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Tag Archive: federal communications commission

Apple Tells FCC Google Voice Would Alter iPhone Experience

Apple Tells FCC Google Voice Would Alter iPhone Experience

Last month, Apple’s controversial iTunes App Store policies went into the spotlight yet again when an app for using Google Voice on the iPhone failed to make it into the App Store. Google Voice is a service that enables users to receive transcriptions of voicemail message and use the same phone number for as long as they like—even if they change telecom operators or mobile carriers. A few days later the Federal Communications Commission opened an inquiry, asking Apple and AT&T to explain the nature of their agreements on iPhone applications and why Google Voice hadn’t been approved for the App Store. The company’s responses were due Friday…and raise almost as many questions as they answer.

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FCC Opens Inquiry Into Google Voice Apps for iPhone

FCC Opens Inquiry Into Google Voice Apps for iPhone

In another indication of how awkward things might be getting for Apple and Google, last week Apple not only rejected Google’s Google Voice application for the iPhone, but also tossed out third party applications that used Google Voice. Now, the Federal Communications Commission wants to know what’s going on, sending an inquiry (PDF) to both Apple and AT&T why the Google Voice applications were rejected. The letter focuses on what role (if any) AT&T may have played in the rejection of Google Voice applications, and asks for details of conditions and contracts between Apple and AT&T that may impact iPhone application approval.

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Sprint Faces $1.2 Bln Class Action Suit

Sprint Faces $1.2 Bln Class Action Suit

Telecommunications operation Sprint is now facing a $1.2 billion class action lawsuit over allegation that allege the company’s early termination fees violate both the Federal Communications Act and laws in every states. The new lawsuit has been filed by Scott Bursor, the same attorney who spearheaded a case in California against Sprint over unlawful termination fees—and won a $73 million judgement earlier this year.

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FCC Opens Set-Top Box Competition

The Federal Communications Commission has denied a request from cable operator Comcast to be exempt from new regulations intended to open competition in the marketplace for cable set-top boxes. Although Comcast plans to appeal the decision, as of July 1, 2007, cable operators will be forbidden from providing customers with set-top boxes which lock customers to their service via integrated security features.  Read more...

Cingular/AT&T Tops Customer Complaints

“Complaint data obtained by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports and ConsumerReports.org, from the Federal Communications Commission show that Cingular and AT&T, which combined last year to form the nation’s largest wireless phone company, have the worst combined complaint record for 2004. AT&T alone has had the worst complaint record two years running.

If you’re considering a change of wireless carrier, you may want to look first to Verizon. It had the lowest number of complaints per customer among national carriers, and among all the carriers, relatively few complaints about service quality and billing. “

Read more at Consumer Reports  Read more...

Consumers Increase HDTV Acceptance

The survey results reinforce CEA’s market research projection that total digital television (DTV) unit shipments will surpass analog television sales for the first time in 2005, based on the “digitaltuner mandate” issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The first time that dollar sales of digital television surpassed analog television was in 2003.

“HDTV is here to stay,” CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro said of the survey findings. “Nearly all consumers are now aware of HDTV and more consumers than ever intend to make their next TV an HDTV. The consumer acceptance ‘obstacle’ is no more. Consumers want HDTV now more than ever; it is now up to the content creators and distributors to deliver it.”

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US Courts Says FCC Stepped Over the Line

“You crossed the line,” Judge Harry Edwards told a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission during arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

“Selling televisions is not what the FCC is in the business of,” Edwards said, siding with critics who charge the rule dictates how computers and other devices should work.

The FCC rule aims to limit people from sending copies of digital television programs over the Internet. The FCC has said copyright protections are needed to help speed the adoption of digital television.  Read more...

California To Appeal of FCC’s VOIP Order

“The state of California is mounting a legal challenge to a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that VOIP phone services sold by Vonage Holdings Corp. were exempt from state and local regulations and tariffs.

In a petition for review filed with the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, the Public Utilities Commission of California said it plans to argue that the FCC exceeded its statutory jurisdiction in its November ruling.”

Vonage and other VOIP telephone service providers claim they are not a traditional telephone service and should not be treated as one. Instead they would prefer to be referenced as an “IP-Enabled Service”.  Read more...

ATI Ships 5M+ HDTV Chips

In addition, ATI announced market leadership in ATSC/OpenCable silicon solutions with an ATI-estimated 85% market share for THEATER and NXT demodulators and a 40% market share for XILLEON MPEGdecoders and display processors.   ATI’s NXT, THEATER and XILLEON chips enable consumer electronics manufacturers to create a wide variety of products that feature exceptional reception andvideo display performance.  Manufacturers also have access to ATI’s extensive software support and reference designs to help them bring to market unique products that conform to worldwideindustry standards.   Leading manufacturers of HD TVs and HD set-top boxes using ATI chips include:    
Changhong
Coship
Funai (Sylvania)
Hisense
Hitachi
JVC
Mitsubishi
Matsushita (Panasonic)
Philips
Scientific-Atlanta
Samsung
Sanyo
Sony
TiVo
Toshiba
Thomson / TTE (RCA)
USDTV
Xoceco (PRIMA)
 
“ATI is providing consumer electronics manufacturers with the industry’s best performing DTV and set-top chipsets,” said Daniel Eiref, director of marketing for DTV Products, ATI Technologies Inc.”ATI’s corporate commitment to research and development in digital television technologies is enabling our customers to deliver brilliant products while at the same time meeting the United StatesFederal Communications Commission mandated conversion to integrated digital reception.”
 
ATI’s product family for digital TVs and set-top boxes includes:
* NXT2003/NXT2004/NXT2005 – cost-effective VSB/QAM/OpenCable reception
* THEATER 310/THEATER 313 – the world’s best performing VSB/QAM/OpenCable reception
* XILLEON 210VC – the only ATSC/OpenCable system-on-chip with integrated VSB and MPEG
* XILLEON 226 – the world’s most popular and best performing dual high-definition MPEG decoder with integrated display processor

FCC Filing Says Cable Must Use CableCards

Digital cable ready (DCR) television sets are a marketplace reality that requires the full backing of both the consumer electronics (CE) and cable industries, the Consumer Electronics Association(CEA) wrote in an ex parte filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). CEA filed its comments yesterday in response to submissions from the National Cable and TelecommunicationsAssociation (NCTA) and its members, urging the FCC to lift its requirement that cable operators and competitive products rely on a common interface for purposes of conditional access. The interfaceand conditional access measures provide protections to prevent theft of service and damage to the cable system.

“Consumer electronics manufacturers have invested countless hours and millions of dollars to design and produce digital cable ready television sets,” said CEA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. “We celebrated the arrival of digital cable ready sets at the 2004 International CES and today, more than 100 models are on the market. We’ll likely see DCR capabilities in other devices, such as digital video recorders (DVR), going forward, but for the consumer to fully benefit from and understand digital cable ready, the cable and CE industries must work together to promote and support CableCARD.”

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