BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, APRIL 1, 2010
INTERNET/BROADBAND
IPhone-Weary TV Broadcasters Gear Up to Fight FCC for Airwaves
Plan Would Help Subsidize Access To Broadband
AT&T Asks FCC to Change Its Mind Over Harbinger
Comcast Rolls Out Broadband Meters Coast to Coast
Behind Qwest's big broadband stimulus bid
Fiber-to-the-X: the economics of last-mile fiber
RADIO/TELEVISION
Obama administration: time to make radio pay for its music
FCC seeks guidance on potential EAS changes
TiVo Faces Patent-Infringement Countersuits By AT&T, Verizon
INTERNET/BROADBAND
TV BROADCASTERS GEAR UP FOR FIGHT
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Kelly Riddell]
Television broadcasters are getting ready for a fight over a US government attempt to redistribute airwaves and help wireless carriers cope with a surge in traffic from bandwidth-guzzling devices like the iPhone. Ion Media Networks, the biggest local TV station owner, and at least three others are resisting a Federal Communications Commission plan to take back spectrum awarded to them by the government and auction it to carriers. About 500 broadcasters went to Capitol Hill this month to lobby members of the House and Senate, and they plan more in the weeks ahead. Ion, Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and LIN TV say they're depending on that spectrum so they can offer live TV via mobile phones. The FCC says carriers such as AT&T Inc. need the airwaves more as smartphones like Apple Inc.'s iPhone cause the amount of data sent through U.S. networks to more than double annually. "Why is the iPhone entitled to more spectrum than local broadcasters?" said Nexstar Chief Executive Officer Perry Sook, whose Irving, Texas-based company owns or provides services to 62 stations. "When the snowstorm hit Washington, did people rush to an iPhone app to find out what was going on? No, they turned to their local broadcasters."
benton.org/node/33964 | Bloomberg
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PLAN WOULD HELP SUBSIDIZE ACCESS TO BROADBAND
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Laura Sydell]
Some 36 million Americans don't have high-speed Internet service — not because they can't get connected, but because it costs too much. That's according to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC recently released a plan to bring service to all Americans, including those who can't afford it. The digital divide is very real across the country, says Amalia Deloney of the Center for Media Justice, a national organization that works in low-income communities. "There's one America that's largely disconnected, that is full of people of color, people from rural communities, migrants, folks that don't have a lot of money, and they're largely disconnected," Deloney says. "And at the same time, there's an America that's connected and being prepared for a 21st-century education and workforce." To help change that, the FCC came up with its National Broadband Plan. The plan specifically suggests tapping into what's called the Universal Service Fund -- a federal program to help subsidize phone service for low-income households. John Horrigan, a director of consumer research at the FCC, says the Broadband Plan recommends that the funds that are devoted to defraying telephone costs be allowed to be used to defray broadband costs "if the user decides to do this — to compensate them for some portion of their monthly broadband bills." But monthly bills aren't the only obstacle.
benton.org/node/33963 | National Public Radio
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AT&T ASKS FCC TO CHANGE ITS MIND OVER HARBINGER
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
On March 31, AT&T filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking it to reconsider some of the conditions associated with an order the agency issued last Friday allowing Harbinger Capital Partners to take over a satellite company and its spectrum assets. The move means the drama in the nation's capital as AT&T and Verizon gear up to fight plans by the New York private equity firm to build a competing 4G wireless network has begun. The FCC set conditions that prohibit Harbinger and Skyterra from allowing AT&T and Verizon to use the spectrum without its approval, and that traffic from the nation's two largest carriers cannot comprise more than 25 percent of the total network traffic. The conditions were put in place to ensure a competitive wholesale network that any buyer could access, but for now, those conditions are galvanizing AT&T's lobbying efforts into high gear. Higginbotham's question is, if AT&T and Verizon are upset over the conditions designed to keep them off this network and from acquiring this spectrum, how will they react if the FCC takes steps to try to remove the satellite requirement associated with the spectrum that Harbinger now owns?
benton.org/node/33962 | GigaOm | AT&T
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COMCAST ROLLS OUT BROADBAND METERS
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: Ryan Singel]
Comcast cable Internet users across the country can now keep track of their data usage to make sure they don't go over their 250GB a month data allowance, thanks to bandwidth meters deployed to customers nationwide Thursday. Comcast will send users an e-mail with a link to the meter, which can be found on their Comcast.net user page. As of Thursday, the meter is now available more than 25 states including all or parts of: Oregon, Washington, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri , Colorado, Utah, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Washington (DC). Comcast, which was dinged by the FCC for throttling peer-to-peer traffic, instituted its 250GB per month cap in August 2008 -- as a way for it to cut down on its heaviest bandwidth users without picking on specific kinds of net usage. It still sells its Internet based on a connection's speed, not the amount of data used.
benton.org/node/33961 | Wired
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BEHIND QWEST'S BIG BROADBAND STIMULUS BID
[SOURCE: NetworkWorld, AUTHOR: Brad Reed]
A Q&A with Steve Davis, Qwest's senior vice president of policy and government relations, about the company's game plan for deploying broadband in some of the most hard-to-reach areas of the United States. Qwest is determined to go big on rural broadband. As the application deadline for the final round of broadband stimulus grants passed this week, Qwest submitted a proposal that, if approved, would dwarf the size of the other broadband stimulus projects throughout the country. The company wants to build out high-speed Internet services that will give customers maximum speeds of between 12M to 40Mbps. The goal is to have these services reach more than 500,000 homes and businesses across the 14 states where Qwest operates as a local phone company. "Our plan is to take advantage of already having fiber built out nearby and extending it into rural areas," Davis said. The entire project will cost $467 million, of which the company is asking the government to pay $350 million, or about 75% of the total cost.
benton.org/node/33960 | NetworkWorld
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THE ECONOMICS OF LAST-MILE FIBER
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Herman Wagter]
Lately the word "fiber" has started to become ubiquitous in advertisements for broadband. It's a synonym for the future, for speed and quality. Everybody tries to connect that synonym to their brand, regardless of their actual network design. In the trade press, acronyms like FttX (which stands for Fiber-to-the-X, where X is your favorite letter or word) are used as if all last mile network architectures with optical fiber are more or less equal. But they're not. Let's take a look under the hood and analyze the reasons why fiber is chosen as a medium, then look at the topologies, the architectures, the trade-offs, and the inherent path dependencies of a particular deployment method. Fiber-to-the-curb, fiber-to-the-basement, fiber-to-the-home -- truly, not all fiber is created equal.
benton.org/node/33959 | Ars Technica
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RADIO/TELEVISION
OBAMA ADMIN BACKS PERFORMANCE RIGHTS ACT
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
The recording industry scored a significant victory today with news that the Obama administration will provide its "strong support" for the Performance Rights Act. The bill would force over-the-air radio stations to start coughing up cash for the music they play; right now, the stations pay songwriters, but not the actual recording artists. This has been a dream of the recording industry for decades, but it has taken on new importance as the revenues from recorded music have plummeted over the last decade. The broadcasters refer to the idea as a new "tax" that will largely benefit foreign record companies such as Universal (France), Sony (Japan), and EMI (UK). A letter from the Commerce Department's general counsel, Cameron Kerry, makes clear which side has the administration's support: the recording industry. "The Department has long endorsed amending the US copyright law to provide for an exclusive right of public performance of sound recordings," says the letter. It pledges "strong support" for the current bill and approves the idea that radio's payment exemption is nothing more than "an historical anomaly that does not have a strong policy justification." A copy of the letter was sent to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, Kerry says that making radio pay for music is really a matter of fairness -- not just to artists, but to Internet webcasters and satellite radio, too.
benton.org/node/33958 | Ars Technica
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FCC SEEKS GUIDANCE ON POTENTIAL EAS CHANGES
[SOURCE: BroadcastEngineering, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Communication Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau March 25 asked for comments regarding whether changes to Part 11 Emergency Alert System (EAS) rules will be necessary when a new alerting protocol begins being used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The new protocol, known as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), is a new data interchange format for collecting and distributing safety notifications to a variety of information networks, public safety alerting systems and personal communications devices. The FCC EAS rules (47 C.F.R. Part 11) were not written with CAP-based EAS in mind. As a result, "significant revision or replacement" of the rules may be necessary once CAP is instituted by FEMA, the FCC notice announcing the request for informal comment said. The FCC is asking for commenters to identify rules that should be changed or dropped and to offer new rules or a rules framework for CAP-based EAS. The bureau also asked commenters to address rules covering 'CAP-based EAS system architecture, equipment requirements, organization, operations, testing, and access for people with disabilities and non-English speakers."
benton.org/node/33956 | Broadcast Engineering | FCC
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TIVO FACES COUNTERSUITS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Todd Spangler]
The telcos have struck back: AT&T and Verizon Communications have separately filed countersuits against TiVo -- which previously sued both telcos over patents -- alleging the DVR company is infringing their intellectual property. The countersuits were detailed in TiVo's 10-K annual report filed March 31. Separately, TiVo is awaiting the resolution of its six-year-old litigation against Dish Network and EchoStar, which have been ordered to pay $300 million in damages and sanctions to the DVR company. Last week, the Texas district court judge overseeing the case gave Dish an extension until April 30 on a previously issued stay on the injunction ordering the satellite TV operator to disable infringing DVRs. Perhaps emboldened by a legal victory over Dish and EchoStar last summer, TiVo filed separate lawsuits in August 2009 against AT&T and Verizon. TiVo argued that the DVRs provided with AT&T's U-verse TV and Verizon's FiOS TV infringed three TiVo patents: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,233,389 B1 ("Multimedia Time Warping System") -- the one that Dish and EchoStar were found to have violated -- as well as 7,529,465 B2 ("System for Time Shifting Multimedia Content Streams") and 7,493,015 B1 ("Automatic Playback Overshoot Correction System").
benton.org/node/33957 | Multichannel News | TechDailyDose
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