31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for June 23, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 136 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:00:31 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: End of Cable Bundle Inevitable, With or Without Aereo: CEO
Message-ID: <kq24bv$2lns$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <8a76ba5f-3993-4898-a985-56e54e88f3ab@googlegroups.com>,
Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> wrote:
>> If I were dictator, I would eliminate the must-carry side
>> entirely for commercial stations..., provide retransmission
>> consent only for subscribers who are located outside each
>> station's FCC service contour, and end the use of Nielsen DMAs
>> for the purpose of defining stations' exclusive markets. TV
>> broadcasters would hate this, but many pointless stations would
>> go under, making it easier to reuse the valuable upper-UHF
>> spectrum (not to mention cable-TV spectrum) for something more
>> productive.
>
>What about subs located inside the Grade B contour? If you eliminate both
>must-carry and retrans-consent for every inside-contour home-DMA station, that
>seems to imply that a CATV can carry, or not carry, the station, at its sole
>discretion, without even letting the station know it. As an ex-cable guy,
>that would be fine with me, but I don't think the NAB would approve.
That's the idea: the CATV operator (or DBS operator) is merely
providing a signal that the subscriber could receive already, so it
doesn't seem to me that the broadcaster is entitled to receive any
compensation as a result. The subscriber could always use an antenna
(and with DTV, they would get just as good a signal as they get from
cable and probably better than satellite); in this particular sense,
the MVPD is deriving its consumer value primarily from the other
services it offers, and secondarily from the convenience of not having
to install and use one's own antenna. These days, you could easily do
it on a per-subscriber basis with the point-to-point Longley-Rice
model (as I believe is done for SHVIA/SHVERA in non-local-into-local
markets).
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:20:01 -0400
From: Fred Goldstein <invalid@see.sig.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Access Recovery Charge
Message-ID: <51C4DFA1.3070603@ionary.com>
On 6/19/2013 11:26 PM, Dave Garland wrote:
> Having just received a bill in which CenturyLink (motto: "proving
> Qwest wasn't so bad after all") raises my Access Recovery Charge, I
> started to wonder. The bill says the charges are "to recover costs
> of providing access to the telephone network". Since I do not receive
> any telephone service from CenturyLink (only DSL, a non-regulated
> service), or the "telephone network" (aside from the copper from my
> house back to the pedestal 2 blocks away) should I be subject to this
> charge?
>
> Google finds FCC filings and rulings regarding the Access Recovery
> Charge, so is this actually a federally regulated thing (and not just
> another BS "extra charge for being alive")? And if so, should I be
> charged it, since I'm not using the switched telephone network?
>
The price of DSL is not regulated. So they can charge whatever they
want, consistent with ordinary contract and fraud law of course.
"Access" generally covers the cost of the wire, not the switched network
that the wire is going to, so not being a switched telephone service, or
not making LD calls, doesn't impact it. Access recovery charges are
allowed on some telephone bills, where they are regulated, because part
of the cost of phone service is in interstate jurisdiction, and the FCC
sets those prices.
--
Fred R. Goldstein fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 10:22:11 -0600
From: fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Exploding the Phone
Message-ID: <fc01c43924fee925f1ab9fcdb0f10e59.squirrel@webmail.mishmash.org>
Lou,
[Here is] the link to the book's Web site:
http://explodingthephone.com
Regards,
Fred
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:24:21 -0500
From: hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Google unveils Internet beaming balloons launched into stratosphere
Message-ID: <AtGdnarbD8S4r1vMnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@megapath.net>
Science Friday covered it yesterday.
Beaming Internet to the Boondocks, Via Balloon
http://tinyurl.com/l9f4vzu
http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/06/21/2013/beaming-internet-to-the-boondocks-via-balloon.html
--
These are my opinions. I hate spam.
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