March 2014

OWNERSHIP

COMCAST TO FCC: WE HAVE OVERDELIVERED ON NBCU CONDITIONS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
As it prepares to pitch its deal to merge with Time Warner Cable, Comcast says it has delivered, and in some cases over-delivered, on its promises to the Federal Communications Commission that helped it secure approval of its combo with NBCU in 2011. In its third annual report on compliance with the NBCU deal conditions, Comcast said it over-delivered on every broadband adoption and deployment condition. The cable operator also pointed out that it had struck a number of deals with online video providers for access to programming without having to resort to arbitration. Those included:
Connecting an estimated 1 million low-income Americans, or more than 250,000 families, to the Internet at home through our Internet Essentials broadband adoption program;
Expanding our broadband network by 6,289 miles or 141% of the total 4,500 miles required to satisfy the year-three commitment. In addition, Comcast extended its broadband plant to 718,511 additional homes, or 180% of the year-three milestone of 400,000 homes-passed;
Providing an additional 664 courtesy video and broadband Internet access accounts to schools, libraries, and other community institutions in underserved areas in which broadband penetration is low and there is a high concentration of low income residents, 64 more than were need to satisfy the year-three requirement; and
Far exceeding the requirement to have a broadband service tier of at least 12 Mbps down in our DOCSIS 3.0 markets. In fact, the Performance tier in all top 30 markets is at least 20 Mbps down and all top 30 markets also have the Extreme 105 Mbps down tier.
benton.org/node/175657 | Multichannel News | Washington Post | GigaOm
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COMCAST’S WEB OF INFLUENCE TOUCHES MANY CORNERS OF WASHINGTON
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Holly Yeager]
As Comcast pushes for approval of a $45 billion merger that would cement its dominance of the cable industry, the company stands to benefit from ties across Washington that it has built through contributions to think tanks, civil rights groups, and other organizations. Comcast’s prolific charitable spending, together with top-level political connections, a roster of executives who have held key jobs in government, and one of the biggest lobbying operations in the city, have helped establish its status as one of the most influential companies in Washington. The company’s reach across the capital also illustrates the many tools beyond traditional lobbying that corporations have at their disposal as they seek to influence policymakers. “They’ve spread a lot of money around town to a lot of places, just for moments like this,” said Craig Aaron, president of Free Press, a consumer advocacy group that opposes the Time Warner Cable merger. The Comcast Foundation gave out just over $16 million in grants in 2012, the most recent year for which tax documents are available. Comcast’s Washington lobbying budget has skyrocketed, from $2.4 million in 2003 to $18.8 million in 2013, according to federal disclosure reports. It ranked seventh in a year-end tally of spending on federal lobbying by the Center for Responsive Politics, with most of the other top spots held by trade associations, including the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which counts Comcast as a member.
benton.org/node/175655 | Washington Post
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IGNORE PARANOID BLOGGERS: THE COMCAST-TIME WARNER MERGER IS GOOD FOR CONSUMERS
[SOURCE: Forbes, AUTHOR: Doug Brake]
[Commentary] Unfortunately, there is a large amount of misinformation surrounding the recent Comcast-Time Warner merger. It’s worth taking a step back and evaluating the transaction in terms of the bigger picture of broadband competition policy. Susan Crawford, John A. Reilly visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School, asserted a claim that the deal is “Bad for America” because it will lead to a monopoly on broadband. Her claim is inaccurate, and leads her to make some strange claims with respect to the proposed merger. Immediately after Comcast’s announcement, many detractors dismissed Google fiber as a viable competitor to cable because it is in only a handful of cities. Yes, cable is well positioned, yes, Comcast is a large, successful company, but that doesn’t make it a monopoly, and certainly doesn’t make it a permanent monopoly without strong competitors in sight. There’s one final way that broadband populists like Crawford get it wrong. For them big is bad and big business is the worst. But economists have found that there are significant scale economies in the provision of broadband services. A recent study from the Canadian government found that economies of scale were responsible for 30 to 40 percent of productivity growth in the telecommunications sector from 1984 to 2008. The increasing returns to scale in the communications industry is a key reason why this deal is good for the economy and consumers. [Brake is a Telecom Policy Analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]
benton.org/node/175649 | Forbes
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INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS

