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  2. July 2015

July 2015

Comcast stream will 'cannibalize' company's core video services, analyst says

Comcast's upcoming over-the-top pay-TV service could prove popular enough to siphon subscribers away from the company's more profitable linear video products, say analysts. "This service is very attractive," said Joel Espelien, senior analyst for The Diffusion Group. "Our data shows these [OTT] services have appeal beyond just millennials. There is a real potential that these services will start to cannibalize the core pay-TV market as some people choose to 'downsize' their pay-TV packages." Comcast said it will soon begin testing in Boston (MA) for a new OTT service for Xfinity broadband subscribers that offers mobile-device streaming of broadcast channels and HBO, plus an assortment of on-demand programming, for $15 a month. Comcast said the service will expand to its entire footprint in 2016.

The fact that Stream is offering over-the-air channels that are free with a broadcast antenna, and doesn't stream to OTT devices, doesn't sit well with some analysts. "Don't I already have access to those networks?" asked Marc Berman, editor-in-chief of TV Media Insights. "What am I getting that's different? I think that's the question that needs to be answered, which I don't think is being answered." Meanwhile, analyst Dan Rayburn cautions that conclusions about the service can't effectively be drawn until Stream officially launches. "What happens if they roll it out in a couple of test markets and realize that it's not potentially what they thought it was? They don't have as much interest as they thought?" Rayburn asked. "A lot of things can happen. That's the thing with these services, you never know what they're going to turn into. Until they're actually on the market and we can judge them on the merits of the actual service, it's a complete guessing game."

NTCA Launches Gig Certified Program for Rural Telecommunication Companies

NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association has announced a gigabit certification program for its rural telecommunication company members, reminding us that rural telcos have made substantial progress in deploying gigabit services. “By becoming a Certified Gig-Capable Provider with NTCA, you will join a national campaign to celebrate rural networks that support gigabit speeds and help us show the world how independent telecom providers are delivering the Internet of tomorrow -- today,” wrote the NTCA.

Companies that receive certification will be allowed to use NTCA’s “Gig Certified” logo on their marketing materials and will be recognized in NTCA media, on the NTCA website and during association conferences and events. Certification will be on an exchange-by-exchange basis, and a third-party engineering firm will need to provide a letter confirming that a service provider can deliver gigabit service to at least 95 percent of the locations in each exchange for which it is requesting certification. Applicants also must be NTCA members and must pay a $250 fee each time they submit an application.

FCC’s Title II Trifecta Gamble

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission could not have gambled more riskily in how it implemented network neutrality. It simultaneously snubbed all three branches of the US Government with its Title II utility regulation approach. If this were a horse race bet, the FCC’s Title II gamble would be like someone betting their mortgage on a trifecta bet where the bettor only wins by guessing exactly which horses come in first, second, and third.

Why is the FCC’s Title II trifecta bet so risky? First, the FCC is betting its proverbial home mortgage that President Barack Obama will be successful this fall in not allowing a House appropriations rider, that would defund the FCC’s ability to implement Title II Internet regulation of the Internet, to become law as part of the annual omnibus spending bill for the whole government. Second, the FCC also is betting its proverbial home mortgage that the courts will completely uphold the FCC’s asserted Internet regulation authority, despite the fact that the FCC has lost twice before on this issue in 2010 and again in 2014. Third, the FCC is betting its proverbial home mortgage that a Republican will not be elected president in 2016. So why are the FCC and its powerful political supporters claiming they have already won this race, when in fact they face long 8-1 odds of beating Congress, the Courts and the electoral process “horses” in perfect order? The only way such an 8-1 odds bet makes any rational sense here is if the FCC and its supporters know that net neutrality is really a political bait-and-switch ruse for what they really want. That would be the “strongest possible” government control over the Internet, because the medium is the message, and who controls the medium controls the message.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC, a research consultancy for Fortune 500 companies]

Technology Policy Institute
Tuesday, August 18
9:00 am

Panel:

  • James Assey, Executive Vice President, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
  • Honorable Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
  • Thomas Hazlett, H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics, Clemson University
  • Blair Levin, Executive Director, Gig.U and Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program, The Brookings Institution
  • Bradley Wimmer, Professor of Economics, Lee Business School, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
  • Scott Wallsten (moderator), Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute

Federal Communications Commission
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST
https://www.fcc.gov/events/roundtable-discussion-closed-captioning-publi...

