The effects of Ligado's proposed LTE network on aviation GPS receivers should be tested before any FCC action on the company's plan, said multiple aviation and aeronautics industry parties, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 11-109. The Federal Aviation Administration and Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) should study and test possible effects on receivers used by fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, they said in the filing laying out their multipart set of concerns with and recommendations for license modifications and the NPRM.
Users of CBS' twin subscription VOD services, CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, have each reached about 1 million subscribers, "well ahead of where we thought we would be this early in the game," CEO Leslie Moonves said. With the company's goal of 8 million SVOD subs by 2020, "we are confident that this will be easily achieved," Moonves said during the company's Q2 earnings call Thursday. The company is expecting "a significant bump" in All Access subscribers through its Star Trek: Discovery series to premier in January, as well as other original programming, and it's growing subscriptions for its stand-alone streaming Showtime service by staggering the launch dates of original series, he said. CBS expects another bump when a Twin Peaks sequel launches there next year, he said.
Looking to assuage concerns from the weather community about how its LTE network plans could affect weather data transmissions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Ligado hopes to have an alternative content delivery network (CDN) in operation this fall, Chief Legal Officer Valerie Green told us. After discussions with the weather community during an American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting last week in Alabama, the company hopes in the same time frame to put together an advisory committee of weather world representatives from the private sector, academia and elsewhere that would help Ligado understand issues raised by its proposal and that NOAA-provided services are protected, she said.
Comcast doesn't plan to use its X1 platform as a route to competing nationwide in the over-the-top (OTT) marketplace, CEO Brian Roberts said during the company's Q2 earnings call Wednesday. "We just fundamentally believe for now that our end market, end footprint strategy, is where we add the most value to consumers," Roberts said. While its broadband and business services operations rely on having a network, Roberts said, "OTT economics are unproven to us, and out of footprint it's not clear that that's the right strategy for us. We're happy with the strategy we have."
SiriusXM has deployed several demonstration cars to road test its SXM17 platform, which will incorporate two-way cellular connectivity into the company's traditional satellite radio and let it offer nonlinear content, CEO Jim Meyer said Tuesday during the company's Q2 2016 earnings call. The SXM17 platform it's developing with a number of automakers (see 1604280042) "breaks down the big barrier we live with today as a one-way broadcaster" and will let it offer customized playlists and on-demand content, Meyer said. He wouldn't discuss a time frame for SXM17 deployment, saying the company will announce details about timing over the next year.
The HTML5 101 document that NCTA and AT&T gave the FCC should help spell out why the pay-TV backed set-top box plan "offers a more productive path forward ... when it comes to competition, content diversity, copyright protection, and consumer welfare" than the NPRM before the agency, NCTA said in a blog post Friday. The apps proposal will obviate the need for set-tops, but "what it will not and should not do is to permit third parties to ignore copyright law and the decision of content creators as to how their content is packaged and presented to consumers," NCTA said. It also lashed out at unnamed critics as taking an "extreme position ... that the FCC must go further to 'unbundle the app.'" The HTML5 explainer -- posted Friday in docket 16-42 -- says what HTML5 is: the latest version of World Wide Web Consortium standards. Along with the 33-page primer, NCTA/AT&T provided an index of questions the FCC asked about the plan (see 1607110042 and 1607210044) and referred to various sections in the document that address them. For example, on the question of whether such HTML5 apps would be free and usable without additional multichannel video programming distributor-provided equipment, the index pointed to page 24 of the filing, where NCTA/AT&T said MVPDs "would license the HTML5 apps without charge to manufacturers of third-party navigation devices for their app stores, provided that the device manufactures and stores do not impose any fee or surcharge on MVPDs or consumers for providing or using the app or for transactions enabled through the MVPD service." On page 13, it said consumers would download the app from an app store associated with whatever device they're using and not require any new cable gateway device. Other questions in the index include whether the functions of an MVPD set-top and of the described app be identical and whether license terms will let a device's universal search include third-party apps on an equal and non-discriminatory basis alongside MVPDs' apps. The filing directly answers some questions, but other answers were left vague, such as whether all the content available via a set-top will be equally available to consumers in an app regime, Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer told us. The HTML5 approach still raises some concerns such as that such universal apps often are "lowest common denominator" and don't take advantage of the full functionality of devices, Bergmayer said. Meanwhile, pay-TV programmers continue to push back against the FCC's original set-top proposal. The plan "concerns programmers because of the lack of sufficient mechanisms to respect and enforce the myriad provisions of the contractual agreements between programmers and MVPDs," said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-42 on a meeting between programmers and FCC staff. Because of that contractual provision concern, the programmers said they "would continue to have concerns with any proposal (app-based or otherwise) that would not honor this threshold element." Meeting were Viacom Senior Vice President-Government Relations and Regulatory Counsel Keith Murphy, 21st Century Fox Senior Vice President Jared Sher, Time Warner Vice President-Public Policy Kyle Dixon, Disney Vice President-Government Relations Susan Fox, Scripps Networks Vice President-Legal and Government Affairs Kimberly Hulsey, CBS Senior Vice President-Regulatory Policy Anne Lucey and FCC staffers including Gigi Sohn, Louisa Terrell and Jessica Almond from Chairman Tom Wheeler's office.
