Sonus Networks said Friday it has agreed to buy Performance Technologies for about $30 million. Sonus said the deal would accelerate its mobility strategy by “adding Diameter Signaling capabilities required in all-IP, IMS 4G/LTE” networks. The deal would also “expand and diversify” Sonus’s portfolio through the addition of an integrated, virtualized Diameter and session initiation protocol technology portfolio, the company said. Sonus expects the deal will allow it to expand its presence in the addressable market to almost $3 billion in 2017 (http://bit.ly/IKlTPv).

Mediacom urged the FCC to invite interested parties to update the record in the retransmission consent proceeding. The price for retrans keeps rising at extraordinary rates, wrote Mediacom General Counsel Joseph Young in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/18H2Rjt). Broadcasters are immune to the price discipline ordinarily imposed by consumers in a truly competitive market, he wrote. Subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors “are the ones who ultimately pay for retransmission consent,” said Young. FCC rules and TV programming owners’ practices “force distributors to offer, and subscribers to buy, programming in bundles over which distributors have little or no control,” he said.

Representatives from about a dozen public interest groups, meeting with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and media and wireless and other aides, expressed the need for a diverse agency. Wheeler should “include a wide diversity of backgrounds in FCC staff,” because “at both the FCC and in the media industry, diverse inputs lead to higher quality outcome,” a Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights official told the gathering, an ex parte filing on the gathering said. The meeting included Special Counsel-External Affairs Gigi Sohn, media aide Maria Kirby and wireless aide Renee Gregory. There’s “collective and strong support for the Lifeline program” and backing for the FCC’s enforcement actions this year against carriers from the American Civil Liberties Union, Consumers Union, Free Press, Leadership Conference, National Urban League, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Public Knowledge (headed by Sohn before Wheeler recently hired her), and other groups at the meeting, said the filing posted Friday in docket 09-182 (http://bit.ly/IKdnzY). “Both old and new networks” are important, said an official of the National Urban League, recounted the filing. “The civil rights community is looking for proactive policies to increase diversity in ownership in all technologies.” A “critical barrier to broadband adoption remains cost and education levels,” and Wheeler should expand Lifeline to include broadband to help “address the persistent adoption gap,” the filing recounted the league official saying. Wheeler was said to have shown a direct style in an introductory meeting last month with association officials and another with public interest representatives (CD Nov 22 p4).

The Austin City Council approved free Google Fiber links for 100 “community connections” sites Thursday evening, said the company in a blog post (http://bit.ly/18H0QUp). These sites include cultural institutions, two universities, workforce education centers, the Austin Independent School District, public libraries, and social and health services. For these sites to get Google Fiber, the surrounding area, or the fiberhood, needs to qualify for service first, said the company. “So when you sign up for Google Fiber next year, you're also helping these local community organizations get one step closer to getting Fiber, too,” said the company. It will probably “be over a year” before these sites starting getting connected, said Google Fiber. The company agreed to give 100 approved community institutions free service for 10 years as part of its contract with the city.

The FCC prison calling order violates the Communication Act’s requirement that inmate calling service providers be fairly compensated, Pay Tel told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Friday, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1cDGn7B). “The Order’s failure to account for the cost of providing ICS in jails will make the provision of ICS in jails economically unsustainable and many high cost small to medium size jail facilities will be left without a service provider.” For Pay Tel, 73 percent of its 160 client locations have at least one category of intrastate calls in which average revenue per minute is below cost, it said. “The total amount by which intrastate capped rates are below cost” is nearly $3 million, about 11 percent of Pay Tel’s revenue, it said. “In this regard, the FCC’s Order violates, on its face, Section 276’s command that the Commission ‘ensure that all [ICS] providers are fairly compensated for each and every completed intrastate and interstate call.'” Pay Tel asked that the commission stay the new rules.

