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The Telecom Digest for August 11, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 170 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 14:59:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Why Charter wants to be bigger than Comcast
Message-ID: <816068ec-5364-4b7c-b625-2837b8bf102e@googlegroups.com>
By Steve Donohue, FierceCable, August 7, 2013
| Charter CEO Tom Rutledge offered a subtle hint Tuesday about
| how Liberty Media chairman John Malone may be able to help him
| hammer major programmers like CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co. if
| he succeeds in turning Charter into a bigger MSO than Comcast.
|
| Like all cable operators, Charter has seen its programming costs
| skyrocket in the last decade. And even if operators refuse a
| rate increase, as Time Warner Cable has in its battle with CBS,
| there's little an operator can do unless Comcast takes the lead
| and tells programmers that enough is enough. That's because
| Comcast, whose 21.8 million subscribers make it the largest U.S.
| pay TV provider, has a most-favored-nation clause in its
| programming contracts which guarantees that it will get the
| lowest license fee. So no matter how long TWC blacks out CBS and
| Showtime, it'll be impossible for the MSO to negotiate a better
| deal than Comcast's.
Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/mmlyb8j
Neal McLain
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 13:19:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Time Warner Cable dumps CBS, Showtime
Message-ID: <d2cf2f40-16ea-4564-980c-194408bed92a@googlegroups.com>
By Steve Donohue, FierceCable, August 2, 2013
| Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) said it pulled CBS Corp.
| owned-and-operated stations from its cable systems in New York,
| Los Angeles and Dallas at 5 p.m. ET Friday, after failing to
| agree to terms on a retransmission-consent deal. It also dropped
| CBS-owned cable networks Showtime, Flix and Smithsonian Channel.
|
| The nation's second largest MSO had pulled the CBS stations and
| Showtime from its lineup for less than 30 minutes early Tuesday,
| but said that it agreed to restore the feeds and continue
| negotiating
Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/mtpq87j
The saga continues...
Time Warner to CBS: Let Us Run Content A La Carte; Recommends Aereo to
Viewers
By Tiernan Ray, Barron's Tech Trader Daily, August 5, 2013,
| There are waves in Pay TV land today. After Time Warner Cable was
| forced on Friday to drop CBS programming amidst a dispute over how
| much Time Warner pays CBS, incoming Time Warner CEO Robert Marcus
| on CNBC a short while ago discussed a proposal put forward by Time
| Warner today to run CBS programming on an "a la carte" basis, rather
| than as part of the overall cable bundle, and giving CBS all the
| proceeds.
|
| Marcus suggests that customers, instead of taking CBS as part of the
| package, can pay for what CBS programming they actually want, and
| that Time Warner "will pass along 100% of the proceeds to CBS, not
| collecting a single dime on what subscribers pay."
| He also advised customers to perhaps go to Aereo, the startup
| company funded by Barry Diller's Interactive if they want access to
| CBS content.
Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/lytxbzo
Well hurrah, I guess.
As regular T-D readers know, I've weighed in on the cable TV "a la carte"
issue many times before. I've repeatedly tried to make the point that program
suppliers are the primary drivers: they all demand to be carried on the basic
tier. You've heard it before, but here it is again:
- Broadcast stations have a legal right to carriage on basic, either by
invoking must carry or by writing it into their retransmission consent
agreements.
- Access channels have a legal right to carriage on basic if the local
franchise requires it.
- Advertising-supported non-broadcast programmers write carriage-on-basic into
their affiliation contracts.
Will CBS finally agree to "a la carte" this time? I doubt it, but it would
certainly be fascinating to find out how many subscribers would actually pay
$2.00 a month for CBS.
Neal McLain
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 15:15:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The 411 on 844: A New Toll-Free Area Code Coming Soon
Message-ID: <4fff45f6-3cdf-43f4-8ff8-f7004d1226a0@googlegroups.com>
by Peter Tannenwald, Fletcher Heald & Hildreth, August 5, 2013
| Toll-free phone numbers using the next area code in the 800 series
| will be up for grabs starting this December.
| A new toll-free area code is about to become available. Put your
| hands together for 844, which is set to join the ranks of 888,
| 877, 866, and 855, and, of course, the venerable 800. 844 will be
| the sixth toll-free code. Two more are on deck for future use -
| 833 and 822. Note: 811 is not a toll-free area code; rather, that
| has been reserved for the "Dig Safe" (formerly known as "Miss
| Utility") three-digit dialing code used to notify the appropriate
| folks of planned excavation that might disrupt underground pipes
| or wires.
Continued:
http://tinyurl.com/lpojhge
Well, "Dig Safe" may have been "Miss Utility" where Peter Tannenwald lived,
but it was identified by many different names around the USA. In Wisconsin,
it was "Diggers Hotline." In Illinois, it was "JULIE" (Joint Utility Locating
Information for Excavators). In Michigan, it was "Miss Dig" (although Mr. Dig
sometimes answered). In Utah, it was Blue Stakes (and apparently still is).
And probably others that I've forgotten.
Neal McLain
Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 17:06:02 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Photo Gallery (34) of San Francisco Bay Area pay phones
Message-ID: <5204326A.6000605@thadlabs.com>
Amazingly, many of these are still functional:
http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2013/08/08/strong-connection-the-greatest-phone-booths-of-the-bay-area/
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