The “competitive environment’s good” for Dish Network’s wireless 5G network rollout, said Chairman Charlie Ergen on a Q2 earnings call Wednesday. The “big picture” amid historically high inflation is that everyone's wireless connection “is a necessity,” he said. “After food and water and shelter, it’s just about next in line.”
Bipartisan legislation that would ban Big Tech platforms from self-preferencing products won’t get to the Senate floor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told us last week. Other Republicans voiced frustration in interviews over comments from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who reportedly told fundraiser attendees last week that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S-2992) doesn’t have the 10 Republican votes needed to clear the 60-vote threshold.
An anticipated FCC order on ATSC 3.0 multicasting is taking longer than expected and may be slowing aspects of the transition to the new standard, broadcast industry officials told us. The Media Bureau has continued to grant requests for special temporary authority as a workaround, but some say that’s not enough. “We have markets backed up where we aren’t going to be able to launch until we have this flexibility,” said John Hane, CEO of 3.0 consortium BitPath.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative often found itself weighing the possible harm to U.S. consumers from the Lists 3 and 4A Section 301 tariffs against the need to give the duties enough teeth to curb China’s allegedly unfair trade practices, said the agency in its 90-page “remand determination,” filed Monday in docket 1:21-cv-52 at the U.S. Court of International Trade.
Two years after consumers' outsized spending on residential electronics projects for stay-at-home COVID-19 pandemic living, custom and specialty electronics dealers and their buying groups are responding to the inevitable shift from home spending to travel and services.
The internet industry raised alarms with a California social media bill as state Senate appropriators teed up the bipartisan measure for possible vote next Thursday, at a livestreamed hearing Monday. The Appropriations Committee could also soon vote whether to advance to the floor three other website regulation measures focused on children, plus a bill to implement the national 988 suicide prevention hotline and a proposal to require standards for emergency alerts.
Charter Communications, like Comcast, had its broadband growth slow to a halt between Q1 and Q2. Charter ended Q2 with 28.26 million residential broadband subscribers -- up 54,000 year over year but about flat from the previous quarter. The sputtering growth made some analysts bearish. The two companies' broadband news "had a decidedly 'end of an era' feel," MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors.
“It's no longer a question of whether global consumers will come back to the cinema for blockbuster movies," said Imax CEO Richard Gelfond on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. “They are back,” he said. Imax's domestic box office in June surpassed pre-COVID-19 pandemic June 2019, he said. Q2 was on par with Q2 that year, he said.
Sony shipped 1.3 million TVs globally in its fiscal Q1 ended June 30, 41% fewer than in the year-earlier quarter and 19% below the volume in fiscal Q4, reported the company Friday. The TV unit sales decline forced a 4% year-over-year revenue decrease in Sony’s core consumer tech sector.
What might otherwise have been a jubilant moment on Intel’s Q2 earnings call Thursday for CEO Pat Gelsinger immediately after congressional passage of the chips legislation he had lobbied heavily for (see 2207280060) instead degenerated into a sobering acknowledgement of Intel's missed financial targets for the quarter. Revenue of $15.3 billion was down 17% year over year and $2.7 billion below Intel’s April target, while earnings per share of 29 cents were 79% lower than a year earlier and 41 cents short of April's projections.