The White House must issue an official response to a petition asking for stronger email privacy protections, after the petition hit the necessary 100,000 signatures needed by Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1avKNbR). Digital 4th, an industry and advocacy coalition, filed the petition, attempting to restart debate over updating the 27-year-old Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CD Nov 14 p19). The group was formed in March to advocate for an ECPA modernization bill from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, which would protect electronic communications collected and maintained by third-party service providers (CD March 20 p10). The bill never made it out of committee. “Several bills in Congress would fix this by updating ECPA to require a warrant, but regulatory bodies are blocking reform in order to gain new powers of warrantless access,” said the petition. “We call on the Obama Administration to support ECPA reform and to reject any special rules that would force online service providers to disclose our email without a warrant."

The sixth Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellite from Boeing was delivered on orbit for the U.S. Air Force, Boeing said in a press release (http://bit.ly/JaOo8Y). Australia’s funding of the satellite provided the Australian Defence Force with immediate access to the WGS network, Boeing said. “Four additional WGS satellites are in production in El Segundo, Calif., under the program’s Block II follow-on contract.”

Britain’s communications sector compares favorably with that of 16 other nations around the world, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said in its 2012 international communications report (http://xrl.us/bqaaxs). The study benchmarks the U.K. communications sector against other countries to see how it’s doing -- France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. The survey found that the sector’s total global revenue, including telecom, TV, radio and post, was around $2 trillion last year, up 2.5 percent from 2011, it said. TV subscriptions generated the biggest and fastest-growing proportion of the total revenue, it said. Fixed-line connections continued to fall, but were most resilient in the U.K., where many customers still get broadband services over fixed lines, it said. Mobile takeup continued to exceed population size in all the countries surveyed except China, it said. Excluding Japan, which has a very high takeup of advanced feature phones not readily available in other countries, the U.S. was the only one to report a smartphone adoption level of less than 50 percent in Ofcom’s online survey, it said. People in the U.K. are most likely to trust online retailers than those in the other countries, it said. In the TV and audiovisual area, Brazil, Russia, India and China continued to have the largest annual growth, it said. The U.K. leads the way in digital conversion and was one of only three countries to have 100 percent of all main TV sets switched to digital in 2012, it said. U.K. consumers are embracing value-added services, with HDTV and digital video recording penetration the highest among the European nations included in the research, Ofcom said. British consumers are more likely to watch catch-up TV on smart TVs, mobile phones and tablets, but scheduled linear TV is also still popular, with Britons watching four hours per day, the regulator said. Other findings included: (1) U.K. residents are the most frequent online shoppers and the most likely to access TV content over the Internet. (2) Social networks are still among the most searched-for terms on the Internet, with Facebook the most searched-for term for 14 of the 17 comparison countries. (3) Mobile Internet users in the U.S. and U.K. are the most active social networkers. (4) Radio revenue was up for the third consecutive year in the 17 countries analyzed. (5) The U.K. had the second-lowest proportion of total telecom revenue generated by data services in 2012, with Japan leading the way.

JetBlue launched in-flight high-speed Internet service using ViaSat’s Ka-band connectivity. During the beta period rollout of the service, Fly-Fi, JetBlue will offer free basic Web browsing onboard Fly-Fi equipped aircraft through June, the airline said in a press release (http://bit.ly/18FSAXR). The satellite system includes a LiveTV portal, aircraft Wi-Fi system and integration for JetBlue, ViaSat said in a press release. It’s capable of delivering 12 Mbps or more to each connected passenger, ViaSat said. The satellite-based system also can operate on the ground, it said.

NTCA commended the Rural Spectrum Accessibility Act, S-1776, while slamming the wireless market as “consolidated” and backing spectrum licenses based on small geographic areas. That “would allow smaller carriers like those in NTCA’s membership to bid only for the territory they are interested in serving and ensure rural areas are not ignored when it comes time to deploy services,” said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield in a statement Wednesday. Two carriers are now “holding 78% of the country’s low-frequency, broadband-capable spectrum and accounting for more than 80% of wireless industry revenues,” Bloomfield said. The bill was introduced and referred to the Senate Commerce Committee before the Thanksgiving recess.