The FCC handed down two orders last week intended to make Lifeline service available to more Americans. The commission agreed to allow prepaid wireless provider TracFone to “self certify” it’s providing 911 service to Lifeline customers in various states, in the aftermath of state inaction. It also approved Virgin Mobile’s petitions to offer Lifeline service as an eligible telecommunications carrier in New York, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee, but dismissed a petition to serve Pennsylvania. Commissioners also approved a clean-up order on universal service provided by competitive eligible telecommunications carriers serving tribal and Alaska native areas.
On February 26, 2009, President Obama released an overview of his fiscal year 2010 budget entitled "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise."
Netflix’s Q1 is “coming along nicely,” with results “about where we expected” or “a bit stronger,” Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy told the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco Monday. He expressed confidence the company is “going to land within the range” it forecast early this year and said results are “looking pretty good on the bottom line as well.” The mostly strong results Netflix reported for Q4 have continued into 2009, he said. The company ended Q4 with subscribers increasing to 9.4 million from 7.5 million a year earlier and from 8.7 million in Q3. Revenue increased 19 percent from Q4 to $359.6 million and profit increased to $22.7 million from $15.7 million. But churn increased to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent. Churn “probably” would have been 4.1 percent “in a better economic environment,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to be pleased with results for its streaming services, including the relationship it has with Microsoft allowing Netflix movies to be streamed through the Xbox 360, McCarthy said. “Most” of the subscribers who stream movies through the 360 and other set-top boxes also continue to be “actively engaged” in DVD rentals from Netflix, he said. But he said it was “too soon” to gauge how that will pan out as streaming becomes more ubiquitous, noting most of the subscribers now streaming movies are early adopters. The 1 million people that Netflix and Microsoft said last month were streaming movies from the rental service through the Xbox 360 included a “combination of new and existing customers,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to ready a streaming-only subscription tier for its members. Earlier Monday, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom Conference in Palm Beach, Fla., that his company had no concerns about Netflix’s streaming-only plan: “I think it’s fine.” Bewkes also said he had no concern about streaming impacting the pricing that his company wants to set for movies. “There’s a real vibrancy to the sales behavior in the new channels of distribution,” he said. The percentage of streamed movies sold versus rented is about the same as packaged product, he said. As examples, he said consumers streaming Warner’s The Dark Knight bought it 94 percent of the time, versus 80 percent or so for Sex and the City and 68 percent for The Bucket List. The DVD business is in “secular decline,” but “you shouldn’t rush for the exits yet” on DVD, he said. Overall industry DVD demand was down “about 4 percent” so far this quarter, an “improvement” over the 10 percent “contraction” of Q4. DVD sellthrough was down about 6 or 7 percent so far this period, with rentals faring “better,” he said. “Entertainment can hold up -- and has traditionally -- quite well in a recessions,” and “it seems to be the case this time,” he said. Box office receipts were up about 16-17 percent so far this year from the same period a year ago, thanks in part to a strong slate of releases, while TV viewing via cable has been strong as well, he said.
Netflix’s Q1 is “coming along nicely,” with results “about where we expected” or “a bit stronger,” Chief Financial Officer Barry McCarthy told the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco Monday. He expressed confidence the company is “going to land within the range” it forecast early this year and said results are “looking pretty good on the bottom line as well.” The mostly strong results Netflix reported for Q4 have continued into 2009, he said. The company ended Q4 with subscribers increasing to 9.4 million from 7.5 million a year earlier and from 8.7 million in Q3. Revenue increased 19 percent from Q4 to $359.6 million and profit increased to $22.7 million from $15.7 million. But churn increased to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent. Churn “probably” would have been 4.1 percent “in a better economic environment,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to be pleased with results for its streaming services, including the relationship it has with Microsoft allowing Netflix movies to be streamed through the Xbox 360, McCarthy said. “Most” of the subscribers who stream movies through the 360 and other set-top boxes also continue to be “actively engaged” in DVD rentals from Netflix, he said. But he said it was “too soon” to gauge how that will pan out as streaming becomes more ubiquitous, noting most of the subscribers now streaming movies are early adopters. The 1 million people that Netflix and Microsoft said last month were streaming movies from the rental service through the Xbox 360 included a “combination of new and existing customers,” McCarthy said. Netflix continues to ready a streaming-only subscription tier for its members. Earlier Monday, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecom Conference in Palm Beach, Fla., that his company had no concerns about Netflix’s streaming-only plan: “I think it’s fine.” Bewkes also said he had no concern about streaming impacting the pricing that his company wants to set for movies. “There’s a real vibrancy to the sales behavior in the new channels of distribution,” he said. The percentage of streamed movies sold versus rented is about the same as packaged product, he said. As examples, he said consumers streaming Warner’s The Dark Knight bought it 94 percent of the time, versus 80 percent or so for Sex and the City and 68 percent for The Bucket List.
