June 2014

Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) outlined an ambitious agenda for spectrum reform, which includes plans to introduce three bills: The Wireless Innovation Act to free up government spectrum; a bill directing the Federal Communications Commission to conduct tests in the upper 5 GHz band and modify the rules to allow Wi-Fi so long as it doesn’t create harmful interference to vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications; and a bill to promote wireless infrastructure.

Sen Rubio, a member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, said that there were a lot of serious policy questions about advancements in high-speed wireless, but what was not debatable was that more spectrum was needed. He said the government should not wait until the current FCC spectrum auctions are over before taking steps to free up more.

His Wireless Innovation Act:

• Reallocates 200 MHz of government spectrum for commercial use;
• Establishes an auction pipeline with staggered auctions starting in 2018;
• Incentivizes federal agencies to reallocate spectrum by allowing portions of the proceeds to be used or conducting research and development, as well as cost and technical assessments on reallocating future spectrum bands;
• Requires an analysis of requests for new or modified frequency assignments to determine whether a commercial service could be used, whether federal users can share; and
• Requires [the National Telecommunications & Information Administration] to develop a framework to determine the commercial value of Federal spectrum.

[Commentary] With the 2014 World Cup kicking off, there is significant opportunity to engage fútbol aficionados by putting access to the games in their hands -- both literally and figuratively.

Univision’s Spanish-language coverage is disrupting the sports streaming model by eliminating all barriers and providing live, around-the-clock coverage for 56 matches on multiple screens, including TV, online and several mobile platforms, including Unimás and Univision Deportes.

During 2010’s World Cup, Univision reached more than 32 million viewers, and that number is expected to grow across all platforms. We are focused on broadcasting the games to as many viewers as possible and in as many platforms as possible. As new products and providers emerge every day, live-streaming piracy is on the rise and is a challenge that requires serious attention -- yet it also represents a significant opportunity to learn from business intelligence and to deliver on unmet consumer demand.

Here, we explore three key steps to help content owners and distributors disrupt piracy, reengage consumers, and uncover business intelligence from piracy.

• Good defense: Disrupting piracy and protecting your rights isn’t just about setting up barriers and thinking, “my content is secure now.”
• Reengage your fans: Give them the stadium experience anywhere and everywhere. People of all ages watch the World Cup.
• Use data to predict the next move and come up with a better game plan: This step is possibly the most important, because content owners and distributors can’t move ahead unless they know what pirate activity happened during a broadcast.

[Viva is Vice President, Univision; Ragland is Vice President, Irdeto]

The media industry failed in 2013 to persuade more customers to pay for its online news services, in spite of experimenting with new ways of charging for content, new research has found.

According to a survey of 19,000 people in 10 countries, conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, only one internet user in 10 was willing to pay for digital news -- exactly the same proportion as in 2012. However, the study did contain some encouraging news for media groups as, even though paying customer numbers remained flat, the proportion willing to commit to subscriptions -- as opposed to one-off payments, day passes or app downloads -- increased.

Of all those paying for online news, 59 percent now have a subscription, compared with 43 percent in 2012. As subscribers generally pay more than occasional customers, they are likely to have boosted the online revenues for many publishers. This phenomenon is consistent with the findings of another report by US research group Pew that concluded “more revenue is being squeezed out of a smaller, or at least flat, number of paying consumers.”

Jim Cicconi, AT&T's senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said Netflix probably has a lot more leverage in its relationship with broadband companies than it's letting on.

"They've been able to get agreements that they obviously like with both Comcast and Verizon," said Cicconi. When a reporter pointed out that Netflix keeps complaining about the deals, Cicconi brushed the objections aside. "Then why on Earth would they have agreed to them? I think that's double-talk," he added. "No company that's in a for-profit business is going to act against its economic interests. Sure, any company would like to pay zero for services they need to deliver their business, but that's not a practical approach." The implication is that Netflix is at least breaking even if not coming out ahead in its negotiations with ISPs.