August 2012

Political junkies take note: YouTube launches new Elections Hub

Political junkies will soon have a new place to get their campaign coverage fix. YouTube launched an Elections Hub to provide extensive online campaign coverage.

The new channel will feature political reporting and analysis from such established sources as ABC News, Al Jazeera English, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Univision, together with popular online sources Philip DeFranco and BuzzFeed. In a reflection of the Internet’s growing importance as a source of news for viewers younger than 30, YouTube’s Elections Hub will offer live coverage of the Republican and Democratic national conventions and, for the first time, provide live streaming of the presidential and vice presidential debates.

Akin Controversy Could Cost Missouri Stations

Leading Republicans weren’t the only ones pulling for Rep. Todd Akin to get out of the Missouri Senate race. Local TV stations across the Show Me State had a lot on the line, as well.

Stations stand to lose a lot of money with Akin defying pleas from the GOP establishment -- including Mitt Romney -- to abandon his campaign. Their urging came after his bizarre comments about women being able to prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.” Akin, the Republican seeking to unseat incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill, prepped an ad apologizing for his remarks, saying he “used the wrong words in the wrong way” and he has “a compassionate heart” for sexual assault victims. But how many more ads he will be able to run between now and November remains a question that could negatively impact some of the country’s leading station groups, including Belo, Sinclair and Gannett (with affiliates in St. Louis) and Meredith, Hearst and E.W. Scripps (in Kansas City).

Three firms must defend mobile phone suit - US judge

Ericsson, Qualcomm and Alcatel-Lucent SA lost a bid to dismiss a lawsuit by a Liberty Media unit that accused them of conspiring to exclude its positioning technology from being adopted in 4G mobile phones.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kelly in Philadelphia wrote that TruePosition Inc's "allegations of an illegal conspiracy between the corporate defendants are plausible when viewed in context and as a whole". TruePosition is a Liberty Media subsidiary that sells technology to assist carriers in locating mobile phones when someone calls the U.S. emergency number 911. The company accused Ericsson, Qualcomm and Alcatel-Lucent of hijacking the organizations that set global standards for what technologies would be included in LTE 4G networks.

Foxconn Trims Working Hours, Boosts Safety After FLA Audits

Foxconn Technology Group, Apple’s largest supplier, cut working hours and improved safety conditions at its China factories after inspections by the Fair Labor Association found dozens of violations, the group said.

The changes are among 284 made by Foxconn this year after FLA audits at three plants of the Taiwan-based company logged more than 50 breaches of Chinese regulations, the group said in a report released today. Foxconn is ahead of its own 15-month schedule for upgrading conditions and meeting FLA mandates, with 76 more items due for completion by July 1, the group said. “A lot of companies are looking at Foxconn’s progress with considerable interest and concern because they know how ambitious a target Foxconn has set,” Auret van Heerden, president and chief executive officer of the labor group, said in an interview. “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that a Samsung facility will come up” for future inspection.

Ad-Supported Content Tops With Connect TV Users

Connected TV advertising proponents will appreciate this bit of research: Connected TV consumers prefer ad-supported content to paid, ad-free content. A new survey pushes the idea that connected TVs will be a big opportunity for TV advertisers, per research done by Frank N. Magid Associates, commissioned by digital advertising company YuMe.

Connected TVs are growing, 30% of Internet-connected households have some form of connected TV, the survey notes. Some 60% prefer 15 second to 30 second ads over a monthly subscription or the pay-per-view model for short-form video. 44% feel the same way when it comes to streaming TV shows. Data also shows that nearly 90% of connected TV users notice ads on the digital platform, with the majority of pre-roll ads -- 57% -- noticed by users. Nearly 70% of connected TV users are likely to interact with a relevant ad, and nearly 20% purchased the product mentioned in the ad.

House GOP: FCC 'twists the facts' in report to justify regulation

A spokeswoman for House Commerce Committee Republicans accused the Federal Communications Commission of using an annual report on broadband access to justify more regulation.

