Streaming Video and Premium Content Behind AT&T's Buy of DirecTV

As reported by The Verge: Sunday's news that AT&T had agreed to acquire DirecTV for a whopping $48.5 billion came as no surprise to observers of the pay-TV industry. "If you think back to the ’90s the marketplace was full of small companies. We've seen wave after wave of mergers and now there are fewer and larger companies," says Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst. "Going forward were going to see even fewer and even larger competitors going forward or moving toward a national, competitive marketplace for television, telephone, internet, wireless."  

For AT&T, the deal is mainly about gaining scale in video and acquiring the bargaining power that comes with that to license premium content — particularly with the looming specter of a tie-up between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. AT&T will combine its 5.7 million U-verse TV customers with DirecTV's roughly 20.3 million US subscribers. "All of a sudden you're talking about the number-two pay-TV provider in the country," says Dan Rayburn, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "That means you can negotiate for better programming, and at a better price."

Having access to premium content is key to AT&T's ambition to become a major player in the world of streaming video. "DirecTV is way ahead of AT&T in terms of licensing deals. Something like NFL Sunday Ticket is a game-changer for AT&T if they can offer it as part of a package to their wireless customers," says Rayburn. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said on an investor call this morning the deal will allow AT&T to offer premium video on all screens, from TVs to smartphones to cars and airplanes.

Just how important is big-ticket content like the NFL? The deal terms actually stipulate that AT&T can walk away from the merger if DirecTV doesn't win the contract with the NFL to renew that exclusive.

There are synergies on the DirecTV side as well. Currently DirecTV can't offer its customers competitive high-speed internet as part of its satellite package. "AT&T can bring high-speed internet to those same customers," says Rayburn. AT&T's Stephenson says that he expects the deal will mean 15 million DirecTV customers, many in rural areas, would be given access to broadband internet using a combination of technologies, including wireless. (DirecTV currently offers its customers satellite internet through packages with Exede, which can deliver download speeds of 12Mbps.)

In a world where double- and triple-play packages are virtually ubiquitous, this kind of upgrade will help ward off competition. "The one big thing we’ve been missing is a two-way broadband pipe to the home," says DirecTV CEO Mike White. "With this deal we can bundle video and broadband to combat the dominance of cable." Of course, the cry to combat "the dominance of cable" overlooks what White and Stephenson would prefer to obfuscate: DirecTV already counts over 20 million subscribers in the US alone, compared to 26.8 million for Comcast. By that metric, the satellite provider is no underdog.

DirecTV also gives AT&T a boost to its bottom line — it reported free cash flow around $2.6 billion last year — and gives the telecom giant substantial new inroads in Latin America: DirecTV currently counts more than 18 million customers there. On the call this morning, Stephenson made several mentions of AT&T's desire to expand aggressively in Latin America, especially Brazil.

The deal, like Comcast–Time Warner Cable, will need to pass regulatory scrutiny before it's approved. If both the mega-mergers do succeed, the media and communications landscape in America will have shifted dramatically. "You're talking about a world where two companies control 60 percent or more of the paid TV and internet market," says Rayburn. "If you thought the net neutrality folks were angry before, this is really gonna set them off."

Driverless Cars, Telematics and Actuarial Science

As reported by Insurance Networking News: Fewer accidents translate into lower insurance rates, and driverless car technologies could lower rates by as much as $475 per year, according to industry experts.

Driverless cars are on the streets in California, Nevada, Michigan and elsewhere, and while they are proving to cause fewer accidents than human drivers, there will continue to be accidents and someone will be liable for them. However, who will be responsible, and who will need insurance, is not yet clear.

At the Casualty Actuarial Society’s Ratemaking and Product Management seminar last month, industry experts discussed the implications of driverless cars and insurance telematics in the presentation “Autonomous Vehicles and the Impact on the Insurance Industry.” Presenters included Robert Peterson, a professor of law at Santa Clara University, Frank Douma, research fellow from the University of Minnesota, and Michael Stienstra, FCAS, AVP at QBE North America.

Human error contributes to more than 90 percent of all auto accidents, but even as accidents decline with consumer acceptance of the technology, there will continue to be a need to insurance the cars, their owners and manufacturers, the experts said.


Fewer accidents likely will means cheaper auto insurance, Peterson said, adding that rates could decline as much as $475 per year for operators of self-driving cars cheaper every year, according to a study by Alain L. Kornhauser, professor of operations research and financial engineering director, Transportation Program at Princeton University.

