Nokia’s Q4 2011 financial report revealed that Microsoft paid Nokia $ 250 million to use Windows Phone just in the last quarter of last year, with much more support money on the way Read more…

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The Android-based smartphone company Pantech could be next in line to sign a patent deal with Microsoft that could give Microsoft a percentage of Pantech’s product sales. Read more…

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Microsoft has announced that today they have signed a patent agreement with LG that that covers “LG’s tablets, mobile phones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome OS Platform”. Microsoft and LG are not sharing the details of the agreement, but it is likely that this will be similar to other agreements Microsoft has made with other Android ODMs. Therefore Microsoft is likely to get a few dollars for every LG Android and Chrome OS device sold.

This latest agreement with LG sees Microsoft hold agreements with 11 companies that produce Android and Chrome OS devices. These previous agreements are with companies such as HTC, Samsung and Acer which means that over 70% of all Android devices sold in the US are covered by Microsoft’s patent agreements.

There has been criticism by some that Microsoft is trying to hamper Android’s success by going after the Android device makers and entering into agreements with them. However, from a legal perspective all patents are assets of the company and Microsoft is obliged to protect all its assets. Therefore, it needs to protect its patents and enter into these agreements, that isn’t to say that it can’t benefits from these agreements in other ways than just covering Android devices. For example when Microsoft signed an agreement with Samsung it was able to get Samsung to offer a “closer collaboration on Windows Phone”.

Microsoft is in the process of suing Barnes & Nobile and Motorola Mobility for distributing devices that encroach on some of Microsoft’s patents. It’s understood that these litigations came following a break down of talks between Microsoft and these companies. All the companies who signed an agreement with Microsoft would have been in similar talks, the difference is they often built upon previous agreements and evidently felt it was better to agree with Microsoft than to fight it.

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Microsoft has signed a new multi-year and multi-title deal with casual and social game developer Arkadium. The developer will create games for multiple platforms under the Microsoft Studios banner. Read more…

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Comcast just struck a huge new agreement with Disney that will give it access to a wide range of content from ABC, Disney and ESPN networks across a number of screens and platforms. The 10-year deal also stipulates that the companies will collaborate on developing interactive applications for the next generation of devices.

At the heart of the agreement is Comcast’s commitment to bringing TV content to online platforms like its XfinityTV.com website, as well as to mobile applications like its iPad app. Comcast will also allow subscribers to authenticate their accounts, which will give them access to Disney content on its own branded applications — like the WatchESPN iPad app, for instance.

Covered in the deal are pretty much all the Disney networks, including ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Deportes, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, ESPN 3D, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FullCourt and ESPN3. It also includes retransmission consent for Disney-owned local broadcasters and the introduction of Disney Junior to Comcast’s channel lineup. It will also grow Comcast’s on-demand library, with a wide selection of ABC, ABC Family, Disney Channel, Disney Junior and Disney XD shows available.

For Comcast, the pact emboldens its TV Everywhere initiative, which it launched two-and-a-half years ago, as it attempts to provide more access to on-demand content on as many devices as subscribers want to view them on. It also includes new and upcoming distribution for Disney-branded mobile and tablet applications, which will include WatchDisneyChannel, WatchDisneyXD and WatchDisneyJunior. In both cases, it follows the need to make content available everywhere possible, or miss out on greater viewership opportunities.

Photo of Comcast Tower courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Burkett.

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Sometime in the past few weeks, Microsoft apparently changed the name of the Facebook app for Windows Live Messenger.  The app, used to connect Messenger and Facebook chat so you can chat with your Facebook friends from the Windows Live Messenger client (or from Hotmail), used to be called (if we remember correctly) the Windows Live Messenger app.  Now, however, both the notification in Facebook’s timeline, and on the apps Page itself, it’s now known as “Microsoft Live”:

Some of our readers have been tweeting us asking about the change, which certainly seems a little strange.  It is nice to see that there are 21.8 million users of the app, no matter what it’s called, but we can’t really figure out why this makes any sense at all.  Anyone have any ideas?

LiveSide.net

Microsoft has signed a deal with Blind Wink Productions, an entertainment company founded by movie director Gore Verbinski, that will allow the company to provide content for Microsoft’s platforms. Read more…

Neowin.net

Google’s deal to be the default search service for Mozilla’s Firefox browser ended in November but the two companies are reportedly in talks to perhaps extend that deal. Read more…

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The spectrum deal that Verizon signed with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks Friday, in which the nation’s largest wireless operator would buy the unused airwaves from the nation’s top cable providers, signals the moment that the consumer benefits of the convergence of voice, video and data hit the wall. It’s a deal that’s great for Verizon, an acknowledgment of reality for the cable folks and a bummer for AT&T and consumers.

