Time Warner Cable and Tribune signed a new multi-year retransmission consent agreement for Tribune stations in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Diego and Indianapolis. “The agreement also covers Time Warner Cable’s continued distribution of Tribune’s superstation WGN America,” the companies said in a press release (http://bit.ly/JZds3K).

Cable operator Cogeco’s Atlantic Broadband will launch TiVo-based mobile app and TV Everywhere services in early 2014 as it completes deployment of the Roamio DVRs across seven markets, Atlantic Chief Marketing Officer David Isenberg told us. Atlantic launched sales of Roamio in the Cumberland, Md., market in October and has since expanded it to Aiken, S.C., and Miami, and plans to add the Annapolis, Md., and Uniontown, Altoona/Johnstown and Warren/Bradford, Pa., areas by early next year, Isenberg said. The Roamio DVR marketed by Atlantic added a Multimedia over Coax (MoCA) connector and Atlantic is “in the final stages” of internal testing of both the TiVo-based mobile app and TV Everywhere offering, Isenberg said. Atlantic had 230,304 video customers Aug. 31, along with 177,108 customers for broadband and 78,246 for telephone, Cogeco said. Video subscribership was down 7,009 from a year earlier and the service had 44.5 percent penetration in Atlantic markets, Cogeco said. Cogeco bought onetime Charter Communications affiliate Atlantic for $1.3 billion in 2012. “We plan to knit together these services so that if you are a TiVo customer and TiVo knows what things you have set season passes for, the TV Everywhere platform will know that and serve you related content instantly,” Isenberg said. “It will lead to a much more personalized and consistent experience across platforms and will ultimately allow people to find the content they want to watch faster and easier.” The mobile app and TV Everywhere services will be offered free to subscribers to Atlantic’s existing TiVo bundles. Atlantic hasn’t disclosed how many TiVo customers it has. Isenberg said it has so far received a “great response” from new and existing customers. The Internet services, which were recently upgraded to 75/5 Mbps and 30/3 Mbps from 40/3 Mbps and 20/2 Mbps, have attracted many TiVo customers, Isenberg said. About 70 percent of Atlantic’s new subscribers choose the DOCSIS 3.0-based services, he said. Less than 50 percent of the total subscriber base get the DOCSIS 3.0 service, he said. While its parent Cogeco has deployed Rovi’s remote recording and XD tablet streaming services in Canada, Atlantic will retain TiVo in the U.S., Isenberg said. It also will continue to push TiVo with an install base that also includes Cisco and Arris’s Motorola Mobility set-tops, he said. Those customers subscribing solely for video will likely get Cisco or Motorola set-tops, Isenberg said. “What we market, sell and believe is the right platform to meet customer needs going forward is TiVo,” he said. “For us they are the only platform that offers the ability to stream live TV into the home and because they are cloud-based we can provide a multi-screen experience.” With TiVo readying both a cloud-based user interface and network DVR, an increasing number of functions will likely migrate to servers from a set-top, Isenberg said. The trend will start with “incremental storage and archiving and then over time I would expect to see more and more of the capabilities moving to a hosted platform,” Isenberg said.

More than 223 million active numbers were registered on the Do Not Call Registry as of September, the FTC said in a biennial report to Congress Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1ienpbz). During fiscal year 2013, 2,875 businesses and other entities paid more than $14 million to access the registry, the FTC said. The agency cautioned that VoIP calls, Caller ID spoofing and automated dialing technology have “made it easier for individuals and companies who disregard the law to make high volumes of calls at very little cost.” That has led to an increase in illegal robocalls, peaking at about 200,000 complaints per month to the FTC by the end of FY 2012, it said.

The Obama administration asked U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to dismiss a case on the constitutionality of warrantless collection of data by the National Security Agency, arguing that a trial threatens national security. White is overseeing a case brought in San Francisco by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and others, Jewel v. NSA. Among the documents released by the government Friday was one that acknowledged that President George W. Bush authorized NSA’s bulk data collection on phones calls and the Internet in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (http://bit.ly/1gSAOFR). “President Bush issued authorizations approximately every 30-60 days,” wrote James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, in a post on the DNI’s Tumblr page. “Although the precise terms changed over time, each presidential authorization required the minimization of information collected concerning American citizens to the extent consistent with the effective accomplishment of the mission of detection and prevention of acts of terrorism within the United States. NSA also applied additional internal constraints on the presidentially authorized activities.” EFF criticized the administration’s claims. “Surprisingly, in these documents and in the brief filed with them, the government continues to claim that plaintiffs cannot prove they were surveilled without state secrets and that therefore, a court cannot rule on the legality or constitutionality of the surveillance,” EFF said in response (http://bit.ly/1jBE22C). “For example, despite the fact that these activities are discussed every day in news outlets around the world and even in the president’s recent press conference, the government states broadly that information that may relate to Plaintiffs’ claims that the ‘NSA indiscriminately intercepts the content of communications, and their claims regarding the NSA’s bulk collection of ... metadata’ is still a state secret."

