Time Warner Cable is using Arris to schedule customer appointments within a one-hour period of time, said the cable operator in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1nBxZgk). It said the operator deployed the consumer electronics company’s WorkAssure Dynamic Routing and Whole House Check products to almost 18,000 technicians last year.

Horizon Cable TV in California said it’s interested in receiving funding from the Connect America Fund to be able to extend broadband service to unserved and underserved areas of western Marin County, Calif. Since Horizon hasn’t received any subsidies, its subscriber base determines how much Internet backbone can be purchased and offered back to customers, it said in a letter to the FCC in docket 10-90 (http://bit.ly/NoeDdR). “Our customers do not receive the full benefit of our HFC [hybrid fiber coaxial] DOCSIS 3.0 platform because of the high cost of the middle mile.” Horizon proposes to use a radio frequency over glass fiber to the home platform to reach the unserved and underserved areas, it said. This new platform will be an extension of the existing network, “providing advanced video, voice and data services,” it said. Horizon also requested temporary regulatory relief like streamlined environmental regulations and assistance with obtaining eligible telecom carrier certification “to insure rapid deployment of broadband services at a minimum cost to taxpayers,” it said.

Los Angeles sued Time Warner Cable for about $10 million in franchise fees allegedly owed to the city. The lawsuit claimed that while Time Warner Cable was withholding payments to the city, “it was raking in billions of dollars in revenue,” said the office of city attorney Mike Feuer in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1gyH3gR). The city filed the complaint last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, it said. The city said the cable company violated the Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act. DIVCA requires cable operators “to pay interest when franchise fees are determined to have been underpaid,” the complaint said. The operator allegedly has underpaid fees from 2008 through 2011. The city demanded that Time Warner Cable pay it $9.6 million, it said. The city also alleged that Time Warner Cable didn’t provide sufficient documentation “to support many of TWC’s own calculations of ‘gross revenues’ during the city auditor’s annual compliance examination,” it said. It’s possible that the cable company owes the city additional fees in both state franchise fees and fees for public, educational and government programming, it said. For 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011, “TWC reported to the city one amount for gross revenues, but actually earned another,” the complaint said.

The top 13 U.S. multichannel video programming distributors lost about 105,000 net video subscribers in 2013, Leichtman Research Group said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1hjx0ds). Annual net MVPD sub additions were about 280,000 subs fewer in 2013 than in 2012, it said. The top nine cable companies, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, lost about 1.7 million video subscribers last year, compared to a loss of more than 1.4 million subs in 2012, LRG said. The top telephone providers, AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS, added more than 1.4 million subs last year, compared to nearly 1.3 million net additions in 2012, it said. Satellite TV providers added 170,000 video subscribers last year, compared to 288,000 net additions in 2012, it said. The MVPDs’ modest losses represent only about 0.1 percent of all subscribers, LRG said. Cable providers now have a 52 percent share of the top MVPD subs in the U.S. compared to a 58 percent share three years ago, it said.

NCTA estimated it would cost about $3,500 per location to order and install new emergency alert system equipment required to recognize a new nationwide EAS code, in comments in FCC docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1d221jx). The development and testing processes for the new code for downstream equipment is significantly more time- and resource-intensive “than the encoder/decoder review process and any subsequent modifications,” it said. The aggregate capital and operational cost of deploying a new nationwide location code is about $1.1 million for about 85 percent of cable customers, it said. At least one year is needed to deploy the new location code once it’s adopted by the FCC, NCTA said. Requiring the National Periodic Test Code to filter location codes and to last longer than two minutes is more costly and complex to implement than adopting a nationwide location code, it said. This would cost about $4.4 million for about 85 percent of cable customers, NCTA said. Public Safety Bureau staff discussed with NCTA the importance of achieving a consistent regulatory approach to EAS over an ad hoc interim approach to the handling, routing and security of EAS alerts, said the association.

An expected Cablevision motion for “summary decision” in the program carriage case brought against it by Game Show Network may not succeed in the “complex case,” cautioned FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel in an order issued Wednesday (bit.ly/1lDJ6AT). The GSN case process was continued because Sippel anticipated that additional discovery would be needed, the order said. “Such circumstances are reasons for delaying the consideration of any motion for summary decision until discovery is completed,” Sippel said. Sippel also granted motions from both Cablevision and GSN to have both parties submit a status report on April 7.

