Matt Daneman

Many major cable distributors have almost crossed the finish line on full digital conversion of their analog signals, but digital transition progress for smaller operators is more of a mixed bag, said companies and industry experts. Most small to midsize cable operators will go digital, or even transition to IPTV, within a decade, American Cable Association President Matt Polka told us. "We want to get there," he said. "We need to maximize our networks to be more efficient so we can reclaim more bandwidth [for broadband]. The issue becomes one of complexity, size, technology and available resources."

Program carriage rules clearly didn't extend to broadcasters, and the FCC decision Friday to reject Liberman Broadcasting's carriage complaint against Comcast makes it "especially clear," one lawyer with cable clients told us Friday. Liberman's complaint -- alleging Comcast dumped the broadcaster's Estrella TV network in favor of Spanish-language networks in which it had a financial stake -- was seen as facing tough odds (see 1604080013).

Battling for each other’s customers, telcos and ISPs increasingly are warring over each other’s advertising claims. Telco-related ad cases before the Council of Better Business Bureaus' National Advertising Division (NAD) are up. That growth could point to an increased emphasis on comparative advertising on the differences among options for consumers, now that two-year commitments and early termination fees have given way to more flexible contracts and even competitors paying customers’ early termination fees, said Alysa Hutnik, a Kelley Drye attorney with advertising expertise.

The FCC has come under fire for rulemaking policies and practices by everyone from lawmakers to its minority-party commissioners, though its openness and transparency -- especially in comparison with some other regulatory agencies -- could be worse, said several commission watchers and regulatory agency experts. Considering the amount of rulemaking the FCC engages in, "it works pretty well," Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us.

Ligado -- under fire from segments of the aviation and aeronautics industry worried about effects of its proposed LTE network on aviation GPS receivers (see 1608010036) -- agreed with some of their assertions. The company in a filing in FCC RM-11681 Tuesday said it had regular talks with Federal Aviation Administration staff about "performance-based conformance" conditions, such as the FAA and FCC requiring the company assess technical parameters of each base station before deployment to set power limits that would ensure conforming with FAA requirements. Ligado said the FAA is reviewing a Ligado-proposed model and compliance plan. The FAA didn't comment Tuesday. The company agreed with a process being pushed by the aviation industry that needs to be at least partially implemented before any granting of the firm's license modification or issuing of a related NPRM. Ligado said the conformance condition it's discussing with the FAA "is similar in many respects" to an aviation industry-backed three-step process outlined in an ex parte filing last week, which involves an FAA-headed theoretical investigation of possible Ligado interference to certified GPS receivers, field testing using real-world Ligado equipment, and deployment of Ligado's network -- with FAA- and FCC-imposed license conditions; rollout would be suspended if any interference issues manifest. At a meeting with Phil Verveer, aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, aviation groups complained Ligado didn't provide sufficient procedural and technical information, saying Ligado's push for approval should be shelved. Representatives of Aviation Spectrum Resources, Helicopter Association International, Airlines for America and the Aerospace Industries Association attended the meeting. They didn't comment Tuesday. The plan Ligado said it pitched to the FAA would have that agency -- with input from the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics -- OK a theoretical model the firm would use to predict signal propagation from proposed base stations. Field testing would follow to validate compliance of actual emissions with those modeled limits if the FAA and RTCA deem it necessary, to be followed by tower-by-tower assessment of the network deployment to ensure each base station follows power limits that would ensure received power from Ligado operations falls below FAA guidelines. Ligado said since it would have to satisfy all FCC conditions before bringing any part of terrestrial low-power service online, "there is therefore no reason to delay modifying Ligado's licenses subject to the conditions." The company said conditions suggested in its license modification application (see 1512310016) cover GPS interference protections, including some for certified aviation receivers. Those conditions would have the company reduce power in transmitters in the 1526-1536 MHz band to a level that would protect certified aviation receivers.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has concerns about sharing NOAA's 1675-1680 MHz downlink spectrum with terrestrial commercial use. In reply comments posted Friday in FCC RM-11681, Ligado included a NOAA presentation given to Senate staff that was "deliberately and explicitly arguing against any sharing," the company said. In a statement to us Friday, NOAA said it's seen interference with test transmissions on bandwidth it uses for its satellites, and that losing 1675-1680 MHz would disrupt the download of satellite data and "interfere with our ability to receive and transmit data from approximately 27,000 terrestrial and remote systems, such as seismic stations, stream gauges, tsunami buoys and weather stations."

The slide in pay-TV subscriptions continues to accelerate, but some of the largest multichannel video programming distributors' video subscriber losses slowed in the most recent quarter. That was in marked contrast to Q2 2015 when cord-cutting concerns sparked wide industry and Wall Street hand-wringing (see 1508070033). Meanwhile the cable industry is gaining pay-TV market share, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in a note Wednesday. Those gains -- cable's first since the 1990s -- are "a profound change in the marketplace," while market share-losing direct broadcast satellite runs the risk of becoming "anachronistic," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett told us. But analysts estimated MVPDs are losing hundreds of thousands of TV subscribers quarterly, and one said declines may accelerate.

The rebranding of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks into Charter Communications will begin this fall, as the company over the next year reconciles various packages and pricing, and over the next two-plus years standardizes its business processes, said Charter CEO Tom Rutledge Tuesday. He spoke in the company's Q2 earnings call -- its first since Charter closed in May on its approximately $90 billion takeovers of TWC and BHN (see 1605120040). Charter's cloud-based user interface Spectrum Guide will be available in most of legacy Charter's footprint by year's end, and will begin to be available in major TWC markets by mid-2017 and throughout the BHN and TWC footprints by sometime in 2018 as those markets also go all digital in the same time frame, Rutledge said. Today, roughly 60 percent of TWC's footprint is digital, while BHN is at 50 percent, he said.

Suddenlink's decision to drop Viacom content last year (see 1504090051) remains "a very good decision," though not automatically one that Altice USA will make for its Optimum -- formerly Cablevision -- footprint, Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said during Altice's Q2 earnings call Tuesday. The Viacom move's "impact on customers was relatively minimal" because that content was replaced by alterative channels, and given the big and rapidly growing cost of content, Altice USA will look at viable alternatives, Goei said. He said "it really is on a case-by-case basis." Multiple times during the Tuesday call, Goei and Michel Combes, CEO of parent company Altice, said Altice USA's focus is on integration of Suddenlink and Optimum, network investment and reducing churn. Goei said the company is seeing increased customer adoption of its higher-margin top-tier broadband offerings with the elimination of data caps on them. Tuesday's earnings report was the company's first since it closed on Cablevision in June (see 1606210026). Goei said Optimum had about 120 people resign from the management and executive ranks, including all the Dolan family members, saving the company $50 million to $100 million annually. For the quarter, Suddenlink revenue was up 5.2 percent to $640 million from the year-ago quarter and the typical seasonal decline in broadband and video customers was less. Optimum pro forma revenue was $1.62 billion, up slightly more than 1 percent, Altice said in a news release.

Globalstar expects to launch a pair of satcom products by early 2017 aimed at broad consumer markets. "You can imagine something appearing at Wal-Mart ... in that type of retailer," CEO Jay Monroe said Friday during the company's Q2 earnings call, referring to its upcoming Spot device. "It's a very, very broad product opportunity for us." But the company's Sat-Fi 2, which will connect Wi-Fi enabled devices to its satellite broadband network, faces challenge from multiple competitors, satellite consultant Tim Farrar told us.