Paul Gluckman

The FCC’s September 2018 small-cells declaratory ruling preempting aspects of local and municipal cell tower permit reviews (see 2210070046) is a “substantive rule” that shouldn’t be applied retroactively to the 2017 Roswell, Georgia, decision denying T-Mobile’s application to build a tower in a residential neighborhood, said U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg for Northern Georgia in Atlanta in a signed opinion and order Friday (docket 1:10-cv-01464).

UPM Telecom expects to file by mid-February at the FCC a Communications Act Section 208 complaint, summarizing its counterclaims against Digicel Haiti, said a joint status report Tuesday (docket 3:15-cv-00185) at the U.S. District Court for Oregon in Portland. The court stayed UPM's counterclaims for FCC review in October as Digicel’s fraud case against UPM progressed to a jury trial. Central to UPM’s counterclaims for the FCC to determine, say court papers, is whether Digicel, as a foreign telecommunications carrier, offered a common-carrier service to UPM that was subject to provisions of the Communications Act. If so, say the court papers, the FCC needs to determine whether Digicel’s termination of that service due to fraud constitutes an unjust and unreasonable practice and amounts to unreasonable discrimination under the statute. Digicel’s answer to UPM’s complaint will be due 30 days after filing, and UPM’s reply will be due 10 days after that, said the joint status report. An eight-member jury, deliberating for a day after a six-day trial, awarded Digicel $3.6 million in damages in November after finding UPM liable for running a “bypass” scheme that defrauded the Haitian mobile communications network provider and deprived it of the proper termination fees (see 2211220049).

Maryland’s digital ad tax is “punitive at every turn,” but the U.S. District Court in Baltimore refused to exercise its “duty” to review the constitutional challenges to the levy, said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s opening brief Tuesday (docket 22-2275) at the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Chamber is appealing the district court’s March decision dismissing businesses’ challenge of the tax and its Dec. 2 dismissal of their challenge to the tax’s pass-through ban (see 2212160050). NetChoice and CCIA are co-appellants. The lower court "should have resolved the merits of appellants' claims and entered final judgment in their favor," it said. The 4th Circuit "should reverse and remand with instructions to do so," it said.

Bob Iger returns as Disney CEO for two years, effective immediately, replacing Bob Chapek, leaving ... GlobaFoundries names Cisco’s Ashlie Wallace senior vice president-global supply chain, effective Nov. 28 ... Zebra Technologies promotes Tami Froese to chief supply chain officer ... Project Liberty’s McCourt Institute names Constance Bommelaer de Leusse, ex-Internet Society, executive director ... AI company Rad Intelligence adds business management veteran Christopher Robert Celona as strategic adviser-corporate development and computer scientist Alexander Wissner-Gross as founding adviser ... Newly promoted to managing directors in Allison+Partners technology practice: Sharon Barclay, business-to-business technology, U.S.; Jeff Leopold, customer experience; and Jaime Tero, technology ... Amazon Web Services consultancy Rebura names AWS partner ecosystem veteran Marty Legg chief revenue officer, newly created role ... Talkdesk names Odigo’s David Paulding senior vice president-international ...

The national Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force has taken enforcement action against two “voice service providers” for their alleged involvement in illegal robocalls, announced Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) Tuesday. The providers being targeted in the action are Avid Telecom and One Eye, he said. “By partnering with a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general, we are able to leverage our resources and better identify those who are enabling these con artists in their attempts to steal from unsuspecting consumers,” said Carr. On behalf of the entire task force, Indiana is enforcing civil investigative demands (CIDs) against Avid and One Eye, but One Eye has stopped responding to the task force, and Avid has refused to answer the CID, said Carr’s office. Efforts to reach Avid and One Eye for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Disney stands by its decision to raise pricing 38% to $10.99 monthly on the ad-free Disney+ offering, effective when it debuts the ad-supported Disney+ Basic tier in December (see 2208110015), CEO Bob Chapek told a Goldman Sachs investment conference Wednesday. “I think it’s what the market will bear, which is a direct reflection of price value, and I think we are way underpriced relative to the value that we provide,” said Chapek. “We owe it to our shareholders to try to get that recognized.” Disney has “lots of data” in terms of “what consumers’ intentions are,” he said. “Suffice it to say that we think we made the right move and we are still in some cases significantly under where our competitors are, which again speaks to that introductory price that we came out at.” Disney’s “whole approach” in evolving ESPN as an a la carte streaming service available outside the traditional pay-TV bundle is to “proactively prepare for that moment” without “prematurely” or “unnecessarily” disrupting the business "that it is today,” said Chapek. “Everybody knows” that the traditional cable bundle “is deteriorating over time, and we’re preparing for the moment when the consumer tells us that they are ready for such a step,” he said. “We’ve got tremendous abilities to read the marketplace and understand when it might be time to do that.” There are “significant benefits” to Disney maintaining its cable business, “but at some point, we see the writing on the wall where this is going, and we’re preparing for that,” he said. “But we’re not going to do anything rash or harsh, and we’re going to follow the consumer.”

