Time Warner Cable (TWC) opened its National Data Center East in Charlotte, N.C., the company said Friday. The $82 million center, one of two nationwide, supports equipment needed for TWC’s residential and business products. “The latest IP technology housed in this building gives Time Warner Cable the capability and flexibility to focus on delivering services in line with our vision of bringing our customers the 4 Any’s -- any content to any device, anywhere at any time,” said Carol Hevey, executive vice president-operations for TWC East, in a news release. Equipment in the building hosts applications that support residential email services, billing management and back-end applications for TWC’s employee base, the company said. The center also includes NaviSite’s NaviCloud platform technology, which addresses IT issues for small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise organizations, TWC said (http://xrl.us/bnzz5f).
Europe’s share of global telecom markets has shrunk from 31 percent to 25 percent in the past six years, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association said Friday. Its annual economic report (http://xrl.us/bnzzts) also showed that despite a revenue decline of 1.5 percent in 2011, investment in Europe’s fixed and mobile sectors grew by 4.6 percent compared to 1.4 percent in Asia and the U.S. Total revenue in the sector was about 275 billion euros ($349 billion), down 1.5 percent compared to 2010, it said. Fixed telephony revenue dropped 8 percent and mobile revenue 0.6 percent, while broadband market revenue grew by 4 percent, it said. The numbers show that in 2011, the sector experienced a revenue decline for the third year in a row despite moderate economic recovery, meaning “structural rather than cyclical changes are shaping” it, said ETNO Executive Board Chair Luigi Gambardella. Notwithstanding the complex scenario, network operators are still committed to investing in broadband deployment, he said. The continued use of social networking and other over-the-top applications “confirms the need for new models of cooperation,” he said. Telecom sector policies must be flexible to allow operators to adapt to rapidly changing realities and let new business models emerge, he said. ETNO believes “an urgent debate at EU level is needed to find possible policy solutions” to the problems and to ensure the sustainability of the telecom, publishing and broadband industries, he said. The telecom market has experience a “major revolution” over the past 20 years, said ETNO Director Daniel Pataki. European users now have a lot of innovation and choice which wouldn’t have been possible without the investment of ETNO members, he said. In the long run, new business models and revenue sources are needed to sustain the pace of investment required to realize the sector’s full potential, he said.
EU Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes and European telecom regulators are committed to boosting infrastructure investment as a way out of Europe’s financial problems and for future growth, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) said Friday. Its representatives met with Kroes Thursday to discuss how to increase broadband connectivity, a key component of the digital internal market. The European Commission is working on several initiatives, including legislation to reduce civil engineering costs of high-speed broadband rollout, but the powwow mainly focused on a planned recommendation for harmonizing costing methodologies and putting in place non-discrimination obligations, BEREC said. It’s also working on issues in this area, including a revised common position on broadband due next month, it said. The meeting marked “an important development in BEREC’s relationship” with the EC that brings its members’ on-the-ground regulatory experience to bear on the development of the EC’s wider policy agenda, said BEREC Chair Georg Serentschy of Austrian regulator RTR.
Telecom Italia appears to oppose a Sipme request for shared country and identification code assignments from the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, we've learned. Sipme wants the numbers for a global VoIP service and to be a mobile virtual network operator, we've learned. The company wants the numbering resources to spur interconnection between the public switched telephone network and cellular networks, Skype and other IP calling applications. Telecom Italia questioned the application on the grounds that it was aimed to avoid paying terminal rates to local networks.
