Several parties that urged the FCC to reject the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal support the AT&T/DirecTV deal with conditions, said a Guggenheim Partners analyst. Analysts expect both mergers to be approved, but the AT&T/DirecTV comments may suggest a more manageable approval path for that merger than for the Comcast/Time Warner Cable buy, said analyst Paul Gallant. Dish Network, Public Knowledge and Netflix took a more even-handed position on the AT&T transaction than they did the Comcast deal, he said Friday in a research note. “This is noteworthy and suggests to us that AT&T/DirecTV is likely to face less strident opposition than Comcast/TWC.” Those entities will probably be among the “leading voices” at the FCC and Department of Justice on both deals, he said. Their moderate tone on AT&T/DirecTV “is incrementally positive for that merger and introduces an additional note of caution on Comcast/TWC,” he said. Initial comments in the AT&T/DirecTV proceeding were due last week.
Sony Electronics in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and its Tokyo parent are jointly patenting technology for a TV, set-top box or DVR that suppresses broadcast or recorded TV commercials and claims to do so much more effectively than current systems. Sony’s system, described in U.S. application 2014/0064705 filed in November 2013, names Brant Candelore of San Diego as the inventor. “Most every business entity advertises to promote products or services, and often pays significant sums of money on such activities to broadcasters and service providers,” said the patent. But consumers “are generally less entertained by advertising,” it said. “To most, an advertisement is an unwanted pause in a program with generally increased volume, and therefore, a significant inconvenience.” Current ad suppression systems, which mute the sound, change the channel or turn the TV off during a commercial are “laborious and prone to error given that a user must guess as to when the commercial break will end,” said Sony. “Despite the ability to fast-forward through commercials, users must still deal with undershoot and overshoot problems.” Thus, despite the advantages of time-shifting over viewing in real-time, “commercial suppression in recorded content is still a manual and laborious task that is prone to error, thereby exacerbating the annoyance and inconvenience brought by commercials in the first place,” it said. Instead, the patented system relies on downloading and storing a library of templates of known commercials, the Sony document said. Downloading is automatic and ongoing, by Internet connection, and the templates contain both audio and video information on the ad’s content and duration, it said. The program being watched is continually compared with the stored templates, and when a match is found, the sound is automatically muted or playback fast-forwarded and the screen blanked until the template signals the end of the ad and switches the set back to normal viewing mode. Attempts to reach inventor Candelore were unsuccessful. Sony representatives didn’t immediately comment.
Current E-rate funding is “not sufficient” and the FCC should go beyond indexing program funding to inflation and make “sizeable additional investments in a program that has only grown in importance in the 18 years since it was established,” said Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Portland, Oregon, Mayor Charlie Hales in a letter to Chairman Tom Wheeler Monday. The letter was provided to us by Best Best attorney Gerry Lederer, who represents Boston and whose firm represents Los Angeles and Portland. Los Angeles also supports a “meaningful increase in overall funding” for the program, Mayor Eric Garcetti wrote in a separate letter to Wheeler and FCC commissioners provided by Lederer. All those mayors are Democrats, except Hales, whose office is nonpartisan. Members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors met in New York City Aug. 11 to form a Cities of Opportunities Task Force, with New York’s de Blasio named chairman and Boston’s Walsh, vice chairman, said the letter from Boston, New York and Portland mayors. The task force backed strategies to “achieve digital equity and avoid educational disparity,” including ensuring that broadband services are available to lower-income residents and startup businesses; backing federal programs that bolster technological innovation and provide tech job opportunities for low-income people and minorities, and dealing with inequality in school systems, the letter said. Education interests and libraries are urging more E-rate funding but are running into opposition from telcos (WID Sept 18 p7).
Amazon announced the Fire OS 4 operating system Thursday, available at launch with the HDX 8.9 Fire and other fourth-generation mobile devices and for all third-generation Fire tablets via an over-the-air update later in the year, Amazon said. Updates with OS 4 include profiles to allow family members to have individual email and social media accounts, user settings, bookmarks and game levels, Amazon said. ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) predicts movies and TV episodes a user wants to watch and starts them instantly, while Smart Suspend proactively turns wireless off and on as needed to deliver up to 25 percent more standby battery life, the company said. New cloud services within OS 4 include Family Library, which allows sharing of apps, games, and Prime Instant Video content with household members. The new Firefly feature identifies text and allows users to take action on more than 100 million items, including making purchases, Amazon said. Fire OS 4 also has free unlimited Cloud Drive storage for photos taken on Fire devices, it said.
