September 2012

Motorola and Nokia Try to Gain an Edge in the Smartphone Market

In the smartphone market, Apple and Samsung have become the two giants. Is there room for a third? Motorola Mobility and Nokia, two laggards in the mobile race, better hope so. Both companies held events in New York to unveil their latest smartphones, just one week before Apple is scheduled to introduce its next iPhone.

Much depends on the success of those phones, as Nokia and Motorola’s shares of the phone market continue to slide while sales of Apple and Samsung devices soar. Combined, Samsung and Apple account for about 50 percent of the global smartphone market, with Samsung in the lead, according to estimates by Gartner, the research firm. Other phone makers are so far behind that there is essentially no relevant third player. Research in Motion, a potential contender for that spot, has said its new line of BlackBerry devices will not be ready until next year. Samsung and Apple are the only companies shipping lots of phones to retailers and making money, said Jan Dawson, a mobile analyst at Ovum, a research firm. “Nobody is really No. 3 because nobody else is shipping and profitable.”

To small carriers the iPhone is about prestige, not activations

Midwestern regional carrier Cellcom won’t reveal how many iPhones it sold last quarter, but according to CEO Pat Riordan the specific numbers are irrelevant. The iPhone is luring new customers into its stores, it’s keeping old customers loyal, and it completes Cellcom’s smartphone portfolio. “Customers were telling us they were simply going to leave us because we didn’t have the iPhone,” Riordan said. “We know are sales had been falling between the end of the year and April, and we think not having the iPhone was the reason.” The iPhone is giving Cellcom’s current customers a lot of reasons to stay: 75 percent of its iPhone sales were upgrades. The iPhone’s other key benefit is its allure, Riordan said. While there are definitely customers that enter Cellcom’s stores and zero in on the Apple display — ignoring all other merchandise — a good deal of customers are lured into a Cellcom retailer by the iPhone only to leave with an Android device, Riordan said.

In-flight cell phone use studied, but not taking flight

US passengers wanting to call home from 30,000 feet shouldn’t get their hopes up, even though a new study into foreign air carriers found no interference with cellphone use.

Congress asked the Federal Aviation Administration to study the effects of using cellphones on U.S. planes as part of the new aviation law passed earlier this year, and there were no reports of “air rage or flight attendant interference.” But it won’t even be the FAA’s call if cellphones are ever allowed in the air, according to an agency spokeswoman who pointed to the Federal Communications Commission. "The FCC is responsible for regulating cellphone issues in the United States. Since 1991, the FCC has restricted the in-flight use of cellphones in U.S. airspace because of potential interference with ground networks,” said FAA’s Brie Sachse. The FCC has not approved any U.S. carrier to install the “base stations” that some other countries use.

Feds Say Mobile-Phone Location Data Not ‘Constitutionally Protected’

The Obama administration told a federal court that the public has no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in cellphone location data, and hence the authorities may obtain documents detailing a person’s movements from wireless carriers without a probable-cause warrant. The administration, citing a 1976 Supreme Court precedent, said such data, like banking records, are “third-party records,” meaning customers have no right to keep it private. The government made the argument as it prepares for a re-trial of a previously convicted drug dealer whose conviction was reversed in January by the Supreme Court, which found that the government’s use of a GPS tracker on his vehicle was an illegal search. With the 28 days of vehicle tracking data thrown out of court, the feds now want to argue in a re-trial that it was legally in the clear to use Antoine Jones’ phone location records without a warrant. The government wants to use the records to chronicle where Jones was when he made and received mobile phone calls in 2005.

Broadband Touted as Driver of Economic Growth

As Democrats this week tout their proposals for boosting the nation's economy, two telecom policy observers argued that more attention should be paid to promoting investment in broadband technologies.

"We all know that growth is driven by innovation," Michael Mandel, chief economic strategist for the left-leaning think tank the Progressive Policy Institute, said during a policy discussion sponsored by Bloomberg at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. "All innovation is being anchored by broadband." He noted that while broadband touches most aspects of the economy, it has been undervalued as a driver of economic growth. In a paper he co-authored in July, Mandel found that broadband providers AT&T and Verizon topped a list of the top 25 non-financial companies that invested the most capital in the United States in 2011. Former-Rep Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN), who now serves as honorary co-chairman for Broadband for America, which is funded by broadband companies, noted that broadband companies employ 10 million people in the United States and were responsible for 4.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2010. "The one bright spot for growth has been broadband," Ford said.