VERIZON CEO LOWELL MCADAM JUST TOOK US ON A TOUR OF THE NEXT-GENERATION INTERNET: TELCO-STYLE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
Verizon’s CEO Lowell McAdam presides over the nation’s largest wireless provider and one of the fastest wireline broadband networks in the US. Recently, he’s perfectly exemplified the type of Internet service provider mentality that we’re likely to see now that the Federal Communications Commission has capitulated on the concept of network neutrality and regulating ISPs like utilities. McAdam showcased exactly this sort of thinking across three different statements. First, in his mind, heavy users will pay per bit. Second: “Both consumers and content providers should pay us.” Third: “We sell broadband, but don’t know how to drive demand.” He hopes [Google CEO Larry Page will] “come up with some applications that really show the need for fiber.” McAdam is seemingly unaware or willfully ignoring the contradiction inherent in charging users more for using a lot of broadband while trying to build demand for faster services. While Google is trying to push the envelope on new services and faster networks, the companies that own most of these networks are concerned with keeping the envelope full of cash. Again, this behavior makes sense given that telecommunications companies have a duopoly situation in most parts of the country. There’s no need to focus on making a service better, or to drive demand for a product, when you’re the only company that sells that product; especially if greater demand has historically meant that you need to then lay out more money for spectrum or digging new trenches. What’s happening here is the culture that has influenced the Internet is shifting.
benton.org/node/175654 | GigaOm
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LESSONS FROM THE 2013 BROADBAND CONNECT AMERICA FUND
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
[Commentary] The final accounting from the 2013 Broadband Connect America Fund program is all but completed -- and the results were considerably different from what occurred with the 2012 program. There are two key takeaways about the program, which is designed to help spur broadband deployment in rural America. First, the plan to allow a carrier to request and obtain additional funding that other carriers declined succeeded in increasing overall participation in the program. Second, a considerable amount of funding that carriers requested was challenged by competitors who argued that they already provided broadband to some of the homes for which funding was requested. And in the majority of cases, the FCC resolved the disputes in favor of the competitors.
benton.org/node/175643 | telecompetitor
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THE MOST REVEALING BROADBAND ADOPTION MAPS WE'VE EVER SEEN
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Emily Badger]
Map the broadband adoption rates in, say, San Antonio, and a pattern emerges that closely reflects the region's socioeconomic geography. Households in and around the downtown business district overwhelmingly have broadband. But just west of Interstates 10 and 35, in the adjacent neighborhoods that are home to many of the city's Hispanic poor, fewer than 20 percent of households do. Starting at the urban core and moving into outer neighborhoods, then into the northern suburbs and beyond, broadband rates appear to swell with income. A related pattern recurs in many cities: People are online in droves downtown and in the suburbs, but not so much in inner-city neighborhoods.
benton.org/node/175631 | Atlantic, The
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GOING ALL-IP IN ALABAMA, FLORIDA
[SOURCE: AT&T, AUTHOR: Hank Hultquist]
AT&T has proposed conducting IP transition trials in Carbon Hill (AL) and in West Delray Beach (FL). We chose these locations in an effort to gain insights into some of the more difficult issues that likely will be presented as we transition from legacy networks. For example, the rural and sparsely populated wire center of Carbon Hill poses particularly challenging economic and geographic characteristics. While Kings Point’s suburban location and large population of older Americans poses different but significant challenges as well. The lessons we learn from these trials will play a critical role as we begin this transition in our approximately 4700 wire centers across the country to meet our goal of completing the IP transition by the end of 2020. Importantly, in developing our plans for the trials, as well as the IP transition in general, we were guided by certain, fundamental principles and values, which were articulated by the Commission in its order authorizing these trials and have formed the basis of communications law and policy over the past century. These are the principles and values that have made America’s communications network the envy of the world – universal connectivity, consumer protection, public safety, reliability and competition. These should continue to apply as we complete the transition to all-IP networks and services while also evolving to reflect marketplace and technological developments. AT&T commends the Federal Communications Commission for opening this proceeding and we’re excited to begin these trials.
benton.org/node/175622 | AT&T | see details
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FINALLY MOVING FROM WORDS TO ACTION ON THE IP TRANSITION
[SOURCE: Phoenix Center, AUTHOR: Larry Spiwak]
[Commentary] For over a year, momentum has been building for the Federal Communications Commission to establish a series of wire center trials to test exactly how an all-IP world might work. Overall, I was impressed with the IP Transition Trial Order -- it was written with a professionalism that has largely been absent from the Commission in recent years. Like most FCC orders, the document was rich in implications, but there were a few major concepts in the IP Transition Trial Order that caught my attention. First, the Commission repeatedly stated that it was not going to use these trials to resolve any legal and policy issues. Instead, reasoned the Commission, the purpose of the trials would be to “endeavor to learn in diverse ways how the modernization of communications networks is affecting the achievement of our statutory responsibilities.” My second observation about the FCC’s IP Transition Trial Order is that I thought the agency did a very good job identifying all of the “enduring values” we expect from our critical communications infrastructure. These “enduring values” include, but are certainly not limited to: 911 capability, network security, network reliability, ensuring access to persons with disabilities, universal service, truth in billing, no cramming/slamming, local number portability, customer privacy and, of course, overall maintenance of quality of service. That said, if there is an Achilles heel to the proposed trials, it may be (but not necessarily is) the fact that these trials are voluntary for both wholesale and retail customers. So, in light of the agency’s hands-off approach and the trials’ voluntary nature, it is unclear how much useful (or unbiased) evidence will be gathered.
benton.org/node/175648 | Phoenix Center
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TELEVISION

