NTIA’s Q2 status report on 233 broadband grants addresses overbuilding. That’s been an issue some telcos and cable operators that didn’t get money from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build broadband projects have raised (CD Sept 27 p6). “As of June 2012, NTIA has resolved 97 percent of the instances of potential overlap between a BTOP award and another BTOP, BIP, or FCC award,” NTIA said in its 14th quarterly status report on Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grantees to Congress Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/Rggcaz). The 15-page report covers April 1 to June 30, which featured what the agency called “strong performance” among grantees in meeting 2012 goals. The remaining 3 percent of BTOP grants where overbuilding was alleged “will be resolved through ongoing negotiations with recipients seeking ways to leverage the respective investments, such as joint-build solutions,” NTIA said. Grantees deployed nearly 15,000 network miles in Q2 for a total of more than 72,000, NTIA said. They spent $420 million and matched nearly $125 million, it added. The agency spotlighted specific projects, such as ones in Oklahoma and Maryland, with a section on the seven public safety BTOP grantees suspended in May due to concerns about compatibility with FirstNet. NTIA discussed the ways it monitors and corresponds with grantees and noted it’s visited 31 grantees in the past quarter. It also addressed how to close the various grants, which were awarded in 2010 and expected to expire in 2013.
Comcast and NCTA filed initial briefs on the cable company’s appeal of an FCC program carriage order requiring its systems distribute the Tennis Channel as widely as two of the operator’s own sports channels. The operator’s First Amendment rights were violated by the order in favor of the channel, Comcast and the NCTA said Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (docket 12-1337). Free speech also is at issue in Time Warner Cable’s appeal of a 2012 program carriage order allowing the Media Bureau to require continued carriage of an independent channel by an operator alleged to have favored its own content, as a complaint is adjudicated (CD Oct 4 p3). This year’s Tennis Channel enforcement order “compels Comcast (and only Comcast) to afford Tennis Channel a benefit -- i.e., penetration parity with Golf Channel and Versus -- that no major distributor in the marketplace believed Tennis Channel had earned,” the operator said. “It imposes this compelled speech based primarily on its application of malleable and easily manipulated content-based standards.” NCTA has a First Amendment interest in the appeal, the association said. “To justify overriding cable operators’ carriage decisions, therefore, the government at a minimum must demonstrate -- not just claim -- that its interference with private speech serves an important governmental interest."
Eutelsat urged France’s national frequency agency to renew the company’s appeal with the ITU in a case involving interference from Iran. Eutelsat asked the Agence Nationale des Frequences to “renew its objection to jamming to the ITU so that it can be addressed as a priority,” the company said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnrdkk). The France-based company said it has experienced “significant deliberate interference” since Wednesday to BBC Persian, Voice of America’s Persian service and Radio Free Europe that broadcast via Eutelsat satellites.
Cablevision and Disney signed a new carriage agreement, the companies said in a news release Thursday. The deal gives Cablevision the ability to introduce new authenticated TV Everywhere services to its subscribers including Disney’s “Watch” products along with ESPN3 and ESPN 3D, they said. The deal also includes carriage of the planned news network from a joint venture of ABC New and Univision. “In total, approximately 70 services are covered by the broad scope of this agreement,” the cable operator and cable and broadcast programmer both said.
Zeebox said it added Viacom as a strategic partner. The smartphone and tablet app developer, which makes an app to be used while watching TV, also has Comcast-NBCUniversal and HBO as partners. “Viacom has the most socially engaged audiences anywhere, and we're constantly striving to give our fans new ways to discover and connect with our content,” said Rich Eigendorff, chief operating officer of Viacom Media Networks.
