"Who should pay and maintain control of .cable, .broadband, or .HBO?” asked Steve Mace, NCTA systems technology director, in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1sYcol3) Wednesday. “Domain ownership comes at a hefty price,” but “there are many benefits to managing a unique TLD [top-level domain], not the least of which is brand management,” said Mace, who attended the ICANN 50 conference in London last week (CD June 30 p10; June 27 p7; June 24 p7). Mace cited French concerns about .wine at ICANN 50 and its potential for “brand dilution.” “The cable and broadband industry faces similar challenges,” he said. Mace expects to see additional domain issues as ICANN winds down its contract with NTIA and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, he said.

New Wave and Reach Broadband each requested a further six-month waiver of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) compliance deadline. New Wave requested a waiver for 21 of its cable systems, it said in its petition posted Tuesday in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1sV4Kry). The company is working on “bringing its systems into compliance by interconnecting systems which lack broadband access to CAP-compliant headends, by purchasing equipment, and through system shutdowns,” it said. Requiring New Wave to buy and install CAP-compliant equipment in systems that it plans to interconnect to CAP-compliant headends “would be economically wasteful,” it said. Reach requests a waiver for six systems due to its lack of physical access to broadband Internet service necessary for the systems to receive CAP-formatted emergency alert messages, it said in its petition (http://bit.ly/1sV5Vaq). Reach also requested a financial hardship waiver for 15 systems, it said.

Cablevision needs more time to develop its Optimum mobile app to receive and pass through video description and emergency information over a secondary audio channel, the cable company told FCC Media Bureau and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff in a meeting Tuesday, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 12-107 (http://bit.ly/1sKU6DF). Cablevision customers using the app on laptops and PCs can already access information delivered over the secondary audio channel, but “further development and software upgrades and testing are needed” to provide the same service over the mobile app, said the cable operator. It said Cablevision “emphasized the need for the Commission to give it sufficient time to complete this complicated process."

Edge video providers like Netflix are the source of “persistent congestion” that leads to buffering and fuzzy HD pictures, said NCTA in a blog post Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1qwno4N). Although failure in home networks, ISPs and interconnection points like a content delivery network can also cause congestion, three reports released last week suggest the edge provider is most often at fault, NCTA said. The FCC 2014 Measuring Broadband America report (http://fcc.us/UOiwxo) (CD June 19 p7) “found that, on average, almost all ISPs are meeting or beating advertised speeds,” NCTA said. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology preliminary report (http://bit.ly/1o3xJnS) (CD June 19 p9) measuring Internet congestion found no “widespread congestion among the U.S. providers at their interconnection points in the core of the network,” NCTA said. A third report, from NetForecast, found that Netflix’s analysis of ISP performance included factors ISPs did not control, NCTA said. “Things like choices made by the end-user, available capacity or performance of the Netflix servers.” With the reports eliminating other factors, and assuming that most home networks perform correctly, the reports show that companies like Netflix are responsible for congestion that affects video streaming, NCTA said.

The FCC seeks comment on disclosure of Form 477 data as part of its investigation of the proposed Comcast acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Form 477 is used by the FCC to collect data on broadband and voice service data. Comments are due July 3, the FCC said in a public notice released in a Monday order (http://bit.ly/1wyvs7P).

Globosat, a Latin American pay-TV provider, will deploy a Tektronix monitor to ensure quality of its 4K coverage of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Globosat will use the WVR8300, a “software upgradeable” platform which has a high-performance architecture “designed from the outset to support the throughput requirements of 4K content,” Tektronix said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/UH7M3E). Global availability of the Tektronix 4K software for the monitor is planned for the third quarter this year, it said.