Many automakers say they will market driverless cars by 2020, and Google says it will have a fully automated car by 2017. Further, the costs may be lower than consumers may have imagined. According to Raj Rajkumar, director of the Carnegie Mellon-GM Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Lab, quoted in the discussion, an autonomous technology package could add $5,000 to $7,000 to the sticker price.

For actuaries, the flood of data coming from driverless cars could be problematic. Stienstra said driverless cars likely will transmit as much as 750 megabytes of data per minute, and actuaries will have to cull the data before collecting it, and then find the variables that predict accidents.

Regulators also could create hurdles, Peterson said, adding that California has mandatory rating factors, including driving record and number of years as a driver; and that safer drivers receive discounts. With an automated vehicle, Peterson said those factors may prove irrelevant, and that state insurance laws will likely need to be altered to accommodate driverless cars.

Driverless cars may be safer than traditional cars, but flawed hardware or software could cause accidents, and liability could then fall on manufacturers or installers, in which case, the insurance pricing would fall to product liability actuaries for coverage.

For a considerable time, there will be a mixture of three types of cars, self-driving cars; partially automated cars, where the owner does some or almost all the driving, and human driven cars, Douma said. He described the five levels of vehicle automation, ranging from no automation, level 0, to fully self-driving, level 4. Currently, development efforts are aimed at level 3, where cars perform all safety-critical functions under certain conditions. Drivers will be alternating with computers for some time, Douma explains, as drivers could back out of the garage and onto the street before handing control to the computer, which could hand control back to the driver as they approach their destination.

Regulators, automakers and the public will expect safer cars to translate into lower insurance premiums, Stienstra said, and actuaries will need to be proactive on this issue, noting that the Casualty Actuarial Society has an Automated Vehicles Task Force to make sure casualty actuaries have the ability to partner with engineers and researchers to properly understand and insure the risks.

Telematics
The increasing availability and consumer acceptance of insurance telematics, also called usage-based insurance also has implications for insurers and actuaries.

In separate discussions, Jim Weiss, FCAS for ISO, Jerel Cestkowski of American Family Insurance and Allen Greenberg, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Transportation, addressed telematics technology and implications for insurers and consumers.


When drivers are aware that their behavior is being monitored, they may drive more safely, Weiss said, adding that studies have found crash rates fell between 20 and 30 percent in cars monitored by telematics devices.

Monitoring is not cheap, though. Weiss said telematics devices currently cost about $100, last three years, and wireless communications for each device costs about $5 a month.

Urban Engines Launches to Use Data to Make City Transportation Better

As reported by GigaOm: Stanford computer science professor Balaji Prabhakar first became interested in how transportation systems move when, years ago, he got stuck in “the mother of all traffic jams” in India. Now, after two years in stealthy development, Prabhakar and his co-founder, former Google exec Shiva Shivakumar, are launching a startup called Urban Engines that is using data, algorithms and behavioral economics to help make cities less congested and urban transportation operate more efficiently.

In an office in downtown San Francisco this week, six stories above the blaring horns of buses and cars running up and down Market Street, Shivakumar and Prabhakar showed me a screen of a train system that could be any big city in the world — Sao Paulo, San Francisco, Bangalore. Prabhakar clicked the play button and we watched a geometrical visualization of the flow of train commuters moving into stations, getting on trains and getting off at their stops. Some trains were too full, some not full enough. It was mesmerizing to watch, in a weird way.

But for city planners and transportation operators it could be an entirely new way of doing things. Urban Engines has built a system that can take data mostly from commuter transit cards — the bus card, the subway card (if you’re in San Francisco, your Clipper card) — and use algorithms to infer information about how commuters and the transportation flow are behaving.

Without embedding any sensors in the subway or video cameras watching the platforms, Urban Engines can tell things like how long commuters were waiting, how many trains went by that were so full commuters couldn't get on and what the volume of each train car was throughout the day. It only needs the data from when the commuter enters and exits the station, and by knowing the aggregate of all the commuter data at the same time, it can infer how the system is operating. It can do the same thing with a city bus system.

Essentially, Urban Engines is taking the smallest and cleanest amount of data possible to map out the entire public transportation network. The approach means that it can build such a monitoring system much more inexpensively than comparable transportation systems that use sensors, video cameras or even people manually observing and counting. A surprising amount of city accountability around transportation comes from city workers standing next to potential problem areas and observing — not exactly efficient or accurate.

