Intelsat and Gilat signed a multiyear, multi-transponder agreement for Ku-band capacity to deliver broadband connectivity in rural parts of Colombia. Gilat will use capacity on Intelsat 907 for a Colombian Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications three-year digital project, Intelsat said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1izCaHU). Gilat plans to integrate its SkyEdge II WebEnhance data networking platform with Intelsat’s services “to provide Internet connectivity to 1,903 kiosks within rural communities located in Colombia,” Intelsat said.
The FCC shouldn’t apply its recently approved closed caption quality standards to captions it may require for online video clips, said Disney (http://bit.ly/1jDRePz), NAB (http://bit.ly/1kVUmG4) and NCTA (http://bit.ly/1nT7D72) in their respective meetings this week with Maria Kirby, legal adviser to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said ex parte filings in docket 11-154. An online video clip rule is expected on the agenda of July’s FCC meeting (CD June 18 p10) (See separate report in this issue.) “It is not reasonable for the Commission to apply the same captioning quality standards that it established for televised full-length programming that is subsequently posted online,” said NAB. Clips taken from an existing captioned TV program are often edited, meaning the original captions can’t be repurposed, NAB said. Online video postings can also have inherent synchronicity issues, NAB said. Companies responsible for captioning may turn to technology -- such as voice recognition -- to meet new FCC captioning requirements, Disney said. Quality standards for captions produced with new technology should be relaxed, it said. “The FCC could consider adopting a quality safe harbor for entities using the best available voice recognition technology.” The FCC shouldn’t adopt rules that could “stymie” experimentation by tying online clip captions to “standards developed for the more mature area of captioning for traditional full-length television programming,” NCTA said.
The approval of the proposed AT&T/DirecTV is likely, although concessions could get tightened following the release last week of AT&T’s public interest statement (CD June 13 p3), said Paul Gallant, a Guggenheim Partners analyst. Reduced pay-TV competition and potential upward pressure on prices “represent the biggest risk” to this deal, he said Friday in a research note. “We suspect the DOJ and FCC will have concerns with the increased concentration in the pay TV market” that would result from the transaction, he said. The deal commitments are “well-designed,” he said. AT&T’s commitment to upgrade broadband in 15 million homes is a material selling point, he said.
Intelsat signed an agreement with Slovak Telekom to expand its direct-to-home services in central eastern Europe. Slovak Telekom, based in the Slovak Republic, will operate multiple transponders at the Intelsat 1 degree west premier video neighborhood, Intelsat said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/ThUwS7). Intelsat’s terrestrial network will provide an uplink from its Fuchsstadt, Germany, teleport “with fiber contribution from Bratislava and a provision for disaster recovery uplink services,” it said.
SES partnered with Meanswhat to bring satellite communications for multinational enterprises and government agencies in sub-Saharan Africa. The companies plan to launch an enterprise-focused service that allows remote offices to connect with legacy enterprise resource planning systems and cloud data centers by integrating satellite communication with virtualization techniques, SES and Meanswhat said in a news release Thursday. The solution “addresses the stringent bandwidth requirements which many applications have, as well as issues associated with high latency,” they said.
Communications Daily won’t be published Monday, May 26, because of the federal Memorial Day holiday. Our next issue will be dated Tuesday, May 27.
United Launch Alliance successfully launched a payload for the National Reconnaissance Office on an Atlas V rocket Thursday morning. The NROL-33 satellite was launched in support of a national defense mission, ULA said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1nhNt9G). The Atlas V rocket featured a 4-meter-diameter payload fairing, ULA said.
Cox Customers will be able to access Tennis Channel coverage of the French Open on multiple platforms, said a news release from the two companies Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1sVFsnR). The French open begins May 25, and Cox customers with subscriptions to Tennis Channel can use the channel’s TV Everywhere app at no additional cost, the companies said.
SES launched a video distribution neighborhood for Latin America and an antenna seeding program for the NSS-806 satellite. The new neighborhood will provide new capacity “for expansion of video channel delivery to cable head-ends throughout Latin America,” plus HD channels in the region, SES said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1oTPEgn). NSS-806 is at 47.5 degrees west, it said. The satellite creates a dual-slot high value proposition for expansion and redundancy “to programmers and broadcasters seeking to grow their channel offerings,” SES said.
The Satellite Industry Association called publication of rules which transfer export controls, including on satellites, from the U.S. Munitions List (USML) to the Commerce Control List a “truly comprehensive overhaul to the U.S. satellite export control system,” in an SIA news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/RMGEid). The final rules will be effective Nov. 10 (CD May 13 p12). The rules, which the State Department called interim, for USML Category XV will be effective June 27, State said in a Federal Register notice Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/1ooReJC).