YOU WON'T BELIEVE HOW BIG TV STILL IS
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Sam Thielman]
As the upfronts approach and the NewFronts try again to imitate them, expect to hear a lot about the twilight of traditional television with the rise of digital video. But don’t believe it. A new study from Nielsen reveals the depth and breadth of both universes, and comparative viewership numbers aren’t even close. The study, conducted with ad targeting firm Simulmedia, contains plenty of insights, but among the most striking is the size of either industry. Nielsen rarely pulls back the veil on exactly how big the TV and video worlds are (they do mint the currency in the former, after all), but here it is in black and white: There are 283 million television viewers monthly (the population of the United States is 313 million), each watching an average of 146 hours of TV. Compare that with 155 million online video viewers averaging just shy of six hours monthly on mobile and almost six and a half hours over the Web. So while TV’s audience is still almost twice that of digital video, the amount of money in digital isn’t even 5 percent of the mammoth $74 billion chunk of change in television. What’s going to bring about growth in the former, said Amit Seth, Nielsen’s evp, global media products, is equivalency.
benton.org/node/175634 | AdWeek
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THE DOJ'S ANTI-JSA ARGUMENTS ARE SO 1997
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
[Commentary]The Department of Justice’s 18-page filing in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to kill joint sales agreements (JSAs) is a bloated document that has a slap-dash quality and is notably short on substance. What’s worse, it references comments it made in a similar FCC proceeding in 1997, saying they continue to make a lot of sense. 1997?! That's 17 years ago. I would say that anything written about media markets in 1997 is totally irrelevant today. In 1997, you could barely pass an audio signal across the Interest, let alone TV. Newspapers were fat with classified ads, satellite TV was just getting off the ground, Google was on the drawing board and Mark Zuckerberg was prepping for his bar mitzvah. If the broadcasters lose at the FCC and they have to unwind their JSA-based duopolies, you can bet that they will mount ferocious legal challenges. The financial damage will be extensive.
benton.org/node/175635 | TVNewsCheck
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FCC PROPOSES OVER $1.9 MILLION IN EAS FINES
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: ]
The Federal Communications Commission proposed fines against Viacom, ESPN, and NBCUniversal for repeatedly transmitting an advertisement that misuses the warning sounds of the nationwide Emergency Alert System. The EAS is a national public warning system that requires broadcasters, cable television operators, wireless cable operators, wireline video service providers, satellite digital audio radio service providers, and direct broadcast satellite providers to make it possible for the president of the United States to address the American public during a national emergency. Federal, state, and local authorities may also use the EAS to deliver important emergency information, such as Amber Alerts and weather information, like tornado warnings, targeted to specific areas. This case is the latest in a series of FCC enforcement actions to address a recent spike in consumer complaints. The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau initiated a wide-ranging investigation in response to consumer complaints about a commercial being transmitted on multiple cable networks. The complaints described an advertisement promoting the release of the film “Olympus has Fallen.” In response to the Bureau’s Letters of Inquiry, the companies each admitted that the commercial appeared multiple times on multiple national and regional networks under their control, and that it used actual EAS codes and the attention signal to advertise the film. As a result of the investigation, the FCC has issued an omnibus Notice of Apparent Liability for a total of $1,930,000 to the companies.
benton.org/node/175656 | TVNewsCheck | read the FCC notice | Revere Digital | B&C | CommLawBlog
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WHITE HOUSE BACKS BROADCASTERS IN AEREO CASE
[SOURCE: Deadline, AUTHOR: David Lieberman]
The Solicitor General of the US put his name and that of the Obama Administration solidly in the anti-Aereo camp with a 40-page amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States. “The proper resolution of this dispute is straightforward,” the brief states. “Unlike a purveyor of home antennas, or the lessor of hilltop space on which individual consumers may erect their own antennas … respondent does not simply provide access to equipment or other property that facilitates customers’ reception of broadcast signals. Rather, respondent operates an integrated system -- i.e., a ‘device or process’ -- whose functioning depends on its customers’ shared use of common facilities. The fact that as part of that system respondent uses unique copies and many individual transmissions does not alter the conclusion that it is retransmitting broadcast content ‘to the public.’ Like its competitors, respondent therefore must obtain licenses to perform the copyrighted content on which its business relies. That conclusion, however, should not call into question the legitimacy of businesses that use the Internet to provide new ways for consumers to store, hear, and view their own lawfully acquired copies of copyrighted works.”
benton.org/node/175667 | Deadline
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

