Comcast will start rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 capabilities in its network starting next year, Jorge Salinger, Comcast Cable's vice president-access technology, said in a company blog Friday. The super-fast broadband standard promising gigabit speeds over hybrid fiber-coax networks was a centerpiece at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Expo in New Orleans this month, Salinger said: "At nearly every booth on the exhibit floor, the companies that make modems and network equipment ... were showing off their latest DOCSIS 3.1 devices. This past week's Expo brings to life how close we are." Development of the 3.1 specification "has moved faster than any previous version ... and is now being implemented by every major equipment maker in the Internet space," Salinger said.

Liberty Global is in talks to buy Cable & Wireless Communications, which provides voice, broadband and video services in the Caribbean and Latin America, Liberty Global said Thursday. No financial terms were announced, though CWC said the transaction could be in the form of both cash and shares. Liberty Global said it had a Nov. 19 deadline to make an offer for London-based CWC under U.K. regulatory rules.

Since Tennis Channel hasn't shown what new evidence it has or explained why it didn't present that evidence previously, the programmer's efforts to reopen its discrimination complaint against Comcast should be denied, the FCC said in a brief filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Tennis Channel's original 2010 carriage complaint initially was held up by the FCC, but then vacated by the D.C. Circuit. After Tennis Channel re-petitioned the FCC, the agency in January issued an order denying both the original complaint and the re-petition (see 1501280059), and Tennis Channel in response petitioned for to vacate that order and remand the case. "Although the FCC claims that the Comcast decision left it no other choice, nothing in that opinion permits, let alone requires, the FCC to turn a blind eye to swaths of record evidence bearing directly on what have now become the dispositive factual issues in this case," Tennis Channel said in its own brief filed Sept. 21. The D.C. Circuit reversed the agency "because the evidence the agency relied upon was insufficient to support its decision. The Court did not -- and, under basic principles of administrative law, could not -- make definitive findings on factual issues the FCC never considered." However, in its brief, the FCC said it "faithfully adhered" to the appellate court's decision when it made its January decision, and "nothing in the Court's decision suggests that the Court anticipated or intended for the FCC to conduct further proceedings on remand." Meanwhile, the agency said, Tennis Channel "already received a full and fair opportunity to prosecute its program-carriage complaint, and it has not shown that the FCC in any way misled it or prevented it from submitting any relevant evidence. The interest in bringing this proceeding to a close outweighs any interest in giving Tennis Channel a second opportunity to litigate its complaint." No oral argument was scheduled in the petition, according to court paperwork.

Level 3 has concerns about Charter Communications' settlement-free peering policy, representatives of the first company told FCC staff, according to an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-149. While Level 3 and Charter have no peering agreement now, they have discussed one and "expressed an openness to considering Level 3's concerns," Level 3 said. Those concerns, it told FCC staffers, include the peering policy's duration. Charter promised to keep its policy only through December 2018, but "a reasonable agreement would need to last for a longer period to ensure stability, performance and scalability," Level 3 said, adding that five to seven years would be more in line with similar traffic exchange agreements it has signed. Charter's policy also should be explicit in covering all Internet traffic, including content delivery network traffic, and not contain any trial period before establishing a peering relationship, because that's not needed for entities that already interconnect and exchange traffic with Charter or Time Warner Cable, Level 3 said. The peering policy also should spell out that new interconnection locations must be mutually agreeable, instead of Charter's decision unilaterally; and should replace its somewhat unclear terms for augmenting existing interconnection capacity with a guideline requiring each party to do that augmentation at its own expense when use exceeds 70 percent for some period of time, Level 3 said. Traffic growth shouldn't be a valid criteria for suspending an interconnection agreement, and Charter's policy should prohibit either peer from any peering traffic discrimination "based on origin, destination or type of traffic," Level 3 said. The ex parte meeting involved Level 3's Nicolas Pujet, senior vice president-corporate strategy; Paul Savill, senior vice president-product management; David Siegel, vice president-product management; and staff from the Enforcement, Media and Wireline bureaus and the offices of General Counsel and Strategic Planning. The FCC has indicated peering policies are one of the things it is examining in reviewing Charter's plans to buy Bright House Networks and TWC (see 1510130063).

The virtual headend and competitive user interface recommendations in a Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee report could be used to allow “competitive navigation devices to operate on MVPD systems on a uniform basis,” officials from Amazon, Hauppauge and Public Knowledge said on a call with FCC staff Friday, according to an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-64. All three entities are part of the Consumer Video Choice Coalition, which backed the virtual headend and competitive user interface recommendations during the DSTAC process. They spoke with FCC staff about ways to implement their DSTAC proposals, they said. The approaches described “would provide MVPDs with flexibility in implementation (e.g., through a cloud interface, or locally) while providing the necessary predicates for a competitive market, such as differentiated user interfaces,” they said.

Unless the inevitable widening schism in programming costs that would follow Charter Communications' purchases of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable can somehow be addressed, the FCC should reject the deals, Incompas said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-149 on a meeting Tuesday at the group's conference in San Francisco between Gigi Sohn, counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and Angie Kronenberg, Incompas general counsel. Incompas said it raised red flags about how the deals might affect the broadband market's competitive landscape. Charter's application lacks any kind of analysis of what the transactions would do to broadband competition and to the "intertwined markets" for linear video and broadband, Incompas said. Consumers prefer ISPs that also offer multichannel video services, but rising video costs are a big hurdle for small- and mid-sized ISPs interested in building out their broadband networks, Incompas said. Charter's and TWC's larger scales post-deals would mean lower programming costs for New Charter relative to potential broadband competition, resulting in "a substantial barrier to future broadband investment and competition in (New Charter's) footprint," the group, formerly known as Comptel, said.

The Q2 inflation adjustment factor for cable operators using FCC Form 1240 is 2.1 percent, almost identical to the 2.11 percent of Q2 2014, the Media Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday. The adjustment factor is “a measure of the annualized change in prices” occurring from April 1 to June 30, the PN said. Cable operators can use the factor to adjust the nonexternal cost portion of their rates for inflation, the bureau said. The adjustments are based on changes in the Department of Commerce’s Gross National Product Price Index, the PN said.

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. broadband households use at least one over-the-top video service monthly, while more than 25 percent use two or more, Parks Associates said Monday. But OTT growth is slowing, indicating the subscription VOD market may be saturated, Parks said. Netflix dominates the OTT market, with 43 percent of U.S. broadband households being subscribers, followed by Hulu at 19 percent and Amazon at 17 percent, Parks said.

Mediacom finished construction of direct fiber connections to Netflix's network aimed at improving performance for Mediacom high-speed Internet customers watching Netflix, the cable company said. Mediacom announced direct connection plans in May (see 1505050056), and said Monday that it has been moving Netflix traffic to the direct fiber connection since late July.

Arris may not close on its takeover of Pace until Q1 as it works through regulatory issues in Brazil, Colombia and the U.S., the equipment maker said Friday. The companies previously said they expected to close the $2.1 billion deal by year's end (see 1507010042). The deal received regulatory clearance in Germany, Portugal and South Africa, but Arris said it received requests for additional information from the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and from Brazilian and Colombian regulators, with the DOJ focus seemingly "on certain optical transmissions products" of the two companies that could ultimately result in a divestiture.