August 2013

FCC's Rosenworcel: 'Proud' of U.S. Broadband Achievements

Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel made a road trip to Arkansas to provide opening remarks at a Senate Commerce Committee field hearing on the state of rural communications and had some good things to say about the state of broadband deployment.

"The United States leads the world in 4G LTE wireless deployment. And our dedicated rural carriers have already brought communications to some of America's hardest-to-reach communities," said Commissioner Rosenworcel, who has worked with Sen Mark Pryor (D-AR) and the Commerce Committee. But she also said there was still work to do to make sure that rural communities were not left behind. That includes leveraging reclaimed broadcast spectrum for rural wireless services; reforming and simplifying the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes communications in rural and high-cost areas; getting high speed broadband to more schools and libraries via the E-rate programs, which she would like to see set capacity goals and be easier to use; and connecting rural healthcare facilities.

ACA Wants FCC to Clarify CAF Support Modeling

The American Cable Association, a representative of small and midsized cable operators concerned about the government subsidizing competition to existing service, has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking for clarification on why census blocks containing the White House, Capitol, and National Mall show up under the FCC's Connect America Fund's (CAF) model as underserved areas eligible for government broadband subsidies.

ACA says that might be OK, but wants to make sure the FCC didn't mistakenly include those and other census blocks among the ranks of the subsidy-eligible. "Because these results seem to run counter to the objectives of the CAF, ACA asks the [Wireline Competition] Bureau to analyze them to determine whether support is warranted, and if it is not warranted, the Bureau should use its authority to address this issue," ACA said. The Connect America Fund is an FCC program which focuses on providing rural communities with greater broadband access. "ACA would not have expected census blocks within this census block group to be eligible for funding under a CAF program dedicated to supporting broadband deployment in rural or high-cost areas," the group said.

Survey: Retransmission Spat Hurts CBS Brand Perception

As the retransmission consent battle between Time Warner Cable and CBS rages on, consumer perception of the broadcaster has plummeted, according to brand perception research company YouGov BrandIndex.

CBS went dark to 3 million Time Warner Cable markets including New York, Los Angeles and Dallas on Aug. 2. Although CBS initially maintained its brand perception with consumers in the early days of the blackout, it has now joined TWC in negative territory, according to YouGov BrandIndex. The research service said TWC is at its lowest consumer perception point since January 2011 and CBS is at its lowest point since August 2011.

US cable and telecom companies add 295,000 new subscribers in Q2

Seventeen of the largest cable and telecom companies in the US added roughly 295,000 broadband subscribers in Q2 of 2013, according to Leichtman Research Group.

These providers now serve 82.7 million subscribers. Heavyweights like Comcast and AT&T dominate broadband access, with just a few close competitors. The top cable broadband providers have a 58 percent share of the overall market, with about 13 million more subscribers than the top telephone companies -- compared to 11.2 million more a year ago, while AT&T and Verizon added 802,000 fiber subscribers in the quarter, while having a net loss of 818,000 DSL subscribers.

Falcone gets to keep LightSquared, but SEC bans him from trading

Billionaire and would-be 4G entrepreneur Philip Falcone has accepted an Securities and Exchange Commission settlement requiring him sit out of the hedge fund industry for five years. In exchange he gets to keep control of LightSquared.

He believes he can still make a state-of-the-art broadband network out of the controversial attempt by LightSquared to convert satellite radio frequencies into a new cellular service. [He also believes in the Easter Bunny.] The company is now mired in bankruptcy, but Falcone still sees hope. Falcone stands little chance of getting this network built, though, unless the Federal Communications Commission gives into his demands to swap out his L-band airwaves for less crowded airwaves. Right now the best chance of seeing a 4G network in the L-band band is probably Charlie Ergen, Chairman of Dish Network, who would combine and reconfigure it with his company's satellite spectrum.

Will copyright be extended 20 more years? An old debate returns

In 1998, Congress agreed to grant another 20 years of copyright protection to every film, book and song in the land. Now, the laws are under review once again — and legal scholars are starting a pool on whether another extension will take place. While the larger debate has been relatively quiet so far, it could flare up again as it did in the late 1990s when the last 20-year extension led to a bitter legal fight between scholars and librarians on one hand, and Hollywood and the music industry on the other.