Under the terms of the deal, Verizon will acquire AWS spectrum that Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks had purchased during the AWS auctions under the SpectrumCo name in 2006. Verizon is paying a $ 1.2 billion premium for the airwaves and will get 20 MHz in cities across the continental U.S., giving it up to 60 MHz for its Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in certain markets. And for mobile players, having a lot of spectrum is essential to meeting demand.

But as part of the deal, Verizon and the cable companies have signed undisclosed “agreements” that indicate how the two companies will combine their products and create partnerships around bundling wireless, voice, data and television. Verizon didn’t explain much, but Kevin Fitchard, my colleague writes:

The most obvious result of that deal would be to allow the cable operators to become MVNOs on Verizon’s network, but it may also hold the possibility of Verizon becoming a kind of cable virtual operator or agent outside of its traditional wireline territory, selling home broadband, TV and phone services out of its stores.

In a blog post today Neil Smit, President of Comcast Cable wrote that Comcast will wait four years before it can provide a mobile offering with itself acting as mobile virtual network operator. He said Time Warner Cable and Bright House had similar agreements. However, the tenor of those agreements is essential in determining how this deal will affect the U.S.’ broadband competition in both wireless and wireline.

The hope of a new wireless player shrinks

Verizon and the cable guys are hanging up their gloves.

Consumer groups are leery that this deal will benefit their constituents, with Mark Cooper — research director of the Consumer Federation of America — saying in an interview, “This is the end of the world!

“Verizon was supposed to be our competitor for Comcast in the wireline space and SpectrumCo was supposed to be a competitor to Verizon and AT&T in the wireless, and now that’s all gone,” he said. Indeed it’s looking unlikely that the cable guys will continue to act as any sort of competition, especially given that CNet is reporting they will halt their agreement to resell WiMax with Clearwire. This leaves the wireless world pretty much stuck with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, with smaller dollops of competition provided by Leap Wireless and MetroPCS. The two smaller carriers may even get a tiny boost if the FCC requires Verizon to sell off any spectrum assets as part of approving the deal.

Despite the potential of a small spectrum divestiture, Cooper notes that in the last ten years AT&T and Verizon have managed to buy 75 percent of the spectrum that was put on auction, and about 90 percent of the spectrum auctioned in the last decade is in the hands of the Big Four carriers. Given that spectrum is one of the barriers to entry for anyone planning a wireless network, and that getting the stuff approved for a mobile broadband network is daunting and expensive, it’s pretty clear U.S. policy hasn’t helped spread that wealth.

Where there’s wireline there’s hope. Or there was.

Yet aside from the wireless implications, the deal has a huge potential impact on wireless broadband competition. Verizon had hinted that it might resell its FiOS TV service over-the-top to folks outside the FiOS service area. Since TV can be a collection of bits delivered over the Internet, the traditional cable packages could become obsolete if the content companies and channels could figure out ways to license their content in new ways.

TV will be affected too.

Given that Verizon has both a broadband and a pay TV business it had one of the best chances to push such a radical change in the pay TV business model. But now that it has some mysterious “agreements” with the cable guys, it’s unlikely that Verizon would try to infringe on their content businesses with its own over-the-top offering. That’s a bummer for consumers that might want to get a Verizon package over one from their local cable provider, but it’s also indicative of Verizon ceding the wireline market to cable companies.

As Verizon has rolled out its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) offerings, it has sold off many elements of its older DSL businesses, and is now positioning its LTE wireless service as a competitor to DSL. This is bad news from Frontier, CenturyLink and AT&T’s markets that don’t have U-verse, but it won’t bother cable providers, which have or are in the midst of upgrading their networks to faster DOCSIS 3.0 systems that can deliver 100 Mbps service.

Cable companies are already taking over at the nation’s primary broadband providers as people dump DSL lines in droves. The problem is that for many consumers a choice between DSL, LTE or cable isn’t really much of a choice at all. Cable networks upgraded to DOCSIS 3 can be much faster than DSL or LTE, and it’s hard to imagine a consumer seeing the options as equal. The best hope for a better competitor to cable is FTTH (not even AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node technology that U-verse offers), and it’s possible that Verizon no longer has much reason to roll out fiber further so it doesn’t upset its new partners. This is why both AT&T and consumers are on the losing end of this agreement.

