Cable

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski renewed his support for the practice of charging broadband Internet subscribers for the data they use, the Washington Post reports.

Michael Powell, National Cable and Telecommunications Association chief, and himself a former FCC chairman, asked Genachowski about tiered broadband pricing at the NCTA's Cable Show in Boston.

Genachowski said that "usage-based pricing could be healthy and beneficial" for broadband providers. "There was a point of view a couple years ago that there was only one permissible pricing model for broadband," he said. "I didn't agree."

Last week, Comcast bumped up its data limit for subscribers and announced that tiered pricing was in the offing.

Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann personally pressed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to block a spectrum deal between Verizon and cable companies, according to documents filed with the FCC.

During a phone call last week, Obermann told Genachowski that allowing Verizon to buy a swath of spectrum from cable companies would give Verizon too much control over prime spectrum and leave competitors, like Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Mobile, out in the cold.

Verizon is seeking approval from the FCC to buy 20 megahertz of spectrum from a joint venture among Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks and from Cox Communications as part of a separate deal.

Last week the FCC announced that it was taking more time to review the transaction because of delays in getting documents it has requested from the companies involved.

Obermann also thanked Genachowski for approving the transfer of spectrum from AT&T to T-Mobile as part of a break-up fee after the failed merger between the companies.

TechAmerica said on Wednesday that the hacker group Anonymous launched a cyber attack against it last month to protest its support for the proposed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, just as the group was wrapping up its annual survey of federal chief information officers. And security topped the list of what causes sleepless nights for federal CIOs, according to results released Wednesday.

CIOs also reported ongoing tension between maintaining secure information technology environments and responding to pressures to cut costs. Federal IT spending hit a high of $80 billion on IT in 2010, but that figure is steadily declining. At the same time, reports of cyberattacks as reported to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team hit an all time high of more that 40,000 in fiscal year 2011.

The report, based on off-the-record interviews with 40 CIOs across 35 government agencies, indicated that ordinary threats such as lost computers, unsecured passwords and access to data by government workers who do not need it were more common causes of data breaches than external threats like politically motivated hacker groups and identity thieves.

CIOs also complained that a lack of coordination with other departments leads to confusion about who controls cybersecurity in an organization. IT departments often get short shrift during the background checks and security clearances for hiring, so CIOs are not able to weigh in on a potential hire who might present a cybersecurity risk.

Cost control was listed as the top management priority, yet budget cuts are creating staffing problems for federal CIOs already faced with the challenges of replacing retiring baby boomers and hiring workers with skills in mobile and cloud computing. Pay freezes have lowered morale and made it more difficult to compete with the private sector for talent. This is worsened by limitations on performance bonuses.

"A fundamental premise of the current administration is that reduced budgets, which are a fact in today's fiscal environment, will cause agencies to become more innovative in how they develop and use IT assets," George DelPrete, a principal at Grant Thornton who chaired the TechAmerica report said in a statement.

The survey suggests that budgets cuts do create an opportunity to consolidate redundant or outmoded systems and to cancel unwanted or poorly performing projects. At the same time, when faced with a hypothetical 10 percent budget cut, CIOs preferred across-the-board cuts to trim costs.

Bloomberg appears to have won a significant victory in its fight to get Comcast to live by a condition imposed on it as part of its merger with NBC Universal that it include the financial news network when it groups other news channels into the same "neighborhood" on its cable systems.

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau ruled Wednesday mostly in Bloomberg's favor in response to a complaint it filed claiming that Comcast was not abiding by the "neighborhooding" condition the agency imposed when it approved the cable firm's acquisition of NBCU last year. Comcast has disputed the meaning of the condition and said that Bloomberg had misinterpreted what the commission had required.

"We find that Comcast does place a significant number of news and business news channels substantially adjacent to one another in many systems' channel lineups, forming news neighborhoods, and that Bloomberg Television is not included in such neighborhoods on some systems," the FCC Media Bureau said in its order. "Accordingly we grant Bloomberg, L.P.'s ("Bloomberg") complaint in part, [and] direct Comcast to carry Bloomberg in a news neighborhood on certain headends."

