August 2011

Senate Democrats’ frustration with media begins to show in FAA fight with House

After an acrimonious, months-long debate over raising the national debt limit, a battle many Democrats think the Republicans won, Senate Democratic leaders are becoming increasingly frustrated over how the media reports on the bold tactics of Tea Party Republicans. This frustration boiled over during a press conference on the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration and what Democrats call the GOP’s extortionist tactics.

The FAA had to temporarily lay off 4,000 workers because Senate Democrats and Republicans cannot agree to a reauthorization of the agency. Democrats are angry that members of the media appear to be accepting the GOP argument that Democrats are to blame for the temporary shutdown. Democratic senators believe reporters are failing to call out Republicans for using extreme legislative tactics, such as pushing debt-limit negotiations to the brink of a national default and threatening a government shutdown in April.

When Jonathan Karl, a correspondent for ABC News, asked why Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) had blocked a short-term FAA extension offered by Republicans on the Senate floor, Democrats lost their patience. “There’s a certain naivety that comes with your question,” said Sen Barbara Boxer. “The story here today is the fact that our leader is reaching out to [House Speaker John] Boehner [R-Ohio] to say, ‘If we want to resolve a particular issue, whatever it might be, let’s talk about it,' but not have one side say, ‘Take it or leave it or people will be out of work.' And the essence of your question doesn't understand that.” House Republicans have offered Senate Democrats a short-term extension of the FAA authorization that would close several small rural airports in the home states of Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen Rockefeller. Chairman Rockefeller objected to the House GOP’s bill on the Senate floor and proposed instead a clean short-term extension of the reauthorization that would not have closed small airports, which Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) blocked.

Top Political Newsmakers of 2011

Seven months after she was shot in the head and gravely wounded during an assassination attempt, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords made an emotional return to the House floor on August 1 to cast her vote in support of the controversial debt-limit bill. Attention to the January 8 shooting rampage that took six lives and Giffords’ arduous journey to recovery has made the Tucson Democrat the second most covered political figure in 2011 to date. She has been a dominant figure in 328 stories in 2011. The only politician to appear more frequently as a dominant news maker is President Barack Obama who has been a newsmaker in 2046 stories. (To be considered a dominant newsmaker someone has to be featured in at least 50% of a story.) The No. 3 political newsmaker this year was the subject of a good deal of unwelcome media attention. He is former New York Representative Anthony Weiner (234 stories) who resigned in June following a sexting scandal. The next six leading newsmakers are all Republicans.

How Publishers Are Dealing With Apple’s In-App Subscription Policies

Apple’s deadline for app owners to run content subscriptions through iTunes or not at all may have passed on June 30, but compliance is emerging unevenly - or not at all.

A month after the deadline elapsed, e-book vendors and The Wall Street Journal last week became compliant by sending subscription transactions within their own apps or through links to web-based sign-ups and, in Google Books’ case, by exiting the App Store entirely before returning with a compliant app. Publishers on iOS are no longer allowed to sell subscriptions within their apps using the in-app purchasing technology unless they give Apple a 30 percent cut of the transaction, and they also have to allow Apple control the personal data of subscribers. But others remain in breach and, in one case we heard, have not even yet been asked directly to comply. It all suggests ongoing negotiations between operators and Apple over the thorny issue. Here’s a brief list of how some major publishers have dealt with the deadline.

AT&T/T-Mobile Merger: More Market Concentration, Less Choice, Higher Prices

From a spectrum perspective, the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile appears to expand network coverage and improve performance for AT&T customers. From a market perspective, Yankee Group believes the merger will increase market concentration, reduce consumer choice, and open the door for price increases in the most heavily populated U.S. wireless markets.

Yankee Group believes the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile will have a negative impact on consumers and competition in the U.S. wireless marketplace. To counteract this negative impact, and to increase competition in moderately and highly concentrated markets, we recommend the FCC not allow this merger to proceed unless it is also prepared to maintain a stronger regulatory stance to avoid domination by the two largest carriers. Such a stance might include actions such as:

Thinking creatively about divesture remedies.
Enforcing mandatory, reasonable data roaming rates to facilitate competition
Regulating unbundled wireless tariffs

Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation

The Department of Commerce's Economic and Statistics Administration released the second in a series of reports on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This report looked at women and STEM. The results offer an opportunity and an imperative for women and America. The results showed that women are vastly underrepresented in STEM jobs and among STEM degree holders despite making up nearly half of the U.S. workforce and half of the college-educated workforce. That leaves an untapped opportunity to expand STEM employment in the United States, even as there is wide agreement that the nation must do more to improve its competitiveness.

Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. This has been the case throughout the past decade, even as college-educated women have increased their share of the overall workforce.
Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs–considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. As a result, the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM jobs than in non-STEM jobs.
Women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.
Women with a STEM degree are less likely than their male counterparts to work in a STEM occupation; they are more likely to work in education or healthcare

Chairman Walden Statement on FCC Process

In a single week the FCC has demonstrated both good and bad process.