The FCC extended to June 29 its deadline to review a Verizon forbearance petition seeking relief from loop and transport unbundling requirements in parts of Virginia Beach, Va., where Cox is the incumbent cable operator. The commission said it gave itself 90 more days because the petition “raises significant questions regarding whether forbearance … meets the statutory requirements set forth in section 10(a).” Under forbearance rules set by Congress, the commission may not extend the deadline again. The request will be granted automatically if the commission misses the new deadline. The new due date lands about one and a half months after a May 15 forbearance deadline to resolve a similar Verizon petition for the Rhode Island area (CD Feb 4 p9). Competitive carriers view both petitions as derivative of a Verizon petition for six East Coast markets, which the FCC denied in December 2007.
The Obama administration defended the law granting immunity to telecom carriers that took part in the government’s warrantless wiretapping. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco this month suggested that the FISA Amendments Act, enacted last year, may be unconstitutional because it seemed to give “literally no guidance for the exercise of discretion” by the attorney general (CD Feb 13 p8). But “nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from granting to the Attorney General broad discretion regarding whether and when to use his authority” under the surveillance law, the Justice Department told the court last week. Further, the Act doesn’t delegate “anything resembling legislative power” to the attorney general, DoJ said. Rather, the official’s role “is limited to gathering and presenting” facts in court, it said. Even if Congress did give the attorney general decision-making authority, it provided the “specific and narrow” guidelines required, the department said. DoJ’s brief marked the Obama administration entry into the court case. It’s “disappointing” that DoJ’s position hasn’t changed under the new president, Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director, said in an interview. EFF is representing customers of AT&T and other carriers in the case. The filing looked “no different” from what EFF would have expected from the Bush administration, she said. As a senator, President Barack Obama voted for the FISA legislation, despite having publicly opposed telco immunity. In a statement Thursday, a Justice Department spokesman said the immunity bill “is the law of the land, and as such the Department of Justice defends it in court.” But DoJ’s hands weren’t tied, Cohn said. On the bright side, she said, the somewhat unenthusiastic statement leaves open the possibility that the Obama administration may reconsider the official executive branch view. It’s unclear when the judge will issue a ruling, Cohn said. Judge Walker probably won’t schedule another oral argument, but he could ask for more briefs from parties, she said.
The Obama administration defended the law granting immunity to telecom carriers that took part in the government’s warrantless wiretapping. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco this month suggested that the FISA Amendments Act, enacted last year, may be unconstitutional because it seemed to give “literally no guidance for the exercise of discretion” by the attorney general (WID Feb 13 p8). But “nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from granting to the Attorney General broad discretion regarding whether and when to use his authority” under the surveillance law, the Justice Department told the court last week. Further, the Act doesn’t delegate “anything resembling legislative power” to the attorney general, DoJ said. Rather, the official’s role “is limited to gathering and presenting” facts in court, it said. Even if Congress did give the attorney general decision-making authority, it provided the “specific and narrow” guidelines required, the department said. DoJ’s brief marked the Obama administration entry into the court case. It’s “disappointing” that DoJ’s position hasn’t changed under the new president, Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director, said in an interview. EFF is representing customers of AT&T and other carriers in the case. The filing looked “no different” from what EFF would have expected from the Bush administration, she said. As a senator, President Barack Obama voted for the FISA legislation, despite having publicly opposed telco immunity. In a statement Thursday, a Justice Department spokesman said the immunity bill “is the law of the land, and as such the Department of Justice defends it in court.” But DoJ’s hands weren’t tied, Cohn said. On the bright side, she said, the somewhat unenthusiastic statement leaves open the possibility that the Obama administration may reconsider the official executive branch view. It’s unclear when the judge will issue a ruling, Cohn said. Judge Walker probably won’t schedule another oral argument, but he could ask for more briefs from parties, she said.
On February 25, 2009, the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing entitled "DHS: the Path Forward" during which the Committee heard testimony from Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano.
Consumers Union and others who criticize sporadic shortages of DTV converter boxes are reminiscent of “the 1969 moon landing being criticized because the pictures were fuzzy,” CEA CEO Gary Shapiro told us in an e-mail. “Some shortages and surpluses among retailers are natural, and in the age of the telephone and the Internet, we have not heard of one consumer who after a couple of phone calls or web searches could not get a box,” Shapiro said. “This has been the biggest technology transition in the history of broadcasting, and is by every indication has been and will be a phenomenal success! The cooperation among industries, government and public interest groups has been unprecedented.”
Starling Advanced Communications is taking the knowledge it gained from developing aviation satellite antennas and converting that for use on emergency medical services and homeland security vehicles, said Jacob Keret, vice president of marketing and sales. “We took advantage of the coherent multi-panel antenna (CoMPATM) technology and leveraged it for the land mobile market,” Keret said in an interview. The new antennas, named StarCar, will be introduced at next month’s Satellite 2009, he said.