Matt Daneman

JPMorgan Chase agreed to put its interest in post-bankruptcy LightSquared into a proxy, which would clear the path for the FCC to approve a transfer of licenses, the last thing LightSquared needs before U.S. Bankruptcy Court approves its final emergence from Chapter 11 reorganization, LightSquared counsel Gerard Waldron of Covington & Burling told us Monday. The filing posted Friday in docket 15-126 said the bank agreed RL2 Investors Holdings or another of its affiliates will hold its minority, noncontrolling equity interests in reconstituted LightSquared.

LTE-U continues to raise red flags with some Wi-Fi backers, as CableLabs said its tests showed Wi-Fi performance "suffered disproportionately in the presence of LTE-U." The testing, using a pair of off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access points and an LTE-U signal generator, found that Wi-Fi throughput was degraded 70 percent when LTE-U was at a 50 percent cycle, with the throughput declining as the duty cycle increased, Jennifer Andreoli-Fang, CableLabs principal architect, said in a blog post Friday.

Suddenlink still expects its purchase by Altice to close by year’s end as it makes "steady progress" on regulatory approvals, CEO Jerry Kent said Thursday, announcing its Q3 results. Transition planning is underway, with the new management team to be announced at closing, Kent said, saying he wouldn't remain with the company. The company didn’t take any questions on the $9.1 billion takeover by Altice, which many don't expect to face substantial regulatory hurdles (see 1509170015). The company has increased broadband speeds in 104 markets, with its upgrade to a new flagship speed of 50 Mbps largely complete, it said. As of Sept. 1, 13 Suddenlink markets offer 1 Gbps speeds, and another 15 will by year's end, it said. In response to a question about over-the-top video growth, Kent said it will lead to some unbundling of video packages due to the rapidly rising costs of video. Meanwhile, the cable industry is unlikely to look at overage charges as a sizable revenue stream because that could quickly lead to more customer churn, he said. In response to a question about the importance of wireless to the cable industry, Kent said it plays a bigger potential role with companies with a national footprint. "For a company like us, it's going to be difficult to mesh in wireless," he said, saying he was curious what AT&T/DirecTV does. But a quadruple-play offering "will definitely be something offered by the really large operators in this space," he said.

Cox Communications agreed to pay $595,000 to end an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation regarding its seeming failure to protect subscribers' personal data from a hacker. The FCC said it was its first privacy and data security enforcement action involving a cable operator. Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said he wasn't aware of any others involving any other regulator.

John Malone is increasingly in the spotlight as part of the review of Charter Communications buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, as was expected (see 1508140001). The chairman of Liberty Media -- the single largest Charter shareholder -- came up repeatedly in comments posted Tuesday in docket 15-149 after the Monday deadline for replies to any comments in opposition to the $89.1 billion deals. Meanwhile, the Media Bureau requested information from Liberty Broadband, Liberty Interactive and Liberty Media (see here, here and here) as part of its review, including details on any involvement by Malone or other company officers in decisions by Discovery, Starz or any other programmer on what programming is presented and whether to distribute any video programming to a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) or online video distributor (OVD). Malone is also chairman of Liberty Broadband and Liberty Interactive.

Several broadcast, cable and media companies are opposing new FCC rules on the handling of confidential information and subsequent American Cable Association (ACA), Dish Network and Incompas opposition (see 1510260030) to a petition for reconsideration of those rules. That opposition ignores many of the arguments justifying reconsideration and often just parrots the reasoning in the order itself, said CBS, Disney, MPAA, Scripps Networks Interactive, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox, Univision Communications, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Viacom in a filing in docket 15-149 posted Monday. The FCC's September order "suffers from significant substantive and procedural errors," and opposition to reconsideration -- like the order itself -- is mistaken when it thinks the Communications Act and Trade Secrets Act allows the agency to make confidential business information broadly available either under a protective order or through the Freedom of Information Act, said Comcast and NBCUniversal in a separate filing posted Monday. The FCC didn't comment.

What Globalstar says was a clear demonstration there are no interference issues between its proposed terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) and either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is coming under increasing fire from critics. The satellite company still hasn't satisfactorily answered how adjacent broadband radio service (BRS) and educational broadband service (EBS) will be safeguarded from TLPS interference, the Wireless Communications Association International (WCAI) said in a filing in docket 13-213 posted Monday. And in a separate filing posted Friday in the docket, Microsoft said the Globalstar demonstration "overstates the results to the point of being misleading." Globalstar, meanwhile, is trying to rebut point by point some TLPS testing critics.

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.

Cablevision and Game Show Network agree that GSN's retiering complaint against the cable operator boils down to issues of direct evidence and channels being similarly situated, plus the business judgment behind the retiering. That was where agreement ended in more than two hours of oral argument Friday before FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel. His decision in docket 12-122 is expected in early 2016.

Iridium now expects the first launches of its Next satellite constellation in April, with the constellation to be fully operational by end of 2017, CEO Matt Desch said Thursday, announcing Q3 results. The company previously said it expected the first Next launch to come in December (see 1510230011). The new launch timeframe is due to "an updated delivery schedule" from Thales Alenia Space, Desch said.