The “imbalance of power between cloud consumers and cloud service providers” must be addressed in order to make the system reliable, trustworthy and compliant with data protection rules, European Data Protection Commissioner Peter Hustinx said Friday. His opinion (http://xrl.us/bnzzg8) responded to a September European Commission strategy that aims to make Europe the leader in cloud computing (CD Sept 28 p14). The chief issue is accountability, Hustinx said. Cloud services raise a “major risk of seeing responsibility evaporating” in data-processing operations handled by cloud service providers if EU privacy laws aren’t made clear enough and if providers’ role and responsibility aren’t defined, he said. “The use of cloud computing services cannot justify a lowering of data protection standards as compared to those applicable to conventional data processing operations,” he wrote. Without those definitions, the complexity and involvement of multiple service providers could lead to a serious lack of protection in practice, the opinion said. The power imbalance could be solved by standard commercial terms and conditions that respect data protection requirements for commercial contracts, public procurements and international data transfers, he said. The EC has proposed changes to data protection rules that would provide many clarifications and tools that could help ensure a satisfactory level of privacy in cloud services, Hustinx said. But he recommended additional changes to take into account the specifics of the cloud. These include: (1) Specifying that processing of Europeans’ personal data by non-EU-based cloud companies that offer services in Europe is subject to the EU legislation. (2) Adding a provision to make clear under what conditions access to data stored in the cloud by non-European Economic Area countries’ law enforcement agencies should be allowed. (3) Developing standards and certification regimes that fully incorporate data protection criteria. Hustinx stressed the need to address cloud computing challenges at the international level, saying many could be tackled in international or bilateral agreements such as mutual assistance or trade agreements.
A France Telecom Orange study on the growth rate of mobile country codes and mobile network codes (MNC) assigned by the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau indicates it has been stable since the introduction of international mobile subscriber identities in the late 1990s, we've learned. The study concluded that the current MNC format, which is under discussion in an ITU-T study group, can accommodate more assignments. The company called for regular surveys on the number of assignments to spot sudden increases and to better track the possible need to revise the ITU-T recommendation.
The U.K. saw growing availability and take-up of superfast broadband, a rising use of mobile Internet services and completion of digital switchover in the past year, the Office of Communications said Friday in its 2012 communications infrastructure report (http://xrl.us/bnzy8y). Nearly 100 percent of premises now have current-generation broadband, with overall adoption of fixed broadband services at around 71 percent, it said. The government has committed to ensuring that by 2015 almost all premises will have access to a basic broadband service of at least 2 Mbps, through the universal service commitment (USC), it said. The significant progress on that goal over the past year is expected to continue, it said. Ten percent of U.K. connections had fixed broadband speeds of less than 2 Mbps this year, an improvement on the 14 percent recorded last year, it said. In addition, many consumers now have the option to switch to superfast services to boost their speeds, and others would have better speeds if they addressed in-home wiring issues. However, broadband speeds “seem to be a significant constraint on how much data consumers can use on the internet,” Ofcom said. The amount of data downloaded and uploaded increases steadily as broadband speeds rise, up to around 8 Mbps, at which point it remains essentially the same until speeds are reached where “superfast” services are used, it said. This is likely caused by consumers with broadband speeds of a few Mbps being deterred from using data-hungry services such as high-definition Internet TV. It may be appropriate to consider increasing the USC, it said. Superfast fixed broadband is now available from commercial providers to 65 percent of U.K. premises, with 7 percent of homes and businesses using such services, it said. Average broadband speeds are rising as a result of the adoption of superfast broadband, with the average now at 12.7 Mbps, up from 7.5 Mbps recorded in 2011, it said. Mobile data use is also on the upswing, with total data volumes more than doubling over the past year, Ofcom said. The commercial launch of 4G services will likely accelerate this trend further, it said. Mobile broadband coverage also improved since 2011, with fewer premises stuck in 3G “not-spots,” it said. But around 0.3 percent of households still can’t get mobile coverage even for voice services, while over 6 percent are in “partial not-spots,” it said. Many homes are using femtocells to boost their in-home coverage, it said. Digital switchover quietly ended Oct. 24, giving virtually every U.K. home access to digital TV, radio and interactive services, it said. Meanwhile, digital audio broadcasting radio continued to grow. Ofcom published updated interactive maps at http://maps.ofcom.org.uk with more detailed data on coverage of fixed and mobile networks around the country, and has also made available information on the availability of superfast broadband across the U.K. and the current speeds received.
