Rocco Commisso, Mediacom’s CEO and controlling shareholder, offered to buy out the company’s public stockholders for $6 a share. He may have trouble raising the bid because the cable operator already carries so much debt, Standard & Poor’s said. Wall Street analysts said the bid seemed low and investors ran Mediacom’s stock price up 17.6 percent Tuesday to $6.27 a share.

Motorola looks to grow its business further by partnering with cities on public safety networks and municipal mobile broadband, said Scott French, vice president of Wireless Mobility Solutions. The manufacturer also plans to make inroads in markets like utilities, transportation and human services, he said in an interview.

SES World Skies successfully avoided signal interference from Intelsat’s stray Galaxy 15 satellite that drifted into SES’s orbital space, both companies said. While the satellite remains within SES’s orbital slot at 131 degrees west, it’s out of range to pose an interference threat to AMC-11, SES World Skies’ satellite in that slot. Galaxy’s expected to exit the AMC-11 orbital space June 7, said Intelsat. Intelsat lost communication with Galaxy in April (CD April 9 p10) and has been unable to keep the satellite from drifting even though its transponders remain active. The companies were concerned the proximity of the two satellites’ active C-band transponders could interrupt service for customers on the AMC-11 satellite.

A combination of legislation and industry self-regulation is the best way to shore up the FCC’s authority over broadband, said AT&T and Time Warner Cable executives. The ISP officials and others condemned FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” proposal in a panel discussion Tuesday co-hosted by the Information Technology & Information Foundation and the Free State Foundation. A technology-based answer by industry would be ideal, said BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker.

An inflection point has been reached in the cable and consumer electronics industries as companies ramp up efforts to provide more online content to video subscribers through their cable connections and via more devices, our survey of executives found. The backdrop is the introduction by Apple of the iPad, increased availability online of content from cable channels, broadcast networks and other programmers, and increasing viewing of video on devices besides TVs. Those factors and cable’s tru2way CE platform mean there likely will be more ways for cable subscribers to view over-the-top content, executives said.

Free Press and Public Knowledge said they're concerned that wireless is getting special treatment in a notice of inquiry about Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” broadband reclassification proposal. That’s based on discussions they've held at the commission and on a notice on the June meeting. Wireless industry representatives had no comment Friday. Meanwhile, AT&T and USTelecom noted that a majority of House members appear to oppose the reclassification proposal.

A recent decision by a federal judge in New York setting the royalties MobiTV is to pay ASCAP for use of songs that are part of the TV programming it distributes over wireless networks has brought a level of certainty to the mobile TV field and should help spur future business deals, MobiTV CEO Charlie Nooney said. “It’s a real watershed moment for the industry,” he said. “It puts mobile in the same category as cable TV or satellite TV, where it should be."

A draft spectrum bill by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., emphasizes that it should be entirely voluntary for broadcasters to give up spectrum. As reported (CD May 27 p10), the bill would codify the National Broadband Plan goals of making 500 MHz of spectrum available over 10 years for wireless broadband, 300 MHz of it within five years, and amend Section 309(j)(8) of the Communications Act to set up incentive auctions under which the government could split auction proceeds with broadcasters that give up spectrum. An eight-page draft we received uses the word “voluntary” and variants of it nine times.

Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” proposal for reclassifying broadband isn’t about FCC policy on the Internet itself, but the legal foundation for net neutrality and other policies that the agency decides to pursue, FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick said on a Thursday webinar sponsored by Broadband US TV. Meanwhile, as expected, Genachowski circulated his reclassification proposal to the other commissioners for a vote at the June 17 commission meeting. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., sharply opposed the plan.

The applicability of the 1996 Telecom Act will continue to spur dialogue over how the Internet and other new services should be regulated, panelists said at the National Press Club. The dialogue goes back to when the Act was established, said attorney John Nakahata of Wiltshire & Grannis, ex-FCC chief of staff. “We didn’t have Internet as we know it,” he said. “The Telecom Act is a creature of a different world, and that became pretty apparent pretty quickly as the FCC started to grapple with how do you apply the statutory definitions to the world of the Internet."