February 2010

Sling reduces 3G bandwidth use enough to make AT&T happy

After stripping SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone of its 3G streaming capabilities last year, AT&T has changed course and "approved" a version of the app with 3G streaming for sale in the App Store.

Key to the reversal were changes that Sling Media made to make bandwidth use more efficient over 3G connections. It took almost a year and a half for Sling to bring SlingPlayer Mobile to the App Store, and many users were disappointed when the app arrived without 3G streaming capabilities. AT&T cited a clause in its terms of service that prohibited "redirecting a TV signal to a personal computer," noting that it considered the iPhone a personal computer. AT&T also noted that the app could "use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network." However, at the time we noted that other iPhone apps—e.g. YouTube—could stream video over 3G connections. What's more, versions of SlingPlayer Mobile were already available on other devices on the AT&T network, with no 3G streaming limitations. Additionally, a number of apps that stream video over 3G started appearing late last year. Knocking Live Video and Ustream Live Broadcaster were approved and made available via the App Store while SlingPlayer Mobile remained unavailable.

FCC may redraw spectrum allocations in broadband plan

A Federal Communications Commission director suggested the agency is exploring new ways to use a swath of spectrum to serve multiple users including utilities building smart electric grids as part of a national broadband plan the FCC will release March 17.

"Just looking at data growth for iPhones and other devices, you can see broadband in America will increasingly be a wireless solution, so spectrum will be a core issue we will be handling in the national broadband plan," said Nick Sinai, director of energy and environment on the National Broadband Task Force at the FCC.

Canadian regulators recently set aside spectrum around 1.8 GHz for utilities building smart grids. At the Grid ComForum where the FCC official spoke, a handful of vendors discussed their use of cellular Wi-Fi, WiMax as well as 900 and 700 MHz links for smart grid projects. Sinai said the FCC held discussions with Canadian regulators, but suggested their solution was not well suited to the U.S. for several reasons. The U.S. has a much higher population and a more complex set of existing commercial networks regulated by the FCC and federal networks regulated by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

FCC to promote mobile health apps in broadband plan

The Federal Communications Commission wants to foster the use of wireless devices and applications in healthcare as part of a national broadband plan the agency expects to release next month, according a senior FCC official.

The FCC plan will describe "where government has a role to reduce some of the hurdles to these technologies both in connectivity and to promote innovation in applications," said Dr. Mohit Kaushal, digital healthcare director of the FCC's Omnibus Broadband Initiative. As part of the plan, the FCC will analyze health IT applications enabled by broadband, including electronic health record systems, video conferencing and remote monitoring, Kaushal said at a Feb. 3 conference sponsored by the mHealth Initiative, which advocates the use of cell phones and other mobile devices to improve healthcare. One of the biggest issues for the long-term future of mobile devices is the finite amount of spectrum, or radio frequencies that carry voice and data wirelessly.

"FCC must efficiently allocate the spectrum that is available in order to drive innovation for both infrastructure and applications," Kaushal said.

iPad Release Drives Social Media Narrative

Technology and offbeat science experiments are subjects that frequently draw interest in the world of social media. And after two consecutive weeks of focusing heavily on the tragedy in Haiti, social media returned last week to this familiar territory-even giving it precedence over the State of the Union Address.

The rollout of Apple's new iPad was the No. 1 topic on Twitter, generating 18% of the news links from January 25-29, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The iPad was also the fifth-biggest topic on blogs (7% of the links) in a week when the No. 1 story in the blogosphere (23%) was the BBC airing of the first-ever film shot entirely by chimpanzees.

President Obama's State of the Union Address, on the other hand, which led in the mainstream press last week according to PEJ's News Coverage Index, carried much less weight in social media. On Twitter it got less than half the attention as the iPad-ranking 5th at just 8%. And the speech did not even make it into the top five stories in the blogosphere.

Hatch to play key role in Comcast-NBC merger

General Electric Chairman Jeffery Immelt sent Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) a $2,000 campaign contribution the same day his company announced a deal giving Comcast controlling interest in NBC Universal. It was the first time Immelt has donated to the Utah senator, and yet the contribution capped a fundraising barrage during the previous month where top GE vice presidents and the company's political action committee funneled a total of $23,000 to Hatch's campaign account. Sen Hatch is expected to play a key role in the congressional review of the controversial merger. He is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary's antitrust committee, which will hold its first hearing on the Comcast-NBC deal Thursday. A GE spokesman said the contributions' proximity to the merger announcement was a coincidence and nothing more, while Hatch's staff said the donations have no impact on his views. Coincidence or not, Sen Hatch is likely to be more sympathetic toward the massive media merger than many others on the subcommittee.

