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Monday, January 12...

AT&T Files Motion to Dismiss AT&T Data Throttling Case
AT&T filed a motion to dismiss the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit against it over allegations of deceptive and unfair data throttling. This October 2014 case sought damages against the carrier for its practice of failing to inform high-use data customers that their connection speeds had been purposely slowed to make additional bandwidth available to other users. "AT&T is a common carrier subject to the Communications Act," the company noted, stating that its data policies are thus exempted from the FTC's oversight. "It offers mobile voice plans to customers on an indiscriminate basis without modifying the content of the information." According to AT&T, this common carrier status instead places it squarely under the thumb of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC). For its part, the FTC asserts jurisdiction due to mobile data services not being regarded as common carriage. The motion was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions Upgrades Verizon Cloud Service
Verizon Enterprise Solutions has updated its Verizon Cloud service with new customer-facing software designed to make future upgrades seamless, as well as other administrative tools. This cloud-based infrastructure and storage service platform will now support future changes without requiring service interruption or other limitations in infrastructure capacity. As such, Verizon Cloud will now operate in a different fashion than traditional cloud platforms that require customers to set up virtual machines in multiple "zones," or upgrade domains. This eliminates the needs for each zone be rebooted after each maintenance session, preventing occasional downtime. In addition to this, Verizon also updated the user interface for its recently released Verizon Cloud Marketplace, adding new administrative tools for reviewing virtual machines, disks, and other resources.

Cox Signs New Retransmission Agreement with Gray TV
Cox Communications announced that it has reached a new retransmission consent agreement with Gray TV. Under this new contract, Cox will once again be permitted to transmit Gray TV programming within its channel lineup. "We regret the recent disruption in service," noted Cox in a statement, "and appreciate our customers' patience and support as we sought to reach an agreement reasonable to our business and customers." On January 9, 2015, Cox noted that Gray pulled its programming for service areas in Florida, Kansas, and Nebraska after Cox refused to sign a new agreement due to Gray's demand for higher rates, which Cox called "exorbitant," and likely to "increase cable bills every year." No financials for the final agreement were disclosed.

... Brady Hicks, Faulkner Information Services