The Council for Research Excellence (CRE) is studying how mobile devices impact TV viewing behavior, the media and advertising industry group said Tuesday. CRE sees mobile device use having an increasing impact on TV consumption, and the group said it believes it’s important to study the issue because of the implications for content development and advertising. “We continue to see shifts in how and where consumers watch, and there is no denying that our constantly connected society creates an ever growing set of opportunities for advertisers and media companies to promote their messages,” said Dounia Turrill, senior vice president at Nielsen, in a news release. CRE said it will work with market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey to conduct the study, which it expects to complete in Q2. The study will focus on in-home interviews in Atlanta, Phoenix and Kansas City, CRE said (http://xrl.us/bn3ru4).
The Senate passed by unanimous consent Monday night a bipartisan House bill to deter the online sharing and possession of child pornography. The Child Protection Act (HR-6063) aims to increase penalties for those possessing child porn, give law enforcement officers tools to combat online porn, and reauthorizes the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force for five years. The legislation was authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. The bill is a watered-down version of HR-1981, the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act, which sparked bipartisan furor over the its potential impact on consumer privacy and cybersecurity. HR-6063 differs from HR-1981 by omitting the provision that would require ISPs to retain data about consumer browsing habits.
Republican members of the House Communications Subcommittee said in a majority memo that circulated Tuesday recent proposals to define receiver interference rights could encourage more efficient spectrum use and innovation. The memo noted, however, that opponents of defined receiver performance levels said such a proposal could raise device manufacturing costs and ultimately the price for consumers. The subcommittee plans a hearing on receiver standards at 10 a.m. Thursday in Room 2322 Rayburn. Witnesses scheduled to testify are Brian Markwalter, CEA senior vice president-research and standards; FCC Deputy Chief Ron Repasi of the Office of Engineering and Technology; and Pierre de Vries of the Silicon Flatirons Center. Republicans said the FCC’s current use of band management tools does not work in every circumstance and “will fall short with growing frequency in an increasingly spectrum-constrained and technologically complex environment.” The memo also said the FCC’s regulation of device transmitters ignores half of the equation. The memo said the LightSquared fiasco illustrates how tracking and resolving interference issues with many retail GPS receivers has been complicated by the lack of a direct, ongoing relationship between GPS signal providers, retail device manufacturers and end users.
Qualcomm joined the board of the NFC Forum, the industry association for near field communication technology said Tuesday. Qualcomm had already been a principal member of the NFC Forum, but its move to upgrade to a sponsor-level membership automatically entitled the company to a seat on the board. David Favreau, Qualcomm Atheros’s vice president-product management, in a news release, said: “We firmly believe that NFC technology drives seamless user experiences in the mobile, computing and consumer electronics markets and look forward to advancing that goal with this expanded role” (http://xrl.us/bn3rh6).
Immersion signed a settlement and license deal with Google and Motorola Mobility, resolving a patent infringement dispute, Immersion said Tuesday. In February, Immersion filed a complaint against Motorola with the U.S. International Trade Commission and sued Motorola in U.S. District Court, Wilmington, Del., claiming the touchscreens of certain Android-based smartphones infringed on six Immersion patents covering various uses of haptic effects. Under the settlement and license deal, Immersion said it’s receiving unspecified compensation for prior shipments of Motorola devices containing Basic Haptics technology. The companies also agreed to a license on future shipments of Motorola devices with Basic Haptics and resolved certain issues with respect to Google-branded smartphones containing Basic Haptics, Immersion said. The deal doesn’t extend to other manufacturers’ Android handsets, Immersion said. Immersion will dismiss all pending litigation between it and Motorola, Immersion said. The resolution of the dispute is “a critical step in our overall strategy of enforcing and monetizing our intellectual property, including Basic Haptics, and we're pleased to achieve a settlement that is consistent with our business model, which is largely based on per unit running royalties,” Immersion CEO Victor Viegas said in a news release. Immersion remains “fully committed to enforcing our IP rights while continuing to innovate and create new technology and solutions for the mobile space,” he said. Other terms of the settlement “will remain confidential and are not anticipated to have a material impact on” Immersion’s financial results this year, he said. Immersion shares closed 34.8 percent higher Tuesday at $6.32.