Newspaper Publisher Journal Register Files for Bankruptcy and Plans for a Sale

The Journal Register Company, whose newspapers include The New Haven Register and The Trentonian, has again filed for bankruptcy protection and hopes for a quick sale, said Digital First Media, which operates the company along with the MediaNews Group.

The Chapter 11 filing announced comes three years after Journal Register emerged from a prior bankruptcy case. Digital First Media says it expects normal operations to continue during the sales process. Journal Register would be sold at auction, it said, and had signed a stalking horse bid from an affiliate of Alden Global Capital. The chief executive of Digital First, John Paton, said Journal Register had more than doubled its digital audience in the last two years. But he said the company was still struggling with print advertising and legacy costs.

Sec Clinton calls for US, China to work together on cybersecurity

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the United States, China and other countries to work together on addressing the rising threat of cyber attacks at a press conference in Beijing. "Both the United States and China are victims of cyber attacks. Intellectual property, commercial data, national security information is being targeted," Sec Clinton said. "This is an issue of increasing concern to the business community and the government of the United States, as well as many other countries, and it is vital that we work together to curb this behavior." Though Sec Clinton extended an olive branch to China in her remarks, the United States and the rising Eastern superpower have had somewhat of a rocky relationship when it comes to cybersecurity.

Rep Eshoo: CALM Act Meant to Apply to Promos

CALM Act author Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote the Federal Communications Commission to say that her congressional intent was for promos to be included in the Act's restrictions on commercial loudness.

That came in response to a petition by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association Aug. 8, asking the FCC to reconsider parts of the act, which goes into effect in December. The Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act requires broadcasters and cable operators to insure that the volume of ads is not noticeably louder than the surrounding entertainment fare. NCTA argues that promotional material was not meant to be included in the definition of commercial advertisement, but Rep Eshoo begs to differ. "The difference between promotional materials and other forms of advertising would not be readily apparent to a consumer, and thus should not be treated differently in the context of the commission's rules," she wrote in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that she asked be made a comment in the proceeding. "[T]he plain language of the law does not provide a blanket exemption from promotional advertisements, nor did legislative debate on this subject infer such an exemption," she added. She suggested NCTA was simply trying to carve out as much of the ad territory from the rules as it could. "The NCTA seeks to create a special class of advertising based on the desire to exclude as many advertisements as possible from the FCC's rules," she said.

Online sharing, information overload is worldwide problem: poll

The languages and the cultures are different, but the pet peeves of mobile technology users around the globe are the same, with most people annoyed by receiving too much information.

About 60 percent of adults and teenagers in eight countries said too much is being divulged online, including inappropriate photos, unsolicited opinions, profanity and mind-numbing details of daily life. "We love our technology because it connects us and gives us an outlet for expression, but then at the same time, we are also feeling there is a bit of information overload," said Jessica Hansen, a spokesperson for Intel Corporation, which commissioned the survey. About half of the 7,087 adults and 1,787 teenagers questioned in the online poll said they felt overwhelmed by all the information. Nearly 90 percent would like people to think about what they share and how others will perceive them online.

Commissioner Ajit Pai On His Visit To Kansas City's Google Fiber Project

It is critically important that states and local communities adopt broadband-friendly policies when it comes to rights-of-way management. When broadband service providers seek to construct next-generation networks, they need to access government-controlled land, poles, and conduits in order to lay fiber and install other infrastructure. Currently, too many providers who try to obtain such access are confronted with daunting sets of federal, state, and/or municipal regulations that often delay and sometimes deter infrastructure investment and broadband deployment. This wasn’t the case in Kansas City. Instead, local governments made a significant upfront commitment to expedite and simplify the permitting process. Indeed, this was one of the main reasons that Google selected Kansas City out of the more than 1,100 communities that applied.

I encourage municipalities across the nation to study Kansas City’s example and to see if they can streamline their own rights-of-way management policies. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission should work with stakeholders to develop model regulations, guidelines, or best practices for rights-of-way management that facilitate fiber deployment while safeguarding legitimate government interests. In the end, consumers will benefit from a more proactive, forward-thinking approach to these matters. More generally, to enable the nationwide deployment of next-generation networks like Google Fiber, we need to eliminate regulatory barriers to innovation and investment at all levels of government. Whether we are dealing with economic regulation or rights-of-way management, we cannot apply 20th century approaches to our 21st century challenges.

Benton

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