The Media Bureau said the condition applies to Comcast's existing channel lineups at the time the FCC adopted its order on the Comcast-NBCU merger as well as to the cable provider's future channel lineups. In addition, the bureau also said that if four or more news or business news stations are within five spots of each other that constitutes a "neighborhood" and therefore Comcast must include Bloomberg in that neighborhood. If it has more than one news neighborhood on its cable systems, Comcast is only required to include Bloomberg on one of them.

When the Comcast-NBCU merger was announced, Bloomberg voiced concerns that the combined company would favor NBC's CNBC financial news network over Bloomberg. In response, Bloomberg pushed hard for the inclusion of the "neighborhooding" condition to mitigate such concerns.

Comcast has said it would appeal the Media Bureau's order to the full FCC.

"We respectfully disagree with the Media Bureau's interpretation of the 'neighborhooding' condition, which so clearly rewrites the history and any permissible underlying rationale for the condition," Comcast Vice President of Government Communications Sena Fitzmaurice said in a statement. "Since by definition, no 'discrimination' against Bloomberg in favor of CNBC could have taken place before the NBCUniversal transaction, any retrospective condition on this subject would have been arbitrary and capricious. And there is simply no support in any record for a four channel definition of a 'neighborhood.'"

Public interest groups that opposed the Comcast-NBCU merger have complained that the FCC needs to enforce the conditions it imposes on mergers.

"Merger conditions are only as good as an agency's willingness to enforce them," Free Press Policy Adviser Joel Kelsey said in a statement. "The FCC did the right thing by acting on this complaint and protecting competition among independent news sources."

Bloomberg's Greg Babyak echoed this view in a statement. "We are pleased the FCC had the foresight to include the news neighborhooding condition in the Comcast/NBCU merger order and the willingness to enforce it." He added that the company, looks "forward to working with Comcast to implement the order over the next 60 days."

No more free Hulu? The video streaming site may soon only allow cable TV subscribers to watch their favorite shows online, according to Fox Business.

A new study finds consumers aren't keen about companies collecting information when phones are used like credit cards, The New York Times reports.

India's spectrum auctions aren't attracting foreign telecom firms, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Blackberry World will highlight the device manufacturer's travails, according to Reuters.

Soda companies Pepsi and Coca-Cola are looking to social media to add some fizz to their biz, USA Today reports.

A billionaire Facebook co-founder is shunning a life of luxury, the Associated Press reports.

More of Today's e-Reads are available on our Tech page.

Public interest groups said Tuesday that the Federal Communications Commission's poor track record in enforcing conditions it has imposed on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger and other transactions shows why the commission should block instead of trying fix other problematic industry transactions, including a pending deal between Verizon and Comcast and other cable firms.

"Comcast's inability to live up to the conditions [imposed on its merger with NBCU] are evidence that behavioral conditions do not work in a market as consolidated as the market for telecommunications services," Free Press Policy Adviser Joel Kelsey said during a conference call to discuss Bloomberg's complaint against Comcast for failing to abide by a condition the financial news provider sought and won as part of the FCC's approval of Comcast's acquisition of NBCU.

In its complaint filed in June with the FCC, Bloomberg claimed Comcast had failed to abide by a condition requiring the cable provider to include Bloomberg's financial news channel with other news channels if Comcast "now or in the future" decides to group news channels into the same "neighborhood" of channels on its cable systems. In its comments Tuesday on Comcast's annual report outlining its compliance with the merger conditions, Bloomberg gave new examples that it says show Comcast has not complied with the neighborhood condition.

"In addition to the hundreds of news neighborhoods Comcast has already created on its systems, Bloomberg's review of cable system channel data reveals that Comcast has created at least two additional news neighborhoods in a manner that would violate the news neighborhood condition between 2011 and 2012: (a) Crescent City, Florida and (b) Claxton, Georgia," Bloomberg said in its letter Tuesday to the FCC.

Greg Babyak, Bloomberg's head of government affairs, urged the FCC to force Comcast to comply quickly becuase the conditions imposed on the deal only apply for seven years. "We hope that there's a greater sense of urgency since with every passing day we lose protections that we think [are] essential," he said.