“In the FCC broadband report, the FCC twists the facts and the law to denigrate our nation’s advanced telecommunications capability and justify past and presumably future regulatory intervention," Debbee Keller, a GOP spokeswoman, said. The two Republican commissioners, Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai, dissented from the report's finding, arguing that broadband is expanding rapidly. "As Commissioners McDowell and Pai explain in their dissents, the FCC’s own data actually shows broadband availability grew from 15 percent of Americans in 2003 to 95 percent of Americans in 2009," Keller said. "Private sector investment brought fixed and mobile broadband service to 7.4 million and 46.7 million additional Americans, respectively, from June 2010 to June 2011. If anything is lagging, it is the FCC’s willingness to get out of the way and let the country’s entrepreneurs bring needed jobs and economic growth to the country,” she said. But an FCC spokesman argued that the report already "reflects the huge strides that both the private and public sector have made to extend broadband, while also explaining that there’s more work to do."

Thousands in San Francisco Bay Area lack broadband access

While many San Francisco Bay Area (CA) residents can get home Internet access at blazingly fast speeds, tens of thousands of others in the region lack basic access to wired broadband, a report released by the Federal Communications Commission showed.

In the Bay Area, Marin County residents are those most likely to not be able to get a wired broadband connection. Sonoma, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties also have large numbers of residents that lack access. The numbers and percentages of residents lacking broadband access varies widely among the nine Bay Area counties. At the high end, there's Marin, where some 9,952 residents -- about 4 percent of the county's population -- can't get wired broadband, according to the FCC report. Sonoma, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties each had at least 6,000 residents that lacked broadband access at home. On the other extreme, there's San Francisco, where every one of its 817,287 residents can get home broadband access if they desire it. Santa Clara and Napa counties each had fewer than 700 residents that lacked broadband access.

Three FCC Votes In for Verizon/SpectrumCo

The Federal Communications Commission's two Republican members -- Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai -- have voted to approve the order allowing Verizon to buy advanced wireless spectrum from cable operators Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Bright House, according to an FCC source familiar with the tally. Those commissioners concurred -- short of an endorsement -- to parts of the decisions, but their yes votes, combined with that of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, whose yes was on all counts, are enough to seal the deal.

FCC Broadband Report Finds Significant Progress In Broadband Deployment, But Important Gaps Remain

The nation has made significant progress expanding high-speed Internet access in recent years, but further implementation of major reforms newly adopted by the Federal Communications Commission is required before broadband will be available to the approximately 19 million Americans who still lack access, according to the FCC’s Eighth Broadband Progress Report.

The Report chronicles major strides taken by providers and policymakers to accelerate deployment, including:

Billions invested by the communications industry in broadband deployment, including next-generation wired and wireless services
Expansion of networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout
World-leading LTE deployment by mobile operators
Sweeping reforms by the FCC to its universal service programs, including the new Connect America Fund for broadband deployment, Mobility Fund, and the Lifeline program for low-income Americans
Action under the FCC’s Broadband Acceleration Initiative to reduce the cost and time required for deployment
Numerous steps to expand availability of wireless spectrum for broadband

Notwithstanding this progress, the Report finds that approximately 19 million Americans—6 percent of the population—still lack access to fixed broadband service at threshold speeds. In rural areas, nearly one-fourth of the population —14.5 million people—lack access to this service. In tribal areas, nearly one-third of the population lacks access. Even in areas where broadband is available, approximately 100 million Americans still do not subscribe. The report concludes that until the Commission’s Connect America reforms are fully implemented, these gaps are unlikely to close. Because millions still lack access to or have not adopted broadband, the Report concludes broadband is not yet being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion.

FCC Begins Work on Next Broadband Report

This Notice of Inquiry initiates the Federal Communications Commission’s ninth assessment of the “availability of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans (including, in particular, elementary and secondary schools and classrooms).” This Inquiry will culminate in a report to “determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.”

To help the FCC fulfill our statutory responsibilities, we solicit data and information that will inform the FCC’s determination and allow us to evaluate all of the factors that influence the availability of broadband to all Americans. Given the critical contribution of broadband to the opportunities for individuals to find and create jobs and prosperity, the FCC examines critically how we should define “advanced telecommunications capability.” In particular, the FCC seeks comment on the criteria the FCC should use to define “advanced telecommunications capability,” whether the FCC should establish separate benchmarks for fixed and mobile services, which data the FCC should rely on in measuring broadband, and other issues. In this Inquiry, the FCC seeks comment about these three core characteristics—speed, latency, and data capacity—for the purposes of determining whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans.

Benton

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