The popular John Oliver segment on net neutrality was “creative” and “funny,” but “satire is not C-SPAN,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told reporters after the meeting Friday. Oliver’s 13-minute attack on the proposed net neutrality rules, featured June 1 on HBO’s Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, was apparently enough to crash the agency’s comment filing system (CD June 3 p5). The segment, which Wheeler watched twice, “represents the high level of interest that exists in the topic in the country, and that’s good,” Wheeler said. After a brief pause, Wheeler added: “I would like to state for the record that I'm not a dingo. I had to go look it up. It’s a feral, wild animal in Australia.” Oliver had said having a former cable lobbyist in charge of passing net neutrality rules was akin to asking the dingo to watch your baby.
"Significant gaps” exist in the rural call completion record, and there should be a 90-day “moratorium” in the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) application process, the Voice Communication Exchange Committee told the FCC Thursday. The FCC’s plan to use a data collection as a means of discovering further call completion problems will have “no practical utility” in addressing the root causes of the call completion issues, VCXC said in a filing in WC docket 13-39. “An industry wide ‘everyone presumed guilty’ data collection represents an extremely inefficient means of triggering enforcement actions,” VCXC said. “In the unlikely event problems arise with even 1 percent of total calls, 99 percent of the data collection burden represents a waste of resources the PRA approval process exists to prevent.” The FCC “failure to properly prepare” during the 40 months of investigations leading up to its rural call completion report “puts the application at risk and makes any outcome vulnerable to litigation and further delays,” VCXC said. A 90-day moratorium would let the FCC determine whether its PRA application can pass, and the agency might also convene industry meetings to discuss the issue, VCXC founder Daniel Berninger told us. The root cause of the call completion problems is the IP transition itself, Berninger said: “Chaos in the network” combined with “bad guys lurking out there, finding ways to collect money without delivering a service.” The problem is “a symptom of the chaos that ensues when you try to transition a network from TDM to all IP,” he said. Submitting the call completion data collection proposal to the Office of Management and Budget for PRA approval, only to have it be rejected, would be “a bigger setback than if we pause and assess the application before submitting it,” Berninger said. A data collection won’t fix anything, he said; it will just look for more problems. A better solution is for the FCC to “set up a process of anonymous whistleblowers” to find the bad actors, Berninger said.
The CE industry was abuzz Friday following reports in the Financial Times Thursday that Apple is planning to buy Beats Audio for $3.2 billion. According to NPD numbers, Beats already has 62 percent of the premium $100-and-above headphone market in the U.S., which topped $1 billion for the 12 months ended March 31. Beats’ Pill wireless speakers have 9 percent of annual revenue in that category, which is forecast to double this year, NPD analyst Ben Arnold said.
The consumer electronics (CE) industry was abuzz Friday following reports in the Financial Times Thursday that Apple is planning to buy Beats Audio for $3.2 billion. According to NPD numbers, Beats already has 62 percent of the premium $100-and-above headphone market in the U.S., which topped $1 billion for the 12 months ended March 31. Beats’ Pill wireless speakers have 9 percent of annual revenue in that category, which is forecast to double this year, NPD analyst Ben Arnold said.
Automakers are employing a multi-pronged strategy to tightening vehicles’ links to the Internet as they spread deployments of operating system software and applications across model line-ups, industry officials told us last week at the New York Auto Show.
Automakers are employing a multi-pronged strategy to tightening vehicles’ links to the Internet as they spread deployments of operating system software and applications across model line-ups, industry officials told us last week at the New York Auto Show.
Automakers are employing a multi-pronged strategy to tightening vehicles’ links to the Internet as they spread deployments of operating system software and applications across model line-ups, industry officials told us last week at the New York Auto Show.
The Competitive Carriers Association asked the FCC to pause the phase-down of legacy USF support for wireless carriers until Phase II of the Mobility Fund is operational. The request came in a filing at the FCC Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1md24z2). “We are very concerned that the FCC’s draft Report and Order on USF will be detrimental to wireless carriers and the consumers they serve, especially those in rural areas where USF support is absolutely necessary,” CCA President Steve Berry said in a statement. “To avoid furthering the dominance of the legacy twin Bells, the FCC must act immediately to put USF reform efforts back on track to promote competition and benefit consumers who are choosing wireless services more and more each day.” Berry also urged the FCC to eliminate the right of first refusal for incumbent price-cap carriers. “Price-cap carriers already have been given the opportunity to accept support, and giving them another ‘first opportunity’ would allow them to take advantage of the process to maximize their own revenues, to the detriment of consumers,” he said. “The FCC has the opportunity to put USF reform on the right track again. Wireless carriers got the short end of the stick the first go-round -- with a 60 percent reduction of funding despite contributing more than half of the high-cost support funding -- and it’s time the FCC focused on restoring competition rather than further skewing USF support in favor of wireline carriers."
BlackBerry is targeting breaking even on its hardware business by fiscal 2016 starting in March 2015 as it “focuses on making money” on sales, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said Friday on an earnings call.
Amazon told its Prime members the price increase it promised during an earnings call last month (WID Feb 3 p12) would take effect with their next membership renewal. The $99-per-year Prime membership fee will take effect March 20 for new members, while the increase for existing members will begin to kick in April 17 as members’ renewal dates come up, an Amazon spokeswoman told us. Thursday’s announcement gives Amazon a week to pull in new customers at the $79 rate.