Swedish cable operator Com Hem signed an exclusive deal with TiVo, giving the DVR service access to an IPTV network for the first time. Com Hem said it will start the service in early 2013 over cable and IPTV, initially installing TiVo in set-top boxes, but also providing it to smartphones and tablet. The deal with Com Hem, which has 875,000 subscribers and passes 1.7 million homes in Sweden, gives TiVo a replacement for its failed pact with Canal Digital. TiVo signed an agreement with Canal Digital in late 2010, but parted ways earlier this year as Canal weighed options including a possible sale of the company. “This agreement is a significant step forward for TiVo, because for the first time will offer our services over an IPTV network, underscoring our ability to offer TiVo via virtually any kind of infrastructure and through all kinds of devices,” TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in a statement. Com Hem first offered digital services in 1997, using OpenTV middleware and Sagem STBs. Twenty applications were developed for the OpenTV system, but the service was dropped in 2003. The middleware was revamped and reintroduced as a VoD service in 2007 with Canadian supplier Espial. “We believe this is an incremental positive for TiVo -- building upon the success that the company has shown in Europe through Virgin Media,” BMO Capital Markets analyst Edward Williams said.
The quantile regression model that limits cost recovery for infrastructure build out “fails to fix the underlying problems with the existing flawed high cost loop funding mechanism and in fact introduces even more uncertainty into the federal recovery mechanism,” Home Telecom told FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and staff, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bncvey). The regression model is “unduly complex” and based on “erroneous data,” and its implications are “not even fully understood by FCC staff,” Home wrote. Home asked that the FCC suspend the model until it can be “fully vetted,” and asked that the waiver process be “less onerous” and waiver fees “lowered or eliminated."
The standard for relief for waivers from new USF rules should be tied to whether a company can repay its Rural Utilities Service loans and complete construction of wireline broadband systems, not whether voice service will be lost, the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association told FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and aides to Commissioners Robert McDowell and Jessica Rosenworcel in a series of meetings last week (http://xrl.us/bncvd3). The FCC’s reforms have “heightened the climate of uncertainty and have placed a chilling effect on new investments,” RIITA said. The shift of cost recovery to rural customers will burden consumers and result in further loss of access lines, they said.
A hearing on the Game Show Network’s program carriage complaint against Cablevision starts Jan. 30 at 10 a.m., Chief FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel ordered. He set a schedule for the case, sent to him by the Media Bureau, in which the independent network claims the cable operator favored affiliated channels over GSN and in which Cablevision denies the allegations. The complainant’s final expert reports are due Oct. 22, and the defendant must be ready by Nov. 5, with discovery complete by Dec. 14, wrote Sippel, who set other deadlines in the order which he said “mostly” follows the dates suggested by the two companies (CD June 25 p17). Both sides have “the option to conduct brief direct examination of its witnesses for introduction, to address or clarify any fact issue raised for the first time in an opposing party’s written direct testimony, and to briefly summarize the witness’s written direct testimony before the witness is proffered for cross examination,” Sippel wrote in the order dated Thursday regarding docket 12-122 that’s not yet posted in that docket.
Grande Communications faces a possible $10,000 fine for violating FCC equal employment opportunity rules at eight Texas employment units, which were deemed by the Media Bureau as not compliant with EEO rules for last year. A bureau audit covering 2010 and 2011 found the cable operator didn’t “recruit widely” for 34 job openings, or 28 percent of jobs filled during that time at those systems by Grande. The company relied “solely on the use of Internet websites for those vacancies,” violating EEO rules, a bureau order and notice of apparent liability said Monday (http://xrl.us/bncu8q). “While the Commission does not require the use of a specific number of recruitment sources, if a source or sources cannot reasonably be expected, collectively, to reach the entire community, as here, a unit may be found in noncompliance.” The rules don’t allow Internet-only recruitment, the bureau noted, something which agency officials have also said publicly (CD Jan 5 p2). Atlantic Broadband owns Grande. Grande “is committed to its EEO programs” and “has an outstanding record in hiring and retaining a diverse workforce,” General Counsel Bartlett Leber of Atlantic Broadband told us. “In response to the FCC’s inquiries, we've already added newspaper recruiting to all of our openings.” Grande “feels that in this day and age, we don’t really see a reason why Internet recruiting is not the appropriate source to find technology and broadband employees,” she said. The bureau’s view is that “because of these recruiting failures in all eight of Grande’s units, we find that the Units also did not adequately analyze their recruitment programs on an ongoing basis to ensure that they were effective in achieving broad outreach or address any problems found as a result of their analysis,” the order said. “Had the Units effectively examined their practices, they should have noted the continuing nature of their failure to satisfy their wide recruitment obligation and could have taken the needed steps to correct it."