The U.K. will back international calls for a harmonized release of 700 MHz spectrum for mobile broadband services while trying to ensure that the 600 MHz band is made available for digital terrestrial TV (DTT), the Office of Communications said Friday in a UHF strategy statement (http://xrl.us/bnzy4d). The 700 MHz band, now used in the U.K. for DTT, wireless microphones and white space technology, could help meet the burgeoning demand for mobile data, it said. But changing the use of the band risks preventing DTT from fulfilling its role of providing nearly universal, low-cost access to public broadcasting services and of maintaining viewers’ choice of platforms, services and equipment, it said. Mobile operators have several ways to boost the capacity of their networks, such as using more high and low frequency spectrum, upgrading mobile networks to more efficient mobile broadband technologies such as LTE, and offloading mobile data on Wi-Fi and femtocells, Ofcom said. But even if they do all that, additional mobile spectrum will be needed to meet the anticipated growth in demand, it said. Only international harmonized spectrum is likely to be used for mobile broadband because of economies of scale, it said. There will be a potentially significant increase in harmonized spectrum resulting from the U.K.’s planned 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum awards; refarming of existing 2G and 3G mobile bands to LTE; government plans to release 500 MHz of public spectrum; and other emerging higher frequency spectrum options such as the 3.6-3.8 GHz bands, it said. But the 700 MHz band “represents the most attractive option for providing additional lower frequency spectrum because there is now momentum behind it being allocated for mobile broadband use on a global scale,” it said. Among other things, a 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference resolution paved the way for the band to be used for mobile services after the next WRC. The earliest it could be made available is 2018, provided there’s sufficient agreement in Europe, Ofcom said. Shifting the 700 MHz band to mobile broadband use could affect multiplex operators running the DTT platform, wireless microphones and white space applications, it said. Some say Ofcom may have underestimated the role broadband Internet Protocol TV-delivered services could play in offering a viable substitute to the DTT platform, it said. But over the time-scale of a future release of the 700 MHz band, perhaps as early as 2018, there’s a major risk that IPTV won’t be able to substitute for DTT because it’s unclear whether broadband connections with enough speed and data capacity limits will be universally available, it said. Moreover, there’s a strong likelihood that consumers won’t have universally taken up high speed broadband connections and IPTV-compatible receivers by 2018, and there is currently a complete absence of stand-alone IPTV service that provide the range of linear TV services available on the DTT platform, it said. Two factors could help ensure there’s enough DTT broadcast capacity for ongoing delivery of its important benefits, Ofcom said. One is further improvements in digital television compression and transmission technology that will allow DTT spectrum to be used more efficiently; the other is the potential use of the 600 MHz band released by digital switchover for DTT and the other services that share spectrum with it, Ofcom said. Most respondents to an earlier consultation said alternative spectrum at 600 MHz should be made available for DTT if the 700 MHz band is switched to mobile broadband, it said. One consequence of that approach is that no long-term rights in the 600 MHz band can be granted, given international development around the 700 MHz band, it said. Ofcom considered two options for shorter-term use of the band -- shared use by DTT, wireless mics and white space devices, and exclusive reservation of an innovation space for white space devices -- and decided that the former solution is better. The regulator stressed that its statement doesn’t reach any final decisions about the process and timeline of any future release of the 700 MHz band. For now, it said, it will engage internationally on the 700 MHz band, and study how and when a change in its use could be achieved. Ofcom also said it will look at ways to reduce or avoid costs and disruptions to consumers and work with current users of the 700 MHz band to safeguard DTT and help them plan for a potential move. The regulator will publish as soon as practicable a document laying out how best to award 600 MHz spectrum, and do more work on the actual arrangements for coexistence of wireless microphones and white space devices in the band, it said.
The House Judiciary Committee plans a hearing to discuss online music streaming royalty rates, industry officials said. The hearing will be held on Nov. 29 and will likely feature testimony from a Pandora representative, the company’s spokesman told us. A large group of recording artists recently opposed the Internet Radio Fairness Act (HR-6480, S-3609), which they said would cut their royalty payments to the benefit of webcasters like Pandora (CD Nov 15 p16). A committee spokeswoman would not comment.
VOD had been “idle,” but is now “growing rapidly,” said Scott Brown, Nielsen senior vice president-engineering and strategic relations. Some of that growth is coming “at the expense” of live TV viewing, he said Thursday at the Digital Hollywood conference in New York. Total live TV viewing is declining as more people move to time shifting, he said.