The Federal Communications Commission will hold a forum on November 10, 2015, to promote discussion about closed captioning of public access and governmental programming shown on television. The event will include discussions about the benefits of captioning such programming, the relevant captioning obligations of programmers and stations, and effective and efficient captioning solutions. The event will engage local government professionals, policymakers, captioning vendors, consumer groups, engineers, representatives from the programming industry, and others as appropriate. The goal of this event is to raise awareness of the issues surrounding captioning of public access and governmental programming.

1:00 - 1:05 PM Welcoming Remarks

1:05 - 2:15 PM Overview: Why Caption PEG Programming?
This session will review the benefits of captioning PEG programming, and will provide an overview of the current rules generally governing the provision of closed captions on video programming.

Facilitator: Suzy Rosen Singleton, Attorney-Advisor, Disability Rights Office (DRO), CGB, FCC

Contributors:

  • Eliot Greenwald, Deputy Chief, DRO, CGB, FCC
  • Amanda Maisels, Deputy Chief, Disability Rights Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice
  • Claude Stout, Executive Director, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc.
  • Mike Wassenaar, President, Alliance for Community Media

2:15 – 2:25 PM Break

2:25 – 3:35 PM Best Practices for Closed Captioning PEG Programming
This session will discuss captioning best practices and address technical and practical challenges in the PEG environment.

Facilitator: Rosaline Crawford, Attorney-Advisor, DRO, CGB, FCC

Contributors:

  • Diane Burstein, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
  • Tole Khesin, Vice President of Marketing, 3PlayMedia
  • Carol Studenmund, President, LNS Captioning
  • Christian Vogler, PhD, Associate Professor at the Department of Art, Communication and Theatre, and Director, Technology Access Program, Gallaudet University
  • Heather York, Vice President of Marketing, VITAC

3:35 – 3:45 PM Break

3:45 - 4:55 PM Closed Captioning Solutions for PEG Programming
This session will discuss budgeting for captioning costs, funding, and low-cost and free solutions to facilitate the provision of closed captioning on PEG programming.

Facilitator: Gregory Hlibok, Chief, DRO, CGB, FCC

Contributors:

  • Jason Barnett, President/CEO, Flarean SBC, Volunteer Captioning Case Study: 2014 Minnesota Gubernatorial 30 Debates
  • Steve Brunsberg, Operations and Production Manager, Saint Paul Neighborhood Network
  • Donna Keating, Media Services Manager, Executive Producer, County Cable Montgomery
  • Carl Richardson, Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator, Massachusetts State House
  • Steve Traylor, Executive Director, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors

4:55 – 5:00 PM Closing Remarks


FCC Announces Roundtable Event to Discuss Closed Captioning of Public Access and Governmental Programming

The Federal Communications Commission announced it will hold a forum on November 10, 2015, to promote discussion about closed captioning of public access and governmental programming shown on television. The event will include discussions about the benefits of captioning such programming, the relevant captioning obligations of programmers and stations, and effective and efficient captioning solutions.

The event will engage local government professionals, policy makers, captioning vendors, consumer groups, engineers, representatives from the programming industry, and others as appropriate. The goal of this event is to raise awareness of the issues surrounding captioning of public access and governmental programming.

Hacked in the USA: China’s Not-So-Hidden Infiltration Op

The vast cyberattack in Washington began with, of all things, travel reservations. More than two years ago, troves of personal data were stolen from US travel companies. Hackers subsequently made off with health records at big insurance companies and infiltrated federal computers where they stole personnel records on 21.5 million people -- in what apparently is the largest such theft of US government records in history. Those individual attacks, once believed to be unconnected, now appear to be part of a coordinated campaign by Chinese hackers to collect sensitive details on key people that went on far longer -- and burrowed far deeper -- than initially thought. But time and again, US authorities missed clues connecting one incident to the next.

