Not quite six of 10 U.S. homes have Wi-Fi, and that puts the country in 11th place among major industrialized countries in terms of household Wi-Fi penetration, Strategy Analytics said in a report Wednesday. The firm puts the blame for the low U.S. ranking on slower adoption of Wi-Fi routers, though the U.S., in terms of number of Wi-Fi homes, ranks second only to China (72 million vs. 108 million), it said. The Netherlands is the top market for Wi-Fi penetration at 80.4 percent, followed by South Korea (76.4 percent), Norway (76.2 percent) and the U.K. (72.1 percent), it said. High fixed-line broadband penetration in those countries is the reason they lead, it said. "Contrary to common perception, not all consumers have embraced Wi-Fi networks in their homes despite the fact that global connected devices per household stand at 5.5 in 2014," the company said. "Wi-Fi router adoption in fixed-line broadband households still has much room to grow globally. As Wi-Fi technologies continue to advance, prices fall, and the technology becomes more familiar to the average consumer, nearly 80 percent of fixed-line broadband households will have established Wi-Fi networks by 2018."

Atlantic Broadband customers who receive any of the company’s TiVo bundles will get three months of free Netflix under a new deal between Atlantic and Netflix, the cable provider said in a news release Monday. “This promotion will be available to new, existing and returning Netflix customers who sign up with Atlantic Broadband through December 31.” Other free Netflix promotional periods will be offered by Atlantic in the future, as part of an ongoing partnership with Netflix, said the cable operator.

Rigid net neutrality rules could hamper the launch of innovative new services, like a Sprint plan that lets subscribers only connect to Facebook or another social media site, or a T-Mobile decision to waive data charges when subscribers use music services like Pandora, Rhapsody and Spotify, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a Monday blog post. “I have not heard of any meaningful consumer discontent with the plans,” May wrote. “To the contrary, I surmise that consumers welcome the additional options, especially low-income or budget-conscious consumers who either are unable or unwilling to pay for wireless plans that are not limited in some fashion.” But some net neutrality advocates want to limit access to these plans on the ground that they discriminate by picking edge providers "to favor, say Facebook over the ‘next-Facebook,’ or certain music sites over others, or music sites over poetry sites,” May wrote. May said he fears a “pronounced proclivity” among FCC Democrats to “elevate supposed potential harms to edge providers (especially non-existent ones, such as the ‘next Google or next [fill in the blank’]) above real-world consumer welfare benefits.”

The number of home broadband subscriptions is expected to surpass the number of home pay-TV subscriptions over the next few months, said a report by The Diffusion Group. While residential broadband penetration will soon top 100 million U.S. households, "legacy pay-TV subscription services have peaked and are in decline," TDG said Tuesday. The report, "Pay-TV Refugees," said 14 percent of adult broadband users don't use a legacy pay-TV service. That's 9 percent higher than the amount in 2011, said TDG. The consumers "provide an excellent opportunity for new video purveyors," like Netflix and direct-to-consumer TV networks, it said.

The FCC should complete its proceeding on updating the competitive bidding rules and policies for designated entities to give them time to get ready for the incentive auction, said the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council in an ex parte filing posted in docket 14-28 Friday. The FCC should finish the proceeding “efficiently," so DEs have time to "finalize their business plans and raise the necessary capital for participation, as mandated by Congress, prior to the incentive auction,” MMTC said.

Opposition filings to the more than 30 petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s incentive auction order are due Nov. 12, said a listing in the Federal Register Monday. Replies to those oppositions are due Nov. 21, the listing said. Once the FCC rules on the petitions, those who filed them will be able to seek judicial review of the order, said a blog post on Fletcher Heald’s website. "If (as may reasonably be expected) this leads to more appeals on the spectrum auction front, there's no telling what impact that might have on the start date of the auctions,” the blog post said.

The TV incentive auction “can’t happen soon enough,” T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham said Thursday in a blog post (http://t-mo.co/1zm6j5b). Ham emphasized the importance to competition of a favorable decision on its August petition asking the FCC to change its spectrum aggregation rules to give competitors to AT&T and Verizon a better shot at buying spectrum in the auction (see 1409260032). “As our competitors well know, arming T-Mobile with low-band spectrum is a competitive game-changer, enabling our service to penetrate building walls better and travel longer distances than we can with the spectrum we have today,” Ham said.

Outerwall subsidiary Redbox and Verizon signed a withdrawal agreement Oct. 19 in which Redbox withdrew as a member of Verizon and Redbox Digital Entertainment Services, according to an SEC filing (http://bit.ly/10oGHp1). Under the agreement, all of Redbox’s rights under the joint venture’s operating agreement will be extinguished and all outstanding amounts including expense reimbursements will be settled in exchange for a payment of $16.8 million to Redbox. Outerwall has made total cash capital contributions to the venture of $77 million and has received total cash totaling $70.5 million, including revenue attributable to DVD and Blu-ray rentals, the filing said. Redbox Instant by Verizon ceased consumer operations Oct. 7.

CBS launched CBS All Access, a digital subscription VOD product that will offer thousands of episodes from the current and previous seasons, and the ability to stream local CBS stations live in 14 of the largest U.S. markets, CBS said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/ZGmfif). The platform is available at CBS.com and on Apple and Android devices for $5.99 per month, it said. It will be available on other connected devices in the coming months, CBS said. CBS has said that it might move to a pay-TV platform if Aereo wins in litigation at the Supreme Court concerning its online streaming service (see 1305030041).

Netflix has competed head to head against the HBO Nordic streaming service for nearly two years in the same four European markets, but the lessons learned there won’t necessarily be applicable to the U.S. when HBO launches its streaming service in 2015 (see 1410150095), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said on a YouTube Q&A Wednesday with two analysts. HBO Nordic, available in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, launched in December 2012 as a joint venture with Parsifal International, the Swedish-based pay-TV provider. That’s about the same time Netflix debuted its streaming service in those same four markets. Asked to speculate how the HBO streaming service in the U.S. might be priced and distributed when it ultimately comes out, Hastings recalled that when HBO Nordic launched two years ago, it "chose to price on top of our pricing." Hastings cautioned that pricing overall in the Nordic countries is higher overall than in the U.S. because of the European valued-added tax and a higher cost of living. "So it's not definitely indicative" of the competitive price structure that could come into play in the U.S. when HBO launches its streaming service next year, he said. "But they've been quite aggressive in the Nordics and we stayed well ahead," Hastings said. Later in the Q&A, Hastings again cautioned against reading too much into the Nordic experience in predicting how HBO and Netflix might go head to head in the U.S. "Each market is unique," Hastings said. When HBO Nordic launched, it encountered "some teething problems initially two years ago that they probably would not have in the U.S.," he said. "I think they've been licensing broadly," including having recently licensing "a number" of Starz titles, he said. "So they're willing to license beyond their core platform. They've done pretty well, and we've done very well." Hastings is looking forward to a "fun" period the next few years when "the two of us compete for the best content, the most Emmys, the subscriber growth," he said. "And many, many people will subscribe to both services. So we're looking forward to that. We're just excited that HBO is really in the game with the Internet. They're the leader in their field. They're well ahead of their peer-group. They're ahead of the broadcast networks in this dimension, so it's exciting to see." HBO representatives didn’t immediately comment. Asked to elaborate on the Hastings comment that HBO Nordic incurred "teething problems" when it launched two years ago, Netflix spokesman Don Halcombe emailed us Thursday to say the company would have "nothing to add."