Aereo will face off with broadcasters next week in the U.S. Supreme Court over the legality of the online video provider’s business plan — using dime-sized individual antennas to receive over-the-air local stations and stream them to paying subscribers over the Internet.

On April 22, Aereo will appeal for its future as it presents its case to the high court in defense of a consumer’s right to access local stations over the air, even if a third-party installs an antenna on their behalf.

Broadcasters consider Aereo just another end run around copyright law, arguing the online service has no right to profit off the resale of their signals to consumers without permission and compensation.

Today Aereo launched a website, ProtectMyAntenna.org that frames its legal case as a basic viewing rights issue. Aereo says the broadcasters’ intransigence is nothing new — they also fought cable television and the videocassette recorder in the courts in the past, suggesting both technologies were stealing their signals.

“What is at stake in this case is much bigger than Aereo,” says the website. “We believe that consumers are entitled to use a modern, cloud-based, version of an antenna and DVR and that consumers should not be constrained to 1950’s era technology to watch free-to-air broadcast television. The broadcasters’ positions in this case, if sustained, would impair cloud innovation and threaten the myriad benefits to individuals, companies, and the economy at large of the advances in cloud computing and cloud storage.”

The Obama Administration has sided with the broadcasters and is seeking time to speak before the Court on the broadcasters’ behalf. Consumer groups are largely lined up behind Aereo, claiming online video competition is something worth protecting.

The crux of the case is likely to be which side is correct in their interpretation of what defines a “public performance,” which makes all the difference in determining whether Aereo must pay broadcasters or not. Private viewing at home is protected by earlier case-law and if Aereo is found to simply be facilitating home viewing, it will likely be deemed legal. Aereo assigns a single antenna to each customer, a fact they hope will strengthen its argument they are not redistributing programming to the masses. How the signal gets to the customer, over an antenna cable or the Internet, should not make any difference.

Broadcasters are hoping for a different interpretation — one popular in California courts, that would find any redistribution of programming over the Internet to be a public performance. Several other ventures have tried to launch virtual cable systems that streamed over the air stations and all were quickly shut down by west coast courts. Aereo has better lawyers, deeper pockets, and apparently a better argument that won favor in several eastern U.S. courts last year.

The Supreme Court will ultimately decide Aereo’s fate. If it loses, expect it to close down operations immediately. If Aereo wins, the company expects to continue expanding into other television markets across the country.

Aereo currently provides service in 11 U.S. cities.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Yahoo Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia on the Future of TV 4-17-14.flv[/flv]

Katie Couric from Yahoo! News sat down for an extensive interview about Aereo with its CEO Chet Kanojia. Kanojia argues broadcasters were already well-compensated when they received free spectrum for their stations. (20:20)

Telus, Bell and Rogers charge customers as much as 45 percent less on wireless service where they face a fourth regional competitor in a case of suspected predatory pricing that could threaten the viability of competition in Canada’s wireless marketplace.

SaskTel, a crown corporation, is one of several Canadian regional wireless providers. The Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation, based in Regina, said SaskTel’s revenue and net income dipped to $1.205 billion and $90.1 million, respectively. SaskTel (which has net income of $106.2 million in 2012) projects this will be only $59.2 million next year.

The dramatic drop in revenue, in part, comes from suspiciously low wireless rates in areas where SaskTel and other regional providers operate.

Sudden rate cuts were introduced last summer and are available only to customers where regional firms offer wireless service. Vidéotron in Quebec, EastLink in the Maritimes, MTS in Manitoba, and SaskTel in Saskatchewan are all impacted. But the savings don’t extend outside of these competitive areas, leading to whispered accusations that the Big Three are engaged in predatory pricing behavior, designed to undercut competitors while maintaining high rates for everyone else.

Styles

SaskTel president Ron Styles told The Leader-Post Telus has been offering customers in Saskatchewan a rate 45% lower than customers in Red Deer, Alberta pay. SaskTel is forced to match those rates to stay competitive, but it has hit the crown corporation’s finances hard.

“We’re very concerned; it’s had a major impact,” Don McMorris, cabinet minister responsible for SaskTel, told the newspaper.

Although many customers are happy paying a much lower mobile phone bill, the savings may prove temporary.

Canada’s three national carriers have proved particularly adept as killing off any competitors threatening their 90%+ market share. Public Mobile found it difficult to attract new customers away from rival Telus, so as the business floundered, Telus made the upstart company an offer it couldn’t refuse, shut down Public’s network, and transferred customers to its own network.

Although stopping short of directly pointing the finger at the Big Three, Styles is headed to Ottawa to discuss the implications of predatory pricing on SaskTel’s future. But he left no doubt something is up.

