Matt Daneman

Viacom, CBS and those worried about their long-expected combination (see 1908130039) foresee more retransmission and affiliate fee pressures. The combined company will have 22 percent of U.S. TV viewership, and will look to greatly beef up its affiliate fees as part of its growth strategy, CBS acting CEO Joe Ianniello said in a call with analysts Tuesday as the two programmers announced the recombination; the companies split in 2006.

Residential broadband small-network equipment is inching ever closer to universally meeting energy efficiency standards in the 2015 voluntary agreement set up by NCTA and CTA (see 1506260038). The two pointed Monday to the latest annual report showing 99.6 percent of small network equipment bought or sold by signatories in 2018 met those standards, up from 99.2 percent in 2017. Consumer electronics can pose a thornier problem, environmental interests say.

Dish Network thinks seamless interoperability between its 5G network and New T-Mobile's LTE network is a big need for its wireless network business plans. And achieving that won't be very difficult, though business competition issues might be heavy lifting, industry experts told us. "It's a tough market," said Boost Mobile founder and current director Peter Adderton said.

Broadcast network efforts to shut down Locast with a copyright infringement suit filed Wednesday in federal court will likely involve how nonprofit the nonprofit streaming service actually is, and what the Section 111 exemption of the Copyright Act applies to, broadcast and copyright experts told us.

With DOJ's justification for approving T-Mobile/Sprint largely hinging on Dish Network's ability to become a national wireless player (see 1907260071), wireless industry watchers tell us that whether Dish can pull that off is a big question mark. "Wireless is a very tough business to get right -- many companies have tried and failed," said wireless analyst Jeff Kagan.

Amazon's plan now before the FCC for a 3,236-satellite non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellation is increasing the pressure on the agency to act on its orbital debris proceeding, especially since Amazon's resources make its constellation plan less speculative than others, satellite experts told us Friday. Amazon's International Bureau application filed Thursday also could raise red flags from other satellite operators about its trying to bypass the processing round process, said satellite lawyer Steve Goodman of Butzel Long. The FCC didn't comment Friday. Amazon's Kuiper Systems would orbit between 590 and 630 kilometers, providing broadband service in the Ka band, it said, saying its goal is "broadband communications services to tens of millions of unserved and underserved consumers and businesses in the United States and around the globe." It said it has at least part of the necessary global terrestrial networking infrastructure in the form of its intercontinental fiber links and global data centers. Processing rounds aren't necessary any longer to ensure competitive entry given the NGSO fixed satellite service spectrum sharing framework, the e-tailer said, seeking a waiver of the requirement the Kuiper application trigger a processing round. The company asked for a waiver of agency geographic coverage rules since its system wouldn't cover most of Alaska. A satellite lawyer said it's inevitable Kuiper will get pushback from other constellation operators on the processing round issue.

The FCC Technological Advisory Council heard about efforts to close the digital divide, and its challenges, at Friday's meeting, TAC's first for 2019. Fifth-generation wireless was a focus of the meeting. Alianza adviser John Barnhill said the biggest rural need is coverage, but 5G's strength is in speed, and rural markets also carry particularly high backhaul, interconnect and antenna costs. So 5G "is not a silver bullet" for rural connectivity, and the fix will require a mix of satellite, Wi-Fi, LTE, better antenna designs and rural funding that incentivizes investment in lower density areas, he said. New York University Wireless founding Director Ted Rappaport said 5G "is the best thing that ever could have happened to rural." He said millimeter-wave spectrum and a line of sight in a rural area can accomplish the same as mid-band spectrum in a more urban area, and fixed point-to-point backhaul using the 27, 37 and 39 GHz bands could replace aging copper. Carriers could be motivated by regulatory approaches that emphasize that kind of deployment, he said. "No one's going to do it on their own." Dyna's Martin Cooper, co-chair of a TAC group, said the rural digital divide threatens to be a "digital chasm" for education, with one possible response being private enterprise being incentivized for rural deployment by allowing use of schools and libraries as cellsites. He said the FCC could prioritize rural spectrum availability to operators providing coverage for education. AT&T Assistant Vice President-Standards and Industry Alliances Brian Daly said projections point to 10 million 5G subscriptions in the U.S. by year's end, and that by 2024, such networks will carry 35 percent of the globe's mobile traffic. Carriers are involved in 95 5G U.S. city deployments now, he said. Daly said the potentially billions of IoT devices in the field within a few years will easily outstrip IPv4 capacity. He said deploying 5G with IPv6 would still support IPv4 but also handle that traffic.