The second piece of Urban Engine’s idea comes from behavioral economics: offering incentives or punishments to shape behavior. After identifying problem spots in transportation systems, it can help city planners use incentives to make the systems run better. For example, if too many people are using buses early in the morning, incentives (like being entered into a lottery) could be provided to encourage commuters to take the bus an hour later. Or if some train stations are being over-used and others are being under-used, incentives could be provided to get more commuters to the under-used stations.

Many of the ideas around incentives are based on the work that Prabhakar was doing at Stanford. He’s the director of the Stanford Center for Societal Networks, which works on making “societal networks smarter, more scalable and more efficient.” After leaving Google, Shivakumar (who’s Urban Engines’ CEO) came to Stanford as a visiting researcher to reboot, and the pair have been working together ever since.

Even though this might be the first time you’re hearing about them, Urban Engines actually already has some early traction and a hot list of investors. It’s working with the World Bank to implement its system for the buses in Sao Paulo. It’s helping Singapore shift its train commuters from peak hours to off-peak hours. And it’s got an early deployment with the train system in Washington, D.C. It’s also done pilots projects in Bangalore, with Infosys, on the Stanford campus.

Last year, Urban Engines raised a Series A round from some of the most prominent investors in the Valley, including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Greylock, SV Angel and angel investor Ram Shriram. The executives didn’t disclose the size of the round, but they’re employing about 20 people.

The underlying macro trend behind Urban Engines is that the population is growing rapidly, and by 2050 there will be 9 billion people on the planet. Much of the growth is happening in cities, and worldwide, more people now live in cities than outside of cities. City transportation systems will only get increasingly crunched over the coming decades. City planners and transportation builders will need new tools to help manage the influx.

SpaceX Capsule Returns to Earth from the ISS

As reported by USA Today: One month after it launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule returned to Earth on Sunday.

The unpiloted Dragon splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, about 300 miles west of Baja California, just five hours after leaving the International Space Station at 9:26 a.m. EDT.

NASA astronaut and station commander Steve Swanson controlled a 58-foot robotic arm that pulled the Dragon from its Harmony node port at 8 a.m., then released the capsule into space 266 miles over the ocean south of Australia.

The spacecraft completed three thruster firings to move a safe distance from the station and its three-person Expedition 40 crew.

"Thanks to everybody who worked this Dragon mission; it went very well," Swanson radioed to the ground. "It's also very nice to have a vehicle that can take your science equipment, and maybe some day even humans, back to Earth."

The Dragon launched April 18 and arrived at the space station April 20 with about 5,000 pounds of supplies. It is returning home with 3,564 pounds of science samples, crew supplies and vehicle hardware.

Dragon is the only cargo vehicle operating today that can return significant amounts of cargo to the ground. Russian, European and Japanese cargo freighters, plus Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus, all are destroyed during reentry into the atmosphere.

Russia's Soyuz carries three people up and down, but little else. The Dragon is one of several contenders to resume flights of NASA crews on U.S. vehicles in a few years.

Thrusters will fire at 2:08 p.m. EDT to begin the Dragon's fall to Earth. An unpressurized trunk that delivered two experiments to the station will be jettisoned before reentry. The splashdown will not be televised, but SpaceX is expected to report its progress on Twitter.

The mission was SpaceX's third of at least 12 under a $1.6 billion NASA resupply contract. The fourth is tentatively planned in August.

Before then, Orbital is planning its second contracted launch of a Cygnus to the station June 10 from Virginia.

Lithuanian Was Smuggling Cigarettes with a Drone

As reported by Arstechnica:

Russian border guards near Kaliningrad “detained” a low-flying drone entering the country from Lithuania last week. According to a spokesperson for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), it wasn’t on a spy mission—it was smuggling cigarettes.

The autonomous aircraft, which had a four-meter (13-foot) wingspan, flew close to the ground following GPS waypoints and released cigarette cartons from its cargo bay at designated drop zones. When captured, it was carrying 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds) of illicit cargo.

FSB press service chief Oleg Dzhurayev told the ITAR-TASS news service that the drone was built by a criminal organization operating in Russia and Lithuania, and it may have been used for other smuggling operations. Dzhurayev added that this was the first time Russian authorities have captured a foreign drone in the Kaliningrad region, a Russian “exclave” between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea.

