Intel CEO Paul Otellini endorsed SoftBank’s buy of Sprint Nextel, which he sees as superior to a Dish Network buy of the wireless carrier. Intel filed an email Otellini sent FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski as an ex parte contact with the agency. Otellini said he was traveling in Asia where he met with SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son. “I simply wanted to add my name to the list of companies hoping that Softbank will be able to acquire Sprint, rather than Dish,” he said (http://bit.ly/154jAjS). “Son-san’s vision to build a high speed competitive third national network is very compelling. We need this competition in the wireless space as the ATT/Verizon model is not giving that to consumers at this time. I just wanted you to know where I and Intel stand on this important matter.” Meanwhile, Dish said it received a nondisclosure agreement from Sprint Nextel about Dish’s proposal to buy the wireless company. Dish provided information to a special committee of Sprint’s board that will examine Dish’s $25.5 billion bid for the company, Dish said Monday in a press release (http://bit.ly/ZZmbTF). Dish is confident it has exceeded the standards required in the proposed agreement between Sprint and SoftBank “in terms of providing a bona fide written proposal that is reasonably likely to lead to a superior offer,” it said. Sprint said it received a waiver from SoftBank of various provisions of the merger agreement between Sprint and SoftBank. The waiver doesn’t allow Sprint to provide non-public information to Dish “nor does it enable Sprint to enter into negotiations with Dish,” Sprint said Monday in a press release (http://bit.ly/10P7E49). Sprint doesn’t plan to comment further on the work of the special committee “until it completes an assessment with respect to whether the Dish proposal is, or is reasonably likely to lead to a superior offer,” it said.
Belkin introduced an HDBaseT HDMI AV extender at the Building Industry Consulting Service International conference in Tampa this week. The Belkin solution provides high-quality AV connectivity over long distances using Cat 5e wire, the company said. While HDBaseT developer Valens Semiconductor has sought a landing for the technology in the residential custom AV market, so far it’s the commercial display world that has made the most space for HDBaseT, which can pass through HD video, multiple streams of uncompressed audio, control data, ethernet and power over a single Cat 5e cable. Last summer at Infocomm, Panasonic and Projectiondesign (CED June 18 p1) launched projectors with HDBaseT connectors for education and commercial markets, and Crestron, Gefen and Atlona are among the companies that have shown HDBaseT-compatible products for CEDIA installers. Belkin chose HDBaseT for its long-distance solution for education, government, conference centers and signage applications “because it packs superior performance into a small, plug-and-play solution that requires a fraction of the resources to set up, move and manage,” said Sydney Wen, product development manager for Belkin. Questions to Belkin about plans for a product for the residential market -- and whether its extender passes through power, ethernet and control signals -- weren’t answered by our deadline.
The retail environment remains “pretty tough,” Mad Catz Interactive CEO Darren Richardson said on an earnings call Tuesday. Many dealers are “playing wait and see” this holiday season, “which I think is wise,” he said. But Mad Catz has “a positive outlook” for the holiday quarter, he said.
The U.S. is at an inflection point in defense spending, said Kay Sears, Intelsat General president. The nation is “probably at the top end of another cycle in defense spending,” she said Tuesday at a Washington Space Business Roundtable event. In the early 2000s, the U.S. grew less comfortable with its space capabilities, she said. “The technological advances of others have forced the U.S. into a defensive posture.” The budgetary downturn is changing the Defense Department culture and “driving them to make some of the hard decisions that they have avoided in the years of plenty,” she said. Sears said the environment that the government and satellite industry are facing is “very unique as we enter this next cycle” of defense spending. The government’s reliance on space capabilities has never been greater, she said. “The U.S. space superiority is diminished by other nations’ space capabilities and the threat environment is increasing.” The nation has an economic and budgetary challenge “that could exceed any time in history,” Sears said. The DOD must consider affordability, portfolio optimization, resiliency, consolidation and other factors to address the needs of the next generation of space capabilities, she said.
Amazon again provided no data on sales of its Fire and other Kindle devices during an earnings call Thursday, but Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak said the company was pleased with the digital content sales to owners of those devices. “We're seeing customers certainly purchasing a lot of content” on the Fire tablets, in particular, and Amazon is seeing strong “engagement with the device,” he said. But “there’s not a lot of specifics I can give you on a per device basis from a content standpoint in terms of what the purchasing patterns have been,” he said.
More people are calling 911 from mobile phones, T-Mobile National External Affairs Manager Mark Wilson told NATOA Saturday in New Orleans. There were 55,000 daily 911 calls from mobile phones in 1996, about 260,000 in 2006 and more than 400,000 in 2012, according to his presentation. These statistics also appear on CTIA’s wireless fact sheet (http://xrl.us/bnr7sg). “People are moving to a wireless only,” he said. He showcased similar leaps in the number of text messages sent and called texting “the preferred mode of communication.” These trends mean “enormous exponential increases in the data” bandwidth required, he said. T-Mobile wants to use more rights of way space “because it often works for the local community and for the wireless carriers,” he said. T-Mobile is currently undergoing a broad modernization campaign and expects to update more than 37,000 cell sites and begin LTE deployment by the end of 2013, he said. The company has “several billions in cash” and significant spectrum as a result of the failed merger with AT&T, which will help enable the company to provide “seamless coverage in residential areas,” he said. It'll also mean superior voice quality and handling of data, he added.
Sony Electronics continues to “search for the best way to demonstrate 3D in the retail environment,” spokesman Ray Hartjen said Tuesday. It’s important to do so “in a way that resonates with consumers, but also in a way that doesn’t confuse other key messaging points that consumers are looking for, mainly superior picture quality and connectivity,” he said. He called it “a juggling act, for certain."
TORONTO -- Multiple video screens offer multiple opportunities and challenges for established video service providers, programmers, advertisers and equipment vendors, executives said. They told the Canadian Telecom Summit last week that multi-screen video has quickly become a fact of life for all media players, whether they like it or not. With consumer adoption rates for smartphones, tablets, game consoles and other Web-enabled devices soaring, speakers said there’s no turning back to the old one-screen, linear TV world. They predicted consumers will increasingly use three, four, five or more Internet Protocol-enabled screens to view video content whenever and wherever they want.
TORONTO -- Multiple video screens offer multiple opportunities and challenges for established video service providers, programmers, advertisers and equipment vendors, executives said. They told the Canadian Telecom Summit last week that multi-screen video has quickly become a fact of life for all media players, whether they like it or not. With consumer adoption rates for smartphones, tablets, game consoles and other Web-enabled devices soaring, speakers said there’s no turning back to the old one-screen, linear TV world. They predicted consumers will increasingly use three, four, five or more Internet Protocol-enabled screens to view video content whenever and wherever they want.
TORONTO -- Multiple video screens offer multiple opportunities and challenges for established video service providers, programmers, advertisers and equipment vendors, executives said. They told the Canadian Telecom Summit last week that multi-screen video has quickly become a fact of life for all media players, whether they like it or not. With consumer adoption rates for smartphones, tablets, game consoles and other Web-enabled devices soaring, speakers said there’s no turning back to the old one-screen, linear TV world. They predicted consumers will increasingly use three, four, five or more Internet Protocol-enabled screens to view video content whenever and wherever they want.