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Editor's Corner: Should Adelphia's John and Tim Rigas be released from prison? Also Noted: Spotlight On... Google Fiber utility cabinets spark complaints from Kansas City residents
Comcast Business names Merritt director of Mountain region; News Corp. recruits Sony veteran and much more... Special Report:
 They're cooked: The top wireline turkeys of 2013
Thanksgiving is a time to relax, eat generous portions of turkey, and yes, watch the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions take the field once again. It's also a great time to reflect on the past year. In the latest edition of our Top Wireline Telecom Turkeys, we serve up a healthy portion of companies' failed initiatives, products, strategies, and executive mishaps of 2013. Read more
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Should Adelphia's John and Tim Rigas be released from prison?
I've been thinking about how to tell the story of John Rigas, the cable pioneer who founded Coudersport, Pa.-based MSO Adelphia Communications ever since I visited Pennsylvania in early November to attend an event hosted by the nation's largest cable company – Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA). The 260-mile drive from my home near Syracuse, N.Y., to Comcast's headquarters in Philadelphia brought me within 70 miles of the Allenwood federal prison complex in White Deer, Pa., which is currently home to the former Adelphia chairman and his son Tim Rigas, Adelphia's former CFO. The Rigases, who were convicted on charges of wire and securities fraud in 2004 – a scandal that rocked the cable industry and pummeled the stocks of public cable MSOs – began serving their prison terms at a jail in North Carolina in 2007. In November 2011, they were transferred to Allenwood, which is 10 miles from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Williamsport and 100 miles from their homes and families in Coudersport. John Rigas, now 89, isn't scheduled to be released from Allenwood until January 2018. Tim Rigas is scheduled to be released in June 2022. As a reporter covering the cable industry, much of my focus these days is on Comcast, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last month. Adelphia was once the third largest cable MSO, with more than 5 million subscribers, and would have celebrated its 60th anniversary last year. The company's name has come up in recent weeks in stories speculating about cable consolidation. Some reports have suggested that Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) could be carved up similar to the way Time Warner and Comcast split most of Adelphia's cable systems in a $17.6 billion deal they struck in 2005, three years after Adelphia filed for bankruptcy protection. Few of those stories have mentioned the Rigases, who had Thanksgiving dinner last week for a seventh year in prison. I haven't thought much about the Rigases in recent years, but that trip I took through Pennsylvania last month brought back memories of the Adelphia trial, its bankruptcy, and even my college newspaper days, when I first wrote about John Rigas. The Adelphia founder was on the board of trustees at my alma mater, St. Bonaventure University, in the 1990s. St. Bonaventure is small Franciscan school in New York's Southern Tier, not far from the Pennsylvania border and Coudersport. Bonaventure is well known for its basketball team, whose matchups with Atlantic 10 rivals like Temple and UMass were once televised by Adelphia's Empire Sports Network. My friend Tom Murphy and I once earned $30 and Empire t-shirts after one of the regional sports network's producers stopped by our college newspaper office, looking for "cable boys" to help two courtside camera operators who were covering a big game from tripping over the cables that were attached to their cameras. Rigas was also one of Bonaventure's biggest donors. One of the last stories I wrote in 1994 as editor-in-chief of The Bona Venture, the campus newspaper, was about the construction of a fine arts center that the Rigases helped fund. While Empire Sports Network is long gone, and the Bonnies no longer play on Adelphia Court, Bonaventure hasn't changed the name of the Rigas Family Theater inside the fine arts center. The last time I saw John Rigas was in March 2004, when I spent a day covering his trial in New York. I took a seat on the defense team's side of the courtroom, since there were several empty rows, while other reporters had filled the seats behind the prosecutors. John Rigas stopped and said hello to me when he entered the courtroom that day with his sons and attorneys. Rigas smiled when I told him that I was a Bona grad. And while his expression changed slightly when I informed him that I worked as a reporter for an industry publication, he remained polite...Continued  More
Read more about: Adelphia, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable
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Today's Top News 1. Former Insight president Dinni Jain named COO of Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) said Thursday that former Insight Communications President Dinni Jain will succeed Rob Marcus as TWC's chief operating officer on Jan. 13.  | | Jain | The move comes a few weeks before TWC CEO Glenn Britt is scheduled to retire. The nation's second largest cable MSO announced in July that Marcus would succeed Britt as CEO in January. Jain, who worked his way up the corporate chain at Insight from CFO in 2002 to president and COO in 2006, helped prepare Insight for its $1 billion sale to TWC last year. He has experience that could help TWC, which is reportedly an acquisition target for Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR) and investor Liberty Media (Nasdaq: LMCA). "Dinni is a proven leader, with more than 20 years of experience in successfully operating cable systems," Marcus said in a prepared statement. "He has a great track record and shares my commitment to creating a performance driven, customer-centric culture at Time Warner Cable," he added. Jain is one of several top Insight executives who stepped down after TWC closed its acquisition of Insight and its cable systems in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio in March 2012. Michael Willner, Insight's founder and former CEO, is now running Penthera Partners, an IP video technology firm that is helping cable MSOs such as Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) develop products that allow subscribers to download programming to mobile devices for offline viewing. Jain was group managing director for strategy at NTL Europe before joining Insight. He's also a veteran of Cellular Communications Inc., Barclays De Zoete Wedd and Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. "I am honored to be joining a company with a long and proud tradition in this industry and am excited to be a part of the dynamic leadership team that Rob is creating," Jain said in Thursday's announcement. For more:
