The National Cable TV Cooperative plans to start negotiating master service agreements with national access carriers and regional transport circuit providers through its Broadband Solutions -- Access Program. That frees NCTC members from independently contracting with larger carriers for broadband access and transport costs, it said Thursday.
A new TiVo product lets MVPDs integrate easily with Android TV. It upgraded user experience with an operator-branded interface powered by Google Assistant search and browse functionality, said the vendor Wednesday.
Charter Communications and the nonprofit US Ignite selected St. Petersburg, Florida, as a smart gigabit community, Charter blogged Tuesday.
The FCC should shift cable industry price reporting requirements to a biennial schedule, reducing the reporting “burdens of the price survey,” NCTA filed, posted Tuesday in docket 17-105. “A biennial survey of prices covering the year immediately prior to the survey would still provide the Commission and ultimately the public with information on rate trends for inclusion in the biennial Communications Marketplace Report without sacrificing the quality of the survey data." The group said the commission should consider “a simplified survey form for cable operators with uniform national pricing for their cable services.” NCTA with Charter Communications and Cox Enterprises met Media Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics staff.
Cable executives and America’s Communications Association representatives worry about rising retransmission consent fees (see 1903230001 or 1903250065) and about Nexstar's buying Tribune, they told aides to all FCC members and front-office Media Bureau staff. "Member companies pass through most, if not all, of these fee increases to consumers, such that subscribers’ bills have increased precipitously. Devoting additional resources and bandwidth to broadcasting also hinders efforts to expand and improve broadband in rural areas," said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-71. Consider "the recent behavior of Nexstar, which has earned itself a reputation as an exceptionally bad actor in an already dysfunctional retransmission consent marketplace," ACA said. It's difficult to negotiate retrans deals with the broadcaster, executives said. "Nexstar has promised to raise retransmission consent rates -- and, indeed, cites this as a benefit of the proposed transaction." As the agency weighs letting one TV station owner reach a larger percentage of U.S. viewers, cable executives noted that increasing the cap "will invariably lead to higher [retrans] prices," they said. Another ACA-member confab included Wireline Bureau Chief Kris Monteith and commissioners' aides, and Pai Chief of Staff Matthew Berry attended another gathering. Executives attending at least some meetings came from Armstrong Utilities, Cable One, HTC, Liberty Puerto Rico, Shentel and TDS. Nexstar didn't comment. The FCC meetings occurred Thursday during ACA's conference in Washington (see 1903200009), noted Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman. Most of the group's members attending went to Capitol Hill, he emailed. "Two small groups were taken to FCC as reflected in ex parte" filings, he added. NAB responded to the lobbying, saying ACA "rehashes tired anti-broadcaster rhetoric that we’ve heard before." TV stations and networks "provide the most popular content on cable systems," emailed NAB's spokesperson. "The FCC should reject ACA calls to inject itself into the free market retransmission consent negotiation process, and should allow local TV stations modest relief from 'I Love Lucy' era ownership rules.”
Municipal code taking effect April 1 and requiring all telecom providers with facilities in city rights of way to pay compensation for ROW use isn't a cable franchise fee, Rochester, New York, emailed us Monday in response to NCTA's naming it as an example of cities violating or exceeding franchise fee caps (see 1903140068). Rochester said before the new code, the city "has been arguably inconsistent" in ROW management, with different utilities and telecom providers paying different levels of compensation. The code establishes a uniform compensation requirement reflecting reasonably approximate costs for the maintenance, operation and management. "We are not 'double billing' Charter" Communications, it said.
Cable interests continue to urge the FCC to eliminate the requirement to provide leased access on a part-time basis. In a docket 07-42 posting Thursday, NCTA, Charter Communications and Comcast recapped a meeting with aides to Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks at which the cablers said the agency should at least simplify its existing rate formula for leased access channels on the basic tier. They said part-time leased access activity is "particularly burdensome" because it consumes sizable staff resources when in most cases, applicants end up not actually leasing time. Cable interests also talked to the offices of Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Brendan Carr (see 1903120070) and Mike O'Rielly (see 1903080056).
Congress imposed fiscal restraint on franchise authorities with Cable Act's Section 626(c)(1)(D) covering franchise renewal standards, and the statutory cap on franchise fees under Section 622, with the two being complementary, not one superfluous, NCTA said in an FCC docket 05-311 posting Friday. It said Congress authorized franchise fees of up to 5 percent of cable service revenue, but most franchising authorities wrongly view that cap "as a floor for monetary payments before adding on costly in-kind exactions -- rather than as the ceiling that Congress intended." It said valuing the "actual cost" of free or discounted services required by franchising authorities wrongly ignores opportunity costs. A Further NPRM asks about further capping some LFA mandates (see 1812200042).
Comcast will launch a $5 monthly streaming platform, Xfinity Flex, for its broadband customers. It said Thursday Flex will be available starting next week and allow streaming of content from subscription services like Netflix and HBO and from free services like YouTube and Pluto, plus music from Pandora and iHeartRadio.
Altice USA is in compliance with requirements attached to its Cablevision purchase mandating no layoffs of its customer-service workforce through 2020, the New York Public Service Commission emailed us Thursday. The state said it continues to review Altice filings to ensure compliance. It said jobs at News 12 aren't considered "customer facing" under the PSC-approved agreement, which prohibits layoffs or other involuntary reductions of customer-facing jobs in the state. Cablevision founder Charles Dolan asked the agency about Altice compliance (see 1903190024).