Birch Communications announced it will buy select assets and customers of Primus Telecommunications Canada, an independent, telecommunications service provider. Expanding Birch’s service footprint will be more than 250,000 Primus business and consumer customers. The transaction will also include 20,000 customers in the United States and Puerto Rico.

DISH, ITTA and the American Cable Association petitioned the FCC on Friday to deny or impose conditions on the proposed acquisition of Media General Inc by Nexstar. The group argues that if approved, the transaction would “create a new broadcast ownership conglomerate of unprecedented size and scope, one which will control the highest number of the Big 4 local broadcast stations in the country and have the power to threaten service blackouts to millions of consumers if any pay TV distributor tries to hold the line on retransmission consent fees, which have risen more than 22,000 percent since 2005.”

Google Fiber has begun the preliminary installation of its fiber network infrastructure in Chapel Hill, N.C., according to a statement put out by the town. Google Fiber has partnered with S&N Communications to perform the installation.

DISH, ITTA and the American Cable Association petitioned the FCC on Friday to deny or impose conditions on the proposed acquisition of Media General Inc by Nexstar. The group argues that if approved, the transaction would “create a new broadcast ownership conglomerate of unprecedented size and scope, one which will control the highest number of the Big 4 local broadcast stations in the country and have the power to threaten service blackouts to millions of consumers if any pay TV distributor tries to hold the line on retransmission consent fees, which have risen more than 22,000 percent since 2005.”

Peregrine Semiconductor announced the UltraCMOS PE42723, which is an upgraded version of the company’s PE42722. The new RF switch reportedly exceeds the linearity requirements of DOCSIS 3.1 cable industry standard and enables a dual upstream/downstream band architecture in cable customer premises equipment devices. More information is available here.