July 2011

Despite concern about health, lawmakers not changing their cell phone habits

Lawmakers who have raised concern about a possible link between cell phones and cancer have not stopped using their held-held devices. Several members of Congress in May spoke out when the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) labeled the radiofrequency fields generated by mobile phones as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

Sen Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has held hearings on the issue, IS concerned about young people spending hours everyday with their cell phones next to their ears. "We don't know the long-term effects," Harkin said. "There's no scientific evidence, but it can't be good," he added, noting that intermittent use is OK. In addition, Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA), Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Anna Eshoo (D-CA) asked the Government Accountability Office last month to conduct a thorough review of existing research on the health risks of long-term mobile use. But none of these lawmakers said they had curbed their own cell phone use.

Google's Schmidt agrees to testify at Senate antitrust hearing

Google's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has agreed to testify at a September hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Antitrust subpanel. Google had earlier declined an invitation from the subcommittee's leadership to send Schmidt or CEO Larry Page to the hearing, prompting speculation over whether the panel would subpoena them to answer questions about the search giant's core business.

Google’s Deal-Making Math

With more than a dozen acquisitions signed this year, the Google deal-making machine is still on full tilt.

“Last year, as part of our policy, we agreed to accelerate our rate of acquisition of small companies,” said Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt. “Because it’s the fastest way to fill out some of these broader strategies.” In terms of acquisitions, 2010 was a banner year for the company, with a record 48 deals. From the hundreds of start-ups in Silicon Valley, how does Google pick its targets and assess their value? It certainly has enough money to be liberal with its offers. Google has one of the largest cash hoards in the sector with some $36 billion in cash on hand. But the company tries to exercise some discipline by adhering to a simple formula. For example, if Google finds a 10- person team with unique intellectual property, it will consider how long it would take for an in-house to build a similar product and at what cost, according to Schmidt. “So what’s a year worth? We then calculate the value of the team plus the value of the year, and that’s the amount of money we’re willing to pay for the company,” he said. “These are $10 million, $20 million, $30 million kind of deals.”

Broadcaster group questions preparedness of local officials

At the House Homeland Security Committee's Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications Subcommittee hearing on improving federal alert and warning efforts, a representative of television and radio stations trumpeted the role that broadcasters play in alerting the public about disasters, but said a training program for local authorities is “desperately needed.”

Suzanne Goucher, president and CEO of the Maine Association of Broadcasters, said that television and radio broadcasters deliver critical information to the public during disasters as part of the nation’s Emergency Alert System (EAS), a national warning program that connects public safety officials with broadcasters. “We consider the delivery of timely alerts and warnings to be the highest and best use of our spectrum, our facilities and our resources,” she said. But she criticized state and local officials for not understanding how and when to use the system, saying the knowledge and expertise of local authorities is at an “unacceptable level.”

Local emergency managers need more training before the nationwide rollout of an emergency-alert text messaging system, industry officials told a House panel Friday, warning that ill-considered texts about minor events could result in cell users not taking the alerts seriously. The Personal Localized Alert Network will be rolled out in New York City in the next few months and should be operating nationwide by spring 2012, James Barnett, chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety Bureau, testified. The PLAN program will allow local emergency managers to send out emergency alerts to all cell phones within range of selected cell towers and will give the texts priority placement, so they'll get through even if phone networks are overloaded during a natural disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is partnering with the FCC on the project. About 97 percent of mobile carriers have agreed to carry the alerts on a voluntary basis, said Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president for regulatory affairs at CTIA.

Barnett also said that legwork is complete on the first draft of regulations implementing a "next-generation 9-1-1" system that can accept text messages. A final rule should be adopted before the end of the year. The improved 9-1-1 systems will likely be able to accept tests and photo texts from callers, so they can gather more information about a situation before ambulances and police are dispatched, Barnett said. This feature also could be useful for disabled people who are unable to speak clearly when an emergency occurs.

NCTA to FCC: Carriage Standstill Needs Prometheus-Like Public Vetting

Cable operators are using the Third Circuit decision in the media ownership rules case to argue the Federal Communications Commission needs to get more input on its program carriage proceeding, per Administrative Procedure Act requirements cited by the court.

