Cox Communications will move to a new building in suburban Atlanta, a few miles away from where the cable operator now is headquartered, and adjacent to where its parent company Cox Enterprises is based in Sandy Springs, Ga. The 578,000 square-foot office building will be 19 stories, with construction expected to start in Q1 and occupancy in 2015, Cox Enterprises said Friday.
The ad-supported Internet industry directly employs two million Americans, said a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (http://xrl.us/bnr72n). This figure from 2011 represents 197 percent growth from 2007, according to the study. In 2011, the ad-supported digital industry indirectly employed an additional 3.1 million Americans, contributed $530 billion to the country’s economy, and accounted for 3.7 percent of U.S. GDP, according to the study. “The thriving Internet ecosystem, sustained by digital advertising, is a powerful, economic engine for the overall U.S. economy,” said Sherrill Mane, IAB senior vice president-research, analytics and measurement, in a statement (http://xrl.us/bnr72p). Last week the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation displayed rejection notices to Internet users who attempted to access itif.org with Do Not Track enabled, saying it would harm the availability of free and low-cost Internet content and services (CD Oct 1 p22).
Comcast’s NBCUniversal Media said it will buy back the $260 million outstanding of its 8.875 percent senior notes due 2015 on Nov. 15, 2012. Additionally, it will redeem all outstanding $146.25 million in senior subordinated notes due 2016 on the same date.
An Urbana-Champaign, Ill., Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grantee will kick off a new “stakeholder alignment approach” in about two weeks, project leader and University of Illinois Professor Jon Gant told NATOA Saturday in New Orleans. Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband is a middle-mile project with a last-mile component, Gant said. “We're going out and doing a new study to talk to stakeholders,” he said. The study will entail identifying their priorities -- and significantly, identifying overlap of priorities in what he called a z-flower, he said. The database will result in charts with green and red to show the overlap and will help create community partnerships that will benefit Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband, he said. The Illinois project relies on these partnerships because the BTOP grant only funds the fiber and acquisition of customers for the network but not digital literacy elements or computers for public centers or anything else, Gant said: “We're having to reach out across our community."
NTIA sought comment on the “framework for designing the public safety network architecture in a manner that leverages existing resources and infrastructure,” as presented last week at the initial meeting of the FirstNet board (http://xrl.us/bnr7fp). “NTIA also solicits input from interested stakeholders on other options that the FirstNet Board should consider in meeting the Act’s requirements to deploy the [network] based on a single, nationwide network architecture that evolves with technological advancements,” NTIA said in a notice of inquiry (http://xrl.us/bnr7ue). “FirstNet is particularly interested in receiving innovative ideas on how it can deploy a reliable, ubiquitous, redundant, and interoperable broadband network for public safety users.” The FirstNet board met for the first time last week (CD Sept 26 p6). Comments are due Nov. 1.
More people are calling 911 from mobile phones, T-Mobile National External Affairs Manager Mark Wilson told NATOA Saturday in New Orleans. There were 55,000 daily 911 calls from mobile phones in 1996, about 260,000 in 2006 and more than 400,000 in 2012, according to his presentation. These statistics also appear on CTIA’s wireless fact sheet (http://xrl.us/bnr7sg). “People are moving to a wireless only,” he said. He showcased similar leaps in the number of text messages sent and called texting “the preferred mode of communication.” These trends mean “enormous exponential increases in the data” bandwidth required, he said. T-Mobile wants to use more rights of way space “because it often works for the local community and for the wireless carriers,” he said. T-Mobile is currently undergoing a broad modernization campaign and expects to update more than 37,000 cell sites and begin LTE deployment by the end of 2013, he said. The company has “several billions in cash” and significant spectrum as a result of the failed merger with AT&T, which will help enable the company to provide “seamless coverage in residential areas,” he said. It'll also mean superior voice quality and handling of data, he added.
Time Warner Cable said it’s continuing to negotiate with other pay-TV providers for them to carry the company’s two Los Angeles sports networks, scheduled to have debuted Monday night. Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Time Warner Cable Deportes, showing games of teams including L.A.’s Lakers, Galaxy and Sparks, are being carried on the cable operator’s systems, the company said in a news release Friday (http://xrl.us/bnr7qv). “Negotiations with other providers to carry the networks are ongoing but have not yet concluded."
"The first construction has already begun” on Google Fiber in Kansas City, Mo., and Kan., said Google’s Motorola Mobility Vice President Rick Whitt at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting in New Orleans Saturday. Google expects the first of the company’s “fiberhoods,” which contain about a thousand households each and mirror traditional neighborhoods, to go up within the next three months, he said. Google will install 180 fiberhoods overall, first on the Kansas side, then the Missouri side, the company said earlier this fall (CD Sept 14 p14. The first fiberhood will be Hanover Heights, Kan., Google said earlier. Whitt emphasized in a Saturday panel that “socioeconomic factors were not at all utilized when we figured this out.” It’s actually more expensive for Google to build in richer neighborhoods because the conduits tend to be buried out in the suburban areas, he said. The notion that any poorer neighborhoods would be left behind isn’t accurate, he said.
USTelecom released a “Cybersecurity Toolkit” Monday, which it said is designed to be a “one-stop online source of information” for individuals involved in cybersecurity, research and planning (http://xrl.us/bnr7me). It provides links to congressional, academic and military reports, and information from groups tracking real-time cyberthreats.
Copper wire can provide affordable broadband services, thereby achieving the FCC’s broadband goals when competitors have access to copper facilities, CompTel reps told the commission in a letter Monday (http://xrl.us/bnr7kd). Technological advancements including “Ethernet over Copper” now permit copper to deliver speeds of several Mbps, CompTel said. The letter was a followup to a meeting with Wireline Bureau officials, in which CompTel discussed the impact of copper retirement and encouraged policies to provide for access to copper facilities. Copper is frequently the only way to economically provide broadband to consumers and businesses, CompTel said.