The FCC should seek comment on rule changes to provide more technical and operational flexibility for current paging and radiotelephone frequencies, facilitating additional public safety use of those channels, APCO said in a filing at the FCC in docket 14-80. The Wireless Bureau sought comment on the paging rules in October, and reply comments were due Monday.
The Patent and Trademark Office granted Rentrak a patent for detecting and correcting TV viewership levels caused by missing or dropped set-top box viewing information, the company said Tuesday. U.S. Patent No. 8,930,978 “minimizes” the impact of outages that operators experience, Rentrak said. The patent “should give our clients continued confidence in our commitment to the best television measurement from massive and passive databases," Rentrak CEO Bill Livek said in a news release.
The FCC Wireless Bureau rejected a request by the Land Mobile Communications Council (LMCC), filed Monday, seeking postponement of the pre-coordination and application filing deadlines for 800 MHz band expansion band (815-16/860-61 MHz) and guard band (816-17/861-62 MHz) channels. The LMCC asked for 120-day extensions of both. “In effect,” LMCC seeks a stay of the bureau's decision to permit pre-coordination for the expansion band and guard band channels starting Wednesday and the filing of applications beginning Feb. 10, the bureau said Tuesday. “A stay is grantable if the petitioner can show that (i) it is likely to prevail on the merits; (ii) it will suffer irreparable harm, absent a stay; (iii) other interested parties will not be harmed if the stay is granted; and (iv) the public interest would favor a grant of the stay,” the bureau said. “LMCC fails to meet this standard.”
The Patent and Trademark Office granted Rentrak a patent for detecting and correcting TV viewership levels caused by missing or dropped set-top box viewing information, the company said Tuesday. U.S. Patent No. 8,930,978 “minimizes” the impact of outages that operators experience, Rentrak said. The patent “should give our clients continued confidence in our commitment to the best television measurement from massive and passive databases," Rentrak CEO Bill Livek said in a news release.
The Patent and Trademark Office granted Rentrak a patent for detecting and correcting TV viewership levels caused by missing or dropped set-top box viewing information, the company said Tuesday. U.S. Patent No. 8,930,978 “minimizes” the impact of outages that operators experience, Rentrak said. The patent “should give our clients continued confidence in our commitment to the best television measurement from massive and passive databases," Rentrak CEO Bill Livek said in a news release.
The FCC should extend the deadline for low-power TV stations to transition to digital and build new facilities after the post-incentive auction repacking, said virtually every response to the NPRM seeking comment on the auction's effect on LPTV. Comments were due Monday, and posted in dockets including 12-268. Though all agreed the deadline should be extended, the low-power broadcasters, wireless and translator associations and public interest groups agreed on little else in the NPRM.
The government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices for Jan 12 (note that some may also be given separate headlines):
Three weeks before the Super Bowl, P.C. Richard pitched football fans in an email on a blowout TV event promising “Every HDTV on sale.” Spotlight deals on the retailer’s landing page include a Sharp 70-inch LC70LE660U, dropped by $401 to $1,298 and a 65-inch LC65LE643U HDTV slashed by $500 to $799. Sharp’s website showed the 65-inch model for $1,199, and Amazon was selling it Friday for $1,186. Amazon was selling the 70-inch model for $1,395 Friday.
The lease on the FCC’s current headquarters at the Portals building runs out in 2017, and the commission could end up moving to a different location or a smaller space within the same building, FCC officials, former FCC officials and the General Services Administration told us last week. Proposals for moving or consolidating into a smaller portion of the building have been discussed in the chairman’s office and the Office of Managing Director, several FCC officials told us, though the GSA makes a final decision on the matter. Though the lease’s end is two years away, planning for a potential move or consolidation of space likely needs to begin well in advance of the Oct. 16, 2017, end date, several former FCC officials told us.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is circulating to the commission a proposal to increase the broadband benchmark speed to 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, from the current 4 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload standard, said an agency fact sheet made available to us Wednesday. Wheeler is also circulating a Notice of Inquiry asking what additional actions the agency should take to accelerate broadband deployment, the fact sheet said.