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The Federal Communications Commission announced that savings from its comprehensive reform of Lifeline are on track to reach at least an additional $400 million in 2013, adding to the more than $214 million saved in 2012 by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse.
Over the past three years, the FCC has taken a series of steps to fundamentally reform the program, including:
- In March 2010, the National Broadband Plan recommended consideration of specific reforms to Lifeline to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, including duplicate payments.
- In May 2010, the Commission directed the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service to make specific proposals for program reforms, and called out eligibility reviews and documentation requirements as particular areas of focus.
- In 2011, the Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to comprehensively reform the program, including proposals developed by the Joint Board.
- Also in 2011, the Commission adopted an order to eliminate duplicative Lifeline payments, which began saving the program money that year.
- In January 2012, the Commission unanimously adopted comprehensive reform to Lifeline.
FCC Reforms Cut Waste in Lifeline Program
A Latino group is re-launching a campaign against a talk radio show it accuses of fueling hate speech against Hispanics.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition said it would renew its push to force the “John and Ken Show” off the air, now that the show will begin syndicating its program in New York. Despite a round of cultural sensitivity training, the radio personalities have built a reputation for offending people of color, the Coalition says. The hosts routinely bash undocumented immigrants on their show.
John And Ken Show Protested By Latinos, As Conservative Talk Radio Program Expands To New York
Comcast will pay $16.7 billion to acquire the 49 percent stake in NBCUniversal owned by General Electric, a move that accelerates the buyout well ahead of analysts' expectations. So how exactly did the cable operator manage to pull together that much dough that quickly?
- April: The company’s sort-of subsidiary, SpectrumCo, sells $3.6 billion worth of wireless spectrum to Verizon in a deal that causes major agita on Capitol Hill. Comcast has a 63.6 percent stake on SpectrumCo and gets $2.3 billion out of the deal.
- May: Comcast sells its stake in A+E Networks, netting an estimated $3.03 billion, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The high-performing private cable network group operates heavyweights History, A&E and Lifetime, among others.
- July: Comcast completes the sale of $1 billion in senior notes due in 10 years, and another $1.25 billion due in 20 years.
- September: Comcast lays off some 1,000 employees in its Northern California call center (this isn’t a huge savings, to be fair to Comcast—assuming the call center employees were mostly making minimum wage, it’s unlikely this helped secure much more than $20 million. Still, every little bit helps). In November, NBCUniversal will lay off another 500 as the company attempts to shave costs.
- January: NBCUniversal finishes selling nearly $3 billion in senior notes—$725 million is redeemable in 10 years, another $1.7 billion redeemable in 20, and $500,000 are redeemable in 30. The company finishes selling them on the 14th.
- Here’s an intriguing entry from this afternoon’s SEC filing: Comcast appears to enter into a “revolving credit agreement” to borrow up to $6.25 billion “for general corporate purposes” from itself, or rather, from Comcast Cable LLC, a limited liability company that effectively counts all Comcast’s assets as its own, but is a subsidiary of the company proper.
How Comcast Scared Up All That GE Cash
Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company, will buy out General Electric’s ownership of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion, following through on the cable company’s purchase of a controlling stake two years ago.
The deal also involves buying the properties used by NBC Universal at 30 Rock building and CNBC’s headquarters for $1.4 billion, Comcast said. The enterprise value of NBC Universal is now $39.1 billion, up from $37.5 billion when Comcast bought the stake in 2011. Comcast bought 51 percent of NBC on Jan. 29 of that year for $13.8 billion in cash and assets. Since then, the company has benefited from improving ratings among 18- to 49-year-olds at the broadcast network and better-than-expected ad revenue from the Olympics. For GE, the deal lets it turn an asset that didn’t fit with its business into a source of cash. “This is an attractive price for us and it gives GE a lot of cash,” Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts said. “We like the NBC Universal business.” The sale will result in a pretax gain of about $1 billion for GE. Those gains will be offset by increased restructuring costs this year, GE said.
Comcast to Buy Out GE’s Stake in NBC for $16.7 Billion http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-18/comcast-tops-100b-market-value-for-first-time.html Comcast buys GE's share in NBCUniversal for $16.7 billion (The Hill)
David Samberg, a Verizon spokesman, said that it behooved the company to inform customers on how apps affect their smartphones because an app that behaves badly can detract from the entire customer experience. And dissatisfied customers might complain to the carrier, not the app maker. “If you have a problem and your data usage is through the roof, the app developer isn’t going to get that phone call,” he said. “Verizon is going to get that phone call.” “We don’t want there to be any surprises,” he added. “We want people to be educated on what they’re downloading and how it’s going to affect their device.”