If Bell, Telus and Rogers can afford to offer low rates here and on other “4th carrier” turf, does that mean their wireless rates are needlessly high elsewhere, Styles asks. Or are the Big 3 engaged in “predatory pricing” — selling something below cost to damage or destroy competitors and keep new entrants out of the market.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities received more than 460 identical e-mails urging the regulator to approve Verizon’s proposed settlement permitting it to renege on broadband expansion commitments that would have brought high-speed Internet to every citizen in the state that wanted it.

More than a few of those e-mails were submitted with fake e-mail addresses or without the knowledge of the alleged senders. An Ars Technica piece this week confirmed Stop the Cap!’s own findings of the astroturf effort and found more customers denying they ever submitted comments to the BPU about the settlement.

“I am a customer only to Verizon and I was not contacted by them to submit anything,” one person told Ars. “If they did, I would’ve slammed them. They are gougers. If AT&T was where I lived, I would switch in a heart beat.”

When this customer was shown the e-mail he allegedly sent to state officials, he said, “That would mean someone did it on my behalf. I can assure you that I did not send that response.”

In other cases, Ars discovered some of Verizon’s vendors were misrepresenting the nature of the settlement and asking people they worked with or knew to sign the petition as part of a contest.

“I hope you are doing well. I have a favor to ask,” one e-mail read. “I’m working on a project for our client, Verizon, and they need some signatures to an online petition. Verizon wants to expand its offerings in New Jersey, but needs approval from the state. Higher-speed Internet, more FiOS, etc.”

“All you need to do is enter your e-mail and zip code,” the message continued. “I appreciate it. We’re in a contest with another vendor to see how many people we can get to sign it. Just let me know yea or nay, so I can get the credit for it.”

Of course signing the petition would result in the exact opposite of more FiOS deployment and higher speed Internet access.

That online petition turned out to be hosted on the website of the astroturf group 60+ Association, which is funded by various corporations and works with D.C. lobbying firms who help corporate clients launch “social media” campaigns that appear to be spontaneous grassroots movements. The group only supports Republican candidates for office and is normally preoccupied with attacking health care reform with the major financial contributions it receives from the pharmaceutical industry. With Obamacare more or less settled, the group now also advocates for telecom companies without bothering to disclose any financial arrangement.

One of the lobbying firms associated with 60+ Association — Bonner & Associates, was implicated in a 2009 scandal when they were caught sending forged letters to members of Congress claiming to be from local minority and senior citizen groups. The lobbying firm quietly changed its name to Advocacy to Win (A2W), where it is still accepting clients that want to launch astroturfing campaigns.

One banking trade association gave glowing reviews for their work:

If you have started to confuse the Washington Post editorial page with that of the Wall Street Journal, you are not alone.

Under the stewardship of Fred Hiatt, WaPo’s editorial opinions have grown increasingly anti-consumer and pro-corporate at home and decidedly neoconservative abroad.

It’s the same newspaper that wholeheartedly supported the merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal in 2010. Let’s check whether they called that one right:

Entities that compete with NBC-owned cable channels fear that Comcast will relegate them to hard-to-find channel locations. Consumer advocates warn that Comcast will use its newfound power to raise subscription rates and stifle new voices on television and the Internet.

The same newspaper reported last week that Comcast refused to let Back9Network, a golf oriented network in direct competition with Comcast-owned Golf Channel, on its cable systems.

For years, Bloomberg TV — in direct competition with Comcast-owned CNBC — has been stuck in Channel Siberia, in some areas like Chicago dumped between Comcast’s promotional “barker” channel and “Leased Access.” CNBC enjoys Ch. 29, certain to attract more viewers than Bloomberg’s Ch. 102.

As Stop the Cap! reported yesterday, no cable company raises cable television rates more than Comcast, blaming programming rate increases that in several cases originate with Comcast-owned cable networks.

Regulators should scrutinize the proposed merger but should be skeptical of the critics’ claims. […] Advocacy groups have been poor prognosticators of the effects of large media mergers.

The Washington Post’s editorial accuracy record has more than a few blemishes, from its 2003 declaration Colin Powell’s “evidence” of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was “irrefutable,” to suggestions that a wedding of Comcast and NBC Universal wouldn’t hurt anyone because the FCC was ready to manage any problems without pesky mandates or overbearing pre-conditions.

The FCC already requires cable operators to deal fairly with competitors. Its rules would require Comcast to give competitors access to NBC content on “reasonable” and “non-discriminatory” terms. The company would also be required to negotiate in good faith about carrying non-NBC channels. Competitors who believed that they were harmed by unfair dealing could have their complaints adjudicated by the agency. Critics of the Comcast-NBCU merger claim that these mechanisms are ineffective and slow. But the breakdown of the complaint system should not be used as an excuse to impose onerous conditions on one company. Instead, critics should push for an overhaul of the system.

