The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a request by OP LLC, an indirect subsidiary of Crown Castle, which asked for another three years to meet the buildout requirement for its nationwide area license in the 1670-1675 MHz band. OP has had the license since 2003, which came with a 10-year license term expiring Oct. 1, 2013. OP asked for a three-year extension, until Oct. 1, 2016. In 2007, OP leased its spectrum rights to TVCC One Six Holdings LLC, a predecessor of LightSquared. “OP contends the Commission should grant its Request due to the regulatory uncertainty that surrounds LightSquared’s plans to build a nationwide terrestrial wireless broadband network, which as planned would have included use of the leased 1670-1675 MHz spectrum along with certain portions of LightSquared’s L-Band spectrum,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bnyazc). “Second, OP claims that lack of equipment currently prevents LightSquared and OP from efficiently meeting the substantial service requirement. ... Third, OP claims that if the Commission does not grant the requested relief, OP will be forced to invest in a nominal ’stop-gap’ network to avoid losing its license.” Comments are due Dec. 5, replies Dec. 20.
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council told Industry Canada it should designate the 700 MHz D-block for public safety use, in response to a consultation by the Canadian regulator. “NPSTC commends Industry Canada’s proposal to designate the 758-763 MHz and 788-793 MHz (D Block) for public safety broadband use, and urges the Department to act expeditiously to ensure that public safety receives the full contiguous 10+10 MHz broadband block of spectrum in the 700 MHz band,” NPSTC said (http://xrl.us/bnyaws). “The public safety market will drive demand for commercial equipment, typically used by consumers, as well as modified commercial equipment and specialized equipment designed to meet specific public safety needs.” NPSTC said if Industry Canada mandates LTE as the standard for the band it will align a Canadian public safety broadband network with the proposed FirstNet in the U.S. “Harmonized 700 MHz public safety broadband spectrum, policies and technical rules and standards are essential for cross-border interoperability,” NPSTC said. Public Safety Canada also endorsed a proposal to reallocate the D-block to public safety. “The allocation of the D block in Canada for public safety would harmonize with the United States band plan, which sets aside a total of 20 MHz for public safety in the same blocks,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bnyaxi).
The FCC reduced its count of the number of counties still affected by Sandy to just 76, in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, in its late Monday update of the aftermath of Sandy and reported that most wireless and wireline facilities are now back in service. “As of 10 a.m. this morning, our assessment indicates that the number of cell site outages within the 76-county area has declined to under 9 percent,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky. “For comparison, the data indicate that nearly one-third of cell sites in this area were affected by outages when reporting began last Tuesday morning.” The figures include “many cases where cell sites that are otherwise operational are effectively inoperable because of outages in other parts of the communications infrastructure, which is highly interdependent,” he said. The FCC also reported “continued improvement” in the restoration of cable service throughout the affected areas. AT&T said 97 percent of its cell sites across the area most affected last week by Sandy were up and running Monday. “More than 90 percent of our cell sites across New York City including Manhattan are back in service, up from 80 percent on Thursday,” AT&T said. “We expect to make continued good progress as power and other infrastructure issues are resolved.” AT&T said resources are shifting to “the hardest-hit areas of New York and New Jersey as our network service has been restored to normal or near-normal operational levels in other areas."
Nexstar agreed to buy three California TV stations for $35.4 million from Newport TV, Nexstar said. The stations are KGPE Fresno, KGET-TV Bakersfield and KKEY-LP Bakersfield. In a separate transaction, Nexstar said it and Mission Broadcasting agreed to buy WFFF-TV and WVNY Burlington, Vt., for about $17.1 million from Smith Media.
LightSquared requested a rulemaking to add a primary allocation that would permit terrestrial mobile use of the 1675-1680 MHz band as an alternative to use of the 1545-1555 MHz portion of the L band for terrestrial mobile purposes. This additional use of the 1675-1680 band should be permitted “only if such use is coordinated to protect government systems that will remain in the band,” including critical operations of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, LightSquared said in its petition (http://xrl.us/bnx53f). The company said it’s “uniquely suited to efficiently integrate this contiguous 10 MHz band segment into a 4G LTE network in a manner that will protect the integrity of continuing, essential government operations” in that band. LightSquared intends to deploy a terrestrial network, which was halted this year when the FCC proposed to take away its ancillary terrestrial component authority (CD Feb 15 p1).
