November 2010

Myths and Facts in the Net Neutrality Debate

In the discourse over network neutrality there are some important facts getting lost in the shuffle. There are strong arguments that weigh in favor of network neutrality, and there are reasonable arguments that caution against it. There is no reason for either side to rely on myths to win support. So in an attempt to refute misconceptions, highlight flawed assumptions that underlie certain myths, or fill in the blanks where available information is too incomplete or ambiguous to support the conclusion being drawn. This memo clarifies some of the economic issues and addresses a number of myths including:

ISPs will not do anything to reduce the value of the Internet to their consumers. It would be bad for business.
Net Neutrality protections will cost jobs, or otherwise depress employment.
Network owners require the ability to price-prioritize in order to build faster, more comprehensive Internet service.

Love and money are likely to be the keys to 112th Congress

[Commentary] Welcome to the 112th Congress. Notice anything missing? Like a third of the House Commerce Committee Democrats? Or a Congressional mandate on network neutrality? Or Chairman Boucher? Let's see what all this means.

This year's midterms have put Members on notice that voters are not afraid to fire them. And each party is looking to 2012 to capture complete control of both houses of Congress and the White House. So in the upcoming Congress look for Members to be feverishly competing for two things: love and money. Love in the form of votes (from an unusually angry electorate, eager to hold officials accountable). And money in the form of, well, money, i.e., the ability to spend government funds on their preferred projects (without, of course, looking fiscally irresponsible). As we shall see, both love and money can be found in telecom policy. So it's likely that telecom issues will get considerable attention from Congressional leadership, including precious "floor time" for debate. Issues such as online privacy are likely to be some of the first to be considered.

As to the less romantic but far more practical question of money, telecom policy is one of the few places it can be found. How? Think spectrum auctions. By providing for the sale of spectrum controlled by the government, Congress can generate revenue that can be used either to (a) "offset" any spending priorities Members might push for or (b) pay down debt.

Broadcasters Keep Pushing the Mobile TV Boulder Uphill

The effort by broadcasters to bring free mobile television (kind of like a mobile phone version of a Sony WatchMan) continues with a group of 12 broadcasters announcing plans to upgrade TV stations in 20 markets so they can deliver live video to portable devices.

The 12 are part of an effort dubbed the Mobile Content Venture, which seeks to deliver free, broadcast television content to specially equipped mobile devices. All of this will be done using spectrum owned by the broadcast companies for delivering over the air TV tuned to a standard pushed by the Open Mobile Video Coalition. With station upgrades by late 2011, the venture says it will deliver mobile video service in markets representing more than 40 percent of the US population. Service consisting of least two ad-supported free-to-consumer channels in each market will be available in the following markets: New York; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Dallas; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta; Houston; Detroit; Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach, Fla.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Greenville, S.C.; Birmingham, Ala; and Knoxville, Tenn. In the meantime, the group is working with device makers to ensure its signals will reach those interested in the two-channel broadcast offering.

TV Poised for New Golden Age with Mobile

[Commentary] The announcement by the Mobile Content Venture that at least 40 NBC and Fox owned and operated television stations and affiliates will start broadcasting ad-supported mobile TV service next year is the first step in moving broadcast TV into what promises to be a revolutionary and profitable future.

Now what's needed is for the networks to work out the copyright issues so that all stations can take all their network programing mobile. And perhaps now, the FCC will start to realize that there are more better ways to serve consumers and more efficient uses for TV spectrum than just handing it all over to broadband.

Like Democracy, the Web Needs to be Defended

The web has worked its way into most of our lives to such an extent that it's easy to take it for granted, and to forget what an incredible resource it is, or the powerful things that it allows us to do as a society. But Sir Tim Berners-Lee says there are threats to the freedom of the web all around us, and that we need to fight them in the same way we fight to protect our freedoms in the real world.

Where are those online threats coming from? Berners-Lee says, "large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," in what appears to be a clear reference to Facebook's walled-garden approach to sharing things like the email addresses of its users, and he later mentions Facebook specifically as "a silo." The other potential threats, he says, include wireless Internet providers who are "being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals," and also governments — totalitarian and democratic alike — who are "monitoring people's online habits [and] endangering important human rights."

The Broadband 'New World Order'

As companies like TATA in India and Oi in Brazil make moves toward truly personalized data packages, the question emerges of how "a la carte" can things get and how fast?

The bottomline is it won't be enough to just sell tiers, or to sell upgrades to people. Additional services should constantly be added, and they have to be increasingly personalized. If a person is vacationing or visiting relatives and is willing to pay for on-demand, value-added services for a short period of time, why not enable it? Well, part of the problem is the transition from data tier plans to personalized data packages will require technological changes around extra policies and the ability to do real-time changes of how networks function, and to control latency and volume limits on the fly. Many policy solutions in use today were implemented before demands for scalability and performance got to current levels. And, most do not integrate with online-charging capabilities.

To really allow for real-time, on-demand services that are personalized, online charging and policy have to come together so that sophisticated charging for new services and upgrades can take place in a very high-volume environment.

Fiber to farm: Should farmers pay more?

The residents of Sibley County in rural central Minnesota have launched themselves into a conversation, not just about whether to build a fiber optic network that would give them world-class Internet access but about how to share the cost burden between town and farm.

Here are the questions: Should the county of 15,000 (18,000 if you add the neighboring town of Fairfax) create a project to serve eight small towns with Internet speed far greater than what is available now through phone and cable companies? Assume it would borrow about $34 million and have an expected breakeven in five years. Or should it build a project offering the same service to the same towns plus all the farms in the county, borrowing $61 million, finding another $2 million in equity and breaking even in seven years? And -- here's the really interesting part for residents to tussle with -- if they lay fiber to all the farms, should farmers pay more?

Google Agrees to Improve Data Handling to End UK Privacy Investigation

Google agreed to improve its handling of data to prevent a repeat of its Street View vehicles' accidental collection of information from wireless networks.

Joe Scarborough Suspended for Two Days for Political Donations

Joe Scarborough, a co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," was briefly suspended Nov 19 after Politico uncovered donations he had made to political candidates. Scarborough's donations to friends and family members totaled $4,000.

His suspension will keep him off "Morning Joe" for two days. Those donations were a violation of a policy at MSNBC and its parent, NBC News, which prohibits political contributions without advance approval. Scarborough apologized to MSNBC and said "this will not happen again." Scarborough said his contributions were "not relevant to my work at MSNBC" because they were made "to close personal friends and family members and were limited to local races." That said, "there is nothing more important than maintaining the integrity" of the NBC News brand, he said.

Sweeping Retransmission Reform Unlikely: McSlarrow, Lake

National Cable & Telecommunications Association CEO Kyle McSlarrow and Federal Communications Commission Media Bureau chief Bill Lake, speaking separately at the SNL Kagan Cable MSO Summit said cable operators shouldn't expect any meaningful changes to retransmission-consent regulations in the near term. Despite the hype surrounding retransmission, the FCC just doesn't have the power to change the law.

Benton

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