Home Depot’s investigation concluded that information for 56 million payment cards was exposed between April and September, said the retailer in a Thursday news release. That puts the breach ahead of the 40 million payment cards that were exposed during Target’s late 2013 breach, which also exposed roughly 70 million customer records that included names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers (WID Jan 13 p4). “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges,” said Home Depot CEO Frank Blake. Home Depot said it has also completed a point of sale encryption project to heighten security.
The FCC “overstepped its authority” and “implemented a rule inconsistent with existing law” when it doubled the record-retention requirement in a July E-rate order (WID July 14 p3), USTelecom said in a petition for reconsideration filed Thursday and made available to us. The rule will “adversely” affect the program, the filing said. The agency had no comment. Despite an agency assertion otherwise, the rule is not necessary to comply with the False Claims Act, USTelecom said. That law “is designed to ferret out fraudulent claims by government contractors, not to increase the recordkeeping expense of government contractors,” said USTelecom. The act has a 10-year statute of limitations, the association said, but “a statute of limitations period by which a claim must be brought and a recordkeeping period during which records must be maintained serve fundamentally different purposes -- purposes that the Order conflates.” The 10-year requirement exceeds the requirement in other federal programs, many of which require record retention of five years or less, USTelecom said. The costs of maintaining and storing records for 10 years “is significant and would “greatly outweigh any purported benefit from having available records during the entire time that a person could theoretically assert a False Claims Act claim,” said the association.
Internet access via mobile devices soared 67 percent in the past 12 months, said a report released Thursday by StatCounter, a website analytics company (http://bit.ly/1udvccq). Overall, 64.6 percent of Internet access is from desktops, but mobile device access has grown from 17.1 percent to 28.5 percent in the past 12 months, StatCounter said. Tablet Web access has increased from 4.8 percent to 6.8 percent of traffic, the company said. “Mobile usage has already overtaken desktop in several countries including India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia,” said CEO Aodhan Cullen.
Global LTE reached 250 million subscriptions in the first quarter of 2014, an Ovum analyst said. The U.S. is the world’s largest LTE market, with Verizon Wireless and AT&T accounting for 35 percent of global LTE subscriptions, it said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1uJLRGJ). Verizon had 47.9 million subscriptions, and AT&T had 38.4 million at the end of Q1 2014, Ovum analyst Thecla Mbongue said. Korea was the most penetrated LTE market during that period, with a rate of 47 percent, it said. In emerging markets, where prepaid service is dominant and handset subsidies are less frequent, LTE take-up is slow, she said. Coverage is limited and operators “prioritize the high-end and business segments,” she said. LTE subscriptions are expected to exceed 2 billion by 2019, she said.
The NFC Forum, the industry group promoting the use of near-field communication (NFC) technology, launched analog testing as part of its certification program, the group said Thursday (http://bit.ly/1BQzyLc). Its analog certification will be the “first detailed evaluation” of the radio frequency (RF) performance of an NFC device, it said. “Consistent RF performance is essential to smooth and swift NFC interactions, fulfilling NFC’s promise of a seamless experience for the consumer,” it said. The testing “milestone” comes at an opportune time, it said, citing IHS estimates that global shipments of NFC-enabled mobile phones will surge fourfold through 2018, when they'll reach shipments of 1.2 billion units and be 63 percent of all mobile phones shipped. “When a device is certified as compliant with NFC Forum specifications —- and the analog specification in particular -— it provides consumers with a better assurance that NFC’s easy touch interface will deliver the comfortable and consistent experience they expect,” the group said. Though dozens of companies belong to the NFC Forum at various levels of membership, its founding “sponsor” members are Broadcom, Google, Intel, MasterCard, NEC, Nokia, NXP, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony, STMicroelectronics and Visa.
The Internet Association, a tech company lobbying group, released a video Wednesday featuring House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., with whom they've disagreed on net neutrality. “We have a lot to showcase in that the Internet allows access to the market that’s frankly worldwide,” Upton said in the video, which also showed business leaders from a small business walking tour in Michigan (http://bit.ly/1uL6lxY). “These businesses may not be in business without the Internet. You don’t need to regulate the Internet -- it’s not a problem as long as it’s not regulated,” Upton says on the video.