Tuesday’s FCC consent decree where Verizon Wireless agreed to pay $1.25 million for violations of 700 MHz C-block open access rules (CD Aug 1 p 18) points to larger issues for the carrier, Guggenheim analyst Paul Gallant wrote investors the next day. Verizon Wireless is unique in that the company bought the 700 MHz C-block through most of the U.S. in 2008, giving it a big chunk of spectrum but with open access conditions attached. “VZW could have a have a harder time fending off apps threats,” Gallant wrote. “In late 2011, Google complied with VZW’s request to exclude Google Wallet from Samsung’s Nexus Galaxy phone. But an Obama-appointed FCC could still press VZW to enable Google Wallet even as other wireless carriers (freed from net neutrality obligations) were able to deploy their own mobile payment service (Isis) and exclude Google Wallet from their networks.” Verizon Wireless may also have a harder time capitalizing on revenue streams open to its competitors, Gallant said. “Recent press reports suggest AT&T is considering charging customers who want to use iPhone’s FaceTime app over cellular frequencies,” he said. “Such fees would likely face a net neutrality challenge at the FCC.” But House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. was pleased with the action. “Consumers deserve the right to use the wireless device and applications of their choosing and innovators need rules of the road to continue to invest in new products and services,” Waxman said. “The FCC must continue to remain vigilant in enforcing its rules that protect consumers and promote innovation and competition online.” The commission “sent a strong signal to the market that companies cannot ignore their pro-consumer obligations,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. “Unfortunately, the fact that Verizon worked to block these apps in the first place is a clear indication that wireless providers have a strong incentive to discriminate against certain content and applications, an incentive that continues to threaten online freedom and innovation."
Several Web performance companies started Speed Awareness Month in August to help site owners learn about download speed improvement, the sponsors said (http://xrl.us/bniz36). The sponsors are Dyn Inc., MaxCDN, Panopta, Torbit, UberTags, StackExchange.com, catchpoint.com and lognormal.com. Site owners can find blog posts, tutorials, tools, services and recommendations from the sponsors and other industry leaders at the month’s website (http://xrl.us/bniz3m), they said.
HSN Q2 sales rose 6 percent to $767.2 million from the year-ago quarter, the cable shopping channel said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnizxm). Operating income rose 8 percent to $65.3 million as digital revenue increased 12 percent. In other cable channel financial news, Scripps Network Interactive said late Tuesday the board authorized the repurchase of another $1 billion in stock, after a buyback program of the same amount was completed in Q2.
Comments on the takeover of Suddenlink are due Aug. 15, replies Aug. 22 in docket 12-207, in a streamlined FCC pleading cycle on the deal, said an agency public notice Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnizwe). The cable operator is being bought for $6.6 billion by a holding company that includes private equity and pension investors (CD July 30 p12).
NTIA on Wednesday announced two meetings for privacy stakeholders to discuss the development of a code of conduct for companies that handle personal consumer information (http://xrl.us/bnizqk). The meetings will be Aug. 22 and Aug. 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Department of Commerce, an NTIA spokeswoman said. The agency convened the first privacy stakeholder meeting last month to coordinate an industry-driven conversation about how to increase transparency in the mobile environment (CD July 13 p1).
Sandvine started its Peak Period Analysis Dashboard on Wednesday. The dashboard, part of the company’s Network Analytics library, provides statistics and predictions based on network data captured during peak bandwidth periods. Sandvine predicted streaming would make up two-thirds of peak bandwidth in 2015. “Bandwidth usage statistics are a key ingredient for accurate capacity planning,” Chief Operating Officer Tom Donnelly said (http://xrl.us/bnizvs).
Norsat was granted final acceptance for its custom-designed dual Ku- and X-band portable satellite terminals. They were designed as part of a $1.3 million contract to provide satellite-based communications equipment and services for the NATO Communications and Information Agency, Norsat said. The terminals have been deployed in active combat areas since January 2012, it said. They're used “to provide data, voice and telecommunications to and from behind the lines areas, and will enable NATO’s NCI Agency to establish communications anywhere,” Norsat added (http://xrl.us/bnizyv).
Telecom competition is having a “positive effect” on Florida, its Public Service Commission said in a new 64-page report on the state’s 2011 telecom market released Aug. 1 to the Legislature (http://xrl.us/bnizb3). The report shows growth in new telecom services like VoIP and wireless households and a decline in traditional landline phones. There were about 2.4 million Florida residential VoIP subscribers in December, a 20 percent increase from 2010, the report said. “The number of wireless handsets in service and VoIP customers in Florida far exceeds the 1.2 million wireline access lines served by CLECs.” Florida CLEC access lines increased last year by 4 percent and ILEC access lines dropped 8 percent, and overall wireline access lines for both decreased 6 percent to 6 million, said the commission. “Industry competition has helped consumers reap the benefits of state-of-the-art telecommunications services at affordable prices,” PSC Chairman Ronald Brisé said in a Wednesday statement (http://xrl.us/bnizb5). “Competition is also encouraging companies to create even more innovative services and pricing packages and to invest in telecommunications infrastructure, all very important for Florida’s economic development.” The PSC underscored the reliability of the new competitive services. “Based on the continued growth of interconnected VoIP and wireless-only households and the ongoing erosion of landline access lines, network reliability of non-ILEC providers appears to be sufficient,” the report said. It said 7 percent of Florida households lack phone service, according to July 2011 FCC estimates.
