New FCC data on the state of voice competition reinforces the “urgency” of the IP transition, said USTelecom Vice President-Industry Analysis Patrick Brogan in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/188nwSv). The data shows the number of traditional voice lines declined by nearly 10 million from 2011 to 2012, continuing a pace of losses averaging 10 percent per year over the past five years, Brogan said. “These statistics underscore the urgency for regulators and providers to address IP transition issues,” he said. Given the dwindling use of traditional voice lines, ILECs should “no longer be subject to dominant carrier regulation,” he said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s policy speech Monday (CD Dec 3 p1) demonstrated “openness toward improved carrier monetization of broadband ... but also a strong commitment to promoting competition among networks,” wrote analyst Paul Gallant of Guggenheim Partners in a research note Tuesday. Wheeler indicated his support for reasonable usage-based pricing and quality-of-service deals, but Gallant noted reason for “slight caution": Wheeler’s pronouncement (http://bit.ly/188rYRk) that companies have “control over their own regulatory fates” could be read as “signaling cable operators not to deploy broadband pricing that is clearly aimed at deterring [over-the-top] entry.” Wheeler’s comments about permitting broadband providers to explore “two-sided markets” are “encouraging for wireline and wireless ISPs,” but it’s not yet clear how far ISPs will be able to go “to persuade content/apps companies to do deals,” Gallant said. Gallant cautioned that mergers and acquisitions “may not be easy,” given Wheeler’s endorsement of the agency’s 2011 rejection of AT&T buying T-Mobile. “We view these comments as quite noteworthy because, as a [venture capitalist] in 2011, he blogged that he would have approved AT&T/T-Mobile in order to establish certain merger conditions he favored,” wrote the analyst. He said Wheeler was also “negative” toward a possible Sprint/T-Mobile merger. The Department of Justice and the FCC “probably would seek to block any effort by Sprint to acquire T-Mobile,” wrote Gallant. Wheeler seemed to favor limits on how much broadcast spectrum Verizon and AT&T can buy, Gallant said. Wheeler’s comments about not rushing into a broadcast auction “support our expectation for a mid-2015 spectrum auction,” Gallant said. Gallant was concerned about Wheeler’s “vaguely ominous comments” when he said he would “not hesitate to invoke the full authority granted to us by Congress to protect competition.” That could portend Title II classification for wireline broadband, or limiting content companies from leveraging their power over distribution, Gallant said.
The FCC Media Bureau’s priority in processing the low-power FM applications is the identification of acceptable singleton applications. This month, the bureau will identify the mutually exclusive application groups, it said in a public notice aimed at offering guidance on the processing of the applications (http://bit.ly/1hwrDLi). The bureau received more than 2,800 LPFM applications during the Oct. 17-Nov. 15 application window (CD Nov 25 p2). It identified about 900 technically acceptable LPFM applications that aren’t in conflict with any other application, it said (CD Nov 29 p6). Mutually exclusive (MX) groups also will be identified this year, it said. The bureau will establish a settlement period allowing applicants to file minor amendments, which include site relocations of 5.6 km. or less and partial and universal voluntary time-sharing agreements, it said. States with the most filings include Texas with 303 applications and California with 283, and Florida organizations submitted 276, the bureau said. The public notice also offers guidance on petitions to deny and dismissed applications. Applicants don’t have to wait for the formal announcement of the MX groups to start figuring out how to eliminate mutual exclusivities, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Harry Cole. It should be relatively easy “for many applicants to sift through the already available lists of applications and identify obvious mutual exclusivities,” he said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1be4Akv). The information from the Audio Division should encourage all applicants “to take whatever steps they can, as soon as they can, to avail themselves of the various options to help the division along in the process,” he said.
Arianespace plans to strive to compete, innovate, and drive down costs of satellite launches to continue to adapt in the commercial launch marketplace, said CEO Stephane Israel. Competition in that market isn’t getting any easier, he said Tuesday at a Washington Space Business Roundtable event. The U.S. satellite business is key for Arianespace, he said. So far, the company has launched 161 satellites made by U.S. manufacturers, he said. It also serves the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other U.S. agencies, he said. Israel said he expects new opportunities to arise from the recently updated National Space Transportation Policy (CD Nov 25 p17): “We see the door opening wider for hosted payloads."
Iowa’s Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) Advisory Council’s Broadband Committee submitted six recommendations to Gov. Terry Branstad (R) Monday designed as part of the Connect Every Iowan initiative to make Iowa the top broadband-connected Midwestern state (http://bit.ly/18YLz4S). The committee recommended the state use broadband adoption rates, network speeds and a statewide broadband economic analysis as criteria to evaluate the state’s efforts, said the report. The state should allocate resources to “maintain within Iowa the capacity” to collect and analyze data for these criteria on a continuing basis, it said. The state’s broadband program should be streamlined by focusing responsibility in the Office of the Chief Information Officer or another existing agency in the state to coordinate a public-private partnership for its broadband initiative, said the report. The parts of Iowa Communications Network (ICN), now used to connect schools, hospitals and government agencies to a fiber backbone, should be repurposed to make bandwidth available to the state’s industry partners, it recommended. Tax code-based incentives and digital literacy training should also be used to bring in infrastructure and encourage broadband adoption, said the report. The committee also recommended the state establish the capacity for Iowa schools to act early on the FCC’s E-rate program by giving them increased latitude of school infrastructure funding for network expansion or upgrades, it said. All of the recommendations are focused on making broadband availability and adoption universal in the state, Iowa Communications Alliance CEO Dave Duncan told us. Duncan is a former president of the Iowa Telecommunications Association and became the CEO of the Iowa Communications Alliance when his organization merged with the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association last month. “We want to bring broadband to all Iowans, and I have been pushing for state policy to look at all angles of this including financial incentives,” said Duncan, who is on the committee. But he said the buildout of the ICN concerned him: “As the representatives of the private industry, we are concerned with government subsidized excess capacity being dumped.” Buildout of the ICN wouldn’t solve the broadband availability problem in the state because the endpoints of the network are limited, said Duncan: “This network would not be able to connect everyone.” While Iowa Utilities Code Chapter 8D would have to be revised to open the network, he said he’s not sure what form the network would take. “It would not be completely open access, and there would be some restrictions on who could use it,” said Duncan.
