Verizon Wireless began a free app, Color for Facebook, which allows users to share up to 30 seconds of live video taken with their smartphones on the social networking site. The app was designed to be used over Verizon’s 4G LTE network to share clips of events including concerts, sporting events and road trips, the company said. Users can also create batch photo uploads that send multiple images to Facebook with one tap, Verizon said. A separate feature is required to add audio to the feed, Verizon said, and charges will be based on a customer’s data usage plan. Color, the company that developed the app, plans to create additional features to make use of the faster Verizon 4G network, it said.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked the FCC and Justice Department to investigate Comcast for alleged anticompetitive conduct and violations of its merger agreements made in connection with buying control of NBCUniversal. His request came in a letter sent to the agencies Monday (http://xrl.us/bm6i7y). Franken, a vocal critic of the deal and member of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said that complaints against Comcast’s compliance with the terms of the commission’s order have “languished” before the FCC “for extended periods of time.” Franken said he’s “disappointed” it took the FCC 10 months to issue an order to resolve a carriage dispute between Comcast and the Bloomberg financial news channel. Franken also alleged that Comcast was using delay tactics to prevent Project Concord, an online video distributor (OVD), from negotiating programming deals. He alleged Comcast was requiring Project Concord to provide a full, unredacted copy of the underlying peer agreement for content with another company before Comcast can provide its programming. Such a dispute has “far-reaching implications for the entire OVD market,” Franken said. He urged Justice and the FCC to act quickly to resolve the issue; otherwise “it will dissuade other OVDs from seeking Comcast’s programming under the terms of the order, and it will send a message to Comcast that it may set unreasonable requirements on OVDs as a condition of receiving its content.” Franken urged the agencies to probe Comcast’s announcement that it will exempt its VOD services for the Xbox 360 from its customers’ broadband data caps. The practice (CD May 7 p5) “raises serious questions about how Comcast will favor its own content and services to the detriment of its competitors,” Franken said. Comcast is “fully complying with (indeed exceeding) the transaction orders as detailed in our recently filed Annual Compliance Report,” a company spokeswoman said by email. The Xfinity app for the Xbox does not stream content over the open Internet and “is not subject to the FCC’s open Internet rules,” she said. Comcast’s Xfinity service is “indisputably part of our Title VI cable service which is not subject to the FCC’s Open Internet Rules,” she said. Franken acknowledged in his letter that Comcast’s video content is being delivered over its private Internet Protocol network, rather than the Internet, saying he was “not yet prepared” to call it a technical violation of the commission’s merger order.
Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse agreed to cut his total compensation by $3.25 million partly due to shareholders’ unease with the subsidies the carrier pays to Apple so it can carry its iPhone, an SEC filing said. “I do not want, nor does our compensation committee want, to penalize Sprint employees for the company’s investment with Apple,” Hesse wrote in a letter to the company’s human resources department, according to the filing. “These voluntary actions regarding my personal compensation, which total $3,250,830, will eliminate any benefit for me to the discretionary adjustment the compensation committee made earlier this year, and will set my 2012 incentive compensation target opportunities at my 2010 levels.” Hesse is cutting his base salary by about $346,000 and is forgoing around $545,000 in future pay related to the company’s performance last year. In a separate filing with the SEC, Sprint Chairman Jim Hance applauded the decision, saying Hesse has support of the board.
Comcast wants out of cable rate regulation in six franchise areas, because the company said rivals serve at least 15 percent of households and DBS is offered. Citrus Heights, Davis, Folsom, Galt and Roseville, all in California, were covered in one petition posted Friday in docket 12-1 (http://xrl.us/bm6jhh), while Media, Pa., is in another (http://xrl.us/bm6jhm).
Eleven low-power TV stations lost Class A status (CD May 3 p2), in some cases voluntarily, or their entire licenses since the FCC got congressional authority to hold a voluntary broadcast incentive auction, agency data we've compiled shows -- www.warren-news.com/showcause.htm. WLLS Indiana, Pa., had its license canceled after (http://xrl.us/bm6jdj) the ex-wife of the licensee told the commission “I don’t care what you do with WLLS-LP -- which has been dark for [more than 21] months and is, consequently, a moot issue to begin with.” KTJA Victoria, Texas (http://xrl.us/bm6jfm), and a Collegedale, Tenn., translator (http://xrl.us/bm6jfs), voluntarily reverted to regular low-power status, giving back their Class A’s and the interference protection that comes with them. And WJJN Dothan, Ala., asked the agency to cancel its license, in a letter the FCC got last week. That was among the stations getting Media Bureau show-cause orders saying Class A status would be yanked, often because the stations were off-air for long periods of time.
NCTA began an ad campaign promoting how cable operators sell more products than just their video services: “Cable. It’s More than TV. It’s How We Connect.” There’s a website -- www.cableconnectsus.com -- and ads mainly will run in the Washington market, the association said Monday (http://xrl.us/bm6ja7). “In today’s overstimulated media environment sometimes we need to take a step back and remember how this amazing environment is thriving,” NCTA CEO Michael Powell said.
The FCC’s rescission of a ban on text-to-speech emergency alert system warnings using Common Alerting Protocol became effective Monday, the agency said in a notice in that day’s Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bm6i3d). The short-lived ban, reversed last month, had applied to multichannel video programming distributors and broadcasters (CD April 20 p2).
Purple said its FCC proposal for a new rate structure could save the telecom relay service over $50 million annually through an expanded tier reimbursement model that would ultimately transition to a unitary rate for all providers once the market for video relay services is “quantifiably more competitive as measured in market share.” The company also reported telling an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn that no IP relay service provider has been reimbursed for any service rendered this year, “which Commissioner Clyburn’s office was not previously aware of” (http://xrl.us/bm6ix6).
The Office of Management and Budget gave three-year approval for information collection associated with November’s USF/intercarrier compensation order, the FCC said in a notice to appear in Tuesday’s Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bm6iq5). The first information collection, associated with sections 54.313(a)(2) through (a)(6) and (h) of the commission’s rules, must be filed by July 2. The approved collection provisions concern Form 525, which is for reporting competitive carrier line count information, and self-certification as a rural carrier.
The FCC International Bureau dismissed Liberty Media’s application for de facto control of Sirius XM. Its applications were unacceptable for filing “because they are defective with respect to execution and other matters of a formal character,” the bureau said in an order (http://xrl.us/bm6abg). In March, Liberty Media filed its application and Sirius filed its opposition to Liberty’s attempt (CD May 2 p10). Sirius said upon expiration of the investment agreement with Liberty, it could take action toward gaining de facto control, “but Liberty Media has neither taken those actions nor indicated that it proposes to take those actions,” the order said. The bureau denied Liberty’s request for a waiver of basic filing requirements because facts disclosed in the applications “are not sufficient to establish that Liberty Media intends to take actions ... that would constitute exercise of de facto or de jure control,” it said.