Matt Daneman

Between now and the U.S. 5G future sit hurdles ranging from an "urban crunch" of spectrum availability to the morass of dealing with legions of local zoning and permitting steps, speakers said at an Axios event Wednesday. North America “started late” on 5G standardization, behind the Far East, but the country has reversed its position in the past two years and the first large-scale rollout likely will happen within the next 12 months in the U.S., said Ericsson North America CEO Niklas Heuveldop.

That media and telco companies now have to release data publicly about what their median employees make and how that compares with the CEO's pay package likely won't change their compensation approaches for either those at the top or for average workers, experts told us. The numbers could be fodder in ongoing populist movements like gender pay equality and living wage issues, said Deborah Lifshey, a managing director at executive compensation consultancy Pearl Meyer.

Movie studios and regional sports networks (RSNs) could become antitrust sticking points for a proposed Comcast buy of Fox's nonbroadcast assets, antitrust experts told us. Comcast said Wednesday it's preparing an all-cash offer for the same Fox nonbroadcasting assets that Fox agreed to sell to Disney. It said the structure and terms of its offer, and the regulatory risk provisions, "would be at least as favorable to Fox shareholders as the Disney offer."

BALTIMORE -- Transportation Department test results on adjacent-band compatibility to GPS reinforces the belief of a threat that Ligado's plans for a broadband terrestrial low-power service (TPLS) pose to high-precision GPS receivers, Bradford Parkinson, vice-chairman of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) National Advisory Board, told us Wednesday during the board's meeting. "I want [Ligado] to succeed, but not at the expense of PNT." He said concerns remain that the FCC could move on approval of the company's applications. The FCC didn't comment.

Attention to T-Mobile buying Sprint continued at the FCC, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington Thursday and Friday. The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee plans a June hearing on the deal, said industry officials, who had expected it (see 1804300057). And current and past FCC members' and staffers' views on the deal vary by party, with Democrats wary and Republicans less so.

The judge overseeing DOJ's lawsuit seeking to block AT&T's buy of Time Warner has a variety of options other than simply blocking or allowing the transaction, and it's not clear what he will do. Multiple trial watchers told us they believe Justice failed to prove the deal would harm competition. There was no consensus on whether U.S. District Judge Richard Leon's opinion -- whatever it is -- will be appealed.

Clearing 100 MHz of C-band spectrum will require modifications to the Intelsat and SES networks, and to their customers' networks, Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said in an earnings call Tuesday. He said the modifications will include additional equipment at downlink earth stations, relocating some facilities or changes to the configurations of satellites. He said the company has been lobbying Capitol Hill on the C-band plan, and FCC representatives it's met showed an interest in the proposal. He said satellite has a big potential role in 5G deployment, given the time such services will take to reach remote or rural areas. He said capital expenditures should start tapering down as the company comes to the end of its Epic network deployment, with its Horizons 3e satellite to be launched later this year, and the upcoming replacement of this North American Galaxy satellites to be done by smaller, cheaper satellites. An NPRM on the satellite companies' midband plan is expected by some this summer (see 1804200003).

Charter Communications stock closed down 12 percent Friday at $263.32 after the company reported accelerating video losses. CEO Tom Rutledge in a Q1 earnings calls said integration of Charter with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks "is going quite well and pretty much as planned." But, he added, "It has lumpy aspects." He said a move to an app-based video delivery system should help cut capital costs. He said there's still potential for video growth, but little profit margin in the video business, so such growth is "relatively immaterial" to the company's future. Charter said it ended the quarter with: 16.4 million residential video customers, down 122,000; 22.87 million residential internet customers, up 331,000; and 10.37 million residential voice customers, down 52,000. Q1 a year ago, it had residential video losses of 100,000. It said Q1 revenue was $10.7 billion, up 4.9 percent. Rutledge said 20 percent of legacy TWC and 60 percent of legacy BHN footprints remain analog, though the company's all-digital effort should be done by year's end. He said 45 percent of Charter's footprint has access to 1 Gbps, and such service should be virtually universal by year's end. He said the company is raising minimum speeds to 200 Mbps at no additional cost faster than planned. Mobile service should launch in the middle of this year, with the company doing a field trial, and modifying several hundred of its retail stores, he said. He said Charter is testing in bands including 3.5 GHz and 28 GHz, and it's working toward a combination of small cells with its existing terrestrial network and DOCSIS products to offer high-capacity low-latency fixed wireless and mobile services. Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey said churn is up due to a focus on disconnects of non-paying subscribers, but sales are up and by the end of Q2 or early Q3, those disconnect numbers should taper off.

Comcast, if allowed to buy Sky, would maintain Sky News spending for 10 years at a level equal to Sky's FY 2017, set up a Sky News board to maintain its editorial independence for 10 years, keep Sky News' U.K. headquarters for five years and not buy a majority interest in U.K. newspapers for five years. Those are the commitments Comcast made as it said Wednesday it made a $31 billion cash takeover offer. In Comcast's Q1 earnings call, CEO Brian Roberts said the Sky deal will boost Comcast’s strategy of vertical integration of distribution and content while bringing “new and attractive geographies” in an internationalization of NBCUniversal. The 52 million combined customer base of the two companies will allow more investment in programming and technology, Roberts said. The bid signals Comcast belief "the required scale for next-gen media will be enormous," MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors. He said the cable business is slowing, but instead of generating cash for investors, cash flows are being "diverted to a high-risk gambit for massive scale in Media." Roberts disputed that. He said Comcast doesn't see Sky as a necessity but was opportunistic because the company became available. He said international isn't a broad strategy for Comcast but Sky fits into its existing vertical strategy, with the added benefit of geographic diversity. Comcast's bid for Sky is seen by many not facing as much regulatory difficulty as Fox's pending bid has (see 1802270011). Comcast said Q1 had revenue of $22.79 billion, up 10.7 percent. It ended the quarter with 21.2 million residential video customers, down 93,000; 24.2 million resident broadband customers, up 351,000; and 10.2 million residential voice customers, down 70,000. Roberts said the video subscriber losses were partly due to increasing competition from virtual MVPDs. He said Xfinity Mobile ended the quarter with 577,000 customer lines. Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh said Comcast sees continued broadband growth due to new home construction in its footprint, to the company expanding its network within its footprint, and from market share gains. Comcast closed at $34.26, up 2.7 percent.

Consumers have a mushrooming array of options for blocking or otherwise avoiding unwanted robocalls, but legitimate callers are increasingly caught up in those nets, robocall service vendors said Monday at an FCC/FTC expo on illegal robocall technology. Legitimate callers "are getting Heismaned" by robocall-blocking tech, said Deirdre Menard, Transaction Network Services director of product management.