The Bloomberg case, now three years old, remains unresolved. That should tell readers something about just how quickly the FCC gets around to dealing with these kinds of complaints. Comcast has been able to argue its decision to bury Bloomberg and keep Back9Network off its cable systems are examples of ‘good faith, reasonable decision-making that doesn’t discriminate.’ It sued to quash Net Neutrality, critical for online video competition, and won.

The Post editorial amusingly insists that Comcast’s merger plans should not be interrupted because of an ineffective complaint system that can’t or won’t promptly deal with Comcast’s ongoing abuse of the very non-discriminatory rules the editors declare as a reason to support the Comcast-NBCUniversal merger.

Many of the same fears of domination and manipulation were raised with the 2001 merger of AOL and TimeWarner; that megadeal crumbled after a few years. Comcast and GE, which will retain a 49 percent stake in NBCU, should be allowed to proceed, and regulators should do their jobs and watch the newly formed company carefully.

Phillip “The Post’s Naivete is Showing” Dampier

The 2001 merger of AOL and Time Warner came at the last gasp of the dot.com boom. As the New York Times noted, “In May of 2000, the dot.com bubble began to burst and online advertising began to slow, making it difficult for AOL to meet the financial forecasts on which the deal was based. The world began moving quickly to high-speed Internet access, putting AOL’s ubiquitous dial-up service in jeopardy.”

The final unraveling of AOL Time Warner came about because the combined company, highly dependent on AOL (and its stock value), could not sustain its business model when nobody could figure out how to get paid for content in the online world. AOL’s dial-up Internet access business was also rapidly in decline as the country started moving towards broadband.

“The consumer has access to everything and now it’s going to be on a handheld device, so what I call the rolling thunder of the Internet started actually to eat its own, which was AOL,” writes the Times. “AOL was the Google of its time. It was how you got to the Internet, but it was using some old media business ideas that were undone by the Internet itself, and that’s why Google came along.”

The same sad story is not true for Comcast or Time Warner Cable (which was spun off from Time Warner, Inc. as an independent company as part of a restructuring in 2009.)

Both cable companies are in a better place than AOL-Time Warner:

• AOL relied on dial-up and reseller access to some broadband providers — neither sufficiently lucrative to sustain AOL’s dot.com-days value. Comcast/TWC own their own broadband networks;
• Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-verse are the only significant multi-city broadband competitors for the cable industry. U-verse remains challenged by its technological limitations and Verizon stopped expanding FiOS. Google Fiber has a totally insignificant market share and is likely to stay that way for several years. Google Fiber provides no competition in the northeast where Comcast and Time Warner Cable dominate;
• Comcast and Time Warner Cable both oppose community-owned broadband competition and Time Warner has successfully managed to push legislation virtually banning network expansion in several states;
• Comcast will both own and control the pipes and a significant amount of the content that crosses its broadband networks. At the time of the AOL-Time Warner merger, online video competition did not exist in a meaningful way.

Just twenty-five years ago, Romanians under the dictatorship of Nicolae “The Genius of the Carpathians” Ceaușescu didn’t have to worry about the Internet. The country was plagued by electricity outages and economic austerity imposed to pay off the Romania’s foreign debt.

After the National Salvation Front dispatched Ceaușescu and his wife (and Communism) in a hailstorm of revolutionary bullets on Christmas Day 1989, Romania’s Euro-Atlantic integration began. Romania’s ancient eastern bloc telephone system was unsuitable for dial-up, much less broadband, so it was largely scrapped in favor of fiber optics in an effort to bring the country up to date with current technology.

Today, 97 percent of Romania is wired with fiber optic broadband. Some goes straight to the home, other providers rely on a form of Ethernet broadband, while fiber to the neighborhood networks predominate in smaller cities.

It is much the same story across the rest of eastern Europe, which has allowed those nations to leapfrog ahead of the United States in broadband speed rankings.

What also sets Romania apart from many other countries is the low price charged for high-speed Internet access. Broadband service at reasonably fast speeds can be obtained for as little as $10 a month.

The top 20 fastest Internet speeds according to average peak connection:

1. Hong Kong, 65.4Mbps
2. South Korea, 63.6Mbps
3. Japan, 52Mbps
4. Singapore, 50.1Mbps
5. Israel, 47.7Mbps
6. Romania, 45.4Mbps
7. Latvia, 43.1Mbps
8. Taiwan, 42.7Mbps
9. Netherlands, 39.6Mbps
10. Belgium, 38.5Mbps
11. Switzerland, 38.4Mbps
12. Bulgaria, 37Mbps
13. United States, 37Mbps
14. Kuwait, 36.4Mbps
15. United Arab Emirates, 36Mbps
16. Britain, 35.7Mbps
17. Canada, 34.8Mbps
18. Czech Republic, 34.8Mbps
19. Macau, 34.4Mbps
20. Sweden, 33.1Mbps

Source: Akamai