Tw telecom president Larissa Herda spoke with all five FCC commissioners Thursday to urge them to suspend the special access pricing flexibility triggers (http://xrl.us/bncu75). The pricing flexibility rules are “broken because they are not an accurate measure of competition,” and they let ILECs increase prices in areas where they do not face competition, she said, according to an ex parte filing. “These price increases undermine tw telecom’s ability to serve its business customers,” she said.
Viewers could fully see 88 percent of all video ads streamed to digital viewing platforms in Q1, while other ads were partially obstructed or invisible to viewers, a video analysis firm said. All ads have demonstrated strong viewing quality, said VideoHub (http://xrl.us/bncu57). Trends also indicate that TV and digital video will simultaneously develop, it said. TV seasons cause peak digital viewing times to shift from 4-9 p.m. during season finales to 12-4 p.m. during TV series’ hiatus, the report said. Digital video saw more variance in ad performance rather than viewing times, it said. Ad performance is sensitive to variables like content and player size, it said.
Europe needs an EU cloud strategy to benefit from economies of scale and the single market, Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes said Monday at an Economic Council symposium on cloud computing and privacy. The cloud is necessary for growth, jobs and more efficient public services, she said. If Europe takes a national approach with “small Clouds stuck in small markets” and data locked within old borders, it will limit its cloud ambitions, her written remarks said. Rules for the cloud should make it easy for consumers and businesses to operate across the EU, she said. Kroes said she doesn’t want to over-regulate, and a European strategy should clarify the liability of cloud service providers and assure users that services are secure and trustworthy. It should also ensure competition in the market, make it easy to switch providers and allow for data portability, she said. With such a roadmap in place, Europe can take advantage of potentially great benefits for the public sector and public services, and deal with key policy areas such as data protection, she said. The strategy shouldn’t ignore global cloud computing issues, and should include measures to support and spur cloud take-up, such as training and awareness, research and standardization, Kroes said. “The Cloud shouldn’t be something that happens to Europe -- it should happen with Europe."
The FCC should reform the retransmission consent process to provide independent programmers greater opportunity to gain enough distribution from cable and satellite operators, NuvoTV said in a filing (http://xrl.us/bncuws). The providers cite capacity restraints for their inability to carry independent channels, and the bandwidth shortage is primarily due to the retrans process, said NuvoTV. CEO Michael Schwimmer and Vice President Judi Lopez discussed their concerns in a meeting with Commissioner Clyburn on Thursday.
Amazon’s LOVEFiLM division signed yet another content deal in the U.K., this time a multi-year one with 20th Century Fox Television Distribution that the companies said Monday will give LOVEFiLM subscribers streaming access to recent and coming movies and TV series. LOVEFiLM members will get “instant, exclusive on-demand access” to the content during the second pay-TV window of the Fox film content, the companies said. The movie part of the deal starts with titles released theatrically in the U.K. last year, which will be made available to subscribers “as early as March 2013,” the companies said. The deal will also give LOVEFiLM members access to movies and TV series from the studio’s library of older titles, they said. The catalog TV titles, available starting in July, will include early seasons of Sons of Anarchy and all seasons of 24, Prison Break, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, the companies said. That content and a “huge range of other titles” will be made available on demand via PCs, Macs, PS3s, Xbox 360s, iPads and several other devices, including Internet-connected TV sets and Blu-ray players, the companies said. LOVEFiLM already signed similar content deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, NBCUniversal, Entertainment One, StudioCanal, Disney/ABC, the BBC and ITV. LOVEFiLM will continue to rent Fox titles on DVD, Blu-ray and Blu-Ray 3D via its LOVEFiLM By Post service, it said.