The Federal Communications Commission released a much-anticipated report on cable prices Wednesday, a move that had the wired incumbent crying foul about the agency’s perceived targeting of the industry.

The FCC report found that the average monthly rate for cable - including basic and expanded basic cable programming services - increased by 5.2 percent during a 12-month period ending Jan. 1, 2005, from $40.91 to $43.04. Moreover, the commission said cable prices jumped by 93 percent since the period immediately prior to congressional enactment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

The FCC also concluded in its report that satellite TV competition does not appear to constrain cable prices. The report said average prices were the same or slightly higher in communities where small dish services were the basis for relieving a cable operator from rate regulation when compared to non-competitive communities, the commission said.

In anticipation of the report, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association released talking points it said shows the real story behind the numbers. Cable’s bundle of video, high-speed internet and phone service costs 23 percent less than it did 10 years ago, NCTA said, and for consumers taking a bundle of services, video prices have actually declined.

Also, the viewing of cable programming is way up, and the real cost per hour is down, NCTA said, pointing out that nearly 32 million consumers subscribe to a pay-TV provider other than cable.

In addition, the NCTA contends that the FCC’s price survey is out of date and doesn’t reflect the current state of competition or the rapidly changing marketplace.

During its open meeting Wednesday, the FCC also approved local video franchise reform.

Hughes Network Systems and NMS Communications completed successful interoperability testing between Hughes’ HX family of IP satellite broadband modems and NMS’ AccessGate Radio Access Network (RAN) backhaul optimization offerings. As a result, 2G and 3G cellular operators can now take advantage of optimized satellite backhaul solutions, which - coincidentally - Hughes and NMS offer together.

According to Hughes, GSM/UMTS operators are increasingly using geostationary satellites for backhauling cellular traffic from remote cell sites to their switching centers, particularly in those locations where geography or distance challenge the viability of more traditional backhauling technologies, such as microwave or terrestrial leased lines.

The Hughes and NMS optimized solutions combine the bandwidth allocation techniques in the HX product platform with the deep packet inspection capabilities designed by NMS in its AccessGate line of RAN optimizers, the company’s said.

Canadian satellite operator Telesat Canada and its parent BCE Inc. have agreed to sell the satellite services company for $3.42 billion (Canadian - $2.8 billion U.S.) to a new acquisition company formed by Canada’s Public Sector Pension (PSP) Investment Board and Loral Space & Communications. The new company will operate out of Ottawa under the name Telesat.

As part of the deal, Loral SkyNet will contribute fixed satellite services and network service assets including employees to the expanded Telesat giving the new company a global footprint and creating the world’s fourth-largest satellite operator.

PSP Investments is a Canadian crown corporation established by the Parliament via the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act with about $30 billion in assets under management, Telesat said. The company, along with other Canadian investors, will hold majority voting control of the new company and 70 percent of Telesat’s board will be Canadian residents.

Loral and PSP will hold 64 and 36 percent economic interest, respectively, in the new Telesat. The transaction, expected to close in mid-2007, remains subject to regulatory approvals.

Many area satellite television customers are switching from DISH Network to DirecTV after learning that DISH customers will lose ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox Network signals on Friday.

“Right now there’s a backlog of people who want to move to DirecTV because Direct is not losing their networks,� said Tom Schaad, vice president of Shadix TV Sales and Service in Marietta.

Shadix is a local dealer for both satellite television systems, and serves about 3,000 customers in Washington and surrounding counties.

“Some people are taking a wait and see attitude, hoping for an eleventh-hour reprieve,� Schaad said. “But I think a lot of people are not aware of the problem. About 4 percent of DISH subscribers across the country will be affected.�

Around 34,000 West Virginians will also lose touch with their favorite network TV programs on Friday.

After that date, DISH Network must stop providing subscribers in the rural areas around Beckley, Bluefield, Clarksburg, Parkersburg and Wheeling with distant feeds of several networks.

All of those DISH Network customers, except Clarksburg, will lose their ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox signals. Clarksburg customers will lose their ABC signal.

The problem will not affect cable customers.

“We want our Suddenlink customers to know that this does not have any effect on them,� said Michael Kelemen, director of government relations for Suddenlink Communications in Charleston.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge William Dimitrouleas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., rejected an attempt by Colorado-based EchoStar, the parent company of DISH, to delay the cutoff date.

In a previous ruling, the judge had determined that EchoStar violated federal copyright law by sending so-called “distant signals� from out-of-area stations to subscribers and ordered the company to stop. Nationwide, roughly 850,000 customers will lose their network service.

In West Virginia, the ruling will affect primarily customers in rural areas where television doesn’t transmit West Virginia stations or in mountainous regions where customers can’t get the signals.

“For consumers, it’s basically a lose-lose situation,� said Jeannine Kenney, a senior policy analyst with the Consumers Union in Washington, D.C. “Through no fault of their own, hundreds of thousands of people will basically be left without important programming.�

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller has introduced legislation in Congress that would allow EchoStar to send distant signals to customers if it compensates the broadcast station in question. In areas where no local affiliates broadcast, EchoStar could transmit the channels without paying a fee. The bill would also require EchoStar to deposit $20 million to cover any future violations of federal communications law.

But with Congress out of session until Dec. 5, the Democratic senator said some disruption of network service for DISH Network customers is inevitable.

