C-SPAN is surprised to have been sued by Sky Angel on antitrust grounds (CD Nov 14 p15), said Corporate Vice President-General Counsel Bruce Collins. “Although Sky Angel has not yet served us with the complaint, we have had a chance to review it,” he said. “We find it wholly without merit. We have confidence in our positions on the legal issues raised in the complaint, including the anti-trust issue,” he said.
Cisco’s acquisition of NDS is helping and will continue to help margins at Cisco’s service provider business, which sells equipment to pay-TV providers and ISPs, Cisco Chairman John Chambers told analysts Tuesday. The company is seeing some signs that the economy in the U.S. is improving, but it’s too soon to call it a trend, he said, according to a transcript of Cisco’s fiscal Q1 earnings teleconference from Seeking Alpha. U.S. spending among ISPs is expected to remain strong given recent announcements from AT&T and Sprint about their plans. Total Cisco sales increased 6 percent from a year earlier to $11.6 billion. Sales to U.S. service providers increased 13 percent from a year earlier, Chambers said without saying what the quarterly total was. Profit increased 17 percent from a year earlier to $2.1 billion. Cisco’s shares increased 4.8 percent Wednesday.
Congress is “unified” behind the idea that the Internet should remain “free of governmental control” and that multistakeholder governance is a “proven model” for benefitting people around the world, said the co-chairs of the Congressional Internet Caucus in a letter dated Tuesday and released Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnzoqb). They told Terry Kramer, who is leading the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications in December, that House and Senate resolutions to that effect passed “without a single dissenting vote.” Nations can work together on cybersecurity, intellectual property protection and online privacy, but Congress is “wary of any attempt by unaccountable intergovernmental entities to usurp control of the Internet” from the various entities that have managed the Internet and made it “flourish,” the caucus leaders said. There would be “dire consequences” from such usurpation, they told Kramer: “We fear that our cherished notions of free speech would be chilled on the global platform, leading to a balkanization of the Internet where censorship would become the new norm.” The letter was signed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. -- considered a likely chairman of the House Judiciary Committee next Congress (CD Nov 2 p5) -- House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.
Contec said it’s the preferred provider of set-top box testing and repair for Charter Communications. The deal will help Charter speed testing and return-to-service of boxes that fail in the field, it said.
A bill to update the Video Privacy Protection Act won’t advance in the 112th Congress, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said in an interview at the Capitol Wednesday. When asked whether he thought the committee would resume its markup of HR-2471, which would let companies like Netflix share users’ viewing choices with their permission, Leahy told us: “This year, no.” In September, Leahy delayed a vote on the bill after law enforcement agencies spoke out against his amendment to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The provision would require the government to notify individuals when their email or personal information is disclosed by ISPs to law enforcement and provide them with a copy of the search warrant. State, local and federal law enforcement agencies said the Leahy amendment would increase the burdens of obtaining electronic communications necessary to catch criminals.
ITU-R studies on the performance objectives of international digital transmission links in the fixed satellite service (FSS) will also address the mobile satellite service (MSS) unless objections arise by Dec. 18, said Francois Rancy, director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, in a letter to members. The new work will consider performance objectives different from those contained in an existing ITU-R recommendation for satellite systems that support time-varying channel conditions using adaptive transmission techniques, a draft copy of the new study said. The recommendation deals with allowable error performance for a satellite hypothetical reference digital path operating below 15 GHz. An agenda item for the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference addresses the possibility of new FSS allocations in the range 13 to 17 GHz in the Asia-Pacific region and 10 to 17 GHz in Europe, Africa, the former Soviet Union and parts of the Middle East. The conference will also consider making new MSS allocations between 22 and 26 GHz.
The FCC OK'd the purchase of Astound Broadband. Now that the Homeland Security and Justice departments and FBI withdrew their request Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnzogt) for the commission to defer action on the deal, and because the transaction is in the public interest, the cable operator can be purchased by Oak Hill Holdco. The acquirer is majority-owned by private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, the companies have said (http://xrl.us/bnpsds), and they had said the deal was completed Oct. 12 (http://xrl.us/bnzohh), under a waiver from the International, Media, Wireline and Wireless bureaus. The applicants aren’t considered “dominant” in any U.S. service they sell, said an FCC public notice Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnzoia).
Twitter and eight companies and groups joined the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (ICAC). The other companies and groups are: the Application Developers Alliance, Distributed Computing Industry Association, Future of Music Coalition, Motorola Mobility, Netflix, Pandora, Tumblr and Yelp, ICAC said Wednesday.
Verizon Wireless signed its first official 700 MHz spectrum license sale agreement -- the carrier’s license on the Texas RSA 6-Jack 700 MHz lower B-block to Muenster, Texas-based Nortex Communications. The license covers a four-county area northwest of Dallas, Verizon Wireless said Wednesday in a news release. The Nortex sale is the first as part of Verizon Wireless’s announced process to sell off its spectrum licenses on the lower 700 MHz A and B blocks, although the carrier noted it had previously sold 24 700 MHz licenses outside of that process. The official sale proceeded after the FCC approved a series of Verizon Wireless purchases of AWS spectrum in August (CD Aug 24 p1). Verizon said it’s evaluating bids for its remaining 700 MHz licenses, although some will be going to 20 rural operators through its “LTE in Rural America” program (http://xrl.us/bnzn32).
Recording artists voiced their opposition to the Internet Radio Fairness Act (HR-6480, S-3609) because they said it would cut their royalty payments in order to line the pockets of webcasters like Pandora. The 125 artists, representing a broad spectrum of musical groups including Blondie, Common, Journey, Rush and the Dead Kennedys, urged lawmakers to return to the drawing board. Their comments came in an open letter to be published in this weekend’s Billboard magazine. Advocates of the legislation said the bill is aimed at aligning the differing broadcast platform royalty payments under the Copyright Act 801(b) standard, which is used to establish rates for cable and satellite radio services (CD Sept 24 p1). But the musicFIRST coalition and SoundExchange said in a joint press release Wednesday that the legislation could slash royalties paid to artists by as much as 85 percent for songs played over Internet radio. “We all want Internet radio to succeed, but it won’t if it tries to do so on the backs of hard working musicians and singers,” said musicFIRST coalition Executive Director Ted Kalo. The coalition includes the Recording Industry Association of America, the American Association of Independent Music and the American Federation of Musicians. “It is important that we protect artists and the long-term value of their music, which is, after all, the foundation of Internet radio,” said Michael Huppe, president of SoundExchange.