All Corning businesses are “continuing to perform well” in the current quarter, “in line” with expectations, except for display technologies, Executive Vice President-Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Evenson told a Goldman Sachs investor conference Tuesday. Panel maker output declined in August “from already low levels” due to “rolling power outages” in China, he said. “This reduces our outlook for display glass volume in the quarter,” he said. “Consequently, we now anticipate the third quarter coming in at the bottom or slightly below” the guidance Corning gave July 26 when it said display glass volume would decline by a mid-teen percentage sequentially from Q2, he said. Corning thinks the outlook for the display market is positive over the “medium and long term,” said Evenson. “As people are doing more things at home, as they're looking to upgrade to better entertainment experiences, the use of larger, more lifelike displays, we think, will continue to be a priority.” The COVID-19 pandemic “induced a lot of advanced purchases, probably accelerated those trends, and pushed us up above the normal range of large TV units,” which customarily number between 225 million and 235 million sets a year, he said. Corning’s view is that TV unit sales for 2022 will be “in the vicinity of what they were last year” but “could be a little down,” he said. Optical communications was Corning’s “biggest growth driver” in Q2, rising 10% sequentially and 22% year over year to $1.3 billion, said Evenson. The world has installed enough glass “to go to the sun and back about 20 times” since Corning invented “low-loss optical fiber” in 1970, he said. Yet only about 19% of Americans “connect through fiber in their homes,” he said. “We believe that the industry is at the beginning of a large multiyear wave of growth.” The combination of private network and public infrastructure investments “will create double-digit market growth for passive optics over the next few years,” he said.

Comcast was one of three companies, along with Google and Microsoft, vying to partner with Netflix on its forthcoming launch of an ad-supported VOD tier, acknowledged Comcast Deputy Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong during a Bank of America investment conference Thursday. The contract ultimately went to Microsoft (see 2207130048). When Netflix “globally went out and said, we need to have advertising capabilities” and would look “externally” to find them, “it was down to three companies,” said Armstrong. “If you think about what Comcast brought to the table, I would say we were at or near the top of the pecking order in terms of the capability set,” he said. “We may not have been willing to write the biggest guarantee around it,” but Comcast’s “prowess” in ad sales, distribution and technology “put us right there,” he said. “That was a great sort of cross-company moment to be that far into the mix on something that was that relevant.”

The string of content cancellations at Warner Bros. Discovery, including the decision this summer to scrap releasing Batgirl on HBO Max (see 2208050006), is nothing “unusual” for when “a new team takes over,” Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels told a Bank of America investment conference Thursday. “We're a creative industry and one of the elements of creativity is that there's judgment and differences in the views on what the potential of a certain piece of IP might be,” said Wiedenfels. Corporate management, including CEO David Zaslav, has “really this belief in the theatrical window,” as opposed to “just producing feature films for just one streaming window,” he said. The Batgirl decision was “blown out of proportion a little bit in terms of the attention” it got outside the company, he said. Zaslav ultimately defended the decision, saying his team couldn't find an "economic case" for steering expensive feature films direct to streaming.

NAB takes no position on the “merits” of the 5G Broadcast technology espoused by Qualcomm for over-the-air TV content delivery to mobile devices as a complement to ATSC 3.0 (see 2208080065), said the association in reply comments Tuesday at the FCC in docket 16-142.