The percentage of “pay-TV refugees” -- broadband subscribers who don’t subscribe to cable or other pay-TV services -- is on the rise, research firm The Diffusion Group (TDG) said Tuesday. There are now about 11 million U.S. households designated as pay-TV refugees, 12.5 percent of all U.S. broadband subscribers, TDG said. That percentage is up from 11.2 percent in late 2011 and 9.5 percent in late 2010, TDG said. Many pay-TV refugees are “cord cutters” who have stopped subscribing to pay-TV services, while the rest are “cord nevers” who never used such services, TDG said. “Cord nevers,” particularly younger ones who prefer over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix and Hulu, will be a particular challenge to the pay-TV industry in coming years, TDG said. “Spending $80-$100 per month for a pay-TV service, though enjoyable, is more of a luxury than a necessity,” said TDG founding partner Michael Greeson in a news release. “And by combining free over-the-air broadcasts with a couple of $8 per month OTT subscriptions and free online video, they can easily create an imperfect but sufficient substitution solution. And many will” (http://xrl.us/bn3rge).
The European Commission must fairly balance investment incentives for incumbent telcos and competition measures to foster challengers’ investments and the growth of the sector, competitive telecom company chiefs told Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Tuesday at the European Competitive Telecommunications Association regulatory conference in Brussels. They asked Kroes to consider the central role alternative operators play in the growth of broadband markets as she prepares a recommendation aimed at boosting investment in and demand for next-generation broadband. The EC wants to stabilize and align wholesale network access prices at the current average level and give dominant operators pricing flexibility when they partly or fully upgrade their networks, but to balance that approach, Kroes promised to tighten nondiscrimination rules to ensure that dominant operators offer wholesale services on the same terms to all wholesale customers as they do to their own retail arms, ECTA said. Given the track record of dominant players to abuse their market power and squeeze competitors’ margins, a key element of a balanced approach is effective prevention of margin squeeze, said ECTA Director Erzsebet Fitori. There’s a particularly high risk of abusive pricing when wholesale access charges are increased without a hike in the underlying costs, or when major players are given pricing flexibility, ECTA said. The EC should make sure such abuses are prevented or face undermining the growth potential of the sector, it said.
The mobile communications equipment market’s revenue is on track to grow 13 percent this year, IHS iSuppli said Tuesday in a market report. Total factory revenue from mobile communications equipment is forecast to reach $376 million by the end of the year, up from $334 million in 2011, IHS said. Growth will continue into 2013, with revenue reaching $444 million by year’s end. That growth is being fueled by rising shipments of mobile handsets and tablets, especially those that support 4G LTE, IHS said. “The wireless equipment market is continuing to grow this year despite facing daunting economic headwinds, including the slowdown in China and the turmoil engulfing the euro zone,” said Francis Sideco, IHS principal analyst-wireless communications, in a news release. “To be sure, growth this year will be lower than the much more sizable expansion of 29 percent in 2011. However, the market’s double-digit rise in 2012 is a testament to the ongoing appeal of cellphones and tablets to global consumers” (http://xrl.us/bn3rec).
Verizon is volunteering to pay $100,000 to the state of New York due to its service failures in New York City in July, the telco told the New York State Public Service Commission. Verizon described an established service quality measure in which the “percentage of ‘core’ customer out-of-service troubles not cleared within 24 hours” remains under 20, according to a Monday letter (http://xrl.us/bn3rcz). Verizon has met this standard 95 percent of the time, it argued, leaving out the months of August and September 2011 due to, “in rapid succession, a strike, a hurricane, and a tropical storm.” But in July, Verizon experienced a metric of “79.42% [outages restored] within 24 hours, instead of 80%,” the established service-quality standard, according to the letter. It’s willing to pay the money “in the interest of addressing this issue expeditiously and focusing our limited resources on meeting the requirements” of the service-quality plan, it said. Verizon said there’s no need for further proceedings, saying it’s not legally required to pay the $100,000.
Submitting data for the National Broadband Map is “disproportionately more burdensome for smaller operators” because they have fewer employees than large providers, the American Cable Association told the FCC in response to a request from the Wireline Bureau. Small operators do not, in the normal course of business, collect and store information in the same formats as requested by the states, ACA said in its ex parte filing in the special access docket (http://xrl.us/bn3rce). Also, many states have not been “diligent” in gathering the data, it said. Among ACA’s smaller members that provide a fixed Internet Protocol broadband service to customers for business purposes, they often have a “limited number” of these subscribers, ACA said.