Update: According to a report from NewKaliningrad.ru, the members of the smuggling ring operating the drone have been arrested—and while it was built in Lithuania, the cigarettes were actually being smuggled to Lithuania from Russia. A 31-year old Lithuanian man had crossed the border legally, and met with a 51-year old Kaliningrad region resident, who helped him buy cigarettes to smuggle to Lithuania. The drone was essentially a set of wings on a skeleton of a fuselage, to which the boxes of cigarettes were strapped externally, as shown in the photos above and below:

Enlarge / The naked drone—a home-made system with radio and GPS control.

NewKaliningrad.ru

The FSB spokesman said that it was estimated that the body of the drone cost about 300 rubles—about $10 dollars. "The appearance of it is unpresentable, but if the plane was made ​​for criminal activity, so there is no reason to make him some kind of supermodel," said Dzhurayev. "And the main thing here is its filling. Due to the design it can lift up to 10 kilograms of cargo. Additionally, the unit could conduct surveillance, was equipped with a camera and had an automatic flight route which is set in advance."  The 500 packs of contraband cigarettes were worth about 25,000 rubles in Russia—around $700—but cigarettes sell for $4 or more a pack in Lithuania, so the haul could have yielded as much as a $1,300 profit per flight.

 

Air Force Launches New GPS Satellite to Space

As reported by Space.com: A replacement Global Positioning System spacecraft for the world's best-known satellite constellation ascended into orbit Friday (May 16) night aboard a Delta 4 rocket in a spectacular sendoff at sunset.

Igniting its main engine and twin solid rockets at 8:03 p.m. EDT, the 205-foot-tall vehicle lifted off on 1.2 million pounds of chest-thumping thrust. The launch had been delayed a day by inclement weather.

Arcing to the northeast, the Delta 4 accelerated through Mach 1 in less than a minute, jettisoned its strap-on boosters a minute later and cruised out to staging in four minutes. 

The cryogenic upper stage then lit to propel the vehicle into a transfer orbit, reaching the point of engine cutoff over the North Atlantic 15 minutes into flight.

A three-hour coast then began as the rocket flew over Europe, the Middle East and Indian Ocean before restarting the RL10B-2 engine to circularize the orbit at 11,000 nautical miles and tilted 55 degrees to the equator.

"Our team has launched every modern GPS satellite from here at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We take great pride in our ability to deliver these capabilities to our citizens and warfighters," said Lt. Col. Paul Konyha, 45th Launch Support Squadron commander. "I am always impressed by the amount of dedication and rigor that everyone puts into each launch."

It was a direct insertion ascent, putting the $245 million Global Positioning System 2F-6 payload into the navigation network three hours and 15 minutes after blastoff.



"Today's successful launch demonstrates our combined government and industry team's dedication to mission success, ensuring GPS continues to be the Gold Standard for space based positioning, navigation, and timing," said Col. Bill Cooley, director of the Space and Missile Systems Centers Global Positioning Systems Directorate.

"I want to recognize the tireless efforts of the 45th and 50th Space wings, United Launch Alliance, Boeing, and the GPS 2F and Delta 4 program teams at SMC. I am extremely proud of the team, everyone pulled together to make this day a true success. Users can depend on GPS with confidence today, tomorrow and in the future."

GPS 2F-6 will replace the aging spacecraft known as GPS 2A-23 in Plane D, Slot 4 of the constellation. The GPS 2A-23 satellite was launched aboard Delta 223 in October 1993. It will go into a reserve role in the network for the remainder of its useful life.


"The replacement of our legacy satellites ensures both the sustainment and the modernization of the GPS constellation by providing the increase in signal power, improved accuracy and anti-jamming capabilities for GPS users worldwide," said Col. Steve Steiner, GPS Space Systems Division chief.

This was the sixth of 12 Boeing-built Block 2F spacecraft being manufactured to form the backbone of the GPS fleet for the next 15 years. The full dozen satellites are due to be launched by mid-2016.

"Boeing's dedicated GPS team is proud and excited to reach this half-way point in delivering this new-generation of spacecraft into service," said Munzir Badawi, Boeing's GPS 2F program manager.

It was the second GPS launch since February, with two more planned for the end of July and late October aboard Atlas 5 rockets from the Cape to further bolster the constellation.



"Boeing has continued to maintain a robust tempo of deliveries to meet U.S. Air Force requirements, with the next GPS 2F already on deck in Florida for a third-quarter liftoff," said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Space and Intelligence Systems. "As a prime contractor on the GPS program since the first launch in 1978, our experience with these complex and critically important spacecraft spans nearly 40 years and now covers 44 satellites delivered into orbit with continuing mission support."

