Former FCC Chairman and GTCR Fund See Strong Rural Cable Future

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Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt hopes this week’s acquisition of tier 2 cable company NewWave Communications by investment firm GTCR will be “the first of many.” Telecompetitor spoke this week with Hundt, who headed up the FCC during the Clinton administration and is now an...Learn More

McCain Bill Seeks a La Carte Cable Programming

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Legislation introduced yesterday by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) aims to give video service providers greater flexibility when purchasing programming from content providers by encouraging the unbundling of programming packages. If passed that would be good news for cable and satellite TV providers, who have complained...Learn More

Comcast Trying to Build Differentiation With Wi-Fi Gateways

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Comcast on April 26 launched its latest Xfinity Wireless Gateway, which boasts of delivering the fastest in-home wireless network speeds in the nation and the most coverage throughout customers’ connected homes. The largest U.S. Internet Service Provider (ISP) also announced it has boosted the speeds...Learn More

When Will Cable Start Shifting Bandwidth Away from Video and to Internet Access?

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If an ISP’s highest-margin product is projected to have demand growth of an order of magnitude growth, or more, while other products with lower profit margins are declining, should we not expect more bandwidth to allocated to the fast-growing, highest-margin service? Internet bandwidth, despite all...Learn More

Connect America Costs to be Based on Fiber-to-the-Premise

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When the FCC determines how much support to offer price cap carriers to bring broadband to areas that do not have broadband today in Phase 2 of the Connect America Fund program, the funding offered will be calculated based on the assumption that the carrier...Learn More

CEA: 92% of New Homes Equipped with Broadband Cable

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Findings from a Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) market study indicate built-in home technology is moving from being a luxury to a standard option. Growth of the home technology market held steady from 2011 to 2012, as built-in new home technology installations reached or exceeded 2008...Learn More

Report: 75% of U.S. Households Now Have HDTV Sets

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High-definition television (HDTV) sets are present in 75% of U.S. households, up from 23% five years ago according to Leichtman Research Group’s (LRG) 1Q 2013 Research Notes. Fifty-two percent of U.S. households have adopted HDTV over the past five years, according to LRG’s latest report....Learn More

FreedomPop Launches Low-Income Broadband Service

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Broadband adoption rates could get a boost as the result of new options announced today from Connect2Compete and FreedomPop. Connect2Compete is a public/private broadband adoption and literacy initiative targeting low-income users and supported in part by the telecom industry. FreedomPop, best known for a mobile...Learn More

ACA: We Need a Cable Bill Crisis

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The ongoing tension between video service providers (including cable MSOs, IPTV service providers, and DBS providers) and the media companies that own and/or distribute video content is well documented. Content and the costs and business rules that govern it are out of control, at least...Learn More

Does Comcast Smell Blood in the Water?

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Comcast is turning up the heat on their broadband competitors by upping broadband speeds in several markets today. They are doubling speed for a couple of their packages and increasing speeds by about 60% for one, all at no additional charge for customers. Comcast may...Learn More

NPD: Average Telco VOD Customer Spends More Than Average Cable Customer

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More than 75% of all transactional video-on-demand (VoD) movies were rented via cable and satellite TV services in 2012, capturing a large majority share of the $1.3 billion dollar market, according to a new report from The NPD Group. Telcos’ share of the VoD movie...Learn More

Interactive Map Plots 35 Community Networks Offering 1 Gigabit Service

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The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has put together a useful interactive map plotting the locations of community broadband networks, primarily in the U.S., but also highlighting several in other countries. The map contains flag markers for each project, indicating whether the project involves citywide cable,...Learn More