Motorola Solutions,” said Vice President-North America Government Markets Debora Courtright in a statement. “The projects will enable a host of next generation mobile broadband communications to support the first responders that serve and protect the citizens in these communities.” She said they would provide “the building blocks and valuable lessons” critical to ensuring network requirements. NTIA suspended the seven projects last May due to concerns about their interoperability with FirstNet.
Comcast agreed to buy the rest of NBCUniversal from General Electric for about $16.7 billion, the cable operator said Tuesday. GE has a 49 percent stake in the joint venture the companies formed when Comcast bought control of NBCU. Comcast said it expects the deal for NBCU, and another $1.4 billion deal for some GE real estate used by NBCU, to close by the end of March. Comcast said it will fund the purchase with about $11.4 billion of cash on hand, a $4 billion senior unsecured note to be issued to GE, $725 million of preferred stock also to be issued to GE and $2 billion in borrowings under Comcast or a subsidiary’s credit facilities. Separately, the company said it will increase its annual dividend 20 percent to 78 cents per share.
NAB urged the FCC to “expeditiously approve” the proposed T-Mobile-MetroPCS deal, in a Tuesday letter from NAB President Gordon Smith (http://xrl.us/bogji9). The transaction “further demonstrates that the free market remains the most dynamic means to address the purported spectrum challenges faced by wireless carriers today” and reflects “the latest in a series of transactions through which the wireless industry is reorganizing to make more effective and more efficient use of its unrivaled commercial spectrum allocation,” the letter said. It called the potential deal part of an “essential transformation” and cited other transactions to underscore the market restructuring under way.
Reforms to the FCC’s Lifeline program are on track to save $400 million in 2013, the FCC announced Tuesday. That’s in addition to the $214 million saved in 2012 by cutting waste, fraud and abuse, a spokesman said. By the end of 2014, the FCC expects its reforms will have saved the commission more than $2 billion, he said. “This will preserve Lifeline for those who truly need it,” said Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach.
The Copyright Office extended the deadline for reply comments on the revised fees for filing of cable and satellite statements of account to Feb. 22. The extension was requested by stakeholders, the office said (http://1.usa.gov/I5Sn0M). The deadline was extended by 31 days.
The FCC should deny a Charter Communications petition to be let out of local rate regulation in five Massachusetts franchise areas, the state’s Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) said in a filing Monday. The state said the methodology Charter used to show it’s subject to effective competition in the areas was inadequate. The data Charter submitted fail to show that satellite providers “have a sufficiently high level of subscribership in the Franchise Area to overcome the presumption against effective competition,” it said. Charter’s data show overall pay-TV penetration in one of the areas exceeding 100 percent, the MDTC said. Moreover, Charter “cannot dispute that it included some DBS subscribers” in the tally of its competitors’ penetration but excluded them from the number of overall households, the MDTC said. That caused “DBS provider penetration rates to appear higher than they actually are,” it said.
Level 3 Communications said Tuesday it had a net loss of $56 million in Q4, vs. the $163 million loss it had during the same period in 2011. It said it had Q4 revenue of $1.59 billion, aided by $1.42 billion in revenue from Core Network Services (CNS). Total revenue for the year was $6.38 billion, up from $6.31 billion in 2011. Level 3 said it expects CNS revenue will decline sequentially in Q1, but will otherwise experience stronger growth for the rest of 2013 (http://xrl.us/bogjdu).
The Disney-Univision joint venture TV network targeting U.S. Hispanics will be called Fusion, the companies said. The company said Cablevision, Charter, Cox, AT&T’s U-verse and Google Fiber have agreed to carry the network when it’s introduced later this year.