The current constellation is comprised of seven GPS 2A satellites, a dozen GPS 2Rs, seven 2R-Ms and four GPS 2Fs. The one launched in February is nearing completion of a navigation characterizing testing and will become the 31st member of the constellation by month's end.

GPS 2F-6 will replace its target within a month of launch.

"The GPS constellation is reliably serving global users with the most accurate and robust signals ever, and the navigation, timing accuracy and availability will improve as the GPS modernization efforts continue," said Col. Bill Cooley, director of the Space and Missile Systems Center's Global Positioning Systems Directorate.

The next Delta 4 launch is scheduled for July 23 carrying two satellites for the Air Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program.


The next launch from Cape Canaveral is less than a week away. An Atlas 5 will launch a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload next Thursday morning between 8:45 and 10:15 a.m. EDT.

Airbus E-Fan Electric Aircraft Makes First Flight

As reported by Aerospace Technology: E-Fan, a two-seat experimental electric aircraft developed by Airbus Group and partners, was unveiled and made its first public flight demonstration at Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport in France in April 2014. The training aircraft is intended for flying clubs and schools, and can be used for training professional pilots.

Flight tests on the E-Fan 2.0 prototype are currently underway, while development of the production version is expected to begin in June in a production facility near Bordeaux Airport. BpiFrance Public Investment Bank will partially provide finance for the development. The aircraft is expected to enter into service by 2017.

Airbus plans to introduce a new four-seat E-Fan 4.0 version aircraft in the next two years.

Design features of E-Fan aircraft
The E-Fan aircraft design was initiated in late 2011 and the final go-ahead for the E-Fan demonstrator development was obtained in October 2012. The electric aircraft features an all-composite construction using materials provided by French company Aéro Composite Saintonge (ACS). It also includes a pyrotechnically deployed airframe parachute rescue system.

The aircraft is designed to meet flight training and aeroclub requirements, considering hangar parking space and flight endurance criteria. The design is also aimed to meet the emission standards set in the European Commission report, 'Flightpath 2050 - Europe's Vision for Aviation'. The report set the targets in comparison to the standards of the year 2000, which include reducing the aircraft's carbon dioxide emissions by 75%, nitrous oxide emissions by 90% and noise levels by 65%.

Video cameras are fitted in the aircraft to provide safety, maintain contact with the pilot and monitor flight parameters. The aircraft external dimensions include a length of 6.67m and a wingspan of 9.5m.  

Landing gear
The E-Fan aircraft's landing gear consists of two electrically actuated retractable wheels positioned fore and aft below the fuselage. It also includes two small wheels under the wings. The aft main wheel includes an electric motor with 6kW power, which provides taxiing and acceleration up to 60km/h during take-off. It is designed to provide reduced overall electrical power consumption during the operation.  

Propulsion of the E-Fan electric aircraft
The aircraft is powered by two electric motors with a collective power of 60kW. Two ducted fans enhance the static thrust, reduce the perceived noise and improve the safety on the ground. The electric motors of the aircraft are powered by 250V lithium-ion polymer batteries manufactured by KOKAM.

The aircraft includes 120 cells lithium polymer battery system with a rated capacity of 4V per cell in addition to a backup battery for emergency landing purposes. The battery packs are located in the wings of the aircraft and can be recharged in one hour.

The aircraft is also equipped with a telemetry system, which records all propulsion, battery and engine parameters and transmits them to a ground station.  

Performance
The E-Fan aircraft has a take-off speed of 110km/h, cruise speed of 160km/h and maximum speed of 220km/h. Its endurance ranges between 45 minutes and one hour.  

Partners and suppliers involved with the development of the E-Fan
The E-Fan aircraft was developed by Airbus Group in association with other consortium partners. The core development team consisted of ACS, EADS Innovation Works, Astrium, Eurocopter (now part of Airbus Group). EADS Innovation Works provided the overall project management and overall aircraft energy management system, while ACS provided support in the construction of all composite parts and mechanical assembly of the landing gear and flight controls.

Institut Pprime provided support for the design of the aircraft main spar and the wing. A3IP provided design, routing, prototyping and manufacture support in the production of tailor-made printed circuit boards for electrical networks. RF Tronic Ingénierie provided design and integration of the air-to-ground telemetry system and the flight data recorder, and also developed a software to display the technical flight parameters.

C3 Technologies provided spars and wings, while MAPAERO Aerospace Coatings provided high-quality paint for the aircraft. The propulsion systems were provided by Safran, Snecma, Labinal Power Systems and Aircelle.