CenturyLink said it bought infrastructure-as-a-service and cloud management provider Tier 3 in order to “accelerate” its cloud offerings. Neither company disclosed the financial details of the deal. The Tier 3 deal is CenturyLink’s second acquisition of a cloud services provider this year -- it bought platform-as-a-service provider AppFog in June. Tier 3 Chief Technology Officer Jared Wray will become chief technology officer of the CenturyLink Cloud division. CenturyLink said it plans to move CenturyLink Cloud’s base to Tier 3’s former Seattle offices. CenturyLink said it plans to integrate Tier 3’s nine data centers with the 55 data centers it owns through Savvis (http://bit.ly/HWSn8s).
The E-rate process needs to be overhauled to include a less-cumbersome application process, said state grantees and E-rate coordinators on a Tuesday NARUC panel. Simplifying the program and modernizing it could help the FCC deal with the amount of paperwork and maximize the $2.38 million allocated for the program, said John Bailey, Digital Learning Now executive director. “E-rate will enable us to provide connected models of learning, but we need connectivity,” said Bailey. “Our challenge is to make sure that the schools have the next generation infrastructure.” The current incarnation of the E-rate program has become increasingly complex to combat abuse to fix the problems that less than one percent have caused, said Debra Kriete, South Dakota E-rate coordinator. “In this case, E-rate is a victim of its own success, and administrative efficiency needs to be put into the program,” she said. The FCC issued the NPRM to update E-rate to address these problems, said Trent Harkrader, Wireline Bureau associate chief. “We are always trying to make the application process easier for our schools,” he said. “We are constantly in contact with states to learn about their best practices, and we are looking for more data from the states to make our decisions on the program.”
The FCC fined a cable operator $25,000 for failing to make children’s programming and proof-of-performance test data available in a public file at its Kansas City, Mo., system in 2011, said an Enforcement Bureau order to Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership (http://bit.ly/186sAHm). Though the operator argued that it corrected the problem after the violation, including implementing an online filing system, the fine wasn’t reduced because of past violations from the company and its ability to pay the full fine, said the order. “The Bureau sought to ensure that the forfeiture amount served as an effective deterrent and not simply a cost of doing business."
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it would permanently locate its Silicon Valley satellite office in San Jose’s City Hall building (http://1.usa.gov/185Wxr7). The announcement came months after PTO’s search for permanent office space went on hold due to sequestration (CD July 18 p12). Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif who restarted the office search by including it in the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014 (S-1329) in July, said the next step was for Congress to “free up funds to continue operating this office. These funds -- which are actually fees from patent filings -- should not be held hostage by the sequester.” Feinstein and a trio of California-based House Democrats praised the bill, in a joint statement Tuesday. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., said he and other members of the House Appropriations Committee would be “redoubling our efforts to end the budget sequestration that threatens the USPTO and all fee-based agencies once and for all.” Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said the PTO satellite office “will help thousands of innovators and entrepreneurs in our region take full advantage of our nation’s intellectual property system.” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said the satellite office “will help our most promising start-ups with the services and resources they need to go from the drawing board to the marketplace faster, and in the process, grow their ventures and create good paying jobs."
About 520,000 high-speed Internet subscribers were acquired by the 17 largest cable and telephone providers in the third quarter this year. The top broadband providers, like Time Warner Cable and Verizon, “now account for over 83.6 million subscribers,” Leichtman Research Group analysts said in a research note (http://bit.ly/1issnAc). The top cable companies accounted for 84 percent of the net broadband additions for the quarter versus the top telephone companies, it said. The cable companies added about 440,000 subs, a 76 percent increase compared to the same period last year, it said. The telephone companies gained about 80,000 subs, “compared to a gain of about 4,000” in Q3 2012, Leichtman said. In the first three quarters of 2013, the top providers added about 1.9 million subs, “compared to about 2,150,000 in the first three quarters of 2012,” it said.
Time Warner Cable petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for 17 communities in Kentucky, said filings posted in FCC docket 12-1. The petitions cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect just over 8,000 households, including the communities of Crestview Hills, Dry Ridge, Brandenburg and La Grange.