The multiyear iPhone deal that Apple signed with China Mobile will also have “implications” for Sprint, Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said Monday. The iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be available via China Mobile’s network of retail stores and at Apple retail stores across mainland China starting Jan. 17, Apple said Sunday in a news release. It’s “clearly a meaningful” announcement for Apple, said Fritzsche. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator, with more than 760 million customers, making it seven times larger than Verizon, she said. China Mobile, like Sprint, is deploying the TDD LTE 4G service on the 2.5 GHz spectrum, she said. Until now, the iPhone hasn’t supported the 2.5 GHz band, she said. With the “significant scale” that China Mobile “brings to the table, it is our understanding that future versions of the iPhone device will now support this band,” she said. That’s a “significant positive” for Sprint shares, she said. Apple, however, didn’t immediately comment on its plans. Of the “Big 4” carriers, Sprint is the only one using the TDD version of LTE, she said. The iPhone “continues to be the most embraced high end” smartphone in the U.S., so having the device support the spectrum band and the TDD LTE technology “should strengthen Sprint’s competitive position in future quarters,” she said. Sprint shares, however, closed 1.8 percent lower Monday at $9.68.

The Senate Commerce Committee sent S.Res. 157 to the full Senate Thursday. The bill, which the committee cleared in late July, would express the sense of the Senate that phone service must be improved in rural areas and that no entity may unreasonably discriminate against users in those areas. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who introduced S.Res. 157 with Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has expressed concerns that call completion issues persist despite FCC action (CD July 31 p1).

Sixty-nine percent of respondents were concerned about computer and phone data collection by private companies and the federal government, according to a Washington Post poll published Sunday (http://wapo.st/1hw6QoC). The poll found 43 percent were “very concerned,” as opposed to the 26 percent “somewhat concerned.” Sixty-six percent were concerned about data collection by the National Security Agency (NSA), said the poll. In separate cases, 69 percent of respondents were concerned about personal data collection on websites such as Amazon, Google and eBay, and the same was true of information collected by phone companies such as AT&T and Verizon. Fifty-nine percent of respondents were concerned about data collection from retail stores such as Target, Walmart and CVS, said the poll. Thirty-four percent of respondents were more concerned about data privacy since the leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, while 62 percent maintained that the leaks had made “no difference” in their estimation of data privacy, said the poll. Seventy-four percent of respondents said they have not taken any action to “better protect” data privacy in the wake of the Snowden leaks, said the poll. A random sample of 1,006 adults from across the country, which included landline and cellphone users, was polled from Nov. 14 to 17, said an adjoined article in the Post (http://wapo.st/JgXocs). The poll has a margin sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, it said.

Members of the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Jan. 14 on the group’s recommendations for changing U.S. surveillance law, committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Sunday. The group’s set of 46 recommendations, released last week, included recommending that the government no longer store phone metadata on U.S. citizens (CD Dec 19 p4). The group’s recommendations “make clear that it is time to recalibrate our government’s surveillance programs,” Leahy said in a statement. “Momentum is building for real reform.” Several of the group’s recommendations align with Leahy’s USA Freedom Act (S-1599), the committee said.

News Corp. acquired Storyful, a self-described social news agency, said a Friday release (http://bit.ly/18CSHG3). Storyful will remain a “stand-alone business” and work with News Corp.’s existing publications, including The Wall Street Journal. “Storyful has become the village square for valuable video, using journalistic sensibility, integrity and creativity to find, authenticate and commercialize user-generated content,” said Robert Thomson, News Corp. CEO: “Through this acquisition, we can extend the village square across borders, languages and platforms.” News Corp. acquired Storyful for about $25 million, according it said. Storyful CEO Mark Little said in a statement the News Corp. sale allows Storyful, launched in 2008, to “quickly transform its vision into a global reality."

Iridium and Aireon signed binding agreements with three major air navigation service providers (ANSPs) for $120 million in new equity into Aireon, the planned satellite-based global air traffic surveillance system. The ANSPs are Italy-based ENAV, the Irish Aviation Authority and Denmark-based Naviair, Iridium said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1cWHHlW). Aireon is a joint venture between Iridium and NAV Canada (CD Nov 20/12 p14). Aireon LLC, the developer of the system, plans to pay $200 million in hosting fees to Iridium “for the integration and launch of Aireon’s Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) receiver payloads on each of its Iridium NEXT satellites,” it said.