A hearing on Internet accessibility legislation exploded into a political brawl after Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., lashed out at CEA President Gary Shapiro. Testifying Thursday to the House Communications Subcommittee, Shapiro had said Markey’s bill (HR-3101) could kill start-up consumer electronics manufacturers by requiring them to make all products accessible to people with any disability. Republicans defended the CEA executive and scolded Markey. Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., tried to steer the discussion back toward areas of agreement.
STANFORD, Calif. -- A veteran FCC economist fleshed out alternatives for auctioning spectrum that broadcasters give up for reuse in mobile broadband. The commission could give out overlay licenses, hold separate auctions to clear and re-license the spectrum, or set up a process to make both changes at the same time, said Evan Kwerel, senior economic adviser to the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, saying he spoke only for himself.
ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments are forming a software joint venture to accelerate the development of smartphones, tablets and other products running on variants of the Linux platform, the companies said. The venture, called Linaro, seeks to simplify the development process for Linux-based operating systems. Linaro’s first software and tools release is due out in November.
Fifty-four ex-government officials lobby on Comcast’s planned purchase of a controlling stake in NBC Universal, said a study by a project of American University’s School of Communication. It cited those whose disclosure forms list the deal as a specific lobbying issue. A total of 78 former government employees were registered as Comcast lobbyists in Q4 2009 and this year’s Q1, said the Investigative Reporting Workshop in a study published with Politico, http://xrl.us/bhm4hs. They include ex-Reps. Robert Walker, R-Pa., William Gray, D-Pa., and Chip Pickering, R-Miss., and ex-Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla. General Electric, parent of NBC Universal, has 19 ex-government officials lobbying on the deal with Comcast, the workshop said. Spokespeople for Comcast and NBC Universal didn’t reply to messages seeking comment. Separately, the deal won support from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, in a Tuesday letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. National Action Network President Rev. Al Sharpton also wrote the commission this week to support the deal.
Nearly a year after the analog TV cutoff, some consumers who made the switch to DTV with a government-subsidized converter box have complained their device suddenly stopped working. Reviews for some boxes still being sold online vary, with some buyers claiming certain brands of boxes broke down within six months of installation. Overall, more than 50 million boxes were sold during the switchover period, and they have worked well, a CEA spokeswoman said. “We've talked to manufacturers and tried to stay in the loop on this,” she said. “We're not getting the calls. These are not devices that were intended to be used for six months and tossed."
Intel is “putting all our energy” into “working with Google on enabling” Sony and Logitech TV products based on the Android operating system (CED May 21 p5) to be sold at retail this year, Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager for Intel’s Digital Home Group, said in a phone briefing Friday. But he said, “We are also very deeply engaged with many other major CE OEMs, so you could expect there to be many additional CE products -- TVs, set-top boxes, media players -- hitting the retail shelves in spring of 2011.” He declined to name other OEMs, citing “very strict confidentiality” deals, but said Intel is “definitely putting a huge amount of energy to scale this out very, very rapidly."
Deploying power-efficient ADSL and DSL networking equipment could cut power consumption by up to 60 percent, the European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association said Tuesday. Its new home gateway energy consumption benchmark, the Green Router for Energy Efficient home Networking (GREEN), involved chip vendors and suppliers of home gateways used to connect devices in the home to the Internet, it said. The first phase of the GREEN benchmark focused on three product categories, ETNO said: gateways already in wide use; reference designs optimized for reduced power consumption levels; and reference designs that weren’t enhanced to cut power consumption. Test results showed a “clear improvement trend,” ETNO said. Power use in the “best of class” ADSL home gateway was limited to 8.1 W in full power mode and 5 W in low power, well below EU target values, it said. For VDSL home gateways the best results were 7.5 W in full and 5.3 in low power modes, it said. By comparing the potential energy consumption difference between the best and worst in class to corresponding CO2 emissions savings, ETNO estimated that on the basis of 20 million deployed ADSL home gateways, efficiency improvements will result in a yearly reduction of CO2 emissions of around 568,000 tons. That’s equivalent to the emissions produced by more than 312,000 cars in a year, or the CO2 captured in 568,000 adult trees, it said. For VDSL, assuming five million deployed home gateways, the annual CO2 reduction is close to 275,000 tons, or the emissions or 142,000 cars, it said. A second phase of GREEN measurements is scheduled for later this year, ETNO said.
Operators worldwide are still expected to deploy HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access), a wireless broadband technology, even as they move aggressively to LTE, company officials told us. Meanwhile, AT&T plans to move from the current planned rollout of HSPA 7.2 to HSPA+, a spokesman said.
The FCC should let Intel out of requirements that HD set-top boxes include a FireWire port while the commission considers rules that would let all box makers get around the IEEE 1394 output requirement, Intel said in a meeting with Media Bureau officials this week, an ex parte filing shows. “An interim waiver of the IEEE 1394 requirement, pending the conclusion of the rulemaking, would help to advance the goal of promoting and enabling home video networking by allowing operator-supplied set-top boxes containing Intel’s cost-effective systems-on-a-chip to reach subscribers sooner,” it said.
Dish Network and DirecTV said they'll work together on a new advertising platform meant to increase sales to national advertisers. The platform, called the Advanced Satellite Advertising Platform (ASAP), will give advertisers access to almost 30 million households, a major selling point. The platform will be interactive and it allows regional locators, product information and requests for additional information, the companies said Monday.