- see the release Related articles:
Insight leadership team departs, following completion of Time Warner Cable acquisition
Time Warner Cable names Rob Marcus next chairman and CEO
Insight founders Willner and Knafel buy IP video company Penthera
Insight signs 3.5M franchise deal in Louisville, setting stage for closure of Time Warner Cable merger
FCC approves Time Warner Cable-Insight deal Read more about: Insight Communications
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2. Aereo to target Comcast subscribers with launch in Baltimore
Aereo said Thursday that it plans to flip the switch on its local broadcast TV platform in the Baltimore, Md., metropolitan area on Dec. 16. The company, which charges customers $8 monthly to watch local TV stations on mobile devices and Web browsers, will target subscribers of incumbent cable MSO Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) with its launch in Baltimore. Comcast's NBCUniversal subsidiary is among the group of broadcasters that have been seeking a court order aimed at forcing a shutdown of Aereo, which uses arrays of dime-sized antennas to capture over-the-air broadcast signals. The Long Island City, N.Y.-based company converts the signals to HTML5 video and allows customers to store programming on a cloud-based DVR. After debuting in New York in March 2012, Aereo announced in January that it would expand to more than 20 cities in 2013. While it has launched in Boston, Miami, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Atlanta, Aereo will need to speed its pace of deployments in order to meet that goal. Aereo said in Thursday's announcement that it plans to announce additional launch dates "throughout the remainder of the year." Its rollout in Baltimore includes 11 counties in central Maryland. For more:
- see the release
- DSL Reports has this item Related articles:
Broadcasters may take Aereo case to Supreme Court
Aereo delays Chicago launch after encountering 'issues' with beta test
Aereo to expand to Chicago, Philadelphia and 20 other cities
Kagan: Retrans fees to hit $7.6B by 2019 Read more about: Aereo
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3. Blue Ridge launches home security and automation service
4. Time Warner Cable's TV channel shift draws interference from Verizon LTE smartphones
Reports of spectrum interference causing problems for LTE networks are growing more commonplace, with everything from fluorescent lights to electronic cash registers being implicated. In the latest twist, Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) LTE data service is getting the blame for interfering with some channels delivered over the Time Warner Cable system in Raleigh, N.C. A report from TV station WRAL said TV channels that Time Warner Cable recently relocated to the 700 MHz band of its cable system--including WRAL's own channel--are being negatively impacted by Verizon's LTE transmissions. According to the report, "When a 4G device and a cable box are in the same room, they can come into conflict." "We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on a solution that will resolve this problem definitively in the coming weeks," Time Warner Cable said in a statement to WRAL. The resolution will involve shifting WRAL and Fox 50 off of the 700 MHz band. In early November, Sam Matheny, vice president of policy & innovation at Capital Broadcasting, which owns WRAL, wrote a column decrying the interference issue. Matheny said he began having problems with his cable TV video "becoming very pixelated and jerky" after he brought home his new Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 5S and left it on his nightstand. Matheny wrote that the immediate solution "is to use the 700 MHz band on cable systems for services that don't require reliable delivery of linear programming," and emphasized that cable operators should avoid putting their most viewed channels in this space. Noting that at least some of TWC's cable boxes apparently do not have the necessary shielding to block interference from other devices, Matheny called for boxes with better shielding to be built starting immediately to "accommodate the new reality of the 700 MHz band." However, wireless consultant and engineer Steven Crowley told Ars Technica that the more likely source of interference is RF energy being conducted into the cable box via power cable or coaxial cable connections. For more:
- see this WRAL article and this column
- see this DSL Reports article
- see this Ars Technica article Related articles:
Industry wrestles with the growing problem of spectrum pollution
AT&T's LTE network impaired by salon's fluorescent light
FCC adopts order banning wireless microphones in 700 MHz band Read more about: LTE, WRAL
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5. Frontier exec clashes with officials in West Virginia city over debate on broadband stimulus
Also Noted SPOTLIGHT ON... Google Fiber utility cabinets spark complaints from Kansas City residents Google Fiber (Nasdaq: GOOG) is drawing some complaints from residents in Kansas City, Mo., after installing utility cabinets on sidewalks to power its 1-Gig Internet and pay TV service. Local Fox affiliate WDAF-TV ran a story this week about the dispute, which is similar to complaints that AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) have seen in other cities where the telecom providers have installed above-ground equipment. Read more Quick news from across the Web. > Comcast Business named Paul Merritt director of its Mountain region. News release > News Corp. named former Sony Corporation of America executive Jim Kennedy chief communications officer. News release > NetCracker Technology said that Israeli satellite TV provider yes is using its billing and customer relationship management solutions. News release And finally… Nickelodeon announced that SpongeBob SquarePants has become the first animated character to be featured as an eBay Celebrity, joining the ranks of "A-listers like Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry." News release > LTE Advanced in unlicensed spectrum? - Tuesday, December 10th, 1pm ET /10am PT As the operators prepare for the looming 1000x data challenge, small cells and utilizing all spectrum resources are in the front and center. But, does it work? What is needed? Tune into this webinar to get the answers Register Today! > Unraveling the LTE Roaming Puzzle- Wednesday, December 11th, 2pm ET/ 11am PT This webinar will delve into the challenges of LTE roaming as well as explore potential solutions. Register Today!
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