Globalstar and Thales Alenia reached an agreement settling an arbitration dispute. Globalstar “agreed to the terms of a commercial proposal for the purchase of six additional spacecraft from Thales,” Globalstar said Monday in a release. Construction of the satellites will begin this year, it said. In May, Globalstar was ordered to pay $67 million to Thales after it terminated an agreement with Thales due to a delay in manufacturing (CD May 22 p13). This agreement establishes “a clean slate for the program once again such that the parties are now positioned to work as strategic partners for the long-term,” Globalstar said.
The Supreme Court will hear an appeal of a 2003 class action lawsuit alleging Comcast conspired to implement “unlawful swap agreements” to achieve a monopoly in Philadelphia. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the suit could proceed, holding that a lower federal court didn’t exceed its discretion when it certified the class (CD Aug 24 p10). In an order Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to take the case to decide “whether a district court may certify a class action without resolving whether the plaintiff class has introduced admissible evidence, including expert testimony, to show that the case is susceptible to awarding damages on a class-wide basis.” Comcast had no comment.
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing on cable retransmission policies, a committee spokesman confirmed Monday without specifying a date or location. Witnesses have not been announced as the committee is in the “very early stages” of planning the hearing, the spokesman said.
The International Bureau granted EchoStar’s request to consolidate its 30 regularly licensed channels at 61.5 degrees west into a single block from Channel 3 to Channel 32. Consolidating the channels “will permit EchoStar to optimize use of spot beams on channels 18 through 32,” the bureau said in an order (http://xrl.us/bncvor). EchoStar also was granted temporary authority to operate three of its satellites on unassigned Channels 1 and 2 at 61.5 degrees west, it said.
The Communications Act is “woefully out of step” with the state of competition and technology in video distribution and programming, said a House Communications Subcommittee majority memo that circulated Monday. The memo was released ahead of Wednesday’s subcommittee hearing on the future of video which will examine whether current video regulation is sufficient or if it should be expanded to cover new technologies and services (CD June 15 p16). Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told us the hearing will examine how the video marketplace has changed since the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The subcommittee is beginning a “deep dive process to look at how the marketplace has changed, how the industries have changed, how consumers have changed their behaviors and whether or not laws need to be changed,” he said. Members are “looking at big policies, and letting the expert agencies do their jobs on existing laws. If the existing laws aren’t working then we need to look at that.” The hearing will focus on issues related to retransmission consent and program carriage, the majority memo said. Such deals are “best left arranged by the respective parties and their viewers, free from regulatory intervention,” the memo said. Letting regulators weigh the relative value of carriage and programming is a “risky proposition” that could discourage investment in distribution and programming and diminish the diversity of content, it said. Network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules should not be revisited unless members also re-examine compulsory copyright provisions, the memo said. Members plan to consider implications of the legal battle brewing over Dish Network’s new “Hopper” digital video recorder which allows subscribers to skip over commercials and save programming indefinitely. Networks like Fox, NBC, ABC and CBS argue that the features violate copyright law and jeopardize the financial underpinning of broadcast television but Dish contends that the technology is permissible fair use under copyright law. The subcommittee will examine whether Internet-based video providers should be subject to FCC regulation, the memo said. The current Sky Angel proceeding at the FCC could have “far reaching consequences” for the future of video if the commission determines that Internet-based video providers fall within the multichannel video programming distributer provisions of the Communications Act, it said. Members will also focus on congressional reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act which will expire in 2014. The memo said eight witnesses are invited to testify at Wednesday’s hearing: Charlie Ergen, chairman of Dish; Robert Johnson, CEO of Sky Angel; David Hyman, general counsel at Netflix; Jim Funk, Roku vice president-product management; Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge; David Barrett, CEO of Hearst Television; Michael O'Leary, senior executive vice president-global policy at the Motion Picture Association of America; and Michael Powell, president of the NCTA.
Relay service providers that need a waiver are getting a yearlong extension to July 1, 2013, or until the FCC takes further action to address those waivers on a permanent basis, whichever comes first. The waivers came in an order adopted Friday in WC docket 05-1965 (http://xrl.us/bncvmr). In the order, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Wireline Bureau extended currently existing waivers of mandatory minimum standards for various telecom relay service providers.
New York City will receive several free Wi-Fi spots, Boingo Wireless said Monday. Google Offers is sponsoring the Boingo Wi-Fi in six subway stations as well as more than 200 Boingo hotspots throughout Manhattan. Internet will remain free in these locations from today through Sept. 7, 2012. Boingo partner Transit Wireless will provide the free Internet access at the following MTA subway stations: the A, C, E station at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street, the L station at Eighth Avenue and West 14th Street, the C, E station at Eighth Avenue and West 23rd Street, the 1, 2, 3 station at Seventh Avenue and West 14th Street, the F, M station at Sixth Avenue and West 14th Street and the L station at Sixth Avenue and West 14th Street. Boingo Wi-Fi is expected to be available in 36 subway stations by the end of 2012 and all 270-plus stations within five years, the company said.
USTelecom petitioned the FCC for review of the Wireline Bureau’s order setting limits on high-cost loop support recovery. “Uncertainty and lack of clarity around present and future effects” of the benchmarks, which are based on a quantile regression analysis, “pose risks to the delivery and expansion of rural broadband availability,” the group said (http://xrl.us/bncvkm). USTelecom argued that the benchmarks will not only impact those carriers affected by reductions this year, but will also result in a “chilling effect on investment for rate-of-return ILECs whose support is currently unchanged.” And because companies don’t understand how the regression analysis works, it will be ineffective in providing incentives for prudent investment, USTelecom said. The association of ILECs asked the full commission to postpone implementation of the order until it can resolve concerns about “accuracy, transparency and predictability.” USTelecom is just the latest of several organizations to seek review (CD June 25 p14).
Dick Butler, the ITU secretary-general from 1983 to 1989, passed away, the ITU website said.
ESPN 3D will present all the X Games Los Angeles 2012 programming June 28-July 1, the network said Monday. More than 200 athletes will compete for medals and prize money in skateboarding, Moto X, BMX and Rally, the programmer said. It said ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will combine to televise 21 hours of live X Games Los Angeles competition in HD, and ESPN3 will air an additional 3 hours of programming, while ESPN 3D will show all the X Games action.