Policy & Regulation

Catherine Bohigian will become Cablevision’s top Washington, D.C. lobbyist. She’s leaving her job as chief of the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. In that role, she’s been a senior advisor and legal advisor to FCC chair Kevin Martin.Source:Multichannel News: Cablevision Hires Top Martin Aide

Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) is in trouble with a judge.The company has been found in contempt of a federal injunction. The judge says Qualcomm used WCDMA chips that infringed on Broadcom (BRCM) patents, even after an injunction was issued last winter.The new order requires Qualcomm to stop using and supporting the chips immediately.Source:Biz Journals: Judge finds Qualcomm in contempt for Broadcom patent useRelated ...

In early August, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff announced the nation's largest-ever hacking and identity-theft case, involving 11 perpetrators who allegedly stole as many as 40 million credit card numbers from local branches of eight retailers in the United States, storing and then selling the information in the Ukraine and Latvia. The crooks accomplished this feat via "wardriving" — ...

The FCC yesterday exempted certain small cable operators from requirements to broadcast both analog and digital signals by next February.Cable MSOs with 552MHz or lower-capacity systems, or that serve 2,500 or fewer subscribers, don’t have to carry both analog and digital signals for another three years.The news came as a relief to small companies that had lobbied for the extension. ...

Sometimes I get squeamish over government telling business what it can and can’t do. But Wednesday’s mandate from the FCC to Comcast in the ongoing inquiry into P2P traffic throttling isn’t one of those times.We need transparency into the companies that are on-ramps to the Information Superhighway, and the FCC rightly recognized that on Aug. 20. (Except it’s undeniable that ...