December 2011

SOPA’s ugly message to the world about America and internet Innovation

Imagine a country where the government is able to shut down Web sites at the slightest provocation, where elected representatives invoke fears of "overseas pirates" to defend the interests of domestic industries, and where Internet companies like Google must cave in to the demands of government censors or risk being shut down. No, we are not talking about China, North Korea or Iran — we are talking about the United States, where legislators in both the House and Senate are attempting to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley. Unlike other, more confusing efforts to regulate the relationship between content providers and other Web sites, opposition to the new Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation has led to a unified front within the tech community.

(11/19)

Tech coalition backs off SOPA support

The Business Software Alliance, which includes tech giants such as Microsoft, Intel Adobe and Apple, has pulled its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, saying that some “valid and important questions” have been raised and that it “needs work.”

BSA president and chief executive Robert Holleyman said in a blog post Monday evening that the coalition agrees with the basic goals of the bill, but he wants the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether the legislations has “unintended consequences.” Other tech giants, such as Google and Yahoo, have already argued against the bill, putting them at odds with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. SOPA, as the bill is more commonly known, aims to halt Internet piracy by giving the government more control to shut down Web sites that host or point to unauthorized copyrighted content. The BSA originally supported the act, saying that it would “curb the growing rash of software piracy” promoted by illicit Web sites. Even then, however, the group stressed that it was important to “strike the right balance” between stopping piracy and limiting innovation.

(11/22)

Why Is Lawrence Lessig MIA In The Great SOPA Piracy Debate?

[Commentary] The debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has not yet included Lawrence Lessig, the genius law professor who created models to understand Internet culture and economics at a time when Google was still brand new and iTunes and YouTube didn’t yet exist.

Lessig is nowhere to be found. The copyright scholar has instead been promoting his idea of using state-level conventions to pass a constitutional amendment that would reform campaign finance. The move is consistent with Lessig’s announcement several years ago that he was stepping back from copyright issues in order to research institutional corruption. The goal is a laudable one, but, frankly, it’s playing out at best as quixotic and at worst as a Nader-like vanity project.

(11/20)

Kansas attorney general urges FCC to kill AT&T/T-Mobile deal

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile in a filing.

Schmidt noted that the merger would reduce the number of national wireless competitors from four to three, and that AT&T is already one of the two largest firms, along with Verizon. He also argued that T-Mobile has a reputation as a low-cost, innovative competitor. "The loss of T-Mobile through its consolidation with one of the two industry giants will deal a blow to competition and, ultimately, to consumers' choice, satisfaction and cost, with no substantial benefit to offset this loss," Schmidt wrote. (11/22)

AT&T must share documents with government witnesses, court rules

AT&T will have to share sensitive company documents with the Justice Department’s outside lawyers and witnesses, a U.S. District Court ruled.

The Justice Department is suing AT&T to block its acquisition of T-Mobile, arguing the deal would violate antitrust law by stifling competition in the wireless market. AT&T had already filed the documents with the Federal Communications Commission, but it resisted allowing the Justice Department to share documents with outside witnesses. AT&T argued that the documents contain confidential company information that witnesses would not need. “Plaintiffs’ request will enhance their ability to focus on the pertinent witnesses and to target their pre-trial preparations, thereby facilitating the just and efficient resolution of this matter at trial,” wrote Special Master Richard Levie, who is overseeing document pre-trial issues for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Super Committee Fails; Incentive Auctions Will Go It Alone

The deficit-reduction super committee has failed to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 billion, triggering defense and other cuts and leaving the spectrum incentive auction plan to go it alone in a stand-alone bill if it is to become the law of the land.

The plan for auction of broadcast spectrum for wireless and the billions it would have supplied for deficit reduction had been on the table as part of the committee negotiations, but the committee said it could not come to an agreement on a package of measures.