The White House endorsed the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) Monday, with National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling calling the bill a “big step in the right direction.” The bill, introduced Monday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, shows that “both chambers of Congress share the President’s goal of encouraging innovation, not needless litigation, by reducing abusive patent trolls lawsuits,” Sperling said in a statement. S-1720 reflects many of the legislative recommendations the White House released in June, Sperling said. Those recommendations came in conjunction with a set of executive actions tasking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with addressing patent abuses (CD June 5 p12). S-1720 drew support from many industry groups Monday and Tuesday, with National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith saying in a statement that the bill would “combat ‘patent trolls’ that are a drain on both the U.S. economy and the broadcast industry. This legislation deters those entities that acquire patents primarily as a litigation tool while protecting the true innovators who keep our economy moving forward.” Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said in a statement Tuesday that S-1720 “provides key reforms that will curb some of the worst abuses of the patent system. The abusive conduct in this area requires legislation sufficient to address the broad scope and dimensions of the problems that exist.” A Public Knowledge spokesman said in a statement Monday that the bill “shows that there is a general consensus growing on the Hill that demand letters, when abusively asserted, negatively impact the economy, innovation, and consumers. The Patent Transparency and Improvements Act of 2013 is a practical step in reforming the patent system in a way that empowers those who want to bring new technologies to Americans and for those who need to access them.” S-1720 also mirrors some aspects of the Innovation Act (HR-3309), which the House Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Wednesday.
Mobility is kick-starting many changes in healthcare and sparking needed policy changes, company officials told Congress, touching on issues that affect the FCC. The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act report, due from the FCC, the FDA and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology by the end of the year, should include proposed strategy and recommendations regarding “an appropriate, risk-based regulatory framework pertaining to health IT, including mobile medical applications,” Qualcomm Senior Director-Government Affairs Robert Jarrin told the House Commerce Health Subcommittee Tuesday, according to his prepared testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1deUPFS). “It is essential that these agencies recognize the growing importance of managing risk at a systems level and that any comprehensive regulatory scheme should take into account existing solutions when contemplating future innovations,” Jarrin said. “The end goal should be for a regulatory framework that allows new technology to flourish, promotes innovation, protects patient safety and avoids regulatory duplication.” IBM Research Vice President-Research Strategy Zach Lemnios said cellphones and other technologies have transformed healthcare: “We are witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon today -- the convergence of five simultaneously disruptive technologies: social, mobile, cloud, pervasive instrumentation and advanced analytics” (http://1.usa.gov/186mNlb).
Pay-TV programming encoding rules, not a “major concern to cable companies,” help consumer electronics made by other companies be compatible with the operators and so are important to consumers, said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. He told us PK wants the FCC to reinstate encoding rules as they existed before a federal appeals court in January ruled for the company now called Dish Network and against the commission in reversing a decade-old order based on a cable/CE pact in which DBS didn’t take part. That U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision, EchoStar v. FCC, was the subject of an FCBA event Monday, where multichannel video programming distributor lawyers said new encoding rules are unnecessary because of what’s happening with innovation in third-party CE devices used by MVPD subscribers (CD Nov 19 p6). “The court’s decision was on procedural matters” and “so there is nothing stopping the FCC from bringing its rules on this subject -- not just the encoding rules but also CableCARD-related rules -- back into full force,” said Bergmayer Tuesday. The waiver Charter Communications got in April from having to use CableCARDs to separate security and navigation functions “was broader than what Charter asked for, and broader than what the court required in its decision on the encoding rules,” he said. PK supports a TiVo request for the FCC to bring back rules after EchoStar, commented the group on the petition in September (http://bit.ly/I3n8t7). “Encoding rules remain important for device interoperability."
Cathy Oakes, 48, Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers senior vice president-operations, died suddenly Saturday at a hospital near her home in Chester Springs, Pa. Hired by SCTE as vice president-finance in 2006, she previously worked at an accounting firm and on cable transactions at a cable operator called Harron. Oakes is survived by husband and four children. Contributions can be sent to the Oakes Children’s Education Fund, care of DNB First Bank, 4 Brandywine Ave., Downingtown, Pa. 19335. Mass and burial, following a viewing, is at 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. Elizabeth’s Church in Chester Springs.