WATCH OUT FOR THIS ‘GAME-CHANGING’ NEW COMMODITY
[SOURCE: CNBC, AUTHOR: Katy Barnato]
Traders could find themselves buying and selling a new commodity in two years' time: wireless broadband. While the US government is mulling whether to deregulate the wireless market like it did for the electricity network, Rivada Networks, a US telecommunications company, has patented a trading platform which it says will allow wireless broadband spectrum to be traded in milliseconds. "This may be a once in a generation opportunity: you don't see new commodities show up in the world on a regular basis… Once you can commoditize something, the natural progression is that there will be a free market," said Rivada’s founder, Irish entrepreneur Declan Ganley. Broadband spectrum may be homogenous but is neither plentiful nor affordable at the moment. It is typically bought by telecommunication giants like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in large chunks in government-endorsed auctions for multi-millions or billions of dollars. But the US government has allocated $7 billion of government money and 20 megahertz of spectrum to build a countrywide broadband network, to aid communications between public safety agencies like fire brigades and police forces.
benton.org/node/175627 | CNBC
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HEALTH

CAN MARK ZUCKERBERG SAVE CHILDREN’S LIVES?
[SOURCE: Technology Review, AUTHOR: David Talbot]
[Commentary] At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offered news that his company was helping out with app engineering for a pilot project delivering educational materials in Rwanda. This is laudable. But he also suggested he was a serious player in expanding global Internet access. This is misleading. And he fluidly conflated Facebook’s efforts with the saving of children’s lives. This is offensive. What really stood out was his mention of “decreasing infant mortality rates” through expanded Internet access, implicitly linking his company to such a life-saving goal. He cited a Deloitte study; I read it. On the infant mortality point, it rested on a study done of Indian villages with and without Internet access and noted: “The village with Internet had access to Internet kiosks providing specific health information to women during and after the pregnancy.” So there was a maternal health program involved, perhaps with other interventions going along with it. That’s quite different from a Facebook account. The point here is not that Internet access can’t provide such benefits, only that Mark Zuckerberg is playing fast and loose with the facts. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that he runs an enormously successful business built on collecting personal data and selling ads, or that he’s trying to expand that business via “free access with upsells.” But when he starts implying that what he’s doing will somehow help save the lives of the poorest and sickest children on the planet, he deserves to be called out.
benton.org/node/175650 | Technology Review
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EDUCATION

