Matt Daneman

The FCC's best route to LTE-U/Wi-Fi coexistence is by watching and encouraging industry-led progress toward that goal, the Wi-Fi Alliance said in an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 15-105. The group, which earlier this month put out its own suggested guidelines on how the two can coexist in the same spectrum (see 1511040059), has said the agency should monitor that coexistence development and step in on coexistence issues only if necessary. "I hope we have stepped in on it," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Thursday after the agency's November meeting. "I've said to [LTE-U and Wi-Fi industry representatives], 'Folks, you've got to come together and resolve this in a broad-based standard.' It appears the House subcommittee has done the same. This is the way things ought to be taken care of. There are two things that characterize unlicensed spectrum. One, it's the innovation band; it's where all kinds of new innovations happen. And you want to make sure that in fact continues. The second is, it's the 'everybody respects everybody else' band. And we want to make sure both of those are happening. And the way that can be done is by a broad-based development of commonly agreed-to standards that meets both of those criteria." LTE-U backer Verizon "agrees," Patrick Welsh, assistant vice president-regulatory affairs, told us Friday in an email. "We are actively working with the Wi-Fi Alliance to develop coexistence guidelines for LTE-U." And in a statement, fellow LTE-U advocate Qualcomm said "proponents of LTE-U, including the members of the LTE-U Forum -- whose members also are members of the Wi-Fi Alliance -- are pleased to continue our ongoing collaboration with the industry through our work with the Wi-Fi Alliance initiative to develop an agreed-upon coexistence test regimen that will ensure that LTE-U and Wi-Fi successfully co-exist in the unlicensed spectrum, where the watchword is permission-less innovation, as Chairman Wheeler has correctly recognized.” The Wi-Fi Alliance ex parte recapped meetings between alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa and front-line staff of Wheeler and of Commissioners Mignon Clyburn, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel, plus with Office of Engineering and Technology representatives. The Wi-Fi Alliance said it plans a Coexistence Test Workshop for the week of Feb. 8. The group's members include Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, Comcast, Intel, LG, Microsoft, Sony and T-Mobile, its website said.

World Radiocommunication Conference delegates agreed on a globally harmonized network of vehicular radar in the 77.5-78 GHz frequency band that opens the door to short-range collision avoidance systems, said Decker Anstrom, U.S. ambassador to WRC-15. Given the rise of smart cars and the “still unacceptable levels of traffic accidents or deaths [worldwide] … this will save lives,” Anstrom said on a call with reporters Thursday.

Major corporate investment in satellite systems is likely to grow, financing experts said Tuesday in New York at SatCon. As "the Googles of the world" step into this space, "it's something for the industry to take advantage of," said John Schuster, principal with 32 Advisors' Project and Structured Finance practice. Satellite mergers and acquisitions -- slower than expected in recent years -- almost surely will pick up, said Randy Russell, co-head of Americas Telecom Investment Banking at Deutsche Bank.

Pointing to possible harm to the over-the-top (OTT) market, Dish Network officials want the FCC to deny approval of Charter Communications buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. Dish was a major opponent of Comcast's now-dead attempt at buying TWC, citing potential harm to OTT competition. "The only difference [this time] is Charter doesn't own NBC," Dish CEO Charlie Ergen said Monday in a conference call on Q3 financial results. Some thought his comments on the incentive auction, meanwhile, signaled Dish may not go big on the auction.

Arris' planned buy of Pace faced more opposition than anticipated but still is expected to get regulatory approval without major conditions, said industry watchers and Arris' CEO. That it faces any regulatory pushback is somewhat surprising given the numerous other set-top box market players, said ABI Research analyst Sam Rosen. He pointed to Cisco, Samsung, increasing participation by LG in the area and "a whole host of vendors" in Europe that could decide to enter the U.S. market.

Comcast plans to take part in the broadcast TV incentive auction through NBCUniversal and plans to activate the Verizon mobile virtual network operator "to trial some things and test some things," Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said Tuesday during the company's Q3 earnings call. "We're in a [wireless] test-and-learn mode and I think it's a natural part of the evolution of our company and participation in the mobile space beyond Wi-Fi," Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit said in response to a question about the company's wireless strategy. Q3 revenue was up 11.2 percent year over year to $18.7 billion, due to factors including a growing high-speed Internet subscriber base and the performance of Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic World. Roberts said deployment of X1 set-top boxes is at 40,000 per day, with 25 percent of its video subscribers now X1 customers, which is lowering churn and leading to higher revenue per subscriber. While multichannel video programming distributors saw their biggest customer losses ever in Q2, Comcast said it hasn't been a major contributor to that. It reported 69,000 video customers lost in Q2, and 48,000 for Q3. Those 48,000 make for Comcast's best third quarter in nine years, and cable "is now unmistakably taking shares from satellite and TelCo TV is fading fast," Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research emailed investors Tuesday. While broadband has driven some of that, Moffett said, so too has "cable's two-way architecture and Comcast's ... user interface and VOD libraries. Cable's improvement in basic video looks sustainable." Though Comcast is buying a majority of Universal Studios Japan, large acquisitions in the U.S. are "unlikely ... under the current administration," wrote analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak of Pivotal Research Group.

The documents the FCC is poring over in its review of Charter Communications buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable give snapshots of everything from interconnection policies to plans of a number of ISPs and cable companies. The released versions of the filings in docket 14-159 -- in response to Media Bureau document requests (see 1510130063) -- are in most cases heavily redacted. However, they illuminate some video and broadband strategic directions and policies.

The FCC proceeding on whether a particular type of over-the-top service should be considered a multichannel video programming distributor seems at a standstill, said an agency official and lawyers who have recently spoken with agency officials. The initiative spearheaded by Chairman Tom Wheeler is opposed by a majority of the other commissioners, as far as all stakeholders we interviewed are aware. Because there are many stakeholders with concerns about the NPRM, many of those interviewed represent interested clients.

The Supreme Court is to meet Oct. 30 to decide whether to take up a pair of related DirecTV/Dish Network legal fights on sales taxes on their services versus how cable subscribers are taxed. But whether the justices opt to add the linked cases to their 2015-2016 docket is difficult to say, legal scholars told us.

LTE-U's backers and critics agree the technology shows immense promise. Beyond that, consensus starts to break down on how to best implement it so as not to cause interference with Wi-Fi, according to panelists at a Monday night FCBA seminar on Wi-Fi-LTE-U. "These unlicensed bands are great [and] there's promise we can still avoid the rocks," said panelist Paul Margie of Harris Wiltshire, whose clients include wireless companies and ISPs.