At last min., FCC once again delayed votes on 3 digital TV items scheduled for consideration at its open meeting Thurs. Commission, which first postponed action on DTV issues last month, didn’t indicate reason for latest delay. But, in his swan song meeting at Commission, FCC Chmn. Kennard pledged that agency would act on all 3 items no later than Jan. 17, just before he’s expected to step down from his post in favor of Republican successor (see separate story, this issue).
DirecTV and TiVo will formalize agreement for video-on-demand (VoD) within 60 days that will use portion of hard drive in current combination receiver, DirecTV Global Digital Media Pres. Lawrence Chapman said. Meanwhile, DirecTV/AOLTV product has been postponed until later this year, marking 2nd time service debut was delayed.
“Robust discussion” of results of latest DTV testing followed presentation of results to more than 150 broadcasters in Washington Thurs., we're told. Closed-door meeting reportedly was told that VSB standard out-performed COFDM on 30-ft. outdoor antennas, COFDM did better on 6-ft. outdoor antennas and neither did very well on indoor antennas, as expected (CD Jan 11 p2, Jan 10 p2). Broadcasters also were told that COFDM would make DTV available to about 6% fewer households and same power level would give stations 14% smaller viewing area. Officials of COFDM supporter Sinclair Bcst. reportedly repeatedly made their claim that testing was flawed because it used COFDM receiver without needed filter. Broadcasters also were said to have repeatedly criticized cable and set-makers for not accelerating DTV rollout. Boards of NAB and MSTV are to meet Jan. 14-16 to decide what to recommend to FCC based on test results.
Internet streaming video surged 215% to more than 900 million streams accessed in 2000, study by DFC Intelligence reported. It said broadband Internet access carried nearly 29% of video streams, and 15% of streams carried ads -- www.dbpwebcasttrack.com.
New Edge Networks said orders for its broadband services increased more than 60% in last 2 months of 2000 because it picked up customers of competitors that were scaling back or in jeopardy of going out of business. New Edge said it took in record 1,700 orders in last week of Dec. alone.
RateXchange Corp. and London Satellite Exchange announced first global alliance that gives bandwidth users ability to fulfill satellite and fiber requirements at same time. RateXchange operates trading system for fiber bandwidth and London Satellite Exchange is online exchange for satellite industry.
German govt. awarded 8 major regional spectrum licenses to provide fixed wireless and broadband services to ArcTel, joint venture of Teligent and Mannesmann Arcor. Licenses in 26 MHz band cover Berlin and Hamburg, increasing total population coverage of ArcTel in Germany to 31 million, companies said. Mannesmann Arcor is fixed-line telecom arm of Vodafone Group. Companies said ArcTel now holds more than 200 licenses in Germany.
Texas Instruments (TI) plans to offer royalty-free licenses under TI patents needed to implement wireless home networking standard called IEEE 802.11g. Offer needs ratification of TI proposal for higher speed wireless local area networks in 2.4 GHz. TI said proposal would double data rate of 802.11b products to 22 Mbps.
Lucent Technologies is to supply fiber network to China’s Liaoning Province for subsidiary of China Telecom under $15 million contract announced Wed. Equipment is to be deployed by May. Lucent’s WaveStar OLS-400G has capacity of 400 Gbps, is capable of handling 5 million simultaneous phone calls or 80 one- page e-mails per sec., company said.