Matt Daneman

A Viacom and Google privacy case could get Supreme Court review this term. A petition for writ of certiorari was filed last month appealing the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissal (see 1606270047) of most parts of a class-action lawsuit that accused the companies of illegally collecting personal data of children. Odds of the high court granting reviews are long, said Stephen Wermiel, American University professor of practice in constitutional law, in an interview, with the court receiving upward of 7,000 petitions for writ of certiorari each session and accepting a low single-digit percentage of them. The Supreme Court last week ordered a time extension to Nov. 17 for respondents to file comments. Counsel for the petitioners -- several minor children and their families -- didn't comment this week.

Exploding demand for satellite communications mobility services -- driven by high-throughput satellites (HTS) and growing use of very small aperture terminals (VSAT) -- comes in the nick of time for a challenged satcom industry, Euroconsult Principal Adviser Susan Irwin said Thursday at a Global VSAT Forum conference. "Mobility is really a lifesaver." Mobile satcom growth also is leading to increased interference, an issue the industry is "trying to get its arms around," David Hartshorn, Global VSAT Forum (GVF) secretary general, told us.

Despite the end of the cable industry's premier trade show, NCTA's INTX, and CTIA folding its conference into GSMA Mobile World Congress (see 1606220030), telco and trade show industry experts and insiders see those as outliers in an otherwise healthy trade show ecosystem. American Cable Association President Matt Polka -- himself a longtime INTX attendee -- said it's too early to say whether new shows will spring up to replace INTX, or whether existing shows -- such as those ACA helps organize and sponsor -- will expand. ACA planning for its 2017 events is going ahead "as is," Polka told us.

Comcast will pay a $2.3 million fine to resolve an FCC investigation into allegations of negative option billing practices. The fine is the largest civil penalty against a cable company in agency history, the Enforcement Bureau said. Comcast also will put in place a five-year compliance plan that will include procedures designed to get customers' affirmative informed consent before charging them for new services and equipment, said Tuesday's order.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rulemaking notice on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) systems could be issued "soonish," said Toyota North America Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Hilary Cain Wednesday evening at an FCBA spectrum sharing CLE seminar. "We are hopeful and optimistic it will make its appearance in the next couple weeks." An NHTSA spokesman told us Thursday the NPRM "is coming soon." Some have criticized White House review of that NPRM as holding up FCC development of the 5.9 GHz band (see 1609010077).

The increased capacity in the satellite universe will mean challenges for satellite operators focused on traditional wide-beam coverage, Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference Wednesday. "People putting up standard wide-beam capacity, they are going to have [internal rate of return] challenges when it comes to replacing those satellites," Spengler said. "It is not a sustainable model." He said Intelsat is moving to a model of its high-throughput Epic constellation providing spot beam coverage in dense areas of high demand, and using wide-beam coverage in areas like ocean coverage. Spengler said North America is a little-changed market for media distribution and direct-to-home coverage, and Ultra HD is coming but "slow in developing." The company's North American broadcaster and programmer customers are taking their time planning for Ultra HD, given higher production costs and the expense of Ultra HD infrastructure, he said, saying Ultra HD might be more readily adopted by over-the-top providers. Spengler said he sees a long tail for media distribution via satellite despite the growing prevalence of fiber networks due to the large number of communities off the fiber grid or that lack sufficient fiber connectivity. Close to 5,000 cable headends are served by satellite and a sizable number will remain "well into the next decade," he said.

Comcast plans to roll out a wireless offering in early or mid-2017, based on its Verizon mobile virtual network operator (see 1605170057) and integrating Comcast's Wi-Fi hot spots, CEO Brian Roberts said Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. The company in July promoted Greg Butz from Comcast Cable executive vice president-sales and marketing operations to president, Comcast Mobile, Roberts said. He said Butz and a team of about 150 have been readying the wireless offering. Roberts didn't say if the company would broadly roll out the offering next year or beta test it, saying it would be "an in-footprint strategy."

DirecTV and MasTec Advanced Technologies, one of its contractors, were out of bounds firing a group of employees who griped to a Florida TV news station about pay policies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday, upholding a 2011 National Labor Relations Board ruling. DirecTV and MasTec said the workers' comments weren't protected concerted activity because of malicious untruths and flagrant disloyalty. Judges Judith Rogers and Sri Srinivasan -- who wrote the majority opinion (in Pacer) -- said the court's interest isn't where that line between protected and unprotected activity sits but on the correctness of NLRB's finding that the workers' appeal is on the protected side of that line. Judge Janice Brown dissented. The pay policy required MasTec installers to hook up DirecTV set-top boxes to customer phone lines, with MasTec setting up financial incentives and punishments for hook-up quotas, the D.C. Circuit ruling said. MasTec fired nearly all technicians who were part of a TV news broadcast about the policy, the court said. An NLRB administrative law judge said going public is protected activity, but their statements were so disloyal and disparaging that they weren't protected. The full NLRB disagreed that the comments to the TV news crew reached that level. Judges' decision Friday said MasTec workers' on-air comments "were neither so disloyal and incommensurate with their labor grievances nor so maliciously untrue as to fall outside" of National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protections. They also dismissed DirecTV arguments that because the direct broadcast satellite company is the fired workers' employer's customer, the workers had no protected rights to criticize it, ruling DirecTV clearly committed an unfair labor practice in causing MasTec to do the firings. In her dissent, Brown said the workers crossed the line from labor dispute to public disparagement aimed at eroding the companies' reputations. "This is not a close case," Brown said, pointing to the workers' telling the station that MasTec was requiring them to lie to customers when it had not done so, and was trying to have them scare customers into accepting the service: "By soberly repeating that joke to a public audience without its context and as though it were a serious instruction, these technicians left the NLRA and its protections behind." DirecTV in a statement said it agreed with the dissent and is "considering [its] options.” MasTec didn't comment.

NBCUniversal's retransmission and reverse compensation fees -- zero five years ago -- should hit $800 million this year, CEO Steve Burke said at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference Wednesday. He also said the unit of Comcast is "catching up" with other major broadcasters in retrans and reverse compensation revenue, but "I wouldn't anticipate us zooming past anyone else." CBS has said it's on track to take in more than $1 billion in retrans and reverse compensation revenue this year (see 1607290022). Burke said NBCU signed some large retrans deals last year and has a couple left this year.

Microsoft is claiming "a profound negative impact" on video game consoles like its Xbox 360S from Globalstar's proposed broadband terrestrial low-power service (TLPS). Those assertions could mire the proceeding before the FCC for months, satellite industry consultant Tim Farrar told us Wednesday. "Things were coming to a head one way or another -- either to move forward or say nothing will happen this year -- and this likely ensures the latter." Nintendo also raised red flags about possible TLPS interference (see 1607060042). Globalstar rebutted Microsoft's concerns.