New Mexico has become the 36th state where Assurance Wireless will bring its Lifeline Assistance Program benefits. Assurance offers a wireless phone, 250 free voice minutes and 250 free text messages to eligible residents, parent company Sprint Nextel said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn3mag). There are 55,000 jobless New Mexicans, and 30 percent are below the poverty line, it said. Eligibility varies by state, according to Assurance Wireless, which said people in New Mexico can apply if eligible for other programs including Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, General Assistance, Federal Public Housing Assistance or the national free lunch program. Applicants can also demonstrate low income other ways, it said. The federal USF supports Assurance’s services.
The EU Parliament’s recently-adopted resolution on the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) is based on a “flawed understanding” of the conference and the ITU, said Richard Hill, secretary of the ITU’s Council Working Group tasked with preparing for WCIT, Monday in an ITU blog post. The EU Parliament resolution, adopted Thursday, says the European Commission and council should block changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that would hurt the open nature of the Internet and multistakeholder Internet governance (CD Nov 23 p8). Freedom of expression and a right to communicate are already included in the U.N. Declaration of Rights, the ITU Constitution and Convention and many other U.N. treaties, Hill said. “Since the ITU Constitution prevails over the [ITRs], nothing in the ITRs has the power to result in a reduction of freedom to communicate,” he said. “It is imperative that the Internet is open for all people, in order to continue to leverage the social and economic benefits of access to information and knowledge” (bit.ly/UMoqcl). The ITU also criticized a Google-sponsored campaign that asks its users to sign a petition that opposes changes to the current Internet governance structure (CD Nov 26 p3). The petition’s text says: “A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet. Governments alone, working behind closed doors, should not direct its future. The billions of people around the globe who use the Internet should have a voice.” The ITU noted Friday that the U.S. WCIT delegation includes Google representatives. “We regret that Google did not take the opportunity to choose to join ITU as a member, which would have enabled it to participate in its own right in the WCIT-12 preparatory process,” the ITU said (http://bit.ly/Ta6eb2).
ITU will develop “mechanisms” that better integrate the needs of the health, education, literacy, democracy, commerce and entertainment sectors into ITU’s international standardization work to spur e-health, e-learning, intelligent transport systems, mobile money and smart grid, the ITU said in a press release citing a call from 14 chief technology officers (http://xrl.us/bn3k58). “We must ask ourselves whether the vast array of forums and consortiums proliferating in the ICT [information and communications technology] sector today is the most efficient way to address a market that continues to grow in sophistication and complexity,” said Hamadoun Toure, ITU secretary-general. The CTOs also said there’s a need for collaboration among standardization communities dealing with mobile, transport and access, the press release said. The CTOs said collaboration will be “crucial” to ensure a coordinated approach to the development of optical transport standards supporting rollout of mobile broadband beyond 4G, it said. The CTOs proposed smartphone security standardization as a new ITU-T study area, as well as the expansion of ITU-T’s work on software-defined networking, it said. CTOs were from Cisco, AT&T, Ericsson, Etisalat, Fujitsu, Huawei, KDDI, NEC, Nokia Siemens Networks, NTT, Orange FT Group, Research in Motion, Telecom Italia, and Telekom South Africa.
Boeing and Orbital Sciences Corp. completed the Bicentenario satellite for Mexsat. The satellite is scheduled to be launched from French Guiana Dec. 19. It is part of an order for three satellites from the Mexican government, Boeing said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn3k6g). Boeing will provide the remaining two satellites, which are scheduled to launch in 2013 and 2014, it said. The satellite is based on Orbital’s GeoStar-2 platform, it added.
The public should get “meaningful notice whenever a broadcaster seeks waiver of an ownership rule,” four groups opposed to such waivers said. The current methods of required station on-air announcements of such requests and FCC lists of such submissions don’t say “whether a waiver has been requested,” Common Cause, Free Press, National Hispanic Media Coalition and United Church of Christ said. “The Commission should issue a specific public notice” and “distribute information” so “people in the relevant community of license” have a “chance to learn” of the request and comment, representatives of those groups told aides to commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel. “Without meaningful notice, the public has no opportunity to rebut this presumption” in favor of waivers for common ownership of a TV station and daily newspaper in the same market, an ex parte filing posted Friday to docket 09-182 said (http://xrl.us/bn3k47). A draft FCC order has such a provision for top-20 markets (CD Nov 23 p5). TV stations “unable to merge under the FCC’s rules” use shared services deals “to consolidate their core operations, and thereby circumvent local media ownership protections,” the four groups said. “The television duopoly rule has been effectively rendered meaningless and unenforceable."
Sprint Nextel is bringing 4G LTE to 11 new locations, it said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn3k2e). The service will come to Anderson, Ind., Clarke County, Va./Jefferson County, W.Va., Harrisburg/Carlisle/Hershey, Pa., Hagerstown, Md./Martinsburg, W.Va., Harrisonburg, Va., Muncie, Ind., Peabody, Mass., Salina, Kan., Shenandoah County, Va., South Bend/Mishawaka, Ind., and Winchester, Va. Sprint debuted its 4G service this summer and now serves 43 markets, it said.
Time-shifted viewing has “transcended ’sampling’ and is becoming an essential component” of watching shows that originally aired on TV, a broadcast trade group said Monday. Primetime shows this season have had a “notable increase in time-shifted viewing,” with 43 percent of it the same day a show aired, TVB said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn3k2v). It said such viewing in the 25 largest markets that Nielsen local people meters measure is “outpacing the national average by 26 percent.” Twenty-six percent of viewing was time shifted in a recent week spanning late October and early November in those markets versus 19 percent nationwide, the group said. “As DVR penetration and new technologies spread to local markets at a varied pace and audiences take advantage,” live-only audience samples are “shrinking,” Maribeth Papuga, MediaVest local investment and activation director, said in a TVB release.
Bright House Networks agreed to buy Telovations, also based in Florida, which sells cloud services to businesses including hosted voice. Telovations “pioneered the delivery of ‘Communications-as-a-Service’ (CaaS), which enables businesses to deploy communications devices and applications on a pay-as-you-go, as-needed basis,” the acquirer said in a Monday news release. It said the deal is expected to be completed in 45-60 days, pending regulatory OK. Comments on the deal are due Dec. 10, replies Dec. 17 in docket 12-341, an FCC public notice said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn3kzw). It said Telovations sells competitive LEC and interexchange services in Florida, and unless the agency says otherwise, the deal can be completed in 31 days.
EchoStar and Arianespace reached agreement to launch multiple new satellites over a multi-year period from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana (http://xrl.us/bn3k2a). EchoStar plans to use the Ariane 5 launch vehicle to deliver on-time success “in the execution of our near term expansion programs,” EchoStar said.
CBS got a several-week extension from the FCC of a deadline to oppose Time Warner Cable’s petition to change the market of the broadcaster’s WLNY-TV Riverhead, N.Y., to exclude some communities in the state’s Hudson Valley. After getting a one-week delay to Nov. 15, CBS requested an extension to Nov. 30 because of a “political broadcasting complaint filed after CBS’s original request for an extension,” and the petitioner didn’t object, the broadcaster said in a filing posted last week in docket 12-305 (http://xrl.us/bn3kyc). Commission action on the petition (http://xrl.us/bn3kyn) now is due March 11, Deputy Chief Steven Broeckaert of the Media Bureau’s Policy Division said in a Nov. 14 email posted Monday to the docket (http://xrl.us/bn3kyk).