Apparently, the FCC has approved (but is waiting for a final vote from FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell) new rules which would keep networks on systems during the resolution of carriage complaints or "true up" programmers through payments for the time they were not on the system if they win their complaint. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is now arguing that, as a matter of procedure, the rules should not be adopted without being properly vetted, though with the order already approved by a majority of FCC commissioner that is a long-shot.

Broadcasters Need to Mount Duopoly Drive

[Commentary] With the Appeals Court bouncing the ownership regulation ball back to the Federal Communications Commission, there’s an opportunity for change to the television duopoly rule.

The FCC’s own recent report says that diversity of owners may not be all it's cracked up to be anymore in the wake of the Internet. Exactly, and it can't continue to block local media combinations on the assumption that all or most will lead to fatter owners and shuttered newsrooms. They can lead just as readily to more and better news. So get busy: Schedule some ex parte visits with the commissioners and their staffs. It's time to pay attention. ’s own recent report says that diversity of owners may not be all it's cracked up to be anymore in the wake of the Internet. Exactly, and it can't continue to block local media combinations on the assumption that all or most will lead to fatter owners and shuttered newsrooms. They can lead just as readily to more and better news. So get busy: Schedule some ex parte visits with the commissioners and their staffs. It's time to pay attention.

So what is a gigabyte for mobile users, anyway?

Verizon’s move this week to follow rival AT&T by eliminating unlimited data plans may not affect most smartphone users today, but could impact them in the future as handsets are used for more purposes. Such tiered data plans, where customers buy a set amount of monthly broadband, are easy to understand at the point of purchase, what isn't clear is how much data is needed for different activities.

Deciding which data plan will be enough for a month of smartphone use, without choosing a higher priced plan that provides more bandwidth than is needed represents a growing challenge. To help its customers adjust from unlimited plans, Verizon has created an online calculator with a number of data-intensive activities, which complements but differs from AT&T’s own data usage calculator. And that’s the crux of the problem here, because different smartphone uses eat up different amounts of bandwidth in a given time.

Sports Leagues Not On TV: What's The Real Message Being Sent To Consumers?

The NFL pulls around $8 billion in overall revenue per year; Major League Baseball, around $7 billion; and the NBA, $4 billion. Television revenues are a hefty piece of that action. For example, the NFL pulls in 60% of its revenue from TV, around $4.5 billion. It's a balancing act for networks, currently. Journalistically, they have to cover the story of these business snafus in a fair and responsible way. For the most part, viewers only want to know that they'll have football and basketball to watch -- even though virtually all sports consumers are aware athletes and owners are multmillionaires. Sports leagues have seen this problem before -- damaged viewer perceptions in the years immediately after operations resume -- after a canceled NHL season some years ago, and a Major League Baseball season before that in the 1990s. Leagues hope the marketing theme of "millionaires fighting with one another" isn't the only long lasting message to remain when sports leagues get back to the action. But TV networks might have no choice than to back that message.

Pentagon's cyber strategy aims to quell fears of militarizing cyberspace

The Pentagon plans on July 14 to release a much-anticipated cyberspace operations strategy that, contrary to some expectations, does not call for militarizing the domain.

According to an unclassified draft copy of the framework, the goal is to extinguish any hope enemies may have of accomplishing a destructive attack. The Defense Department will build new "active defenses" -- sensors, software and digital signatures -- into military networks to detect and stop malicious code before it ever affects operations, according to the document. "Too many of our adversaries would gamble that we could not attribute the attack to them," according to a draft of the remarks Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III is expected to make. "Far from militarizing cyberspace, our strategy of securing networks to deny the benefit of an attack will help dissuade military actors from using cyberspace for hostile purposes." Defense cannot monitor civilian networks, however, which presents a challenge, since 99 percent of the electricity it consumes is distributed through private sector systems and 90 percent of military communications travel over commercial and residential networks. To address the security gap, the department will provide some industry partners with classified intelligence on threats for self-help purposes.

Subcommittee on Communications and Technology
House Commerce Committee
Friday, July 15, 2011
8:30am

A legislative hearing to address spectrum and public safety issues. The committee will discuss legislation to advance wireless broadband, promote deployment of an interoperable broadband public safety network, create jobs, and reduce the deficit. Witnesses to be announced.

Read more about Spectrum and Public Safety Issues

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