Comcast said its voice customers will be able to make free calls over Wi-Fi or a cellular broadband connection using their home phone number. Using the Xfinity Connect mobile app, customers will be able to make calls and send text messages from their mobile devices on a Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G network. The update to Comcast’s home phone service also allows call forwarding to up to four additional phones and gives subscribers the ability to assign individual phone numbers to different members of a household.
A federal appeals court affirmed a July 2010 judgment from a lower court setting the royalty for the blanket public performance license for music in performance rights organization the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ repertory used in TV and radio content delivered to mobile phones paid by MobiTV (http://xrl.us/bm8ye5). ASCAP had appealed the rates, saying the Southern District of New York court should have based the rates on the larger retail revenue received by wireless carriers, not the smaller wholesale revenue paid by MobiTV to various programmers.
Google completed its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Tuesday, the companies said. Dennis Woodside, previously head of Google’s Americas region, is now Motorola’s CEO. Departing CEO Sanjay Jha will help to ensure the transition, Google said. Several executives at Motorola Mobility will continue in their current roles: Iqbal Arshad (Product Development), Marshall Brown (Chief of Staff), Fei Liu (Mass Market Products), Dan Moloney (Home), Scott Offer (General Counsel), Mark Shockley (Sales), Mahesh Veerina (Software & Enterprise) and Jim Wicks (Consumer Experience Design), according to Google. Woodside is bringing in some outsiders as part of the transition: Regina Dugan (former director ofDARPA), Mark Randall (former supply chain vice president at Amazon and previously at Nokia), Vanessa Wittman (former chief financial officer of Marsh & McLennan), Scott Sullivan (former head of human resources at Visa and NVIDIA), and Gary Briggs (former Google vice president-consumer marketing) are joining the business. It’s uncertain how Google would run the Motorola business. Several analysts warned there’s little incentive to run Motorola independently.
U.S. children are using mobile devices including smartphones, tablets and iPod touches about five days a week out of seven, NPD said an online survey found. Their average sessions are lasting just under an hour, and there is an average of 12 apps on such devices that kids have access to -- 88 percent of them acquired for free, the research company said. Gaming was by far the No. 1 type of app used by youngsters, followed by music and taking photos. There’s an average of 6.5 game applications on each mobile device, NPD said. Boys were more likely to be game players than girls (87 percent vs. 80 percent), while girls were more diversified in the apps they used and were likely to have more types of apps than boys, it said. “The wide variety and sheer volume of free entertainment content available for app devices is clearly having an impact on kids and the way they play,” said analyst Anita Frazier. She said many of the apps were used by children and abandoned after a short time. Games were the apps most often paid for, at 35 percent, followed closely by educational game and movie apps. The online survey was done March 6-21 and had 2,502 respondents, NPD said.
Compliance with FCC ex parte rules has generally improved since the agency issued new rules a year ago, General Counsel Austin Schlick said at the Cable Show. The “improvement” occurred after the agency “did quite a bit of outreach” around the rules, “which I think had the effect of reminding practitioners of the requirements,” he said on a Tuesday panel. Schlick identified two areas where he sees filings not meeting requirements, of those he reads. Some don’t refer to the specific page an argument was initially made in, when a lobbying meeting covers ground from an earlier document, Schlick said. “My view is it is our duty to read them for compliance with the rules,” he said of staff reviewing the lobbying disclosures from meetings they attended. “What I see with the ones I get is some trouble with the requirement that it is not sufficient to merely summarize the arguments that were discussed” during a meeting, he said: Generally more than a summary is needed, with details on the topics covered.
Governments and international institutions should ensure that decision-making activities relating...
Governments and international institutions should ensure that decision-making activities relating to Internet governance be open and inclusive to all stakeholders, said an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) official at a meeting of the U.N. Commission on Science and Technology for Development in Paris. The World Summit on the Information Society-Tunis Agenda, signed by heads of state in 2005, recognized the “critical role of all relevant stakeholders on issues of Internet governance,” said Subramaniam Ramadorai, chair of the ICC’s Business Action to Support the Information Society. “The forward-looking agenda established a new multistakeholder process for Internet governance, which helped to establish it as a model for global Internet policy development.” He said cooperation among agencies and organizations on Internet governance can be done through “existing frameworks.” Creating new “entities and processes” would be “counterproductive,” he said.
The NAB asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn the FCC’s recent order requiring certain TV stations to post the contents of their public inspection file online. The association said the rule change was arbitrary, capricious, exceeded commission authority and violated the First Amendment (http://xrl.us/bm8x67). An FCC spokesman said the rules are “consistent with Congress’s directive to ensure public availability while providing cost-savings for broadcasters.” Corie Wright, Free Press senior policy counsel and an advocate for the rules, called the petition a stall tactic. “The FCC made the right decision and is on firm legal ground,” she said. Monday was the deadline for parties to file appeals and have their appellate venue of choice entered in the venue lottery, according to the Fletcher Heald firm blog. NAB appeared to be the only party to have sought judicial review Monday.
Connect2Compete, the public-private partnership announced by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to attempt to close the digital divide (CD Feb 14 p10), announced its first nationwide public service ad campaign on digital literacy Tuesday. The campaign, created in partnership with the Ad Council, will begin in January 2013, and aims to raise awareness about digital literacy. “Digital literacy is essential to online access to jobs, health care, education and e-government,” Connect2Compete said in a statement. “However, more than a fifth of American adults -- approximately 60,000,000 people -- consider themselves non-users of the Internet.” The campaign will encourage individuals to make use of free community resources and training provided through partnering companies and community organizations. Ben Hecht, CEO of Living Cities -- a collaborative of 22 major foundations and financial institutions -- has been chosen as Connect2Compete’s chairman.
NTCA executives met with new FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai on Friday to discuss NTCA’s member companies and the rural nature of the areas they serve, in the context of ongoing efforts to implement universal service and intercarrier compensation reform, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm8x38). The association executives also discussed the results of a recent call completion test that found failures on calls to rural areas were 13 times higher than those to non-rural areas. NTCA leaders also spoke with an adviser to Commissioner Robert McDowell regarding the regression caps on universal service support (http://xrl.us/bm8x4r). The caps “cannot serve as meaningful guideposts” for operating efficiency or prudent investment, given that the caps frequently “shift beneath and among carriers."
With just over a week to go until the June 1 deadline, the Utah Public Service Commission has asked the FCC for a 13-month extension to adopt uniform eligibility criteria for the Lifeline program (http://xrl.us/bm8x25). Granting the waiver request would be in the public interest because it would “allow the Commission adequate time to come into compliance” with the rules, and would “result in less confusion and a better, more complete program design, and Utah ETCs will not be subject to an unnecessary disruption in reimbursements,” the Utah PSC said.