The FCC Wireless Bureau Friday restarted it’s informal 180-day “shot clock” on its review of AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile. As a result, Friday was officially day 83 of the review. AT&T welcomed the development, but merger critics said the quick restart of the clock could also be bad news for AT&T. Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the development.
A second cable operator may get an FCC waiver to encrypt all channels. RCN now wants (CD Aug 16 p13) to follow Cablevision’s lead and be able to turn on and off service remotely, cutting down on signal theft and the expense and pollution of sending out technicians. Commission approval of RCN’s new request seems likely, and there will probably be less opposition to the move expressed than Cablevision faced in 2009, industry lawyers and an analyst said in interviews Tuesday. They said the regulator seems unlikely to start a rulemaking to examine whether it’s worth keeping a ban on operators encrypting channels in the basic tier. RCN wants out of that ban in Chicago and New York, where it’s gone all-digital.
A second cable operator may soon land an FCC waiver to encrypt all channels. RCN now wants to follow Cablevision’s lead and be able to turn on and off service remotely (CED Aug 16 p1), cutting down on signal theft and sparing the expense and carbon emissions of sending out technicians on truck rolls.
Sirius XM pushed past 21 million subscribers by June 30 when it had 8 percent more paid subscriptions than the 19.5 million it had June 30 a year earlier, the company said Tuesday. “Self-pay net additions” grew 19 percent in the quarter ending June 30 to 363,000 from the same 2010 quarter, prompting Sirius XM to upgrade its forecast on net subscriber additions for the year to 1.6 million from 1.4 million in the previous forecast. That would represent a 13 percent increase from 2010’s net subscriber additions, CEO Mel Karmazin said on an earnings call.
A service that lets users stream movies on demand, even when played one at a time from hundreds of Internet-connected DVD players in a remote physical location, must license those works from the movie studios, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled.
A service that lets users stream movies on demand, even when played one at a time from hundreds of Internet-connected DVD players in a remote physical location, must license those works from the movie studios, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ruled. Judge John Walter granted the studios’ motion for a preliminary injunction against Zediva (WID April 5 p10) which bills itself as a DVD rental service, and distinguished its business model from that of Cablevision, which won approval from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a remote DVR service. Cablevision also disputed in a friend-of-the-court brief that Zediva’s service was anything like its own. Walter gave the studios and Zediva parent WTV Systems until Aug. 8 to draw up a preliminary injunction and then hand it over to him by Aug. 10.
The FCC should “immediately withdraw LightSquared’s waiver authorizing upper channel [ancillary terrestrial component] deployment and stay lower channel ATC authorization until the studies called for by” the Defense and Transportation Departments are conducted and evaluated, said UPS in comments (http://xrl.us/bk3t7f) on the study filed by the technical working group (TWG) that looked at possible interference with GPS signals. The deadline for working group comments was Saturday, but filers had until the close of business Monday to file in docket 11-109 because the deadline fell on the weekend. LightSquared’s service poses a threat to UPS’ air cargo operations and its use of GPS for its daily truck delivery operations, UPS said. TechAmerica in its comments also asked the FCC to tread carefully to ensure LightSquared’s service doesn’t hurt GPS spectrum use (http://xrl.us/bk3t7s). Lockheed Martin said LightSquared’s revised roll out plan, which would begin service only in the lower part of the L-band and pause all operations in the upper part of the spectrum, doesn’t solve the interference issues (http://xrl.us/bk3t8n). The FCC should reject the revised plans, “rescind the conditional waiver, and otherwise ensure that the conclusions reached from the work of the TWG and further studies/tests be codified in its rules governing ATC use in the L-band, said Lockheed .
There seems to be little momentum now at the FCC for an AllVid rulemaking proposing how consumer electronics can connect to multichannel video programming distributors and get online content without using CableCARDs, agency officials said Friday. The day before, a 10-page letter from CE companies, groups and nonprofits that have been seeking the rulemaking was posted to docket 10-91. It remains to be seen whether the letter and lobbying of the commission by AllVid advocates will lead to the rulemaking being circulated soon, and it very well may not, some commission officials watching the proceeding said.
There seems to be little momentum for now at the FCC for an AllVid rulemaking proposing how CE gear can receive multichannel video programming distributor content without using CableCARDs, agency officials said Friday. The day before, a 10-page letter from CE companies, groups and nonprofits that have been seeking the rulemaking was posted to docket 10-91. It remains to be seen whether the letter and lobbying of the commission by AllVid advocates will lead to the rulemaking being circulated, and it very well may not, some commission officials watching the proceeding said.
The following are the trade-related hearings scheduled for June 6-9, 2011: