June 2013

Public Media Stations to Expand Early Learning Projects

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that four public television stations will receive funding totaling $110,000 to support the expansion of Ready To Learn (RTL) projects in their communities.

Ready To Learn is a public media education program funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement to support the development of early math and literacy skills for children ages 2-8, especially those from low-income families. The effort funds the development and distribution of PBS KIDS multiplatform content to help kids build these critical skills. Over the past year, KBTC (Tacoma, Wash.), Iowa Public Television (Johnston, Iowa), WFSU (Tallahassee, Fla.), and WVIZ/PBS ideastream (Cleveland, Ohio) have provided PBS KIDS interactive math and literacy programming and services, developed through RTL for children from low-income backgrounds, to their local communities. This latest funding from CPB will enable these four stations to continue their current projects through September 2013, and expand their work to reach more children, teachers, and families.

YouTube’s mobile ad revenue triples as mobile views reach 40% in the US

Mobile is quickly becoming the new normal for YouTube, and it’s starting to pay off: 40 percent of all of the service’s video views in the U.S. are now coming from mobile devices, a YouTube spokesperson told GigaOM.

Worldwide, mobile is now responsible for 25 percent of all of YouTube’s video views. This, and the roll-out of new mobile apps, has helped YouTube to triple its mobile ad revenue in the past six months, according to Bloomberg, which got YouTube VP of Sales Lucas Watson go on the record about the mobile growth.

Transforming education digitally

[Commentary] Digital-age broadband and cloud computing are not only revolutionizing our economy, they are transforming education as we know it. In time, traditional classroom teaching tools like blackboards and books are bound to be delivered through high-speed bandwidth. This means students learning about cell technology through a digital rendering in an interactive book. It means using gaming to explore math concepts like the Pythagorean theorem. It means developing videos to experience historical events. If all this sounds gee-whiz and futuristic, consider that these changes have already taken place in so much of our lives. The smartphones in our pockets, growing ubiquity of tablets and arrival of big data have brought us always-on connectivity and endless access to information. They have revolutionized the way we communicate, connect and create at home and at work. It’s time for a similar upgrade in the classroom.

Of course, new technologies are already filtering into our schools. But to have really successful digital classrooms, we need bandwidth — and lots of it. We can do something about it by updating an existing program at the Federal Communications Commission called the E-Rate. It is time to update the program for the challenges of the digital age. We should reboot, reinvigorate and recharge the E-Rate program. Call it E-Rate 2.0.

President Obama Taps Two for National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee

President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint Steve Bennett and Angel Ruiz to be members of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

Bennett is President and CEO of Symantec, a global software company that offers information security, storage and systems management products. From 2010 to 2013, he served on Symantec’s Board of Directors, serving as Chairman from 2011 to 2013. From 2000 to 2007, he was President and CEO of Intuit, a software company that provides products and services to support small business operations. Mr. Bennett joined Intuit after a 23-year career at General Electric, where he held management roles in various segments within the company, including GE Capital e-Business, GE Capital Vendor Financial Services, and GE Electrical Distribution and Control. He currently serves on the boards of American Airlines and AMR Corporation, the American Airlines parent company. Mr. Bennett received a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin.
Ruiz is Head of Region North America at Ericsson, a global telecommunications equipment and services provider. Mr. Ruiz first joined Ericsson in 1990 and has held a number of sales and managerial positions, including Executive Vice President and General Manager for Cingular Key Account and Vice President and General Manager for Ericsson’s BellSouth (now AT&T) Key Account. Prior to joining Ericsson, Mr. Ruiz was the Senior Product Manager at Alcatel from 1988 to 1990, the Supervision Engineer and Senior Project Manager for Network Planning at Sprint from 1984 to 1988, the Engineering Supervisor for Non-switched Fixed Network, Special Services for AT&T from 1983 to 1984, and the Engineering Supervisor for Special Services for Bell Atlantic from 1980 to 1983. Mr. Ruiz received a B.S. from the University of Central Florida and an M.A. from John Hopkins University.

Koch brother confirms interest in buying newspapers

Charles Koch, chairman and CEO at Koch Industries, confirmed that his company is interested in buying newspapers, as long as they can be operated profitably.

He declined to say in the Journal report whether the company was interested in buying newspapers operated by Chicago-based Tribune Co., which have been for sale since February. It has been reported previously that Koch and his brother David Koch are interested in buying the Tribune papers, but those remarks were attributed to unnamed sources. In this latest report, Charles Koch disputed previous speculation that he would use newspapers to advance his political interests. "If we got in the media, it would need to stand on its own and have good economics, create real value and create value for the marketplace, or we wouldn't be interested," Koch said. "We wouldn't be interested in putting huge amounts of money in it on the bet that we can have a miraculous turnaround (of newspapers). We see it continuing to decline, the print media."

Breaking Down the Urban-Rural Broadband Divide

In a new report, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) delve deeper into the differences between broadband availability in rural and urban areas.

This latest report is part of a series from NTIA that examines broadband availability data in greater detail. One key finding of the new report suggests that, in many cases, the closer a community lies to a central city, the more likely it is to have access to broadband at higher speeds. This is significant because some lower-density communities are located closer to the central city of a metropolitan area and have more access to faster broadband speeds than higher- density communities that are more distant from a central city. The report shows that in 2011, 76 percent of residents in exurbs, which generally ring suburbs, had access to basic wireline broadband, defined as advertised speeds of 3 Mbps download and 768 kbps upload. In contrast, 65 percent of very rural residents, who live outside of metropolitan areas, had basic wired service. This disparity between exurban and very rural areas is even greater when it comes to access to much faster broadband service of at least 25 Mpbs. Only 18 percent of very rural residents had access to broadband at this speed compared to nearly 38 percent of exurban residents. There are also significant gaps between exurbs and very rural areas when it comes to access to wireless broadband. The report also found even among urban areas – central cities, suburbs and small towns - the closer communities were closer to central cities, the more likely they were to have access to faster broadband.

Global spending for media and entertainment to rise steadily

Worldwide spending for entertainment is expected to steadily rise over the next five years as consumers increasingly use smartphones and tablets and as Brazil, China and India further develop into vibrant media markets.

Consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted that global spending for media and entertainment will reach $2.2 trillion in 2017, compared with $1.6 trillion in 2012. The U.S. is expected to remain the largest media market, with spending increasing 4.8% annually to reach $632 billion in 2017, up from the nearly $500 billion spent last year. Digital media — fueled by the expansion in ownership of smart devices — is expected to account for 43% of all media spending in the U.S. by 2017. That's up from 31% of the total in 2012. Latin America is expected to become the fastest-growing region over the next five years, with 10.6% annual spending growth. Asia Pacific countries are expected to notch annual growth of 6.5%.

Smartphone Ownership 2013

A majority of Americans now own a smartphone of some kind. Our definition of a smartphone owner includes anyone who says “yes” to one—or both—of the following questions:

55% of cell phone owners say that their phone is a smartphone.
58% of cell phone owners say that their phone operates on a smartphone platform common to the U.S. market.
Taken together, 61% of cell owners said yes to at least one of these questions and are classified as smartphone owners. Because 91% of the adult population now owns some kind of cell phone, that means that 56% of all American adults are now smartphone adopters. One third (35%) have some other kind of cell phone that is not a smartphone, and the remaining 9% of Americans do not own a cell phone at all.

Adware is biggest threat to smartphone security in U.S., report says

Nine out of every thousand smartphones in the U.S. likely have annoying or dangerous ad software installed on the device, according to an analysis by mobile security provider Lookout.

The company said its report is the first one to break down the existence of malicious software in phones by country. “The key takeaway for average users is that while their chances of encountering a mobile threat are relatively low, they can protect themselves by understanding what types of threats are more prevalent in their area,” said Jeremy Linden, Lookout's security product manager. About 56% of American adults own a smartphone, according to a Pew Research survey. Their biggest security worry is the advertising software, or adware, that sometimes comes bundled in apps such as games. It often contributes to poor battery life and might lead to strange pop-ups, toolbars or icons. Linden said adware is commonplace in the Google Play store.

Former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: 'people have the right to send and receive information over the internet, period'

A Q&A with former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski.

On network neutrality, he says, “One of the things that came out of the intense and loud public debate that we had in 2009 and 2010 was that we won the proposition that people have a right to send and receive information on the internet. We won another debate, which is that the government has a role in enforcing that right. That was also a controversial proposition. But by the end of the day, when we put the framework in place, it was supported by a very broad array of stakeholders including the bulk of companies both on the internet side and on the network side. I think people get it now, and I think more importantly, the business and social norms around internet openness are settling into the cement of the industry. The most important thing for people to understand is that the basic rule that people have a right to send information over the internet — even when they are using a wireless device — is part of the framework. If a carrier blocks a consumer's access to the internet, they are violating our rules.”

Benton

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