“We may not be able to get this resolved before Dec. 1, but we must make sure that as soon as possible consumers can access the stations they have come to depend on,� he said in a statement.

Kathie Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for EchoStar, referred a call seeking comment to a company statement supporting the legislation, but expressing regret that it will likely come too late to prevent disruptions in service.

While Sen. Robert C. Byrd supports the proposal, another member of Congress who helped draft the law that EchoStar violated, is warning against any emergency legislation.

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Canon, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he doesn’t want the company to get a “special interest exemption� from the law. He noted that the court ruling affects relatively few DISH Network customers and they have the option of switching to DirecTV or cable.

“EchoStar violated the law and should not be allowed to use its consumers as human shields in the debate on the legality of its operations,� Canon wrote in a letter to fellow members of Congress.

Kenney said no one wants to sanction EchoStar’s actions, but cable is limited in many rural areas that don’t have nearby providers. And DirecTV has higher costs than the DISH Network service, she said.

EchoStar, which has about 12.5 million customers nationwide, is still hoping to delay Friday’s deadline through an appeal filed with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

You can’t get the Tennis Channel in Canada. Almost as distressing, you can’t get HBO, MTV, ESPN, Showtime, Nickelodeon and a number of other popular U.S. channels.

More precisely, you can get these channels here, but you have to hook up with one of the many distributors who quietly sell equipment that allows the pirated reception of a U.S. satellite-television service, namely Dish Network, run by EchoStar Communications. Either that or you have to pay your bill using a U.S. address, to make the satellite-television company think you are in the U.S. Both are illegal.

Scamming the satellite-television company, of course, is a problem in the U.S. and other countries. But it seems epidemic north of the border. Estimates of the number of Canadian homes with unauthorized satellite service go as high as 700,000 or more — a lot for a country of 33 million.

Why all the shenanigans to watch television? A lot of popular U.S. content is carried on Canadian television systems and channels, but U.S. satellite services provide more choice and more foreign-language programming. In recent years, Bell Canada’s ExpressVu satellite-television service, chockablock with Canadian content (and plenty of pornography), also has been pirated.

Canadian laws prevent U.S. satellite services and various U.S. channels from operating in Canada to protect the local industry. But those laws haven’t stopped U.S. signals from spilling over the border, or underground tech whizzes from finding ways to crack scrambled signals. (Since 2004, DirecTV Group has kept its system foolproof.)

This cat-and-mouse game has been going on for years. Many Canadians are hoping for a showdown. Quebec resident Jacques D’Argy, charged in 1998 with selling a DirecTV satellite system, has been battling the case ever since, arguing that the country’s constitution gives citizens the right to watch foreign television. “I’d say there’s a fair shot” that the Supreme Court will hear the controversial case, says technology lawyer Sunny Handa of Montreal.

Meanwhile, these are dangerous times for satellite pirates. EchoStar and other satellite-television providers, along with Canadian law-enforcement officials, have stepped up their crackdown on businesses and individuals supplying satellite gear. In September, EchoStar, Bell ExpressVu and their signal-security partner NagraStar, arranged police-assisted raids of stores and homes across southern Ontario, confiscated thousands of piracy devices and shut down 17 related Web sites. The same month, five Quebec men were charged with fraud and theft of satellite signals after law-enforcement officials seized the equivalent of about $290,000 worth of piracy equipment and traced $1.15 million of related revenue. The police warned illegal satellite viewers in a news release not to participate in “this social evil.”

Ripping off a satellite signal is wrong. But is it evil to allow legitimate competition? It would have been nice to watch Roger Federer take out Fernando Gonzalez live at the Masters Series Madrid final one recent Sunday morning on the Tennis Channel. The local sports channel showed a midnight replay. I set up the recorder and then tried to avoid learning the outcome before watching. An inadvertent look at a paper ruined the surprise.

In this age of global media and competition, what purpose is served by laws that ban outright U.S. satellite television and many popular U.S. channels from Canada’s airwaves?

“It’s the government telling us that we are prohibited access to expression that comes from a source outside of the country,” says Ian Angus, a lawyer who has long represented various satellite distributors in Canada. Canada’s broadcast industry has “a history of protectionism bred into the culture,” he says.

Defenders of the Canadian restrictions say they are needed to ensure the country sustains a viable domestic market for homegrown writers and actors. The laws also help keep the modest-size Canadian broadcasting industry financially healthy, says ExpressVu President Gary Smith. Whether viewers of U.S. satellite are paying for the service or not, “they all represent leakage of value from the Canadian broadcasting industry,” he says.

Yet, opponents of the bans say the U.S. and Canada have free trade in everything from oil to orange juice, and Canada has prospered, so why not television? They would prefer taxing foreign services, or bundling local and foreign channels.

Outside of Vancouver, Richard Rex’s Can-Am Satellites store sells DirecTV and Dish Network systems to anybody who wants one. Even though he lost a court battle against ExpressVu several years ago, nobody has shut him down. He thinks the broadcast industry doesn’t want him to test the constitutionality of laws that ban foreign television signals. An ExpressVu spokeswoman declined to comment specifically on the case against Mr. Rex.

The top court, says Mr. Handa, will have to address this “delicate balance” between the country’s cultural protections and its citizens’ freedom of expression.