Crestron’s Internet radio tuner card now supports Pandora, and customers can access the firmware update on the Crestron website, the company said. Customers can create a Pandora station from a smartphone or tablet and see what’s playing from any touchscreen or remote control in the home, Crestron said. Crestron touchscreens show the current song, artist, and album cover playing and allow users to create or browse stations, the company said. Subscribers to Pandora can also pause, skip, and bookmark individual songs and artists on Crestron panels and remotes, Crestron said.
It’s incumbent carriers against the world in the latest round of comments regarding the development of an IP-to-IP policy framework, addressed in the further notice of proposed rulemaking as part of the USF/intercarrier compensation order. Commenters also addressed the FCC’s ongoing transition to a bill-and-keep framework. States urged the FCC to proceed at a slower pace or even pause the implementation of intercarrier compensation rules.
New carrier obligations in the Lifeline order show that the FCC has “not taken seriously” its Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) obligations, lawyers for General Communication Inc. wrote the Office of Management and Budget (http://xrl.us/bmzhgs). The FCC told OMB the new regulations will increase the annual time burden from 60,000 hours to over 1.5 million, excluding the commission’s new estimate of 22 million hours to account for an increase in the estimated number of Lifeline subscribers (http://xrl.us/bmzi68). Chris Nierman, director-federal regulatory affairs at GCI, said that others feel similarly to the telco and are likely filing their own comments.
TiVo needs to approach 10 million subscribers for its advertising to become a “meaningful” business, Tara Maitra, senior vice president and general manager for content and media sales, told us last week at the Digital Hollywood conference in New York. TiVo had 2.2 million subscribers Dec. 31, up from 2 million a year earlier.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hactivist group Anonymous has its thumb on the scales of justice, lawyers said at the RSA Conference on network security: Attorneys now must pause before taking action on behalf of clients that activists have grievances against, to take the risk of cyberattack into account in giving their advice and in their own decisions on IT security. “The risk of electronic retaliation for litigation is kind of new,” said Steven Teppler of Edelson McGuire.
The departments of Justice and Homeland Security and FBI asked the FCC to defer action on a streamlined application for transfer of control of Keywest Communications (USA) to Sifa Technology pending their own investigation (http://xrl.us/bmwh2m). “DOJ, DHS and FBI are currently reviewing this matter for any national security, law enforcement, and public safety issues but have not yet completed the effort,” they wrote Wednesday. Kuala Lumpur-based Key West Global Telecom Berhad filed an application to transfer control of KCUSA to Sifa. KCUSA provides interstate and intrastate interexchange telecommunications services; Sifa is a British Virgin Islands corporation wholly-owned by a Canadian citizen named Xiao Ping Yang. An FCC public notice had said Sifa doesn’t currently provide telecom services. U.S. regulators often ask the commission to pause action on deals while the security agencies review them.
NBCUniversal may face an arbitration request from an upstart online video distributor (OVD). It could seek a programming deal with the company under terms of an FCC order approving Comcast’s purchase of control in NBCU that gives OVDs the rights to buy some content accords if they strike distribution deals with other programmers. Project Concord Inc.’s request may be the first such instance of an OVD intending to seek arbitration to get access to shows from Comcast’s cable channels or the NBC broadcast-TV network to distribute them online, consumer advocates who opposed the NBCUniversal deal told us. The OVD’s request was made public in an FCC filing last week. It asked the agency not to pause issuance of a protective order to keep programming contracts confidential while it reviews Comcast’s request to change a condition in the 2011 order (CD Feb 22 p4).
NBCUniversal may face an arbitration request from an upstart online video distributor (OVD). It could seek a programming deal with the company under terms of an FCC order approving Comcast’s purchase of control in NBCU that gives OVDs the rights to some content accords if they strike distribution deals with other programmers. Project Concord Inc.’s request may be the first such instance of an OVD intending to seek arbitration to get access to shows from Comcast’s cable channels or the NBC broadcast network to distribute them online, consumer advocates who opposed the NBCUniversal deal told us. The OVD’s request was made public in an FCC filing last week. It asked the agency not to pause issuance of a protective order to keep programming contracts confidential while it reviews Comcast’s request to change a condition in the 2011 order (WID Feb 22 p2).
Dish Network lacks the legal standing to force the FCC to pull back encoding rules for set-top boxes adopted in 2003 as part of plug-and-play device implementation, the FCC and Justice Department said in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Dish appeal, filed in 2004, was paused as the agency considered DirecTV’s petition for reconsideration of the plug-and-play order, which the commission denied in 2010. Dish argued in its brief last month that the agency’s application of plug-and-play rules to all multichannel video programming distributors, rather than just cable, goes beyond the congressional intent.
Dish Network lacks the legal standing to force the FCC to pull back encoding rules for set-top boxes adopted in 2003 as part of plug-and-play device implementation, the FCC and Justice Department said in a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Dish appeal, filed in 2004, was paused as the agency considered DirecTV’s petition for reconsideration of the plug-and-play order, which the commission denied in 2010. Dish argued in its brief last month that the agency’s application of plug-and-play rules to all multichannel video programming distributors, rather than just cable, goes beyond the congressional intent.