Why Is Verizon Reviewing Smartphone Apps?
Eric Kessler has worked at HBO for more than two decades in various capacities, overseeing everything from program licensing to digital strategy and marketing. He’s been in the business a long time, seen the pay TV programming evolution first hand and played a role in it as well. Put it this way, he’s the guy who came up with the slogan “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO,” which after a decade remains part of the cable TV vernacular. Today he’s got his hands full mapping out a viable digital strategy while remaining tethered to the cable TV cash cow and fending off new rivals like Netflix and Amazon that are mounting assaults on its business. As the first order of business at D: Dive Into Media interview, Kessler confirmed that HBO’s HBO Go App is now compatible with Apple’s AirPlay, and HBO subscribers who have been pining to stream HBO shows from their iOS devices to Apple TV can now do so. “Our long-term plan for Go is to be across all devices, and effective today, we will be enabling AirPlay,” Kessler said, adding that Apple TV support will follow “at some point.” And when that day comes, might it be accompanied by a la carte programming? At some point. But Kessler argued that the time for that is still quite a ways off. The economics simply aren’t there.
For HBO, a la Carte Programming Is Still a Ways Off, Says Eric Kessler
A coalition of GPS companies will launch a new lobbying organization — the GPS Innovation Alliance. The founding members will be GPS-makers Deere, Garmin and Trimble. The group grew out of the Coalition to Save Our GPS, an organization devoted to defeating wireless network startup LightSquared. The new group will lobby on a broader array of issues that affect the GPS industry.
New GPS lobbying group moves on from LightSquared battle
The National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) is looking to lift the freeze on seven Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants for emergency communications network buildouts.
That came out of a board meeting of FirstNet, the national, interoperable broadband communications network being funded by broadcast incentive auction proceeds. Those seven grants are administered by NITA under its stimulus bill-funded the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. The seven projects began a couple of years ago, before FirstNet was authorized by legislation passed last year. NTIA did not want to continue spending $380 million in taxpayer dollars for state efforts that might be superseded by FirstNet. But now, subject to confirmation by NTIA that those buildouts will be interoperable with the planned nationwide network, they will be allowed to go forward as kind of a test-bed for the network, whose board chairman, Sam Ginn, said at the meeting would combine national interoperability with state and local operational control. Board member Craig Farrill outlined the five key goals of the network: 1. Reliability, 2. coverage, 3. exceeding public safety requirements, 4. low cost, and 5. early availability.
NTIA Looking to Lift Freeze on Public Safety BTOP Grants
The Obama Administration has stepped into a long-running file-sharing lawsuit in Minnesota, urging the United States Supreme Court not to get involved in a six-figure verdict against a woman from Northern Minnesota.
The feds don't buy the woman's argument that the massive size of the award makes it unconstitutional. Jammie Thomas-Rasset has been fighting a recording industry lawsuit accusing her of sharing music using the now-defunct peer-to-peer network Kazaa for the better part of a decade. In 2007, a jury found Thomas-Rasset liable to the tune of $222,000 for sharing 24 songs. She appealed the verdict, resulting in two more trials that each produced even larger jury awards. These higher figures were thrown out by the courts, but last year, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the $222,000 award. Thomas-Rasset is now seeking review by the Supreme Court. The Obama administration rejected Thomas-Rasset's argument and urged the Supreme Court not to consider her appeal. It noted that lower courts agreed with the defense in principle that an award could be "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense and obviously unreasonable." Indeed, the trial judge had rejected a $1.5 million jury award on just those grounds. But the lower courts had concluded that a $222,000 award for sharing 24 songs was not so disproportionate and unreasonable as to violate the Constitution. And in the government's view, the Supreme Court should let that judgment stand.
Obama administration defends $222,000 file-sharing verdict
In further evidence of the thawing relationship between broadcasters and wireless operators, the National Association of Broadcasters has asked the Federal Communications Commission to approve the T-Mobile/MetroPCS merge.
T-Mobile is one of the wireless carriers that the NAB teamed up with to endorse a framework for the incentive auction band plan. In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, NAB President Gordon Smith urged the FCC to approve the merger, saying it was further evidence that the free market was the route to "purported spectrum challenges." NAB calls it just the latest in a series of wireless deals that "will make more effective and efficient use of commercial spectrum." NAB has argued that the marketplace, including through secondary market deals, is addressing the alleged spectrum crunch that the FCC is targeting through incentive auctions.
NAB Backs T-Mobile/MetroPCS Merger