The process leading to the FCC's report on ‘Measuring Broadband America’ was exemplary. The Commission selected a commercial vendor through open, competitive bids; used a transparent process to partner with stakeholders; and leveraged its technical expertise. As a result, the Commission and its partners designed and completed a path-breaking study helpful to all broadband consumers. Just as important, the Commission recognized the limits of its work and declined to make conclusions where its data were too limited.

In contrast, the process leading to the FCC’s decision to adopt standstill rules for program-carriage complaints leaves much to be desired. The FCC based these rules on a four-year-old Notice of Proposed Rule Making that did not provide the text of a single proposed rule and did not clearly indicate a standstill rule was on the table. Regardless of one's position on the merits of the ruling, this needlessly opens the order to challenge and weakens the FCC’s credibility. The fact that this comes on the heels of the Third Circuit’s recent procedural rebuke in the Prometheus decision makes it all the more puzzling. To avoid these types of controversies and improve the quality of decision-making, the Communications and Technology Subcommittee is considering legislation that would require the FCC to publish the text of a proposed rule before adoption. The Commission has come a long way on process recently, but I am afraid it still has a ways to go.

ACLU Probing Government Use of Cell Phone Location Data

The American Civil Liberties Union announced a new effort to uncover details on how local law enforcement agencies use location data stored on cell phones to track or provide evidence on private citizens.

Last month a top lawyer at the National Security Agency, Matthew Olsen, suggested the Patriot Act may have given the federal government powers to use cell phone data to track Americans inside the United States, a comment that alarmed privacy advocates and civil libertarians. Now 34 ACLU affiliates across the country cited Olsen's remarks and announced they had filed requests under government transparency laws for documents that could reveal how authorities use location data on cell phones for law enforcement. The ACLU groups want to know if agencies provide citizens the appropriate protections when they access this data; for instance, they want to know if officers tend to obtain a warrant first. They are also seeking statistics on how often authorities use this data and how much funding these efforts receive.

Frontier is now Dish Network’s biggest customer

, revealed Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter on an investor conference call to announce the company’s second quarter earnings. Dish Network signed a multiyear renewal of its reseller deal with Frontier , extending the agreement to include 13 states the rural telco acquired from Verizon Communications where it previously offered DirecTV. Overall, Frontier has operations in 27 states and approximately 14,900 employees. As of June 30, the company had 3.25 million residential customers and 326,800 business customers.

Wilderotter was enthusiastic about a new IP-capable set-top box from Dish Network. “With a wireless modem, [we] can do IP video to the TV set,” said Wilderotter, adding that the company envisions a “Frontier channel” on the TV set. “And by using Fring, [customers] will be able to take video anywhere to any device,” she said. Often Dish Network is 20% less costly than other options in a market, Wilderotter said. She also noted that the Dish partnership with Blockbuster will “continue to move forward with other capabilities we can leverage.”

Priciest mobile Internet in the world: US

Japan is the cheapest place to have a smartphone with a data plan, while the U.S. ranks highest in mobile Internet costs per month.

U.S. users pay more than $40 a month for 2GB of data (the going threshold for new capped data plans). On the other end of the scale, Japanese mobile phone callers pay just a touch over $10 a month for the same plan. Both were priced at 4G LTE speeds. Verizon's rates spiked the U.S. to the most expensive, but the current plans on its website show a price of $30 for 2GB, on both smartphones and mobile broadband devices like tablets. At $30, the U.S. would be more in line with the middle of the pack, with China -- if Verizon was its only carrier. But others can be interpreted as being over the $40 marker, such as T-Mobile's Unlimited Plus Value Plan for families, with an entry point of $39.99 per line for two lines of 1,000 minutes, unlimited text and data (2GB of high-speed, then throttled down over that).

Public Knowledge Issues Consumer Warning on "4G" Wireless Service

Consumers should be wary of pitches by telecommunications companies for their newer, faster “4G” wireless service, according to a new report from Public Knowledge.

The report, “4G + Data Caps = Magic Beans,” finds that consumers will find their experiences with the faster services severely hampered by the rationing techniques the carriers impose on customers who use lots data — such as watching video.

The report found: “These data caps actively discourage the types of activities that 4G enables. Activities that are made possible by 4G, such as watching movies or uploading video to the Internet, are made impossible by the data caps. As a result most users will avoid taking advantage of these new services out of fear of incurring large overage fees. That makes capped 4G little more than a bait and switch, like being sold a handful of magic beans.”

While the report notes that 4G can be a useful technology because it could provide faster and better service, the report concluded: “The imposition of data caps on 4G networks marks an unfortunate milestone in the history of network innovation. For the perhaps first time, the introduction of a generationally faster technology will not have a widespread impact on online behavior. As long as there are low data caps, most users will be better off staying with a (cheaper and slower) 3G connection than paying a premium for 4G.”

Benton

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