While a district court didn’t determine that Viacom acted anticompetitively in a carriage deal with Cablevision, the rejection of the cable programmer’s motion to dismiss the case is still a mildly unwelcome development for Viacom and content companies, said a Guggenheim Partners analyst. If Cablevision’s evidence can support its claims over Viacom’s evidence, “Cablevision is likely to prevail,” Paul Gallant said in a research note Monday. Cablevision alleged that Viacom engaged in illegal “tying” and forced the cable company to carry 14 networks that its customers don’t watch during a carriage deal (CD Feb 27/13 p11). The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Viacom’s motion last week (CD June 23 p17). Cablevision has proffered subscription, demographic and other statistical information “that suffice at this pleading stage to make plausible its market definition allegations,” said Judge Laura Swain in a memorandum order. Viacom programming licensing arrangements are “flexible, competitive and the result of good-faith negotiations with distributors,” Viacom said in a statement. “Although we are disappointed that the court did not dismiss these claims at the outset, we are confident that Cablevision will fail to prove the facts required to prevail in their case.” A victory for the cable company might be a concern for content companies by raising legal uncertainly over their longtime bundling strategy, Gallant said. If the court concludes that Viacom violated antitrust law, that could feed into the nascent Telecom Act rewrite, or a narrower bill updating the 1992 Cable Act “in an unwelcome way for content companies,” he said.

CenturyLink urged the FCC to take steps to facilitate fair retransmission consent negotiations by opening a proceeding on the Block Communications petition. CenturyLink agrees with Block that consolidation among broadcast stations and multichannel video programming distributors is “increasingly removing more localized marketplace considerations from retransmission consent negotiation discussions to the detriment of consumers in those markets,” it said in a filing in docket RM-11720 posted Friday (http://bit.ly/1lGJiRH). The FCC should modify its rules to promote fair retrans negotiations involving smaller, competitive MVPDs and broadcast stations, it said. Block asked the FCC to adopt “heightened good faith bargaining standards” for markets where smaller companies are more likely to be harmed by bargaining power of larger broadcasters and MVPDs (http://bit.ly/1iQRY3M). The American Cable Association (http://bit.ly/1nps2Pf) supported the petition; NAB is opposed. The FCC lacks authority to adopt the Block proposal, NAB said (http://bit.ly/1m4fJKh). Block somehow assumes, “without analysis or discussion, that the Commission has authority to approve its proposal under the good faith bargaining provisions of the Communications Act,” NAB said. If the FCC required broadcasters and MVPDs to submit for review details of their offers and other market and ratings data, it would “be in the driver’s seat, deciding what retransmission consent ‘negotiating positions,’ including rates, are ‘reasonable,'” it said.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied Viacom’s motion to dismiss an antitrust suit filed by Cablevision. The motion was dismissed Friday in an opinion by Judge Laura Swain. Cablevision alleged that in order to carry core networks Viacom forced it into carrying 14 networks that its customers don’t watch (CD Feb 27/13 p11). Cablevision said it’s “gratified” that the court ruled that Cablevision stated “a valid antitrust claim against Viacom for illegal channel tying.” Cablevision continues to believe that “Viacom’s tying of its popular networks to carriage of its lesser-watched ancillary networks is illegal, anti-consumer and wrong,” it said in a statement.

The Alliance for Community Media urged the FCC to act on ACM’s 2009 petition to declare AT&T’s offering of public, educational and government access (PEG) channels on U-Verse inadequate. ACM also urged the commission not to act on AT&T’s proposed buy of DirecTV until it acts on the petition, the alliance said in an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 09-13 (http://bit.ly/1yelQB0). The group has said it would revisit arguments in support of the petition, which has been pending for five years (CD June 6 p6). PEG channels “should receive equal treatment, in terms of subscriber accessibility and functionality, to local broadcast and other commercial channels on a cable system,” it said. ACM doesn’t seek to pre-empt any state law or local franchise, it said in an attached filing (http://bit.ly/1ni9Zur). The franchises under which each of the individual local government and PEG center petitioners operate, be they state or local franchises, “require the operator to set aside ‘capacity’ for PEG use and to provide PEG ‘channels,'” it said.