Clearwire, DirecTV and EchoStar now can offer “triple play” bundles of voice, video and Internet thanks to 2 distribution agreements revealed Thurs., Clearwire said. DirecTV and EchoStar each signed agreements with Clearwire to sell the ISP’s wireless broadband, Clearwire said. Under the agreement, Clearwire also should be able to sell the satellite companies’ video services. But it’s unclear which satellite service Clearwire will offer customers -- if not both. Unlike major telcos, Clearwire likely will sell its “triple play” components unbundled, Clearwire spokeswoman Helen Chung told Communications Daily. Clearwire did not give the agreements’ terms. The pacts do not mark “a complete solution” for the satellite companies, given Clearwire’s limited coverage, Pali Research’s Walter Piecyk said. But if Clearwire succeeds at rolling out its network everywhere it has spectrum, “it would offer a differentiated service to cable operators based on its mobility and it could remain as a potential acquisition candidate,” he said. DirecTV previously has flopped at adding broadband to its service, trying a satellite broadband service and signing agreements with telcos, Piecyk said: “Broadband over satellite is plagued with latency and speed issues and the telephone companies are in the process of building fiber networks that would enable their own triple play service.” The ability of DirecTV and ClearWire to offer a wireless bundle to compete against cable and telcos will also benefit infrastructure contractor MasTec, ThinkEquity Partners said. DirecTV is MasTec’s largest customer, it said.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
Sprint Nextel will pay $312.5 million to acquire affiliate Northern PCS, Sprint said Wed. The price includes debt assumption. The purchase will be the 7th of Sprint’s 10 former PCS affiliates that it has acquired. Sprint has affiliate agreements with 2, Shentel and Swifttel, and is in a legal dispute with the other, iPCS. The company also recently bought former Nextel partners. Sprint expects to complete the acquisition in Q3 2007, subject to state approval. As with previous PCS buys, the FCC will not likely be involved, a Sprint spokesman said. Financial analyst firm Standard & Poor’s said its ratings and outlook for Sprint Nextel are unaffected: “Given the size of the transaction, there will not be any meaningful impact on leverage.”
AT&T will go after content pirates with new technology it’s developing with Viacom and other Hollywood companies, AT&T Senior Exec. Vp-External & Legislative Affairs James Cicconi told the L.A. Times. AT&T and the entertainment companies met last week to discuss the weapon, he said. “We are pleased that AT&T has decided to take such a strong, proactive position in protecting copyrights,” Viacom said: “AT&T’s support of strong anti-piracy efforts will be instrumental in developing a growing and vibrant digital marketplace and will help ensure that they have a steady stream of great creative content to deliver to their consumers.” Others voiced fear that such a mechanism would throttle users’ freedom of access to Internet content. Plans for copyright screens “fly in the face of the expectations of consumers to use their material more flexibly,” said Public Knowledge Pres. Gigi Sohn: “By attempting to act as the copyright police, the company is going to make its customers angry, even in a market in which customers have little choice of providers for high-speed Internet service.” Critics shouldn’t make assumptions about what the technology will be, an AT&T spokeswoman told Communications Daily; it doesn’t exist yet and last week’s meeting was “just discussion,” she said. In developing the screen, AT&T aims to balance Viacom and other companies’ needs to guard copyrighted data against consumers’ right to get legal material, she said.
Wireless companies should “get past” political friction in spectrum dealings with the FCC, and “get together from a national perspective,” Northrop Grumman Vp/CTO Robert Brammer said at the WCA conference. Wireless network security is a major safety and homeland security issue, and requires involvement beyond the govt.’s, he said: “We need much higher awareness of security issues. Don’t underestimate these security threats.”
The competitiveness of Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless will be hurt by the need to develop workarounds if the ITC’s Qualcomm ban isn’t overturned, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast told Communications Daily. Investors say substitute devices could be created in 2 quarters, but carriers say it could take 1-2 years, Arbogast said. The reality is “probably somewhere in the middle,” she said.
AT&T’s “pure IP” backbone upgrade will be a “great platform for integrated, converged services,” Group Pres.- Operations Support John Stankey said Mon. at the Bear Stearns Conference in N.Y.C. And the wireless network is due for an upgrade, he said, predicting 3G coverage in “nearly all 100 top markets” by year-end.
Court costs, inefficiency and “degraded” marketing have dogged Vonage the last 12 months, Vonage CFO John Rego said Mon. at the Bear-Stearns Conference in N.Y.C. The company hopes new ads and services, coupled with a possible 4th Circuit overturn of the Verizon patent infringement decision, will make Vonage profitable, he said.
Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) judges Mon. denied all motions for rehearing by webcasters hoping to reverse a March 2 ruling to raise fees they pay to stream music online. The decision came as webcasters, musicians and independent record labels announced formation of a SaveNetRadio Coalition to rally support.
Campaigning to mobilize musicians for net neutrality, the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) Tues. announced a Rock The Net campaign and website, FutureOfMusic.org/RockTheNet. Rock The Net -- endorsed by House Telecom & Internet Subcommittee Chmn. Markey (D-Mass.), 26 bands and others -- maintains that indie musicians will suffer unless Congress stops AT&T, Verizon and other ISPs from charging websites for extra bandwidth. The campaign is “big, powerful and going to rock,” Markey said.
YouTube and other video websites are in multiple deals to bring new content online. Meanwhile, MySpace licensed content protection company Audible Magic to provide a filter that will keep users from uploading that content to their MySpace pages.