Indianola Municipal Utilities plans to expand its fiber offerings of telephone, Internet and video service to certain residents of Indianola, Iowa starting Oct. 1, its website says (http://xrl.us/bnkjqy). The company currently supports the internal network for local schools, provides looped service for shared utility control systems and serves business customers, according to the company. The residential service is expected to have faster speeds and better consistency than their alternatives “and to be a lower cost,” IMU General Manager Todd Kielkopf told the city in a video update July 25 (http://xrl.us/bnkjwo). The utility company says it started a fiber-to-the-premise partnership in 2006 and began building out residential fiber in 2010. Last spring, its goal was to finish planning and licensing agreements, it said (http://xrl.us/bnkjt9). The residential fiber launch will be in partnership with Mahaska Communication Group, which says it has worked with Indianola Municipal Utilities since 2005 (http://xrl.us/bnkjtc). Indianola contains fewer than 15,000 residents overall. They're able to review residential package prices now, as shown in door hanger ads (http://xrl.us/bnkki6) and a bigger breakdown (http://xrl.us/bnkjsf). The fiber will be available in “limited areas” initially, the providers say.
ISPs participating in the FCC’s Broadband Measurement Group will study and report back on how often broadband subscribers continue to use legacy equipment after they have upgraded to a faster broadband service, an agency official told us. ISP representatives had raised concerns about the issue when the group met Wednesday to plan out the next speed test report (CD Aug 9 p4). The representatives claimed legacy equipment could cause a subscriber’s broadband connection to run slower than it normally would, and could thus affect speed test results. The ISPs plan to report back on the issue at the next meeting, and will discuss policies for addressing the problem, the agency official said. The group will discuss the issue and will determine what steps they will need to take to respond to those concerns, the official said.
Public Knowledge lobbied FCC officials on its recent petition alleging that Comcast’s bandwidth usage practices violate the terms of the order approving the company’s NBCUniversal takeover, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bnj8me). In several meetings with FCC officials, Public Knowledge argued that Comcast’s data usage limits “increasingly have a negative impact on consumers and on the growth of many online video services,” the notice said. “The Commission should hold up data caps that negatively impact services that competed with those offered by ISPs to a high level of scrutiny.” The nonprofit said the commission can handle Public Knowledge’s petition without resolving other questions about the future of pay-TV regulation.
Telcos supported HyperCube’s petition for a waiver of FCC rules regarding multi-frequency signaling. They took issue with the company’s other requests, including waivers of call signaling rules for Internet protocol traffic, and of rules prohibiting carriers from altering calling party number or charge number data, in comments filed Thursday. CenturyLink said HyperCube failed to give “adequate explanation as to the intended scope of the requested waiver or seeks an overload broad waiver or both” (http://xrl.us/bnj8kw). NTCA, OPASTCO, NECA and the Eastern Rural Telecom Association recommended the commission require additional information before considering granting waivers of its call signaling rules for IP traffic, and refrain from waiving its rules to permit any carrier to alter customer proprietary network or customer network data, or insert something other than the true CN in the signaling stream (http://xrl.us/bnj8k8). “There are several standardized approaches” that will ensure “seamless” interoperability between VoIP and the public switched telephone network, they said. Permitting altered CN data can let providers insert a “billing number” to “alter the jurisdiction, and thus the billing” of certain calls, leading to providers “avoiding the payment of lawful access charges,” they said.
Free Press said it is seeking “political ad sleuths” on college campuses to “find out who’s behind all the political ads dominating our airwaves.” The group is soliciting college students and faculty to visit broadcasters in smaller markets that are not yet subject to the FCC’s online political file rules, it said (http://xrl.us/bnj8k2).
Comcast attorneys encouraged the FCC to quickly complete its basic tier encryption rulemaking, in a meeting with aides to Commissioner Ajit Pai, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnj8kh). They also urged Pai’s staff not to extend the ban on vertically-integrated cable programmers from reaching exclusive carriage deals, the notice said. “We also argued that the Commission should not adopt more expansive regulations, and in particular should not limit or prohibit volume discounts or adopt new rules to address theoretical ‘uniform price increases,'” the notice said.
*Aug. 16 FCC 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee space services informal work group meets, 10 a.m., FCC 4th floor, room 4-B516
The FCC’s Office of General Counsel denied a request by Comcast that the commission stay its recent Tennis Channel carriage order (http://xrl.us/bnj8jr). Commissioner Ajit Pai, who once worked in the OGC, said he would have voted to stay the order if he had the chance (http://xrl.us/bnj8jt). He and Commissioner Robert McDowell dissented from the original order (CD July 25 p5). Comcast’s arguments for a stay failed to satisfy any of the four factors the commission uses when deciding whether to issue one, the order released by OGC said. Comcast has also asked a federal appeals court to stay the carriage order while it’s under review.
DirecTV further urged the FCC to extend the cable exclusivity ban in the FCC program access rules. Doing so is necessary “to preserve and protect competition and diversity in the video marketplace,” it said in a filing in dockets 12-68, 7-18 and 5-192 (http://xrl.us/bnj8jk). The filing pertained to a meeting last week between Stacy Fuller, DirecTV regulatory affairs vice president, some university researchers and members of the Media Bureau. Cable’s increased ability to offer bundled services “has made exclusivity an even more attractive strategy for cable operators than it was five years ago,” it said. Exclusive arrangements for programming not subject to the exclusivity prohibition are exceedingly rare, “which strongly suggests that exclusive programming arrangements are rarely economically efficient,” it added.
A France Telecom-Orange cable ship caught fire and was abandoned after repairing the Sat3-Safe cable off the coast of Namibia, the company said Friday. All 56 crew members were recovered without injury, it said. The crew is now in Namibia and will be repatriated in coming days, it said. The cause of the fire isn’t yet known, it said. The incident had no immediate impact on submarine cables in the area, which are working normally, it said.