Nearly half of all calls received by 911 emergency centers in North Carolina from wireless phones in June didn’t include accurate location information, said the Find Me 911 Coalition in a news release Tuesday (http://yhoo.it/1bdJ67e). Statewide data released by the FCC and analyzed by the Find Me 911 Coalition showed 211,241 of the 447,918 wireless calls received by 911 emergency centers in June lacked accurate “Phase II” location information that displays the location of the caller, said the coalition. It said the problem has worsened over the past year, as the percentage of calls lacking such information has risen from 36 percent in June 2012 to 47 percent this June. Carriers have been locked in a fight with the coalition, which they say is funded by technology provider TruePosition and has been spreading bad information to the states (CD Nov 19 p1). AT&T, T-Mobile and the Carolinas Wireless Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Data traffic on metropolitan access and aggregation networks will increase by 560 percent between now and 2017, said Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs Tuesday in a study. Metro networks’ data traffic will grow primarily due to demand for video and continued proliferation of data centers, Bell Labs said. Traffic from video services alone will grow 720 percent by 2017, while data center traffic will rise 440 percent, the study said. Video services are increasing their local delivery of content over metro networks, meaning that by 2017 about 75 percent of traffic originating on metro networks will completely stay on those networks rather than access content through a backbone network. About 57 of metro network traffic remains on the network now, Bell Labs said (http://bit.ly/18flqhF).
The operation of millions of outdoor Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure-1 (UNII-1) access points would drain Globalstar’s satellite power, diminish user capacity, and create gaps in signal coverage, Globalstar said, citing a study they commissioned by Roberson and Associates. Globalstar presented the analysis in supplemental comments in docket 13-49 (http://bit.ly/18AqShO). The study demonstrates that the operation of outdoor access points in the UNII-1 band “would have a substantial detrimental impact on Globalstar’s licensed MSS [mobile satellite services] operations in the Big LEO [low-earth orbit] band,” it said. “This outcome is directly contrary to the FCC’s Part 15 regulatory framework for unlicensed services and its well-established commitment to protecting licensed services from interference.” The MSS company continued to urge the FCC to maintain its prohibition on outdoor transmissions in the UNII-1 band, it said.
The FCC shouldn’t comply with requests from the White House, Department of Justice and some wireless carriers to change spectrum aggregation rules for the upcoming spectrum incentive auction to treat low-band spectrum technologies below 1 GHz differently than high-band technologies above 1 GHz, said NetCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland Monday in a blog post. Complying with such requests would subvert the current spectrum marketplace and would cause the FCC to regress to a 1980s “pre-auction” mentality that government rather than auctions should determine what spectrum a company received, Cleland said. “The last time the FCC imagined it could manage competitive inputs better than competitive market forces could, the entire CLEC industry the FCC heavily-subsidized went bankrupt.” The requests are also not justified from a technological perspective, since “there is nothing intrinsic about 1 GHz to justify the boundary it draws except its clean numeric appellation,” Cleland said. “That’s because radio spectrum is simply a continuum of the ever-shortening of radio frequency waves as one moves up the radio spectrum chart” (http://bit.ly/1g3Eowq).
Games remain the most popular mobile apps by far despite the growth of several non-gaming app categories, representatives from several app makers told Mediabistro’s Inside Mobile Apps conference in New York Tuesday. Social and dieting apps are becoming increasingly popular, said Mary Bloom, senior manager-developer partnerships at Tapjoy, an ad and monetization service provider for mobile apps. Probably about 80-90 percent of Tapjoy’s app publishing base, however, is made up of free-to-play games, she said. Executives at several companies that make mobile messaging apps said on another panel that they were seeing growing demand for their apps. Tango’s mobile messaging service has attracted about 170 million members, said Eric Setton, its chief technology officer and co-founder. As part of a deal announced last month, Spotify is giving Tango’s members the ability to discover and share music from Spotify’s catalog of more than 20 million songs and personalize their Tango messages to friends, the companies said in a news release. The Paltalk chat service, meanwhile, has 5.5 million unique monthly users, Wilson Kriegel, its president and chief operating officer, told the conference attendees Tuesday. But there are “going to be a lot of failures” in the sector, he predicted. Average revenue per user (ARPU) tends to be much higher on messaging apps in Japan and other Asian markets than in the U.S. and “we may never have that ARPU” level in the U.S., he said. Android users are “much cheaper to acquire” than iOS users, said Geoff Cook, CEO of social media company MeetMe, which has a chat app for each platform. More than 1 million users log into the company’s service each day, he said. About 70 percent of MeetMe’s business is now mobile, after initially focusing on the Web, he said. If the user rating on an app dips lower than three stars, the maker of that app should consider dropping it until improvements are made, suggested Gary Yentin, CEO of consulting company App-Promo. It’s a “very competitive” market and although mobile app makers should advertise, they should do so “wisely,” he said.