The FCC Media Bureau reiterated the Dec. 3 due date for the annual DTV ancillary/ supplementary use services report for digital stations. Form 317 is required for TV stations that are licensees of digital commercial or noncommercial educational full-power TV, low-power TV, TV translator or Class A TV station, the bureau said in a public notice (http://xrl.us/bn2jjr). The form also is required for a permittee operating under digital special temporary authority of those types of stations, it said. Such digital stations must submit the form by Dec. 3, “even if they did not provide ancillary or supplementary services,” the bureau added.
NAB wants the FCC to keep “as simple as possible” the design of the voluntary incentive auction of TV station frequencies and the move of broadcaster channel locations, engineering officials of the association including new spectrum executive Rick Kaplan told agency officials designing the auction. Such simplicity would “minimize the enormity of the challenges evident in this complex proceeding,” recounted a filing (http://xrl.us/bn2jf3) by Kaplan, who joined NAB this fall and was previously head of the Wireless Bureau and a top aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (CD Oct 5 p15). It was Kaplan’s first ex parte meeting at the commission for NAB, agency records show (http://xrl.us/bn2jf9). He and colleagues met with Gary Epstein, co-head of the agency’s spectrum task force, Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp and staff of the Enforcement, Media and Wireless bureaus and general counsel’s office.
An economics professor at Stanford University filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC for information across several years of the cable pricing survey. Ali Yurukoglu asked for individual responses to several questions, including the number of channels in the analog channel lineup, monthly charges for sports tiers and for HDTV broadcast signals, the request said (http://xrl.us/bn2jfn).
NFC and chip provider Inside Secure will buy Authentec-owned Embedded Security Solutions (ESS), which designs, develops and sells encryption-related security hardware and software, Inside Secure said Monday. Inside Secure will pay out $38 million in cash and up to an additional $10 million from post-closing transactions to acquire the company. The transaction is set to close by the end of 2012, Inside Secure said. The purchase will allow Inside Secure to “reinforce its position as a key player in the fast-growing security solutions market,” the company said in a news release. “ESS brings to INSIDE Secure complementary offerings for a complete security architecture, as well as additional solutions for securing both content ... and data exchange.” The deal will also give Inside Secure a wider customer base in the mobile, content provider and network industries. “By leveraging the strong capabilities of INSIDE Secure’s existing Mobile NFC and Digital Security businesses, the combined offer should lead to additional sales in high growth markets,” Inside Secure said (http://xrl.us/bn2jcq).
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities is suffering from scheduling issues after Superstorm Sandy. It was unable to hold a Friday meeting, CenturyLink told the FCC, which affected the board’s ability to review the telco’s petition for state high-cost support certification. The board’s public meeting is rescheduled for Tuesday, CenturyLink said. It described Sandy’s effect on the board and noted staff is “significantly hampered” in traveling to work due to storm damage. In a filing posted Monday (http://xrl.us/bn2jb9), CenturyLink asked the FCC for relief “to permit it to receive frozen high-cost universal service support” for the first quarter of 2013 despite missing the Nov. 16 FCC certification deadline. CenturyLink called the circumstances “highly unusual and unexpected” and warned against allowing the disaster to be “doubly devastating.” The board changed the meeting time due to “storm recovery activities,” a spokesman confirmed.
Belo Corp.’s below-investment grade credit rating was raised a notch to BB by Standard & Poor’s as Belo reduces leverage. An S&P release Monday (http://xrl.us/bn2jbg) cited “geographic and revenue concentration in Texas, and our assumption that the company’s TV stations will maintain good audience ratings compared with local competitors.” A BB rating means a company’s is “less vulnerable in the near-term but faces major ongoing uncertainties to adverse business, financial and economic conditions,” the ratings agency’s website said (http://xrl.us/bn2jb7).
The House Communications Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing on spectrum and receiver standards Nov. 29 at 10 a.m. in Room 2123 Rayburn. The title of the hearing is “The role of receivers in a spectrum scarce world.” Witnesses have not yet been announced. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said in a press release Monday subcommittee members plan to “examine how we can stay flexible while preparing for the next generation of innovation and advancement.”
Downloads of paid apps are forecast to generate $57 billion total by the end of 2017, but the paid category will represent a shrinking portion of all app downloads by that time, Strategy Analytics said in an industry forecast. By 2017, free apps will represent 91 percent of all downloads, the forecast said. The increase in free downloads will push the average selling price of all downloaded apps down to 8 cents by 2017; the decline in revenue from such downloads, coupled with increasing app store maintenance costs, may force app stores to look at alternate revenue streams, Strategy Analytics said. “Paid downloads will remain an important way for smaller developers to monetize their efforts,” said Josh Martin, director-apps research for Strategy Analytics, in a news release. “For developers committed to paid downloads transitioning to tablets may be the smartest way to preserve the business model over the long term. App stores will also see a revenue crunch as more revenue is earned from advertising -- revenue generated outside the bounds of the app store -- and will need to prepare. Newer platforms such as Windows 8, BlackBerry 10, Tizen and Firefox are building their operating systems and storefronts with this knowledge which should go a long way to making them attractive to developers and end users” (http://xrl.us/bn2jc8).
State regulators want to ensure that the federal government recognizes consumers in its telecom laws. NARUC released a detailed statement of intent regarding its new seven-member telecom task force, announced last Monday at the NARUC Baltimore meeting (CD Nov 14 p5). The task force will “examine whether the Association’s existing positions and resources need to be updated to keep up with changes in the telecommunications and wireless sector,” NARUC said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn2i8b). The group will revise the 2005 NARUC white paper “Federalism and Telecom” to include a framework for the states’ roles and interactions with the FCC and other federal bodies as well as “an updated negotiating framework” on federal telecom law and “principles to evaluate State-level telecommunications legislation,” NARUC said. Incoming President Phil Jones spoke in a statement of the great technological changes since 2005 regarding VoIP, smartphones and the increased fraction of Americans cutting their landline phone cord. “As State regulators, we must make sure consumers are not left behind,” Commissioner Orjiakor Isiogu, chair of the new task force, said in a statement. Support staff includes General Counsel Brad Ramsay, Legislative Director-Telecom Brian O'Hara and National Regulatory Research Institute Telecommunications Principal Sherry Lichtenberg, according to NARUC. The group will meet in person and over the phone “as much as necessary” and strive to create and release its revised white paper by next November, NARUC said. The 2005 paper offered what it deemed “pragmatic” examination of how states should play a role: “...decisions about jurisdiction and oversight should be linked not to the particular technology used, but to the salient features of a particular service, such as whether it is competitive and how consumers and small businesses depend on it” (http://xrl.us/bn2i7z).
Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract for the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center Military Satellite Communications Systems Directorate. Lockheed will show concepts allowing data “to seamlessly flow between existing MILSATCOM legacy systems and future protected communications systems,” Lockheed said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bn2i97). The 10-month contract is part of an initiative aimed at developing a flexible, agile system “that focuses largely on serving MILSATCOM tactical users, whose needs for protected communications continue to grow,” it said. Lockheed said it was chosen for the affordable gateway risk reduction and the demonstration portion of the project.