How Corporate Dollars Dominate the Black and Latino Conversation on Network Neutrality

[Commentary] So why are black and Latino civil rights organizations campaigning for the digital redlining of their own communities? Why are black and brown elected officials, LULAC, the NAACP and similar outfits petitioning the FCC to end the relative freedom of the Internet that network neutrality makes possible? And how did voices like those of Navarrow Wright, who echoes the party line of Big Cable and the telecom industry become part of the black conversation on network neutrality?

To start with, people talk, and communities define themselves by their internal civic conversations. But in the U.S., our collective conversations have become the territory, literally the property of soulless and greedy corporations which intrude themselves into every aspect of our private and collective lives, from child-rearing to how we die, and everything in between. In the generation since the Freedom Movement ended, corporate forces have all but extinguished the internal political conversation of black America, by doing away with news programming on black-oriented and other media, and by assuming the role of chief funders for black elected officials and mainline civil rights organizations. The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the NAACP, the National Association of Black State Legislators and just about every similar institution you can name all have "corporate advisory boards," "corporate round tables," and such. These are formal arrangements that let AT&T, Comcast, Lockheed, Wal-Mart and other entities send a fat check and a corporate exec, usually a black one, out to help draft the organization's position on policies it wants to weigh in on. This explains why the NAACP, LULAC and similar organizations supposedly representing the interests of black and brown communities, along with platoons of local and federal elected officials have been lobbying the FCC to give Big Cable and the telecom industry absolute control over the Internet. Dependence on corporate funding has turned these elected officials and "civil rights" organizations into corporate whores and whorehouses.

Comcast's fast-growing Washington presence

The tale of Comcast's remarkable rise in Washington tracks the story of how the cable giant built its business. In the same way that it aggressively grew its empire by acquiring one cable system at a time, the company has methodically added one lobbyist after another and steadily spread more money around the nation's capital as its interests expanded beyond the television screen.

Now the nation's biggest cable and Internet service provider, Comcast's relatively new but highly visible presence in DC comes into focus just as a long regulatory review begins of its proposed $30 billion merger with NBC Universal. If completed, the deal would transform Comcast into a media and Internet giant just as the Web threatens to throw the cable and media businesses into turmoil. In effect, the company's hopes to turn itself into Comcast 2.0 lie in the hands of federal officials. Beyond Comcast's sheer size, some observers and telecom policy insiders say that the company's aggressive and sometimes combative approach has occasionally bothered key constituents in Washington's communications and tech circles. That style has come to define the cable giant: a relentless push for policies and a willingness to wage marathon battles to prove its point. It is already suing one of the federal agencies that is reviewing the NBC merger. It pushes back against consumer groups on multiple issues, and those groups have turned their attention to blasting the NBC deal.

Ads Prove Broadband Competition, Verizon tells FCC

Verizon has supplied the Federal Communications Commission with a CD full of advertisements that illustrate, the telecom giant says, "the head-to-head rivalry between telephone companies and cable operators, both to win new broadband customers and to lure away existing customers." The company offers the ads as proof of "vigorous competition" among broadband Internet access service providers.

UK rethinks product placement plans

The UK government's plans to green-light product placement in locally produced TV shows is being watered down.
The ban on product placement in items involving alcohol, junk food, high-sugar drinks and gambling will likely make it more difficult for brands such as Coca Cola and McDonald's to pay to have their goods featured in British TV shows. In a letter quoted in the Guardian, media minister Ben Bradshaw, who told the U.K. TV industry last September that he intended to relax product placement rules, highlighted the new restrictions. He wrote: "Following consultation with the Department of Health, I propose to ban product placement in the following areas: alcoholic drinks, HFSS (high in fat, sugar or salt) food, gambling, smoking accessories, over-the-counter medicines and baby food." Introducing product placement in Britain, which is commonplace in the US, has proved to be a tortuous process.

China, US vie for mantle of world's biggest hacking victim

China and the US have been battling lately to portray themselves as the more pathetic victim of cyberattacks. The US has lamented its own lack of preparedness for a major Internet hack attack and focused on the 30+ companies affected by the recent China-based hack that set Google off on its recent anti-censorship kick. But it is Beijing that has been most at pains to claim the mantle of "victim."

Benton

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