Comcast dismissed the latest salvo from Bloomberg, saying the financial news provider is "willfully" misinterpreting the condition imposed by the FCC.

"Comcast does not 'neighborhood' news channels in the way Bloomberg seeks to be repositioned," Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said in response to Bloomberg's latest comments. "Bloomberg is not entitled to any relief pursuant to its threatened complaint. And its continued rehashing of the same arguments it has previously made smacks of desperation."

The FCC would not comment on the spat. But Kelsey and others pointed to the dispute as a reason why the commission should reject troublesome transactions including Verizon's spectrum deal with Comcast and other cable firms. They argue that the FCC does not have the resources or the will to enforce conditions aimed at ensuring that mergers and other transactions will not harm consumers.

The FCC is currently weighing whether to allow Verizon to buy spectrum from a joint venture that includes Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks and from Cox Communications as part of a separate transaction. Free Press, Public Knowledge and other groups argue that the deal will undermine competition in the wireless market.

"The inability of the commission to decide this calls into question whether the agency is able to enforce [the Comcast-NBCU merger] conditions or any other conditions. [And it] raises questions about the spectrum sale to Verizon," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said.

Parul Desai, communications policy counsel for Consumers Union, echoed this view, adding that the commission may just "have to say no" to more transactions instead of trying to fix them with conditions.

Paramount Pictures has reached a deal with YouTube to provide movies for a new online rental service it is launching despite an ongoing copyright infringement dispute, the Wall Street Journal reports.

A new Carnegie Mellon study raises questions about the effectiveness of the Digital Advertising Alliance's self-regulatory privacy program, AdWeek reports.

Google has released more details on its augmented reality glasses, which provide the user with information about what they are seeing ahead of them, the BBC reports.

More than 1 million cable and other pay TV subscribers have dropped those services in favor of online video options from Netflix and providers, Bloomberg reports.

All of today's e-Reads can be found on our Tech page.

Verizon's bid to buy spectrum and enter into marketing agreements with a group of cable companies will get its first public examination before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday afternoon.

The deal is not nearly as controversial as AT&T's failed effort last year to buy T-Mobile USA. Still some public interest groups and competitors such as T-Mobile are calling for the FCC and Justice Department to block the deal. Wednesday afternoon's hearing before the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will provide some sense of whether lawmakers also have concerns.

Groups like Free Press and Consumers Union argue that Verizon's bid to buy spectrum from a joint venture among Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks and a separate deal with Cox Communications will further cement the hold that Verizon and AT&T, the nation's top two mobile operators, have over the U.S. wireless market. At the same time, critics say that related agreements by Verizon and the four cable companies to sell each others' services will decrease competition for telephone, video and Internet services to the home and provide the companies with little incentive to compete against each other in new markets.

"Though the transaction we are considering now does not appear on the surface to be as harmful as AT&T's most recent horizontal empire plans, Verizon's consolidation of valuable spectrum raises as many long-term competitive concerns," Free Press Policy Adviser Joel Kelsey said in his written testimony for Wednesday' s hearing. "These concerns alone would be enough to reject these applications, but when viewed along with the unprecedented Verizon-cable cartelization agreements, the federal agencies reviewing this deal have no choice but to tell Verizon no if they intend to protect competition."

Verizon argues that the 20 megahertz of spectrum that it is seeking to buy is not being used now and is needed to help the company meet its customers' growing demand for wireless technologies. "Verizon Wireless is not buying a competitor and is not buying any customers or facilities. We are only buying spectrum not currently in commercial use in order to put it to use serving customers, and no customer will see fewer choices or increased prices as a result of this transaction," Verizon executive vice president and general counsel Randal Milch said in his written testimony.

Milch added that the marketing agreements with the cable companies will allow Verizon to offer a package of services outside of the small number of areas where it provides FiOS phone, video and Internet service. He noted that 85 percent of the areas served by the four cable firms do not have access to Verizon's FiOS service.

Verizon and the cable firms appear to be going to great lengths to detail the ways in which their deal differs from the failed AT&T-T-Mobile deal.