CBS said it licensed some of its old TV shows to Hulu. The shows, which include Star Trek, I Love Lucy and newer series such as Medium and Numb3rs, will be available on Hulu Plus, Hulu’s subscription service.
Lawyers got a crash course in social media data law, in a Practising Law Institute webinar Monday given by Lori Lesser, an intellectual property and technology lawyer who has represented AOL, Google, Microsoft and Viacom. The FTC can investigate unfair and deceptive acts, so once a company develops a privacy policy, she said, “you really have to do everything you say you're going to do.” Lesser said she’s seen companies copy and paste privacy policies from other websites in the hopes of meeting industry standards. “You want to be industry standard,” she said, “but if you say you comply with anything and you don’t,” a company could be investigated by the FTC. There are efforts to ensure “the ‘right to be forgotten,'” Lesser said, which could “be very difficult technically” if it requires erasing an online presence that has already been shared by someone else. Lesser wondered what would happen if one person shared something on their Facebook Timeline that was then shared by another user. Would Facebook be able to delete that information from the second user’s Timeline, she asked. “It’s just bizarre."
Cablevision reached a new carriage agreement with Comcast’s NBCUniversal, the companies said. The deal includes “expansive” VOD rights and access to live channels “across multiple platforms, both in and out of the home,” they said. The deal covers NBC and Telemundo stations in Cablevision’s service area, as well as NBCUniversal’s stable of pay-TV networks. It’s the first deal Cablevision has reached that gives it out-of-home rights to TV programming, said Tom Montenegro, Cablevision’s senior vice president-programming acquisition. “We look forward to offering variety of these new NBCUniversal services starting early next year.”
By 2018, TV broadcasters’ retransmission-consent revenue could exceed $6 billion a year, SNL Kagan said, an increase over its previous forecasts. “The increased projections are due to the success of a wider range of TV stations owners in securing sequentially higher retrans fees from multichannel operators over the last year,” it said. For 2012, SNL expects TV stations to bring in $2.36 billion in retransmission-consent fees, it said.
ViaSat will launch sales of DirecTV, bundling the video service with its Exede satellite-based broadband, Lisa Scalpone, vice president-marketing, told us. Which DirecTV packages Exede will be bundled with hasn’t been finalized and pricing hasn’t been set, she said. But the agreement follows Dish Network launching dishNET earlier this fall using ViaSat’s ViaSat-1, the same satellite that’s providing the Exede service. DishNET is being bundled with Dish Network packages, including America’s Top 100. Despite ViaSat providing the network for dishNET, there isn’t conflict in it also having a bundling deal with DirecTV, Scalpone said. DishNET also uses EchoStar’s Hughes Communications’ EchoStar-17 satellite for its service. Dish “is a great partner” and the pact with DirecTV “is just a separate thing,” Scalpone said. “I don’t think there is any change from the current relationship” between ViaSat and Dish. DirecTV officials weren’t available for comment. While many Dish Network dealers, who sell Exede, also will likely carry dishNET, Scalpone doesn’t expect much change in distribution. “I think Dish had a lot of dealers selling Exede and I don’t know that Oct. 1 changed anything,” said Scalpone, referring to the dishNET launch date. Meanwhile, ViaSat introduced an Exede brand advertising campaign on the Root regional sports network that delivers West Virginia University sports and the Mike Tomlin Show in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Scalpone said. The TV spot, which first aired Oct. 11, is gradually being rolled to other markets as Exede seeks to raise its profile, Scalpone said. The TV ads will reach a “critical mass” of the 210 U.S. designated market areas, but won’t reach all of them, Scalpone said. Exede recently increased the monthly data cap on its entry-level package to 10 GB from 7.5 GB and has implemented some “performance tweaks” so that subscribers get “well over” 12 Mbps download speeds during peak periods, Scalpone said. ViaSat has postponed introducing VoIP for its Exede customers to Q1 from Q4 as it focuses on brand advertising, Scalpone said.