Multichannel video programming distributors are signing affiliation agreements with subscription VOD services at an increasing clip, with some seeing such arrangements between the erstwhile distribution rivals becoming the norm. After Comcast and Netflix's announcement earlier this month of a deal to integrate SVOD into the X1 platform (see 1607050061), more such deals undoubtedly will be announced in the next year or so, and longer term, there will be MVPDs likely signing up multiple SVODs, Brian Shepherd, president-global broadband, cable and satellite business at CSG, told us. Such arrangements may remain out of the hands of mom-and-pop cable operators because of the technology demands, but they have become increasingly common among mid-sized and big MVPDs, said Leichtman Group President/Principal Analyst Bruce Leichtman.
Charter Communications, facing a pair of programmer legal challenges to its affiliation practices after its buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, could see others, cable industry insiders and watchers told us. One cable programmer said there are “rumblings” that other such lawsuits against Charter may be forthcoming.
The FCC spectrum frontiers order ended up giving satellite operators more flexibility in siting future earth stations than they had feared they would receive, though the industry also hoped the agency would apply a heavier regulatory touch to aggregate interference, industry officials tell us. The aggregate interference wording in the 278-page order and Further NPRM voted on Thursday (see 1607140052) "is not action oriented" because it set up a route for gathering information and urges more study and cooperative data gathering, one satellite company lawyer told us.
Numerous groups with an interest in 5G are applauding the FCC for opening up high-frequency bands for 5G in its spectrum frontiers proceeding. Intel said Thursday's 5-0 vote (see 1607140052) is "ensuring that the U.S. remains a world leader in mobile broadband." It said 5G access to the 28 and 37/39 GHz bands and unlicensed use in the 64-71 GHz bands "in an investment-friendly manner will spur development ... in the U.S. and other countries." CEO Brian Krzanich in a statement said, "Consumers and businesses are going to start benefiting from 5G much faster than generally expected and the FCC’s bi-partisan decision ... is crucial to accelerating this phenomenon." Commissioners' "proactive leadership [is] helping pave the way to make 5G networks a reality in the United States," said National Association of Tower Erectors Executive Director Todd Schlekeway. NATE said member companies "have developed and maintained every generation of communications networks and will be on the front lines again in order to help make 5G networks a reality in the future." The Telecommunications Industry Association in a statement said the FCC vote "frees a significant amount of new spectrum for mobile use, and does so without attaching strings or taking a wait-and-see approach. ... Spectrum Frontiers provides both the fuel that will be demanded by next-generation networks, and the predictability that is needed by technology companies." TIA said implementation of the 5G rules must be done "in ways that deliver on the FCC’s promise of a flexible approach, and we must continue to find new and creative ways to address our insatiable demand for more bandwidth." Information Technology Industry Council Vice President-Government Affairs Vince Jesaitis in a blog post Thursday called the spectrum frontiers decision "a historic one, and one that will cement U.S. leadership in 5G connectivity and next generation WiFi technology commonly known as WiGig" by making the U.S. the first country to map out 5G spectrum and identify additional spectrum bands for 5G and other wireless technologies. "This puts the United States well ahead of foreign counterparts by allowing American entrepreneurs and consumers to be the first in the world to have the tools needed to innovate in the new era of the of the internet: the Internet of Things," Jesaitis wrote. "Cars, buildings, infrastructure like highways and bridges, industrial systems, streetlights, and countless other objects will be using wireless connections to transfer data as well. To accommodate the 30 billion devices that will be connected to the internet by 2020, and fully realize the $11.1 trillion boost to the economy that the IoT will bring, we need to build on current wireless technologies by adopting policies like the 5G initiative that will spur investment in next generation wireless technologies." Friday, the White House and agencies unveiled a wireless research effort that includes 5G (see 1607150035).