Looking for information on alternatives to GPS-provided positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities, the Department of Transportation received input on a variety of systems that supposedly could fit that bill. Comments were due Monday at Regulations.gov. Globalstar and Echo Ridge said they're ready to do a field demonstration of PNT capability that could back up or complement GPS, operate independently of other global navigation satellite systems and require no new infrastructure. They said its augmented positioning system uses 24 low earth orbit Globalstar satellites and a series of its earth stations. Skyhook said its Wi-Fi-based system could provide hybrid location in populated areas that also use crowdsourcing to monitor GPS performance trends. Locata said its terrestrially based non-GPS system could cover all the traditional GPS functions needed for PNT services. Seven Solutions said its timing-only solution, using disparately located global navigation satellite system receiver sites, "would render local jamming and spoofing activities moot." Multiple filings weren't made public because of confidential business information. GPS is the best technology for precision navigation and timing requirements, and the industry supports looking at complementary technologies as long as they offer equivalent capabilities and performance, the GPS Innovation Alliance said. GPSIA said given the costs to develop those alternatives and potential limitations, federal resources should still be principally be directed at maintaining and improving the existing GPS system. Some possible alternatives came under fire. GPSIA said one possible complementary technology, eLoran, isn't accurate enough in navigation opposition data for many PNT functions like high-precision agriculture, surveying and intelligent transportation. Qualcomm said eLoran has problems -- its 10-inch square antennas are tough to house in mobile handsets and mobile devices generate high levels of low frequency noise in the 100 KHz rate in which eLoran operates. It said another possible approach, metropolitan beacon systems, would be limited to urban areas and need extensive network buildout and ongoing maintenance. DOT should keep in mind the wireless industry's network rerouting, device-based navigation and timing and cloud-based application capabilities to continue voice and data transmissions in the case of GPS outages when deciding the scope of need for GPS backup when it comes to wireless communications, CTIA said. It said any terrestrial backup will require substantial antenna deployments on U.S. wireless infrastructure, and DOT should be talking with tower company owners and operators about tower space availability and operational issues.

"There's no secret sauce" for how the satellite industry could play a bigger role in 5G standards setting, aside from committing resources, said Balazs Bertenyi, 3rd Generation Partnership Project TSG Radio Access Network chairman. If satellite doesn't play a role, the risk is further marginalization, said Antonio Franchi, European Space Agency head-future programmes acquisition, at the Satellite 2019 show Monday. Some satellite interests said the industry likely will be end-to-end integrated with 5G standards. Inmarsat Global Principal System Engineer Ammar Khan said "it's not a straightforward task." He said terrestrial 5G is deploying in phases, focusing on broadband first, with IoT and machine to machine to follow, and a phased approach would make sense for satellite. "Five years ago, [such integration] was unimaginable," Bertenyi said, saying such integration is welcome news for the mobile industry since mobile use cases alone won't be enough to make 5G a success.The big changes coming to the satellite industry include software defined hardware that can be reprogrammed in orbit, even to the point of changing the satellite's mission, said Lisa Callahan, Lockheed Martin general manager-commercial civil space. Industry officials said that future will require increased cybersecurity. IBM Watson Cloud Chief Technology Officer-partner ecosystem and cognitive security Jeb Linton said satellites are a particular security challenge because a bad actor could disable one permanently, so there's a particular need for advanced security technology not commonly employed today such as secure enclaves and advanced cryptographic capabilities.

As Charter Communications' wireless business grows, it's tough to peg when its losses peak and it begins swinging toward profitability, said Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey in an analyst call Tuesday as the company announced Q1 results. CEO Tom Rutledge said Charter is testing its Spectrum Mobile wireless product to see if mobile capabilities can be increased by using Dual SIM technology along with unlicensed and potentially licensed spectrum. It said it added 176,000 mobile lines in the most recent quarter, ending with 310,000. "Mobile is ramping nicely," Winfrey said. He said the bulk of capital spending, such as setting up retail locations, should be in 2019. The company said revenue in the quarter was $11.2 billion, up 5.1 percent year over year. It said during the quarter it had residential and small and mid-sized business internet net adds of 428,000, video net losses of 145,000 and wireline voice net losses of 99,000. It ended the quarter with 15.95 residential video customers, 24 million residential broadband customers and 10 million residential voice.