Comcast’s buy of Time Warner Cable wouldn’t substantially increase Comcast’s power over programmers, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen told former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt Monday on The Digital Show, Hundt’s SiriusXM radio show. “I really don’t see how moving from 22 billion customers to 30 billion customers is going to dramatically increase our negotiating leverage,” said Cohen. Since cable faces video competition from DBS, over-the-top and elsewhere, Comcast won’t be in that much better a position after the TWC deal, he said. “Maybe we would have a little more negotiating power, but the control for must-have content is still likely to be in the control of the programmer and not the multichannel video distributor,” Cohen said. He also said the Comcast/TWC deal should be approved because Comcast and TWC aren’t competitors. “I think people should ask themselves why that is and if that’s really the natural state of the world,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood, who also appeared on the episode. “There’s nothing today other than perhaps some licensing agreements and the historical unwillingness of cable operators to cross over and overbuild each other that would prevent Comcast and TWC from competing at least online,” Wood said. Hundt also spoke with MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett about the cable deal. The effect of the Comcast/TWC deal on programmers is likely to “get a lot of scrutiny in the FCC” because it has the potential to create “a company so large that it controls what [viewpoints] Americans can and can’t hear,” Moffett said.

The FCC should take up the Tennis Channel’s carriage complaint against Comcast again and reaffirm its original decision against the cable provider based on evidence that Comcast would benefit from carrying the channel, Tennis Channel said in a petition for further proceedings filed Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in Comcast’s favor in May (CD May 29 p1) because it said the commission had not shown discrimination by providing evidence that carrying the Tennis Channel on a more basic tier would benefit Comcast, Tennis Channel said. Tennis Channel asked the Supreme Court to overturn the decision, but wasn’t granted cert (CD Feb 25 p15). The existing record in the proceeding contains “ample evidence” to satisfy what Tennis Channel characterized as the court’s “new tests,” the channel said. The evidence “demonstrates that Comcast’s distribution business would reap a net benefit from carrying Tennis Channel broadly” or at least that any losses from carrying Tennis Channel on a wider tier “would be smaller than those it was incurring from broad carriage of Golf Channel.” The evidence also shows that Comcast’s justifications for keeping Tennis Channel on a more selective tier were “merely pretexts designed to obscure a discriminatory purpose,” Tennis Channel said. The FCC should set a new briefing cycle and direct Comcast and Tennis Channel to “file limited proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law on the narrow issues” the D.C. Circuit said weren’t backed by the evidence, said Tennis Channel. Those briefings are needed because in the prior proceedings “neither the parties nor the Commission had an opportunity to evaluate the record evidence against the tests that have now been articulated by the court,” said the petition. After the proceeding, the FCC should affirm its original decision that Comcast violated discrimination rules and require Comcast to carry Tennis Channel on the same tier as Golf Channel and Versus.

"Above all,” Comcast’s proposed $45.2 billion Time Warner Cable buy (CD Feb 14 p1) “will benefit you, our customers,” TWC CEO Robert Marcus said Friday in an open letter emailed to subscribers. “Our two companies have been behind many of the innovative services that you enjoy every day,” including digital cable, high-speed Internet, DVRs, VOD and wireless “in the home and on-the-go -- to name just a few,” Marcus said. “The combined company will innovate faster and deploy even better products and features, including a superior video guide,” faster broadband speeds and “even more” wireless access points “so you can access the Internet wherever you go,” he said. Comcast and Time Warner Cable expect to complete the deal “around the end of 2014,” he said. “In the meantime, all of us at Time Warner Cable remain committed to providing you with great TV, ultra-fast Internet, rock solid phone service and innovative home security and monitoring. And we will continue to make significant investments to improve reliability and to enhance our customer service."

The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on Buckeye Cablevision’s petition for a waiver of the integration ban for its new Hybrid Box set-top box, the bureau announced in a public notice Friday (bit.ly/1glnB3j). Buckeye needs the waiver because the Hybrid Box combines a unidirectional QAM digital terminal adapter and an Internet Protocol (IP) video interface in the same box, which would violate the ban’s prohibition on new navigation devices that allow both conditional access and other functions in a single device. The QAM portion of the new box uses integrated security while the IP portion uses downloadable security, the PN said. Buckeye has said the box will encourage the transition to IP video, promote downloadable security and limit “consumer disruption in the IP transition,” the PN said. Comments and oppositions are due March 27, and Buckeye’s reply is due April 7, the PN said.