Cox Communications said it’s increasing the speed of its commercial broadband service. It will begin offering 80 Mbps and 100 Mbps tiers in its Lafayette, La.-area systems now and will expand the service to other markets later this year and early next, the company said.
Comcast and other cable operators will need flexibility in responding to the commission’s upcoming special access data request, as they “do not maintain information about their non-switched offerings in the same format” as ILECs, Comcast told FCC Wireline Bureau officials, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnphic). Comcast stressed its “desire to provide information that would be helpful to the Commission’s inquiry."
Requests to exit the NECA pool should be “transparent on both the part of the companies exiting the pool as well as NECA,” and the commission needs to examine these filings for their overall impacts on exchange access prices and Connect America Fund intercarrier compensation support, AT&T told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Monday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnphh2). AT&T said it supports the conversion to price-cap regulation of the carriers leaving the NECA pool, and “commended these companies for not utilizing the methodology they originally proposed in their price cap waiver petitions."
Mobile network developer Tango Networks debuted its Small Cell Connect solution Wednesday, which it says can extend secure enterprise mobile unified communications applications and services to any mobile device connected to a small cell network. Mobile unified communications software and technology aid in mobile collaboration. The Small Cell Connect solution is powered by Tango’s Small Cell Services Exchange software, which the company said expands the functionality of its core technology to allow for secure connectivity and guaranteed interworking between small cell enterprise unified communications and PBX systems and mobile network elements. “By ensuring seamless functionality over small cells, mobile, Wi-Fi, and fixed networks, Tango provides mobile users with a high-quality Mobile Unified Communications experience regardless of their point-of-attachment,” Tango Chief Technology Officer Andrew Silver said in a news release. “The Small Cell Connect solution addresses the distinct needs of carriers today, by reducing backhaul resource demands and maintaining bearer stream and signaling local to the enterprise while enabling unique small cell location-based services and new tariffing models.” As part of its expansion into small cell technology, Tango said it is joining the Small Cell Forum, an industry association that supports small cell deployment (http://xrl.us/bnphhy).
More people watched the local news in the New York City market than watched during prime time CNBC, CNN, Fox News, HLN and MSNBC combined nationwide, the TV Ad Bureau (TVB) said after performing an analysis on Nielsen TV ratings data from the most recent sweeps period. “One single market -- New York -- outpaces the national audience of the five cable news networks combined,” it said. “Expanding to just the top 3 U.S. TV markets, local broadcast news has a 168 percent advantage, and across all top 10 markets, the multiple approaches nearly 5x cable’s national audience,” it said. “The data is conclusive in highlighting the enormous audience reach and composition balance advantages local broadcast TV news provides advertisers,” said Steve Lanzano, president of TVB.
The FCC finally closed the book on the Time Warner-AOL merger. The agency granted a petition from Time Warner Cable to end the remaining conditions the FCC attached to its 2000 approval of that deal. “At the time of the merger, AOL was the world’s largest Internet Service Provider ... [and] Time Warner was the second-largest cable provider in the United States, possessed one of the world’s largest content libraries and controlled the nation’s second-largest broadband ISP, Road Runner,” an order released by the commission Wednesday said (http://xrl.us/bnpg72). Still in effect as of Tuesday was a prohibition against TWC discriminating against unaffiliated ISPs providing service to TWC customers. But after a series of corporate restructurings that saw splitoffs of both Time Warner Cable and AOL as well as AOL’s exit from the broadband ISP business, the commission found the “rationale supporting the adoption of the remaining AOL-Time Warner condition ... no longer exists,” the order said. The order terminated the condition effective immediately.
FCC members upheld a staff decision to not release under the Freedom of Information Act materials relating to the Enforcement Bureau’s investigation of televised video news releases (VNR), under a FOIA exemption relating to government investigations. The commission upheld the bureau’s withholding from the Center for Media and Democracy in response to a 2007 CMD FOIA request for letters of inquiry to licensees as part of the agency’s investigation into VNRs on 77 stations, answers to the LOIs and other records. The bureau cited the law’s exemption 7(a) because the documents related to an enforcement investigation, said an order released in Wednesday’s Daily Digest (http://xrl.us/bnpg85) responding to the center’s 2010 application for review of the withholding. “Exemption 7(A) provides Commission investigations into VNRs the same protection it provides investigations involving national security concerns,” said the order approved by the five commissioners. “Courts also give deference to government showings of articulable harm in law enforcement situations not involving national security concerns.” There’s “one narrow class of records” not raising “concerns” under the exemption: Three completed VNR investigations that led to enforcement orders, said the decision directing the bureau to release the actual videos the licensees submitted to the agency. The licensees are News Corp.’s Fox Television Stations, subject of a 2011 forfeiture order (CD July 11/11 p6) after CMD filed a complaint, Access.1 New Jersey, recipient of a 2011 notice of apparent liability (CD March 25/11 p6), and Comcast, which got an NAL in 2007. The center can seek judicial review of the decision, the order said. CMD has complaints in years past over numerous VNRs, which the center said were carried during TV news shows without disclosures they were material provided by outside parties. The center, which hasn’t decided whether to sue the commission, is disappointed in the order and that it took five years to get the decision after the FOIA request was made, Executive Director Lisa Graves told us. The documents the center seeks “would shed greater light on the use of ‘fake news,’ pre-cooked” VNRs “made by corporations to be passed off as news,” she said. “The FCC does not appear to be up to the task of helping the public regulate the use of our airwaves in fast-moving media markets when it cannot even rule in a reasonable time period on the public’s requests for files. Taking five years to deny requests for information about how its weak rules are enforced does not give any basis for confidence that the agency is taking its responsibilities to be responsive to the public very serious[ly] at all.” This “slowness and obstinacy of burrowed-in bureaucrats” doesn’t “bode well” for anyone complaining that TV stations’ public files are missing information, Graves said. Top-four rated stations in the 50 largest markets began last month uploading to the FCC’s website new political file information, so it’s not just available at main studios in paper form.
