The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill that seeks to delay the transition to all-digital television broadcasts in the United States until June 12th. The 264-158 vote delays the planned switchover from the original February 17th date. The delay, opposed by most Republicans, is supported by President Obama as up to 20 million households are thought to be unprepared for the transition.
Around 13 million people hold expired coupons to subsidize the cost of a digital converter box, which is needed for households with analog televisions after the switch. Millions of requests for coupons are currently pending as the supply has run out under demand. Those thought to be mostly affected by the switch are poor, elderly and rural households.
“We believe it is irresponsible to ask mostly rural, or elderly consumers to reach into their own pockets to deal with this transition when many folks, including the federal government, are making a profit,” said Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst at Consumers Union. The U.S. Government raised about $19 billion from companies bidding for use of the vacated spectrum. Qualcomm, for example, paid $550 million to use the spectrum for its mobile video service. It was opposed to the delay.
Result for: pockets
Nokia Vietnam is being sued by that country’s equivalent of the RIAA, the Recording Industry Assotiation of Vietnam (RIAV) over downloads they’re offering to mobile phone owners as part of a promotion.
The case is somewhat strange since the songs in question are being provided to Nokia by another company, FPT Telecom. What makes it odd is that the RIAV doesn’t seem to be going after FPT Telecom for selling the music to Nokia.
“We want to directly solve the case with Nokia. As a matter of fact, we will independently work with FPT Online about another matter,” said RIAV’s Vice Chairwoman, Truong Thi Thu Dung.
Perhaps it’s simply a question of going after the company with the deepest pockets. Or maybe it’s because they’re already suing FPT Telecom over content on their IPTV service and want to maximize the damages for each.
And maybe they just don’t expect to get their money from FPT, who Dung has described as “uncooperative.”
