Cable operators support seven principles to let subscribers buy video devices from retailers that could connect to any pay-TV provider’s service, NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow said Friday. The plan could be the base for FCC inter-industry efforts on retail video devices, he wrote Chairman Julius Genachowski at http://xrl.us/bgyb38. The National Broadband Plan will recommend a move toward so-called gateway set-top boxes (CD Feb 22 p4). CEA said the principles are “good."
New online tools allowing consumers to measure their broadband speeds and latency are aimed at educating consumers, supplying the FCC with data and encouraging better transparency in the industry, said FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin. Broadband service providers advertise certain speeds “and most people don’t have any intuitive sense of what that performance is. [The tools] can help people really make a connection between the numerical speed and the experience their getting with broadband,” he said.
Industry heeded his complaints, voiced in July, that the first filings on the National Broadband Plan were a sign the FCC could be in trouble, National Broadband Plan Executive Director Blair Levin said Thursday at a conference. In the end, groups came though with filings that helped shape the plan, Levin said in what’s expected to be his last speech before release of the plan Tuesday.
The FCC is reviewing what changes might make sense for the agency’s retransmission consent dispute policies (CD March 11 p8), Chairman Julius Genachowski told the Senate Commerce Committee. “The events of the last two or three months confirmed that this is a subject that should be looked at seriously,” he said in a hearing Thursday. He and Christine Varney, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department Antitrust Division, pledged to narrowly review on the merits Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal.
Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob appeared to be drawing more regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, experts said. The agency was reportedly looking for declarations from Google rivals.
Media venture capital and private equity investors are still looking for deals in ad-supported media, though they're also increasingly eying investments in gaming and mobile technology, executive told a conference Thursday. “I'm a big believer in advertising-supported companies,” said Richard Bressler, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Partners, which owns part of Univision and Clear Channel. Interactive ad technology companies are also catching investors attention, Allison Goldberg, managing director of Time Warner Investments, said at the Media Summit in New York.
A combination with competitor Leap Wireless is appealing, MetroPCS Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Wednesday, providing no specifics. “Obviously, we're very interested in the combination of our companies,” Carter said at an investor conference. Many potential benefits that made a merger attractive are no longer relevant now, but there are still many positive factors, he said. “It’s important to reevaluate what your options are.” He acknowledged fierce wireless pricing competition. Carter declined to comment further on whether the companies are in talks. Leap and MetroPCS dropped negotiations in 2007 after they couldn’t agree on price. Analysts had said a deal wouldn’t face significant regulatory hurdles but there would be significant regulatory, business and technology obstacles if one of the major national carriers agreed to buy Leap (CD Feb 3 p5).
The House Commerce Committee unanimously approved an amended spectrum inventory bill (HR-3125) with stronger national security protection. The panel also Wednesday unanimously approved a bill (HR-3019) by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., that would streamline moving federal users off bands to be reviewed by a three-member technical panel reporting to the agencies. And the committee approved without objection an amended Caller ID spoofing bill (HR-1258) by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., that would ban manipulation of Caller ID information. All three bills were reported to the full House.
The Senate passed legislation reauthorizing satellite TV providers’ distant signal licenses for five years Wednesday. It’s a significant step for what has proven to be a difficult piece of legislation to complete. The Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act of 2010 (STELA) was an amendment to a larger jobs bill (HR-4213), which passed 62-36. The bill will next move to the House, where leadership will decide to vote on the bill as-is, or make changes with the Senate through a conference, industry and Senate officials said.
Disparate reactions greeted an order proposed Monday by an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission opposing the proposed acquisition by Frontier Communications of Verizon landlines in that state. The companies questioned the order’s logic. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America, foes of the deal in Illinois and elsewhere, lauded the proposed order.