Qualcomm further urged the FCC to begin a proceeding that would establish a new terrestrial-based, secondary status air-ground mobile service in the 14 GHz to 14.5 GHz band. Qualcomm opposed a filing in docket RM-11640 from the Satellite Industry Association that criticized Qualcomm’s interference analysis (http://xrl.us/bni2ee). There is no risk that the incumbent users of the 14 GHz to 14.5 GHz band will cause harmful interference to the Next-Gen Air Ground (AG) service, it said in its ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnpg2x). The Next-Gen AG service was designed “to operate in the presence of all incumbent users of the band and not suffer harmful interference from, or cause harmful interference to, such users,” Qualcomm said. Qualcomm urged the FCC to promptly issue a notice of proposed rulemaking “proposing to establish the Next-Gen AG service on a secondary licensed basis in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band so that the proposed service can become a reality,” it added.
European Parliament approval of a report on online distribution of audiovisual works won cheers from European commercial broadcasters Wednesday. The report (http://xrl.us/bnpgvs), which EU lawmakers adopted in plenary session Tuesday, acknowledged the fragmentation of Europe’s online market, which is plagued by technological barriers, complex licensing procedures, differences in payment methods, lack of interoperability for critical elements such as e-signatures, and variations in tax rates. Fixing those problems will require subtitling, easier cross-border licensing, new business models and innovative payment methods, especially for small- and mid-sized companies, report author Jean-Marie Cavada, of France and the European People’s Party, said in an interview posted on Parliament’s website. EU policy must be to create an environment conducive to development of universally accessible legal content, innovation and creation, he said in the explanatory statement to his report. He stressed the difference between “authors’ rights” that are connected to the author as an individual, and “copyright,” which is a right of exploitation linked to the work itself. Parliament “now unequivocally acknowledges” the need to safeguard authors’ rights and should focus its efforts on ensuring legal certainty in the online environment in Europe and guaranteeing that online and offline services are treated equally, he said. After adoption of the 1989 Television Without Frontiers Directive, there seemed to be a very real prospect of inundating Europe, via cable and satellite, with rich and varied European audiovisual content, but 25 years later that hasn’t happened, he said. Most audiovisual services are targeted mainly at national audiences or a particular linguistic area, which is why there must be no legal requirements to negotiate multiterritorial, multilingual or multiplatform licenses, he said. A pan-European license would merely make it easier for players with the biggest purchasing power to monopolize the market, he said. The report also said that net neutrality is “of fundamental importance” to the online world. Cavada also called for EU-level collective copyright management agreements among authors’ representatives and the platforms that exploit the works on the Internet. Streaming must be regulated, and it’s “absolutely essential” to figure out how to block access to pay platforms offering unauthorized content, he said. The report “takes as its starting point” the need to encourage market players to distribute TV programs and films across a range of platforms, said the Association of Commercial Television in Europe. Commercial broadcasters are already active on those new platforms, it said. ACT is particularly pleased that Parliament has “understood that the copyright regime in our sector is not a barrier” to extensive investment and innovation, Director General Ross Biggam said.
Mobile operators have their LTE networks ready, but are not prepared to manage subscriber billing and are unclear on how to generate revenue from LTE, transaction management provider Openet found in a survey released Wednesday. Telecoms.com Intelligence surveyed 200 operators to get the results, Openet said. More than 90 percent of surveyed operators thought it was important to take a real-time approach to mobile data billing, but more than 80 percent indicated their existing postpaid billing systems were unable to provide for real-time billing, according to Openet. “Advanced Policy and Charging Control (PCC) systems can work with legacy investments so that operators can evolve without needing to rip and replace existing billing systems,” Chris Hoover, Openet’s vice president of marketing, said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnpgv4).