A Senate bill to authorize the auctions is awaiting a floor vote, while a different House version has yet to get a vote in committee, though there is word a markup could come as early as Dec. 1. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W. VA), who sponsored the Senate bill, pledged Monday to push for stand-alone passage before year's end. Commenting on the news of the committee's failure, President Barack Obama said that his plan, which he sent the committee in September, would have achieved the committee's goal of cutting the deficit by $1.2 billion--that plan included the spectrum auctions. But he said Republicans continued to be the main stumbling block. The FCC has been pushing for the legislation to get moving on its spectrum reclamation plan to free up more spectrum for wireless broadband, while broadcasters have been arguing that any voluntary auction must protect existing broadcasters' coverage area and signal quality. CTIA: The Wireless Industry was quick to push for stand-alone spectrum auction legislation. (11/21)

Dem lobbyist for LightSquared sought meeting at White House

Lobbyist and former Democratic majority leader Dick Gephardt sought a meeting in April with the White House on behalf of the wireless company LightSquared.

The requests to the White House, made in emails sent April 22 and April 27 by an employee at Gephardt Group Government Affairs, were initially rebuffed. White House staffer Avra Siegel said a meeting about LightSquared “wouldn’t make sense” because the company’s attempt to build a wireless network was an issue for regulators, not the White House. “This is an issue that an independent regulatory agency is working on and the White House is not involved, so a meeting here wouldn’t make sense,” Siegel wrote. (11/19)

Cellular offload to Wi-Fi growing, and expected, says a new report

A Devicescape survey found 86% of respondents believe Wi-Fi is faster and cheaper than 3G, and 88% expect it. Good thing it's a cost-saver for carriers as well. (11/23)

The Move Away From Unlimited Data: Who Is It Good For?

Unlimited data plans are the genie mobile operators are steadily stuffing back into the bottle. Though they have been wildly successful at enticing users to migrate to smartphones and take up data plans -- hence expanding their monthly expenditure with mobile operators -- many experts predicted at the outset that the all-you-can-eat model would be short lived. As unlimited plans exit the market (to a steady chorus of boos from many consumers), the question arises whether the shift away from them is good for anyone.

Hugh Roberts, an internationally recognized expert on communications billing and strategic consultant to some of the world’s leading operators, sets the gradual disappearance of unlimited plans in a greater economic context. Roberts says that "given the current economic reality in most developed markets" communications service providers in general have often "resorted to knee-jerk reactions focused on cost cutting" in an effort to "offset declining voice revenues." He says that hand-in-hand with these moves has been a tendency to exercise "claw back strategies such as tiered pricing in place of one-size-fits-all subscriptions," but questions whether these moves truly benefit operators in the long term. "The basic choice is a balancing act," says Roberts, as service providers must choose between "all-you-can-eat" which may drive customer retention, and "usage based pricing" which may result in near-term average revenue per user improvement—"but at what cost?" The real problem for operators, says Roberts, is that while unlimited data plans have been a "useful entrapment mechanism" as part of an overall offering to customers, "it was not, is not, and can never be an end-to-end sustainable business model." Operators therefore face a tough task as they must "re-educate and incentivize customers to accept changing realities," Roberts says. Consumers, Roberts argues, are likely to get the short end of the stick in the near term as unlimited options are taken away.

(11/21)

As cellphones get smarter, are smartphones overkill?

How much difference is there anymore between smartphones and the "feature" phone -- that breed of cellphone with basic social networking, games, and Internet connectivity?

A Microsoft exec says the two are blurring, though that may have something to do with the fact that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is a less-smart smartphone than many of its competitors. Still, in Europe Samsung's Bada mobile OS has done well, and Nokia recently announced its Asha line of feature phones for developing countries in an attempt to bring the basic capabilities of smartphones to the masses. And when Research in Motion ships its QNX-based BlackBerry smartphones next year, the company will continue to sell its current BlackBerry OS models to developing nations. Feature phones are being used more and more for application deployment, akin to a smartphone, says Joe Shirey, Microsoft's director of developer and platform evangelism: "The big thing we're seeing is this line between the feature phone and the smartphone is really starting to blur. People are starting to deploy apps to some of these feature phones." (11/21)

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