Blackout "battles of attrition" between pay-TV providers and distributors will let the former assess the impact of losing carriage fees while they grow their direct-to-consumer services, Ampere Analysis' Sam Nursall wrote Tuesday, pointing to Disney channels going dark last week on YouTube TV. It's the first major dispute with a carrier since Disney released its ESPN app, with the streaming platform "significantly shifting the dynamic between ESPN and carriage partners such as YouTube TV," Nursall said. Instead of relying on carriage agreements with MVPDs and virtual MVPDs, ESPN is now a competitor, especially with the ESPN/Disney+/Hulu bundle, he noted. Between the ESPN app and Fox One app, the vast majority of sports are available in the U.S. via streaming, and the ability of fans to create a streaming-only subscription basket could incentivize further cord-cutting among pay-TV and vMVPD subscribers, he added.
Noting that many judges aren't technology experts, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham expressed concern Monday that many legal issues are decided using court documents instead of jury trials. “One of the frustrations” that stems from long-running litigation is that “a trial judge … never got to hear the full evidence,” he said during oral argument in CCIA v. Paxton.
Comcast and Charter continue to be hammered with fiber and fixed-wireless access (FWA) competition in residential broadband, though their wireless businesses are still growing. Between fiber overbuilding and FWA, "in any market, when you have new competition ... there's going to be a short-term impact on us," Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said in a call with analysts Friday as the cable ISP announced Q3 results.
With one of the FCC's largest monthly agendas in recent years -- nine items -- the commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved everything from a major revamp of the agency's satellite and earth station approvals process to a proposal to end simulcast requirements for the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard. But three items were adopted Tuesday over the dissents of minority Commissioner Anna Gomez. She said the broadband labels further NPRM was "one of the most anti-consumer items I have ever seen." She also dissented on the prison-calling order and NPRM (see 2510280045) and the wireless direct final rule.
Senate Communications Subcommittee member Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., praised the FBI on Monday night for investigating claims that during the Biden administration, the bureau and then-Special Counsel Jack Smith tracked her phone calls and those of eight other GOP lawmakers as part of a probe into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Fox News reported that in 2023 the FBI circulated a memo outlining the Jan. 6 team’s “analysis on limited” records of communications by Blackburn and the other Republicans, including current Senate Communications members Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. The Fox News report indicated that the FBI tracked the phone numbers that lawmakers called and the locations of the callers and recipients.
President Donald Trump is pushing for Univision's return to the YouTube TV channel lineup. "I hope Univision, a great and very popular Hispanic Network, can get BACK onto the very amazing Google/YouTube," he wrote Saturday on Truth Social. Trump said Univision's removal from the YouTube TV package "is VERY BAD for Republicans in the upcoming Midterms." Univison was "so good to me with their highest rated ever political Special, and I set a Republican Record in Hispanic voting. Google, for the purpose of FAIRNESS, please let Univision back!" Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said last week that the blackout was "obvious retaliation" for Univision hosting a town hall event during Trump's 2024 campaign (see 2509300037).
Real-time AI voice interfaces might undermine the role of phone numbers, Disruptive Analysis consultant Dean Bubley wrote Friday. Many AI chatbots have voice inputs with speech to text and then use large language models to parse the text and generate responses with a text-to-speech spoken reply. But now, several AI platforms also support speech-to-speech interaction with lower latency and more conversational fluidity, he said. That session initiation protocol combined with real-time AI "is a potential gamechanger" and could work as one side of a phone call or an entirely non-call voice application or service, he said. But it's unclear if telcos "are really prepared to engage with a 'number-optional' world for voice."
The American Library Association is disappointed that the FCC’s order canceling the Biden-era internet hot spots program cuts grants for FY 2025 applicants, said Megan Janicki, the group’s deputy director for strategic initiatives. FCC items eliminating that program, as well as one that provided Wi-Fi connections for students on school buses, passed Tuesday in a pair of 2-1 votes (see 2509300051), with dissents by Commissioner Anna Gomez.
Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, argued in an opinion piece Monday that private 5G will be critical to providing the bandwidth needed to handle the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Private 5G “is increasingly used for connecting broadcast cameras, devices such as drones, handhelds for security staff, wireless payment terminals, and entry/exit gates” and “can be configured for the venues’ specific needs, with dedicated coverage and local control,” Bubley wrote in RCR Wireless. Carrier networks “will be insufficient to simultaneously meet all the requirements for the diverse Olympic venues and specialized applications, visiting fans, and non-participating LA citizens and businesses,” he wrote. Even using advanced 5G techniques like network slicing, “public networks’ limitations will likely require deployment of dedicated ‘private’ 5G networks.”
Noting its 28-page economic analysis, the International Center for Law & Economics told the FCC that Charter Communications' $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications is "pro-competitive." The proposed deal, announced in May (see 2505160060), is "a geographic expansion, not a horizontal consolidation of competitors." The two carriers have almost no footprint overlap, with fewer than 0.1% of their combined broadband serviceable locations served by both companies, the group said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket 25-233). Rather than reducing the number of options available to consumers in local markets, the deal instead lets New Charter reach the scale it needs to better compete against larger national broadband providers and vertically integrated tech platforms, it argued.