"Unlike the AT&T-T-Mobile deal, this transaction involves no consolidation of customers, jobs, assets or operating businesses. It will take spectrum not currently being used and get it to a company that wants to quickly deploy it to consumers. Consumers will benefit from more choice, more competition, and more convenience," executive vice president David Cohen said in a blog post Tuesday previewing his testimony before the Senate committee.

While the marketing agreements are viewed as potentially more problematic, some analysts still say the deals are likely to get a green light from regulators. "Absent the appearance of 'smoking gun' documents, we remain skeptical the DOJ and/or FCC will move to block the deals outright, though we believe there's a greater chance some conditions will be imposed," investment research firm Stifel Nicolaus said in a research note Wednesday.

It's been a year since Comcast got the green light to merge with NBC Universal and the company says it has gone "above and beyond" to meet the commitments it agreed to in order to win regulatory approval of the deal.

In its first compliance report filed with the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday, Comcast detailed its efforts to comply with the conditions it agreed to when it gained approval of its merger with NBCU. The conditions it says it has been working to meet include a pledge to help spur broadband adoption by offering lower-cost broadband connections to 41,000 homes, to increase the number of independent cable networks it carries, and expand its commitment to local news by investing "millions" in the 10 local news stations NBC owns.

The report "shows the extensive measures we've taken to comply with and in many cases go above and beyond our commitments and the FCC's conditions in connection with the NBC Universal transaction," Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen wrote in a blog post Tuesday on its report to the FCC. "As the report shows, our commitments and the conditions, though extensive, have been incorporated into our business activities and become part of the company's 'DNA.'"

But some of the company's critics beg to differ. They include financial news and data provider Bloomberg, which argues that Comcast-NBCU has refused to abide by its pledge to ensure Bloomberg's financial news network is grouped with other news channels including NBCU's CNBC financial news channel on Comcast cable systems.

"Comcast's report to the FCC includes revisionist language that deliberately misstates its own legally binding commitments to [FCC] Chairman [Julius] Genachowski and the American people on the news neighborhooding condition in the Order on Comcast-NBC-Universal," Greg Babyak, who heads government affairs for Bloomberg, said in a statement. "Comcast has refused to implement this time-limited condition for more than a year. Now means now, and news does not -- as Comcast claims -- mean infomercials. It's now time for the FCC to move swiftly to force the company to live up to its commitments."

Bloomberg filed a complaint with the FCC last summer claiming that Comcast-NBCU had failed to abide by this condition. It is waiting for the commission to rule on the matter. In its report Tuesday, Comcast argued that it has not "rearranged any news channels into a neighborhood since the close of transaction and, as a result, has not incurred any obligation to neighborhood news channels."

While Comcast touted deals it has made with online video distributors to gain access to NBC programming, Free Press, which joined other public interest groups in opposing the merger, said it doubted Comcast-NBCU's willingness to promote competition in the online video market.

"These core conditions are the only things preventing Comcast from using its market dominance to disadvantage its rivals and limit consumer choice in programming and video services," Free Press Senior Policy Counsel Corie Wright said. "We urge the FCC to ensure that these conditions are being enforced and that competition and consumer choice is protected."

Verizon Wireless submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to get permission to buy $3.6 billion in spectrum from billion from SpectrumCo, LLC, jointly owned by cable companies Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, and Comcast. Verizon said the purchases would benefit customers by making networks more robust.

Verizon said earlier this month that it was buying 122 Advanced Wireless Services licenses covering 259 million POPs from the cable providers. It also said the government does not need to review its marketing agreement with the cable companies - something that worries advocacy groups.

"No matter how forcefully Verizon claims that this is 'a spectrum-only transaction,' it is much more than that," Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project said in a statement. "The FCC's mandate is to look at the totality of the circumstances to decide if a proposed transfer is in the public interest."

Verizon announced a smaller deal on Friday, saying it would buy 20 MHz of spectrum from cable provider Cox Communications for $315 million. The stretch of AWS spectrum includes 28 million POPs.

Cox and Verizon also agreed to market one another's residential and commercial products and services.

"Over time, Cox may have the option to sell Verizon Wireless' services on a wholesale basis. In addition, Cox expects to enter into arrangements with the innovation technology joint venture formed by Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to better integrate wireline and wireless products and services," Verizon said in a statement on Friday.