Bose unveiled a controller accessory Monday for its SoundTouch music systems that has a round wall-mountable footprint reminiscent of a Nest thermostat. The $99 device, designed to replace the need for a smartphone or tablet app, is included with the SoundTouch stereo system and SoundTouch SA-4 amplifier, and also can be bought separately for other SoundTouch systems, the company said. A built-in OLED display shows what’s playing, and controls let users adjust volume, skip tracks, pause music, and access Internet radio stations, playlists and streaming music services, Bose said. The device communicates to a Bose SoundTouch system over Bluetooth LE at a range of up to 70 feet, the company said. The multiroom SoundTouch systems operate over Wi-Fi for streaming, according to specs. Despite ad copy promoting convenience and ease of use, in the SoundTouch FAQ section on the Bose website, the company said pairing the controller to multiple SoundTouch systems involves “multiple steps using the SoundTouch setup app,” and the company recommends a separate SoundTouch controller for each system. To know which room a controller is connected to, the company said, “Simply select a preset and see which system reacts."
Reductions in intercarrier compensation rates for originating intrastate toll VoIP traffic should be paused, effective June 30, 2014, until full implementation of the Phase II Connect America Fund, in the case of price-cap telcos, said NTCA and several other groups in an emergency petition for a waiver of FCC rules (http://bit.ly/1mvpDo8) posted Monday in docket 10-90. For rural, rate of return-regulated carriers, the waiver was sought until the implementation of a tailored CAF mechanism for the rural LECs. The reductions would cost Frontier Communications and Windstream $14.5 million total annually, the petition said. The Eastern Rural Telecom Association, Frontier, IITA, National Exchange Carrier Association, WTA and Windstream joined in the waiver request.
Reductions in intercarrier compensation rates for originating intrastate toll VoIP traffic should be paused, effective June 30, 2014, until full implementation of the Phase II Connect America Fund, in the case of price-cap telcos, said NTCA and several other groups in an emergency petition for a waiver of FCC rules (http://bit.ly/1mvpDo8) posted Monday in docket 10-90. For rural, rate of return-regulated carriers, the waiver was sought until the implementation of a tailored CAF mechanism for the rural LECs. The reductions would cost Frontier Communications and Windstream $14.5 million total annually, the petition said. The Eastern Rural Telecom Association, Frontier, IITA, National Exchange Carrier Association, WTA and Windstream joined in the waiver request.
Dish Network debuted its Wireless Joey, a system that allows customers to watch TV virtually anywhere in and around the home without the need for wiring. The system has full Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR functionality, and “the ability to view, record, pause, rewind and fast forward TV content,” Dish said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/UB5QJT). It also is the first in the pay-TV industry to apply 802.11ac wireless technology, it said.
Dish Network debuted its Wireless Joey, a system that allows customers to watch TV virtually anywhere in and around the home without the need for wiring. The system has full Hopper Whole-Home HD DVR functionality, and “the ability to view, record, pause, rewind and fast forward TV content,” Dish said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/UB5QJT). It also is the first in the pay-TV industry to apply 802.11ac wireless technology, it said.
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 (WID June 3 p8). 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.
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.