Media strategy firm Revolution Messaging asked the Federal Election Commission for an advisory opinion making it easier for people to make contributions to federal election campaigns via text message (http://xrl.us/bnizgq). “If the Federal Election Commission is serious about helping federal political committees take advantage of the most innovative technologies, they will consider these changes,” said CEO Scott Goodstein. He’s a longtime adviser to Democratic candidates on media strategy. “We recognize and are empathetic to the carriers’ concerns regarding liability, but we need to achieve a balance that protects the carriers [which] also fairly opens the system to the campaigns who want to utilize it,” Goodstein said. The firm wants the FEC to rule that campaigns can share short codes. Revolution Messaging also complained about the fees charged by carriers. “Currently, carriers can charge a service fee of 40 percent, which is higher than the usual and normal rate for non-profit organizations,” it said. “In fact, purveyors of pornography and horoscopes are the types of organizations that pay up to a 40 percent service fee. Political committees should not be treated the same as these types of organizations, and the rate should be low enough to make the service competitive with credit card processing."
U.K. creative industries are “busy streamlining copyright licensing for the digital age” but there’s no room for complacency, an independent report for the U.K. Intellectual Property Office said this week. The study (http://xrl.us/bniy57) is the second phase of an independent review of whether the country’s copyright regime is fit for the digital environment. The “diagnostic phase” noted several major issues with the system; the report published Tuesday set out possible solutions. The fact that the music, publishing, audiovisual and image sectors are working on making licensing easier means the U.K. will strengthen its No. 1 position in the e-world, and that some of the “excuses” for “justifying” copyright infringement on the fixed and mobile Internet have been erased, wrote authors Richard Hooper and Ros Lynch. But the need to streamline licensing processes “never ends,” they said. The report’s key recommendation is for a “not-for-profit, industry-led Copyright Hub based in the U.K. that links interoperably and scalably to the growing national and international network of private and public sector digital copyright exchanges, rights registries and other copyright-related databases, using agreed cross-sector and cross-border data building blocks and standards, based on voluntary, opt-in, non-exclusive and pro-competitive principles.” Issues that must be resolved include, it said: (1) Data building blocks, such as standard international identifiers for works, their creators and accompanying rights, that enable development of better databases that are able to talk to each other across sectors. (2) Less-complex and expensive licensing of digital services. (3) Technical solutions to problems around orphan works whose owners can’t be contacted, and mass digitization, particularly by libraries, archives and museums. (4) “Repertoire imbalance” between what’s available in the physical world, such as on DVDs, and what can be obtained via downloads. To ensure that industry maintains momentum on these issues, the report recommended the creation of a steering group to facilitate cross-sector coordination. The creative industries have agreed in principle to fund an office to continue the work for one year, subject to discussion with the government, and the report recommended that the office be independent and industry-led. It also urged sectors other than the music industry to commit to an annual report to the government detailing their progress. The copyright hub is “potentially a ground-breaking step forward,” said Business Secretary Vince Cable. U.K. digital media lawyer Laurence Kaye praised the report for identifying the key issues needed to harness technology and the Web to make finding and licensing protected works cross-sectorally and internationally “as easy as search is today. Of course, the devil is in the implementation but we must laud the vision.” Separately, French citizens’ rights group La Quadrature du Net, fresh off the defeat of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, floated its vision for reform of copyright and related rights (http://xrl.us/bniy8f). Fighting the non-market sharing of digital works “has been a constant obsession during the past fifteen years,” the document said. It recommended that policymakers adapt to the digital world the legal doctrine of exhaustion of rights. That holds that when one takes possession of a copy of a work, some exclusive rights that previously applied to it no longer exist, making it possible to lend, give, sell and sometimes rent it, the organization said. Applying the concept to digital content would lead to the re-acknowledgment that copyright “has nothing to say” about non-market sharing of digital works between individuals and would open the door to recognition of new social rights to remuneration and access to financing for contributors, it said. Other proposals included: (1) Solid exceptions for educational and research practices. (2) Giving libraries and archives the right to make orphan works available free and with wide usage rights. (3) Creating non-market collective use policies, such as by turning the exception for public performances within the family circle into a non-commercial public performance exception. (4) Fairer digital publishing and distribution contacts. (5) Compulsory registration of works by authors. (6) Maintaining and expanding a free common infrastructure that combines open devices and net neutrality.