The amount of TV ads large drug companies buy has been dropping with a wave of patent exclusivity expiration washing over the drug industry, and is expected by industry officials to continue falling sharply, putting hundreds of millions of dollars of annual TV revenue at risk. So-called blockbuster drugs such as Plavix, Lipitor, Singulair and Seroquel have either lost their exclusivity or are about to. Historically, drugmakers stop advertising treatments up to a year before they expect to face competition from generics.
The FCC Wireline Bureau exceeded its delegated authority when it adopted a quantile regression methodology that imposes unreasonable burdens on rural LECs, applies support limits randomly, and will fail to provide incentives for efficient operations, several rural telecom associations said in a petition for commission-level review Friday (http://xrl.us/bm9ege). The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, OPASTCO, the National Exchange Carrier Association and the Western Telecommunications Alliance have accused the bureau of acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner, and have asked for a stay of the methodology and initial caps adopted by the bureau in its April 25 order until the commission can respond to its petition for review (http://xrl.us/bm9eg7).
The use of services in the private sector is critical to national space missions, and policies and frameworks are needed to allow commercial involvement to thrive, satellite executives and government officials said Friday. At the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in Washington, NASA’s chief and executives said having companies participate in government efforts is good for both stakeholders. Policies should be multi-generational to encourage the investments in the commercial space and satellite markets, said Steve Cook, director of space technologies at Dynetics.
While the legal battle pitting TV broadcasters against Dish Network’s ad-skipping technology focuses on alleged copyright infringement, it also will hold implications for future retransmission consent agreements, broadcast lawyers said. The DBS company and the Big Four broadcast networks filed litigation against each other late last week in U.S. District Court in New York.
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) threw its considerable weight behind spectrum sharing, approving a spectrum report Friday that stresses the importance of sharing. The report recommends that President Barack Obama issue a memorandum saying it’s U.S. government policy to share underutilized government spectrum and ordering agencies to identify 1,000 MHz of spectrum that could be shared with the private sector. PCAST didn’t release the report, but the details were presented at a meeting in Washington.
The White House plans to hold a cybersecurity event Wednesday to tout its partnership efforts with private sector entities to combat botnets. White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt will join representatives from TechAmerica and CenturyLink at the event, industry officials said. The event is expected be one of Schmidt’s last public appearances before he retires following two-and-a-half years at the helm of the administration’s cybersecurity office.
Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., slammed the proposed AWS license transfer from cable operators to Verizon Wireless, in a letter sent Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Attorney General Eric Holder. The pending purchases of AWS licenses from Cox, Leap, and SpectrumCo -- a venture of Bright House Networks, Comcast and Time Warner Cable -- raises “serious competition concerns which should be examined closely,” Kohl said. But Subcommittee Ranking Member Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, suggested otherwise in a separate letter that said the agreements “are primarily pro-competitive and will benefit consumers."
The FCC approved an allocation of 40 MHz of spectrum, to be used on a secondary basis, for a new Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) Thursday, within spectrum set aside for aeronautical mobile telemetry. An agreement on the spectrum took years of negotiations between GE Healthcare and Philips Healthcare with the Aerospace & Flight Test Radio Coordinating Council (AFTRCC). Participants said more than a year ago they had essentially worked out agreement on medical use of the 2360-2340 MHz band (CD Jan 19/11 p 6). Commissioner Robert McDowell questioned why it took more than five years for the FCC to move forward.
A complete sale of T-Mobile USA like the one to AT&T is unlikely, said parent company Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann. But “we do not exclude any option for the T-Mobile unit in the U.S., also not a merger,” Obermann said. Meanwhile, Obermann called for regulatory relief in Europe.
The FCC Thursday approved a notice of inquiry asking a battery of questions on Deployable Aerial Communications Architectures (DACA) -- balloon-mounted systems and other aerial base stations that could be quickly dispatched to disaster areas to keep communications alive when other systems falter. The FCC earlier sought comment, only to meet with resistance from wireless carriers, who cited major interference concerns (CD March 2/11 p 7).