Susan Crawford, an influential policy wonk and a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York City agrees. She emailed me the following:

“This is the crystalline moment when the division of the marketplace becomes completely clear, even to people who haven’t been paying attention. VZ and ATT get wireless; cable gets wires; consumers are stuck. Wireless, like wired high-speed access already wholly dominated by the cable companies, is a natural monopoly service at this point, with incredibly high barriers to entry – so high that even current players, like T-Mo, are having trouble making it. Clearwire has nowhere to go at this point. So we have the worst of all worlds: no competition, and no regulatory oversight.”

Wait what if Wi-Fi can save us?

The potential counterweight to this anticompetitive world is Wi-Fi. The hope that Wi-Fi remains a growing power that’s not controlled entirely by one party was mentioned as a possibility by several people I spoke with. If the cable companies follow Cablevision’s strategy of deploying Wi-Fi networks in addition to their wireline networks, it offers the chance for a newcomers such as Republic Wireless to offer mobile-esque data plans that rely mostly on Wi-Fi hotspots for connectivity.

This is a pretty small hedge against the growing monopoly and duopoly in U.S. broadband, but I suppose it’s something to hold onto as the convergence of voice, data and television continues to play out and the existing players try to hold onto as much of the profits as they can. Maybe it was crazy to think consumers could get away with paying for a broadband connection for $ 45 a month, as opposed to paying around $ 170 for Internet, cable and voice. It might be technically possible, but the ISPs aren’t going to pass up on those profits unless competition forces them to. This latest deal may end up ensuring that competition continues to evade the U.S.

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Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks are selling off the spectrum remnants of their stillborn wireless venture, SpectrumCo, to Verizon Wireless for $ 3.6 billion. The deal would allow Verizon to double up on its LTE network – in some regions triple up – creating huge overhead for future mobile broadband growth.

Meanwhile, the cable operators aren’t wiping their hands of the wireless business completely. Instead, Verizon and the three MSOs have entered into a rather mysterious sounding “agent” agreement. The most obvious result of that deal would be to allow the cable operators to become MVNOs on Verizon’s network, but it may also hold the possibility of Verizon becoming a kind of cable virtual operator or agent outside of its traditional wireline territory, selling home broadband, TV and phone services out of its stores.

Under the sale agreement, Verizon will gain SpectrumCo’s Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) licenses covering much of the cable operators’ territory in the lower 48 states. Verizon is paying a premium $ 1.2 billion premium over the $ 2.4 billion the cable operators bid at auction for the spectrum in 2006. With that spectrum, Verizon can fill out its AWS footprint, which today is limited to the eastern U.S. SpecrtumCo owns 20 MHz blocks in all of the major populated regions of the U.S. (Phonescoop published detailed maps after the auction, which you can see here). Today Verizon’s AWS spectrum lies unused, but it is targeting the spectrum for the next phase of its LTE deployment.

With that spectrum, Verizon can build what amounts to another LTE network parallel to its current 4G network at 700 MHZ. In areas where its current AWS holdings overlap with SpecrtumCo’s, Verizon will have a total of 60 MHz of spectrum, which would be enough to build mobile broadband networks with three times the capacity it has on LTE today. If it can get this deal by regulators, Verizon will seal its mobile broadband future for years to come.

Gaining approval, however, might be challenge given the anti-acquisition regulatory environment in Washington. Both the Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice are trying to block AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile and the resulting mood is not one that’s very pro-consolidation. That said, a $ 3.6-billion spectrum acquisition is not a $ 39 billion merger, and the FCC looks set to approve AT&T’s purchase of Qualcomm’s 700 MHz spectrum. There’s little chance, the FCC would deny the same opportunity to Verizon.

As for the agent agreements, the joint announcement contained few details and Verizon officials declined to comment on future plans while the deal is still pending. The press release stated cable companies will have the option of selling Verizon’s wireless service, becoming MVNOs, and that the four entities are forming an “innovation joint venture” to explore the deeper integration of wireless and wireline technologies.

The deal, however, could upset the relationship that these three MSOs have with Clearwire. All of them are major investors in the WiMAX operator and have begun reselling its mobile broadband service on limited basis in their territories. Verzion’s LTE network would give them a second — and much more extensive — 4G option.

Image courtesy of Flickr user buddawiggi.

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