Interviews with federal investigators and cybersecurity experts paint a troubling portrait of what many are calling a serious failure of US intelligence agencies to spot the pattern or warn potential victims. Moreover, the problems in Washington add new urgency to calls for vigilance in the private sector. In revealing the scope of stolen government data on July 9, Obama Administration officials declined to identify a perpetrator. Investigators say the Chinese government was almost certainly behind the effort, an allegation China has vehemently denied.

Here’s how data caps really affect your Internet use, according to data

A new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research takes actual, real-world data on data usage from a North American Internet provider and shows that even for people on fixed, wired home broadband, data caps have a dramatic effect on consumer behavior. It turns out that data caps are incredibly effective at getting people to use less data, and not merely on cellphone plans. The study looks at tens of thousands of subscribers belonging to an unnamed provider of high-speed broadband in four markets. And one key takeaway is that the closer people get to hitting their data caps, they more they make a conscious decision to use less Internet.

Meanwhile, consumers who are near the end of their monthly billing cycle but still have a chunk of unused data will use more of it, in an attempt to make the most of their plans. This might sound obvious in the context of your cellular bill; you probably know how much data you pay for by heart. But Williams was studying the effect of data caps on residential Internet. Such limits on home broadband are relatively rare in the industry, but some providers have considered rolling them out more widely. The really interesting difference has to do with folks on data-capped or usage-based plans versus those on "unlimited" plans with no data caps. At the time the data was collected, in 2012, this particular provider offered higher speeds to those on capped plans, perhaps as incentive to get unlimited data users to switch. People valued the extra speed they got from the metered plans far more than they valued the extra data they got on unlimited data plans.

Local TV takes news to Web in fight for cord cutters

Local TV stations are plugging one of the last major holes in mobile video: streaming their news to phones and tablets. The move presents yet another challenge to cable and satellite providers, which are grappling with the widespread online availability of content. Fall 2015, 112 US stations will begin streaming live newscasts through an app called NewsOn, one of several planned "over-the-top" offerings delivered online without a pay TV subscription. And Verizon Digital Media Services, which offers technology that enables streaming on a wide variety of screens, is in talks with owners of more than 300 affiliates that want to supply programming directly to consumers over the Internet, Ralf Jacob, chief revenue officer, told Reuters. Stations could use the technology to stream news or other local programming.

Local broadcasters, like cable networks, are trying to adapt to the changing preferences of viewers, who increasingly want to watch programs on their own schedules. The challenge for local news programs will be to satisfy demand for mobile video without undermining audience numbers for traditional broadcasts, which generate hefty fees from cable operators as well as higher ad rates than online programming. After years of isolated experiments with mobile news, a critical mass of the local TV industry is seizing on the idea. If they are successful, they could both increase viewing by current consumers and attract new ones, especially a younger generation of viewers who prefer watching television programming on mobile devices. But if current viewers "cut the cord," or drop pay TV service, broadcast stations and cable operators could both suffer.

Regulation and Investment: Uncertainty, With an Application to FCC Title II Regulation of the Internet

The impact of regulation on investments in fixed capital has been a central focus of economic inquiry for decades. As a general rule, economic theory can suggest either a positive or a negative role for regulation, depending on the circumstances. Recent years have seen a surge in empirical studies that seek to estimate the overall impact of regulation on investment and overall economic activity. In addition, more traditional studies analyzing specific micro-level policies have continued to contribute to our understanding. In this paper, we explore the unique challenges facing policy evaluations of the effects of regulation on investment and provide guidance on overcoming the adverse circumstances. In addition, we discuss the impact of two types of uncertainty – uncertainty regarding the actions of regulators, and uncertainty regarding the likely impact of regulations – and draw implications for the modeling of the actions of both. We close with a specific application to the current debate over net neutrality regulation of Internet service providers.

We showed that Title II regulation should be expected to increase costs, and therefore is the type of policy that should be expected to reduce investment. Second, we reviewed field-specific evidence that suggested that the scale of the negative effect could be quite large, from about 5.5 percent to as much as 20.8 percent.

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