Leap Wireless will eventually be sold to Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA or another carrier, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Steve Sweeney in a report Thursday. Investors assume T-Mobile will not make a bid for Leap until its proposed merger with MetroPCS closes, Sweeney said in the report. T-Mobile announced Wednesday it had agreed to buy MetroPCS from its shareholders for $1.5 billion in cash and 26 percent ownership of the merged company. The company is expected to keep the MetroPCS brand alive post-merger (CD Oct 4 p1). “If people assume T-Mobile won’t also acquire Leap in the near term, then there is no rush for Sprint to acquire Leap,” Sweeney said. “However, we think that it would be dangerous for Sprint to either not make a competing bid for PCS, or alternatively, not to make a bid for Leap because Sprint could be left out of the consolidation game if T-Mo/PCS or another entity were to eventually bid for Leap.” The value of Leap’s shares was down 18 percent at the close Wednesday, in part due to concerns T-Mobile will aggressively expand MetroPCS’s pre-paid service in Leap’s markets if the proposed merger closes, Sweeney said. “This is a legitimate concern and would result in more competition in Leap’s markets,” Sweeney said. “But we think this would not happen until mid-2013 at the earliest. We also think the primary focus of the combined T-Mo/PCS entity should ultimately be on stemming the outflow of postpaid T-Mobile subscribers, as opposed to focusing marketing dollars and valuable spectrum on gaining more pre-paid share in new markets."
Amdocs said it expects over-the-top (OTT) video service providers, communications service providers and device manufacturers to seek strategic partnerships, even though each group is “heavily invested in owning the all-important customer experience.” The company hired Coleman Parkes Research to survey the industry about its plans. “Service providers increasingly see OTT players as potential partners,” the survey found. “While service providers used to form partnership mainly for roaming and with device manufacturers, today they must navigate a more complex environment full of over-the-top, Internet, financial settlement and other players,” said the research firm’s founder Ian Parkes. The company conducted more than 100 phone interviews with executives at companies in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
The Parents TV Council asked its members to file FCC complaints over a recent broadcast of American Dad on the Fox network. The show featured graphic verbal and visual references to sex acts, the group said. “We believe this broadcast has broken the law, and we are calling on the FCC to hold Fox and its affiliates accountable,” said Tim Winter, PTC’s president. A spokesman for Fox declined to comment.
A draft ITU-T recommendation specifies smart traffic control and resource management functions for “smart ubiquitous networks” (SUN), a working document we obtained said. SUNs are IP-based packet networks that can provide transport and delivery of a wide range of existing and emerging services to people and things, it said. The networks are smart in the sense that they are knowledgeable, context-aware, adaptable, autonomous, programmable and can affect services effectively and securely, it said. Various smart user devices in fixed networks are demanding more traffic from emerging services such as smart TV, HDTV, 3D TV and video streaming, it said. Networks are required to allocate more resources to support more bandwidth and various service features such as real-time, non-real-time, store-forward and others, it said. These are some of the causes for the enormous rise in traffic, it said. A “few maniacs,” both users and providers, of services and applications “monopolize” almost all network resources, it said. This monopolization of network resources, both in terms of bandwidth and number of sessions, prevents proper network resource arrangements for use by everyone else, it said. The monopolization of resources degrades service quality and prevents further development of smart devices and their services, it said. Smart end user devices, such as smart phones, in wireless environments, including mobile, also use various broadband multimedia services, for example, Web TV, multimedia services including mobile networked games and video-phones, it said. The trend toward wireless services is causing traffic congestions, high bandwidth use, and a reduction in the number of users in mobile access networks, it said. Delivery to end user devices over mobile and wireless access is done with quite limited resources compared to fixed access, it said. Incoming traffic from fixed network environments to the mobile access environments should be coordinated and harmonized for better operation of mobile resources as well as to ensure, as much as possible, services to users, it said. Smart traffic control and network resource management should be carried out in transparent ways and by reasonable means to protect users’ quality of service and experience requirements against resource monopolization, it said. KT Corp. was reportedly a major contributor to the proposal. The recommendation is slated for ITU-T’s rapid approval process in February, which indicates no regulatory concerns have been raised.
FairPoint Communications said Thursday it’s launching Carrier Ethernet Services (CES) 2.0, an enhancement of its current E-Line CES product. FairPoint said CES is designed to provide flexible and reliable service for its wholesale market customers in northern New England. The service is a great step for FairPoint, said Roopashree Honnachari, program manager of business communication services at Frost & Sullivan, in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnsnek). “It’s taking Ethernet to the next level,” Honnachari said.