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Worse Than a CableCARD?
“We are getting away from set-tops,” points out Matt Polka, president and CEO of the American Cable Association. Speaking at last week’s WEC 2016 conference, Polka was referring to the migration of his MVPD members’ licensed programming to IP set-top boxes, TVs and hand-held devices through the magic of Apps. He expresses concern that the proposed FCC changes (PDF) – that…
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More Efficient TV White Spaces #CES2016
Eight times higher transmit power is what the new IEEE 1900.7-2015 TV White Space standard promises. According to LETI, a French research organization and contributor to the standard, this translates into 75% longer distance for a given data rate. It achieves this performance gain without interfering with adjacent TV channels. The extended range afforded by this new modulation…
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Fiber as a Moral Obligation
The idea that fiber is a piece of infrastructure that is so fundamental that it becomes almost a moral obligation was one of the take-aways from a couple of panels moderated by Calix’s Geoff Burke. Burke was the moderator of panels that featured the FCC’s Chief of Strategy, Jonathan Chambers and Kelly Drye Partner, Tom Cohen. The…
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A Comprehensive Risk Assessment Policy and Practice
“We used the framework as a way of guiding how we changed our business operations through the institution of a risk-assessment meeting,” says Jeff England, CFO at Silver Star Communications in the above video. England refers to the NIST cybersecurity framework and how Silver Star used the framework as the basis for formally addressing risk across functions (e.g.…
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Making Sense of the Cybersecurity Framework
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and its 98 subcategories can appear daunting to the typical resource constrained, independent telecommunications company. Fortunately for its membership, NTCA has been working with NIST, the FCC and its members to make sense of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. They have also been tracking and providing input to the FCC’s cybersecurity working group, (Communications, Security, Reliability…
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16 Million Reasons to Challenge CAF
With this headline, “Connect America Fund Offers Carriers Nearly $1.7 Billion to Expand Broadband to Over 8.5 Million Rural Americans,” a dispute over $16M would seem like a rounding error. It is a rounding error, unless you are in a place that can’t receive broadband. Making it even worse is if the $16M is to fund…