LAS VEGAS -- With 2012 widely seen as a make or break year for mobile DTV, the Mobile 500 Alliance and Mobile Content Venture (MCV) are expected to continue discussions at CES this week on a potential merger, industry officials said.
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell expects Universal Service Fund reform to dominate the FCC’s agenda in the early part of 2012, starting with a Lifeline cleanup order at the Jan. 31 meeting. McDowell hopes that will be followed by an order addressing USF contribution issues left unsettled by last October’s order (CD Oct 28 p1), he said during an interview last week. McDowell said he remains open minded on a 700 MHz interoperability order and stressed the importance of spectrum efficiency. McDowell also thinks more media ownership deregulation than the FCC proposed in the quadrennial review may be needed.
EchoStar signed a deal with Broadcom to build Sling Media place-shifting technology into chips for cable set-top boxes, the company said. Set-tops containing Sling Media software will be available by Q3, the company said. The companies didn’t announce agreements with major U.S. cable set-top suppliers, including Motorola and Cisco, but EchoStar itself has sought to develop cable set-tops for the U.S. market. EchoStar supplies satellite set-tops to Dish Network and Bell Canada’s ExpressVu, and also provides set-tops for German cable operator Unity Media. Broadcom supplies processor chips for EchoStar’s set-tops and for Motorola and Cisco products. Time Warner Cable began testing standalone Slingbox set-tops last year in New York City.
MetroPCS will begin offering the Mobile Content Venture’s Dyle mobile DTV service to customers this year on a new Samsung 4G LTE smartphone, the companies said Wednesday. The deal makes MetroPCS the first cellular carrier partner for the TV broadcasters’ fledgling mobile DTV service. Each of MetroPCS’s 14 major markets includes at least one MCV member station that will be broadcasting mobile DTV services this year, the MCV said. And some markets, such as Los Angeles, will have mobile DTV programming from as many as six stations, said Erik Moreno, co-general manager of the MCV. “We will be encouraging additional broadcasters to light up their stations in that core MetroPCS footprint,” he said.
Demand for digital cable set-top boxes in Asia is driving a solid year for the category despite lower shipments in North America, according to data from NPD In-Stat. Declines in North America are due to a fall-off in cable TV subscriber households and cable TV operators tightening capital expenditure budgets, In-Stat said. For 2011, global digital set-top box shipments are on track to pass 55 million units, down one percent from 2010, it said. Although In-Stat is projecting global unit shipments to slow in 2012 and 2013, the ongoing shift from analog cable to digital cable in developing countries will boost demand again in 2014, said analyst Mike Paxton. Motorola Mobility continues to be the leading cable set-top box manufacturer, followed by Cisco Systems, In-Stat said. In 2011, nearly 11 million HD cable set-top boxes are forecast to ship, while total digital cable set-top box product revenue is expected to reach $6.5 billion, it said. The total available market for semiconductor components in digital cable boxes is forecast to be $2.9 billion this year, In-Stat said.
The TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board is currently conducting research which it will submit to the FCC when completed, a spokesman for the monitoring board said. In a letter sent last week that followed up on information requested in a May 2011 meeting between FCC Media Bureau staff and the monitoring board, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake asked NAB CEO Gordon Smith for information about how the board is meeting the commitments it made to the FCC in 1997. “As we have not yet received any such information, I am writing to request again that such information be provided to the FCC,” Lake wrote in the letter. Among the commitments were an agreement to conduct focus groups and quantitative studies to learn whether the parental guidelines are giving useful information to parents and to conduct independent scientific research and evaluation of the V-chip, Lake’s letter said. “I am writing to request an updated copy of any research undertaken by the board related to this commitment,” he said, asking for the information by Dec. 21.
Lightsquared is “very pleased” with the results of a new round of testing into whether its proposed LTE broadband wireless network interferes with GPS-equipped devices, CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said Monday at the UBS conference in New York.
The FCC’s Public Safety Bureau approved a $273,000 budget for the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) to be used to cover its expenses for a one-year period, ending Aug. 31, 2012 (http://xrl.us/bmi7qw). All of the costs are to be paid by the 21 local and state government entities who have received waivers from the FCC to build out early broadband systems for first responders in the 700 MHz band. Each will chip in $13,000 to pay for PSST “staff; bookkeeping and accounting; legal and consulting services; and other miscellaneous expenses.” The order reminded the PSST that the money is to be used only to pay for the “legitimate expenses incurred as a result of administering [the] leases.”
Major cable operators plan to deploy more energy-efficient set-top boxes than those widely in use now. The U.S.’s six biggest cable operators plan to have at least 90 percent of all new set-tops they buy and deploy by the end of 2013 be Energy Star 3.0-compliant, NCTA executives said Friday. The association and CableLabs are setting up an energy lab to develop electricity-efficient set-tops and other gear used by consumers, and equipment used by cable companies’ networks. A CEA executive said such efforts may reduce power usage and costs, the Environmental Protection Agency said it’s a good move, and environmental groups backed it while saying more must be done by cable operators to use less power.
Restoring “Silicon Valley to its rightful place as the center of wireless hardware innovation” requires securing branch offices of the FCC and the NTIA and unifying fragmented local public and private interests, said the head of an industry organization. “Backhaul is the next big opportunity in wireless, … Silicon Valley almost certainly has the innovation and knowledge to create solutions,” and investments in “small pole-top LTE cells and smart antenna for millimeter wave backhaul systems … indicate that the capital market recognizes” the opportunity, said President David Witkowski of the Wireless Communications Alliance, a nonprofit in the region. But local entrepreneurs need “access to rulemakers in Washington, D.C.,” said his text for a presentation at the Silicon Valley Wireless Symposium. “Venture capital is typically allocated for research, development and go-to-market, not lobbying and stalking the halls of the FCC. Software and mobile apps typically don’t require the FCC to modify rules. Wireless hardware often does. Building a wireless hardware economy requires a different strategy and tactics.” And “the FCC is not readily accessible to the individual entrepreneur, because it’s in Washington, D.C., not here in the Silicon Valley where it’s needed,” Witkowski said. The commission has a field office in San Francisco that he didn’t mention. Established wireless-hardware hubs have much different economic development approaches to wireless from the Bay area’s, Witkowski said. “In San Diego, by far the dominant nonprofit organization for communications is CommNexus, which enjoys strong support from both regional corporations and even local government officials,” he said. Austin, Texas, “has a similar model.” Silicon Valley, by contrast, “has over a dozen small nonprofits dealing with wireless” from varying perspectives, and government at all levels “is largely absent and seems not to know what these smaller organizations are trying to accomplish,” Witkowski said. A single council of companies, governments, nonprofits and academics would help align the region’s interests with its history, he said. Long before “the silicon revolution, the San Francisco Bay area was famous for its technical leadership in the development of radio and microwave technology,” Witkowski said. Since “the investment community has almost completely abandoned the semiconductor industry during the recent downturn, I sometimes wonder if we shouldn’t rebrand ourselves as the Wireless Valley."