Dish Network lost 10,000 net subscribers in Q2, besting some analysts’ projections of a loss of 119,000, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said in a research note. Dish added 665,000 gross subscribers, bettering analyst estimates of 577,000, she said. Monthly churn was 1.6 percent, against forecasts of 1.65 percent, Ryvicker said. Wells Fargo is projecting a 1 percent increase in average revenue per user, she said. Dish made the disclosures in SEC filing for a senior note debt offering, the size and pricing of which wasn’t disclosed. The money raised will be used for “corporate purposes,” Dish said.
Bandwidth in rural areas is “important,” said Jonathan Adelstein, RUS administrator. Businesses are using the Internet in new and innovative ways to expand and grow, he said Thursday at a Minority Media and Telecom Council event in Washington. The private sector plays an important role in helping RUS and the FCC to meet the demand for bandwidth, he added. In terms of broadband, RUS has made a “major outreach push for diversity in both businesses that we fund as well as in the areas that are served by our awards,” he said. The agency awards about $8 billion a year in loans and grants, he said. “We provide affordable financing for capital-intensive projects … and engineering standards, careful scrutiny and oversight to make sure those funds go where they belong.” About 25 of the awards granted through the Recovery Act went to minority and tribal organizations, he said. NTIA is preparing to roll out the First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, said Anna Gomez, NTIA deputy administrator. She said she expects opportunities to arrive for network security and maintenance professionals, software developers and other professionals when the system is fully operational, she said. Applications development is going to be very exciting in the public safety field, she said. For FirstNet, NTIA will establish a 15-member board that consists of the Department of Homeland Security secretary, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and 12 members appointed by the Commerce Department secretary, and it will ensure geographical, regional, rural and urban representation on the board, she said: A public safety advisory committee will meet with tribal, regional, state and local jurisdictions to discuss provisions like the placement of towers and the assignment of priority to local users, she added.
Time Warner Cable petitioned the FCC to be let out of local rate regulation in 18 Wisconsin communities (http://xrl.us/bnhgmh). The cable operator said it’s subject to competition from AT&T’s U-verse service in those areas and therefore meets the local exchange carrier test for determining that it is subject to effective competition.
Cable operators shouldn’t be allowed to encrypt their basic service tier without offering “a comparable successor to ClearQAM,” attorneys for Boxee told FCC Media Bureau officials during a recent teleconference, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnhgkr). Beyond the proposal Boxee and Comcast presented to the agency last month (CD June 29 p8), they discussed “'cloud based’ methods for delivery of content by cable operators,” the notice said. On its own, a hardware solution “would not be a sufficient long-term replacement” for ClearQAM, “although one could form an interim solution, as suggested in the Boxee and Comcast proposal,” the notice said.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service should step in to help in Verizon’s ongoing contract negotiations with its employees, said the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in a statement Thursday. The parties have struggled to establish a contract for more than a year as “Verizon management continues to insist on drastic cuts in benefits and employment security” and demonstrates “greed” and creates delays “not only bad for workers, it’s bad for consumers and bad for our communities,” the unions said. CWA held protests in several cities earlier this summer to underscore the problem (CD June 25 p13). Verizon declined to comment on the unions’ request to the service, a federal government agency.
Nearly a dozen telecommunications and technology groups urged lawmakers Thursday to require the Department of Justice and FCC to increase transparency in their consideration of the proposed Verizon/SpectrumCo transaction. The groups told lawmakers in a letter that they should be “very concerned” about the competitive impact of the proposed deal and particularly alarmed that there’s no transparency in the dealings for the FCC and interested parties to properly review these “unprecedented agreements.” The letter was sent to House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., House Competition Subcommittee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., Ranking Member Mel Watt, D-N.C., and members of the House Commerce and Judiciary committees. The letter was signed by Access Humboldt, the Center for Rural Strategies, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Eastern Rural Telecom Association, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, Public Knowledge, the Rural Broadband Alliance, the Rural Independent Competitive Alliance, the Rural Telecommunications Group, and the Western Telecommunications Alliance.
There has been a big push for a compromise draft proposal on exceptions and limitations for visually impaired and blind people at the World Intellectual Property Organization meeting in Geneva. India, China, Switzerland, the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Group and, for the first time, Australia clearly supported a full-fledged treaty and asked for conclusion of the preparatory work during the 24th Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that runs through Wednesday. “Further convergence in delegations’ discussions were possible and a balanced and flexible text was within reach,” the European Union said. The U.S. delegation rejected allusions that a linkage could be made between the visually impaired media treaty and the broadcasting treaty. The Brazilian delegate had warned against efforts to link the WIPO efforts on the human rights-oriented print disabilities and the broadcasting treaty. A linkage had led to the failure of earlier SCCR work. “A linkage between the print disabilities effort and an effort for business affairs would be unprincipled, it would be unethical, and the United States will not have any part of it,” the U.S. delegate said.
The FCC International Bureau adopted changes Thursday to the earth stations on board vessels (ESV) rules, in a second order on reconsideration (http://xrl.us/bnhf8k). The bureau’s actions stemmed from Boeing and ViaSat petitions, the bureau said. Its revisions will provide greater operational flexibility for ESVs “while continuing to ensure that the FSS operators are protected from harmful interference in the C- and Ku-bands,” the order said. It said the aggregate power-density rule will allow ESVs with variable power, co-frequency systems “to operate their individual transmitters simultaneously while using varying off-axis equivalent isotropically radiated power-density levels instead of requiring each transmitter within the system to use the same EIRP-density.” The order requires variable power ESV systems to operate 1 decibel below the off-axis EIRP-density limits “to protect fixed satellite services from harmful interference.” Other rule changes involve renumbering the rules “to incorporate the variable power ESV provisions ... and incorporating the new requirement to file coordination notifications electronically” on the bureau filing and reporting system, the order said. It said the agency doesn’t expect a substantial number of small entities to be directly impacted by the rule changes.
A carriage agreement is expected to be reached between Viacom and DirecTV given the profit the programmer would lose without carriage on that DBS provider, Evercore Partners wrote investors Thursday. DirecTV wants to offer the programming “as long as DTV can procure it at a fair price,” they said. The analysts estimate the subscriber loss breakeven point at 1.15 million subscribers. The potential damage to DirecTV’s premium position in the market from not carrying the programming is more difficult to quantify, they said. In the highly unlikely event that Viacom were to lose DirecTV permanently, “both sides would have less leverage in future negotiations,” they added. This Friday marks day 10 of the stalled carriage agreement, which left DirecTV customers without Comedy Central, TVLand, MTV and other Viacom channels (CD July 12 p10).
A decision on the proposal that would allow Dish Network to deploy a terrestrial service could come sooner than some telecom industry professionals expected. A notice of proposed rulemaking on allowing terrestrial use of 2 GHz wireless spectrum was introduced this year (CD March 22 p4). It sounds like the FCC’s final draft of the NPRM may be ready to go, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said in a research note recounting a Wells Fargo wireless symposium. “We believe that the September timeframe as suggested in several trade reports may actually be correct.” Many speakers at the symposium suggested that the higher band spectrum has significant value, she said. This spectrum “provides capacity to complement the coverage that many of the wireless carriers currently have through their lower band spectrum, such as the 700 MHz.” Symposium speakers also suggested that a potential purchase of Dish by AT&T is unlikely to occur in the near term “although this could be the ultimate scenario down the line,” she said. In terms of Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen’s strategy, it’s likely that Dish partners with various parties inside and outside the wireless ecosystem “to ensure a better place in both the pay-TV and wireless industries,” she added.