The entertainment industry ultimately prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 that copyright laws stretching more than a century were not unconstitutional. This time around, it’s unclear whether Disney and others in Hollywood will lobby for another law similar to the 1998 one that critics derided as “The Mickey Mouse Protection Act.” “Copyright will be extended indefinitely, at least in the U.S., so long as there is large corporate money involved,” wrote one commenter on the Volokh blog, an online publication for legal scholars. However, the presence of Google pushing for the expansion of the public domain and the existence of digital archiving are just some of the factors disproving that longer copyrights lead to increased sales.

The NSA Searches Ten Times as Much of the Internet as It Said It Does

The National Security Agency assured Americans that it only surveils a tiny percentage of the web data it collects. But it turns out the NSA screwed up the math, and that percentage was off by an order of magnitude.

That error is in a document released by the agency on the heels of the President's speech announcing measures to review NSA surveillance. The NSA said it only looked at .00004% of the world's data traffic, but this was the result of a miscalculation by one decimal place, or ten times more surveillance than they claimed. The NSA also claim it makes 20 million data queries each month, which turns out to be seven queries a second, according to Mother Jones writer Kevin Drum, who also spotted the decimal mistake. After a series reviewing the math, he came up with and 7.5 privacy violations per day, a significant number resulting from a seemingly tiny fraction.

Verizon Again Declines CAF Funding But AT&T Accepts

For the second year in a row, Verizon again declined funding from the Connect America Fund (CAF) program aimed at covering some of the costs of bringing broadband to customers in high-cost areas of its local landline service territory that cannot get broadband today. But AT&T, which also declined funding last year and which has considerably more rural lines than Verizon, said it would accept up to $100 million in CAF funding.

According to an AT&T executive blog post, AT&T was willing to accept funding this year because it felt that “uncertainty about some of the obligations associated with acceptance of CAF money” have now been addressed. It may also be because funding was opened up to customers that cannot get service at rates of 3 Mbps downstream, expanding AT&T's potential customer base. The telecom company is focused entirely on locations that lack fixed broadband service of at least 768 kbps and is offering to deploy broadband to approximately 129,000 such homes, which include more rural lines. It’s not surprising, however, that Verizon again declined CAF funding. Verizon has a thriving wireless business and the carrier likely wants to focus its investment dollars in that market, rather than in the less promising rural broadband market.

CenturyLink Accepts More Than Half of This Year’s Connect America Funding

CenturyLink said it would accept $54 million of $90 million offered to the company through the Connect America Fund (CAF) program to help cover some of the cost of bringing broadband to areas that cannot get broadband today.

Under the terms of the program established for this year, the company also will invest an additional $54 million or more of its own in the broadband deployments, which will include 33 of the 37 states where the company is the incumbent local telephone service provider. The commission last year established a yearly funding amount for each of the nation’s largest price cap carriers, based on the number of rural lines in a carrier’s territory. Last year CenturyLink accepted $35 million of the $90 million it was offered. The company likely accepted a higher amount of funding this year because the terms of the program changed somewhat for this year. In addition to offering the carrier $775 per line to bring service to customers that could not get broadband speeds of 768 kbps downstream and 200 kbps upstream, this year’s program also gives carriers the option of accepting $550 per line for homes that cannot get service at speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream. And it appears that CenturyLink is primarily targeting homes in that category. According to the release, the company expects to bring service to nearly 95,000 homes for this year, which works out to an average of $568 per home.

Testing the Waters on POTS Phaseout on Fire Island

When Verizon’s traditional copper phone line infrastructure on New York’s Fire Island and Barrier Island was damaged by Superstorm Sandy, the carrier began offering Voice Link wireless landline replacement service and petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow that to be a permanent solution. However, modernizing plain old telephone service (POTS) has proven to be complex on Fire Island.

The FCC back in June proposed to grant Verizon’s request but offered stakeholders a two-month comment period. Based on comments received, the FCC now has said that it will not automatically grant Verizon’s request but instead wants additional information. The FCC appears particularly concerned about the reliability of Verizon’s wireless infrastructure and its ability to support 911 services. According to Verizon, Voice Link “will identify your exact address for the 911 systems operator,” as with traditional POTS. But the FCC now is asking the carrier to explain how 911 calls placed by Voice Link customers in the affected areas are routed to the appropriate public service answering point, among other concerns, such as Voice Link’s ability to support monitored alarm security systems, fax machines, DVR services, credit card machines and medical alert services. Verizon makes no secret about Voice Link’s limitations, advising Fire Island customers in a letter that such services may not work properly. Industry stakeholders will want to pay close attention to the final outcome on Verizon’s petition, as it should offer an idea of the issues that any carrier will face if it should seek to phase out traditional POTS in favor of a wireless solution.

Benton

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