House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said Wednesday he didn’t think there is enough political will for lawmakers to tackle music royalty performance rights this session. He'd prefer an industry-based solution rather than congressional intervention, he said: “Frankly you see a stalemate up here on these issues, and so it really is better done out in the marketplace,” he told us following a subcommittee hearing on the future of audio. He and other subcommittee members praised a recent Clear Channel agreement to pay performance royalties to the Big Machine Label Group and its artists (CD June 6 p12).
Executives from CEA and Pandora said in separate interviews Tuesday lawmakers are increasingly supportive of leveling the playing field among broadcast, radio and Internet radio stations. CEA President Gary Shapiro and Pandora founder Tim Westergren are scheduled to testify Wednesday at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the future of audio.
Senior engineers from cable’s three largest equipment suppliers, in a highly unusual move for the rivals, are banding together to update the industry’s broadband platform, so it can produce much higher data speeds than current DOCSIS 3.0 technology can support. Executives from Arris, Cisco and Google’s Motorola Mobility say they're jointly promoting upgrades to the DOCSIS protocol and related areas that could enable cable operators to deliver broadband speeds as high as 10 Gbps downstream and 2 Gbps up. That would be about 100 times faster than what most operators can deliver now over DOCSIS 3.0 networks.
GENEVA -- Trade officials are beginning to float ideas on how to classify and describe additional goods for tariff-free treatment under the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA), officials said following the start of informal talks. The World Trade Organization ITA Committee meeting in May (CD May 16 p6) agreed to begin meeting bilaterally and in small groups to start discussions on expansion, John Neuffer, a vice president at the Information Technology Industry Council, told us May 23. “So the train is moving forward.”
FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick steps down in mid-June, to be replaced by Deputy General Counsel Sean Lev … Sunrise Telecom board changes: Peter Kamin, 3K Limited Partnership, and Alan Howe, Broadband Initiatives, added, as directors; Henry Huff and Jennifer Walt resign … Open Internet Advisory Committee appointments: Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard University, chairman; David Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, vice chairman; and members including Harvey Anderson, Mozilla; Brad Burnham, Union Square Ventures; Alissa Cooper, Center for Democracy & Technology; Leslie Daigle, Internet Society; Jessica Gonzalez, National Hispanic Media Coalition; Neil Hunt, Netflix; Charles Kalmanek, AT&T; Kevin McElearney, Comcast; Elaine Paul, Disney; Chip Sharp, Cisco; Charles Slocum, Writers Guild of America, West; and Marcus Weldon, Alcatel-Lucent.
The FCC approved an allocation of 40 MHz of spectrum, to be used on a secondary basis, for a new Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) Thursday, within spectrum set aside for aeronautical mobile telemetry. An agreement on the spectrum took years of negotiations between GE Healthcare and Philips Healthcare with the Aerospace & Flight Test Radio Coordinating Council (AFTRCC). Participants said more than a year ago they had essentially worked out agreement on medical use of the 2360-2340 MHz band (CD Jan 19/11 p 6). Commissioner Robert McDowell questioned why it took more than five years for the FCC to move forward.
Facing several challenges, Verizon withdrew its petition for an increase in special access rates late Friday. Verizon’s rate increases, which foes say would have increased their rates by up to 8 percent in some areas, were scheduled to take effect Tuesday at midnight unless the FCC filed a suspension order (CD May 11 p7). “Verizon decided to withdraw its tariff filing prior to the filing becoming effective in order to focus our resources and the debate on the broader issues in the special access rulemaking proceeding,” a Verizon spokesman told us. “Those issues include continuing to demonstrate that the high-capacity marketplace is highly competitive and no additional regulations are necessary.”
GENEVA -- Expanding product coverage and national participation in a WTO agreement eliminating tariffs for certain information technology gear could give a big boost to global economic gains, officials and executives said at a symposium on the 15th anniversary of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). The ITA “must be expanded,” said Charlene Barshefsky, an attorney with WilmerHale. Negotiations could address the nearly $1 trillion in annual trade that isn’t covered for tariff-free treatment, speakers said.
Cable operators are looking to bring greater bandwidth and faster data transmission speeds to cable’s broadband pipes without resorting to costly all-fiber network buildouts. A team of cable technologists is promoting the idea of delivering Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) signals over the industry’s hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) networks in the near future, executives said in interviews and told a recent industry conference. The team of senior engineers from major cable operators and vendors is looking to win approval for their project from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) this summer.
Eighty-one percent of U.S. cellphone owners would consider paying a one-time fee of 30 cents to get radio stations’ terrestrial broadcasts, according to a poll done by Harris and paid for by the NAB. Forty-three percent of the 2,212 U.S. adults polled April 18-20 said they'd “strongly consider” paying what the association estimates a radio chip costs, up three percentage points from 2010. Another 38 percent responded they'd “probably consider” paying 30 cents, up two points from two years ago. Seventy-six percent of respondents now say they'd use a radio built into their cellphone, an increase of 10 percentage points from 2010, the NAB said (http://xrl.us/bm6qa9). “We're hopeful that as demand for this capability becomes more apparent, wireless carriers will voluntarily offer this feature or activate radio chips already in their devices,” an NAB spokesman said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm6qbd). “Radio-enabled cellphones are a standard feature in much of Europe and Asia.” CTIA sees “considerable marketplace evidence that many consumers prefer Pandora and other apps to the FM format, so consumer preference has to drive outcomes in this space,” responded Vice President Jot Carpenter. “For that reason, we agree with NAB’s oft-stated position that there is no need for an FM chip mandate. Consumers who want FM-enabled devices can buy them, as the market already delivers a variety of FM-enabled handsets.” CTIA is holding its convention in New Orleans. (See separate report in this issue.) “For those who wish to listen to analog over-the-air radio on their smartphones, there are dozens of models that offer that feature,” noted CEA Senior Vice President Michael Petricone. “Similarly, the vibrant mobile phone marketplace also serves the growing number who prefer listening to Pandora, Spotify or radio stations digitally streamed on the Internet. Americans are entirely capable of picking smartphones and other devices with the features and functions they prefer. We strongly object to any attempts to remove the consumer’s right to choose by mandating the inclusion of analog over-the-air radio receivers in mobile phones or other devices."