OK, I’m piling on here, but there’s just too many good laughs to have at Senator Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) expense. Another bit of mockery that is laugh-out loud funny: The Ted Stevens Internet Fan Club, which has this great song by Andrew Raff called “The Internet is a Series of Tubes.”
On a less humorous note, Raff’s song, which appears on MySpace, was pulled briefly for violating some kind of user policy. Conspiracy theories then abounded regarding whether the Murdoch-owned site dropped the satirical song in order to curry favor with the Senator. But the song’s back up — give it a listen.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:00 PM | Print | Comments (0)
As expected, the FCC today gave its approval to the purchase of bankrupt cable company Adelphia by the nation’s number one and number two operators, Comcast and Time Warner. By a vote of four-to-one, with Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein dissenting (sort of), the Commission greenlighted the $17 bil. buyout of Adelphia, but conditioned the approval on a few content access requirements.
The first: any regional sports network owned by either cable company must go to arbitration in the event of a pricing dispute involving cable’s rivals. The issue here is whether cable operators, Comcast in particular, is withholding its regional sports programming from competitors, thereby handicapping the cable rivals.
Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia is grandfathered, however, meaning that rival RCN doesn’t get to take advantage of this arbitration requirement. The FCC also ordered that Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and Comcast go to arbitration over fights that Mid-Atlantic has had gaining carriage on Comcast systems.
With that, Comcast now gains around 1.8 million, and Time Warner gains around 3.5 million, net new customers from the carved up Adelphia properties. Together the two companies will represent around 58% of the nation’s cable subscribers, and the ranks of the top cable operators thins considerably. (See table below).
|
Top Cable Operators - Post Adelphia |
|||||||||||||||||||
| % of All | |||||||||||||||||||
| Total Subs. | Cable Subs. | ||||||||||||||||||
| BrightHouse* | 2,154,597 | 3% | |||||||||||||||||
| CableOne | 695,464 | 1% | |||||||||||||||||
| Cablevision | 3,065,716 | 5% | |||||||||||||||||
| Charter | 5,913,000 | 9% | |||||||||||||||||
| Comcast | 23,295,000 | 36% | |||||||||||||||||
| Cox* | 6,318,832 | 10% | |||||||||||||||||
| Insight | 1,306,700 | 2% | |||||||||||||||||
| Mediacom | 1,422,000 | 2% | |||||||||||||||||
| Time Warner | 14,539,000 | 22% | |||||||||||||||||
| Total | 58,710,309 | 90% | |||||||||||||||||
| *Estimates | |||||||||||||||||||
| Based on Q1 06 subscriber data. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Total U.S. cable subs. = 65.2 million. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Source: Emerging Media Dynamics, Inc. | |||||||||||||||||||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:54 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Chinese blogger Hao Wu has been freed after 140 days of imprisonment. Hao has become a cause célèbre following his unexplained imprisonment that occured as he was writing a report on underground Protestant churches. His sister, Na (aka Nina) Wu, kept up Hao’s public profile through a web site and free speech advocates Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman lobbied for his release.
MacKinnon writes that it’s not clear why Hao was released. But after so much time in prison, he needs privacy.
Hao is now resting at home in Beijing. While there are many unanswered questions about the cirumstances of his release, his family is asking the media and other well-wishers to keep their distance in these early days after his release.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:15 AM | Print | Comments (0)
OK, I’m on record as defending Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) and his lack of understanding about how the Internet works. I feel bad because it’s really OK that he isn’t an Internet expert — he’s a legislator and he’s 80 years old.
But, I’m always up for a laugh and you must, you must watch this very funny bit by Jon Stewart on Senator Stevens and his “tubes” metaphor. Watch all the way through because Stewart ties Stevens’ comments back to legislation to limit Internet gambling.
(Hat tip to TechDirt.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:55 AM | Print | Comments (0)Yesterday was a landmark day in telecom antitrust matters — the first judicial proceeding under a revised Tunney Act took place in Washington and the subject was the mega-mergers between AT&T and SBC and Verizon and MCI. The National Journal’s Sarah Lai Stirland has a good write-up here.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of U.S. District Court in Washington is reviewing the mergers to determine whether their approval is warranted. During the hearing, Judge Sullivan complained that he had not been provided with expert reports on the telecommunications marketplace from any party — government or industry.
His basic concern: should he just rely on the findings of the FCC to make his determination.
“The public has to have some confidence in these proceedings,” he added, saying he would not “rubber stamp” the mergers between two of of the former “Baby Bells” — SBC and Verizon — and the long distance carriers, AT&T and MCI.
Judge Sullivan is holding these hearings over the objections of the phone companies involved. His task is to determine whether the mergers, which were approved by the Department of Justice with few conditions attached, took place “in the public interest.”
Some opponents of the combinations are agitating for the judge to decide that antitrust authorities relaxed their own guidelines in approving the deals and that conditions attach to the approvals. The Alliance for Competition in Telecommunications issued a statement yesterday decrying the merger approvals.
The public knows that something was not quite right with the way the government handled these Bell mergers. In its rush to approve these mergers, the DoJ ignored its own merger guidelines and refused to impose a single meaningful condition to protect competition and consumers. And then the current Administration, together with AT&T and Verizon, tried in vain to squelch this independent judicial review.
Few people think that Judge Sullivan will do anything to change the status quo. But this unique set of hearings, the first since the Tunney Act was modified in 2004 to provide a greater role for the judiciary in merger approvals, could lay the groundwork for trouble later on when it comes to antitrust approvals for AT&T’s deal to buy BellSouth.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
MSNBC columnist Michael Rogers has this piece on “How Washington Will Shape the Internet.” For those in the know, it doesn’t provide any new information on the battles to reform the nation’s telecom laws, but for newbies, it’s a great synopsis of the range of issues Congress is dealing with as it moves forward with legislation.
Rogers gives a thumbnail of network neutrality, national video franchising, universal service funding, content flags and “white spaces.” More than that, however, Rogers hits on a point that few people in the trenches have considered: Government is now involved in the Internet in a big way, ending the freewheeling days of unregulated Internet growth.
Over the next few years, government regulation will increasingly be a factor in how the Internet grows. Government has been remarkably hands-off in its approach to the commercial Internet over the past decade (with a few exceptions, such as indecency and children). But as the Internet becomes integral to the economic infrastructure of the country, it’s hard to see how government won’t be involved in issues ranging from anti-competitive practices to safety and security. We’re going to look at the first decade of the commercial Internet as something like the Wild West — and we’ll mark 2006 as the year that the sheriff rode into town.
(Hat tip to the 463 blog.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:53 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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