HELPING MORE SCHOOLS BE “FUTURE READY”
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: Kumar Garg, James Sanders]
President Barack Obama articulated that to achieve the goal of harnessing technology for excellence in education, the public and private sectors will have to collaborate in four critical areas: leadership; empowering teachers; providing access to high quality content solutions and low cost devices; and robust high-speed Internet connectivity. This kind of cooperation was on display in the form of a number of new commitments. For example, Adobe announced it would make available over $300 million worth of software for free to teachers and students, and Prezi, which makes a software tool for creating memorable presentations, will provide $100 million in Edu Pro licenses for high schools and educators across America. This pushes the total value of private-sector commitments to the ConnectED initiative to over $1 billion. Also, Digital Promise, a non-profit focused on spurring innovation in education, announced a new “Future Ready” pledge. For many, this pledge will act as their first step -- by showing commitment to the President’s goal in each of the four critical areas above. The pledge includes promises to provide links to important resources, and to take actions that can help get individual schools on track -- actions like taking an Internet speed test. In a related effort, EducationSuperHighway, a non-profit focused on getting an accurate picture of classroom connectivity in order to better focus policy and resources, is announcing it will offer a “Future Ready” badge to every school that takes this important step. The badge can be placed on a school’s website, not just to show parents and administrators that it is taking positive steps but also to help raise awareness—like wearing a sticker that says “I voted today”. By partnering with educators, researchers, and technologists, Digital Promise and Education Superhighway aim to provide guidance and resources to help schools create learning environments that prepare students for the ever-changing future.
benton.org/node/175629 | White House, The
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PRIVACY

'BIG DATA' REVIEW TO FOCUS ON PRIVATE SECTOR
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Kate Tummarello]
A White House-ordered privacy review group will focus its attention on private sector, rather than government, use of data, according to White House counselor John Podesta. By focusing on companies, the group hopes to “get a more holistic view of the state of the technology,” said Podesta. The examinations of government surveillance programs are happening on a “somewhat separate track,” he said, pointing to a White House-ordered review being led by Attorney General Eric Holder and members of the intelligence community. By “looking at this beyond just the intelligence community,” the big data review group “may help inform intelligence policy going forward,” Podesta said, “but really I think that these are parallel tracks.” Podesta said his review will focus on whether policy updates are needed to account for the vast amounts of data that can be collected and analyzed due to advances in technology, including the capabilities of the Internet. Podesta said that the review process will engage with “a broad range” of stakeholders, including members of the international community.
benton.org/node/175659 | Hill, The
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IS PRIVACY A LUXURY?
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: ]
[Commentary] In our data-saturated economy, privacy is becoming a luxury good. After all, as the saying goes, if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. And currently, we aren’t paying for very much of our technology. Not long ago, we would have bought services as important to us as mail and news. Now, however, we get all those services for free — and we pay with our personal data, which is spliced and diced and bought and sold. As more privacy-protecting services pop up, we need to consider two important questions: Can we ensure that those who can afford to buy privacy services are not being deceived? And even more important, do we want privacy to be something that only those with disposable money and time can afford? The food industry can offer some possible answers to those questions. Our government enforces baseline standards for the safety of all food and has strict production and labeling requirements for organic food. It may be time to start doing the same for our data. [Angwin is a senior reporter at ProPublica]
benton.org/node/175674 | New York Times
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

TELECOM GIANTS PUSH BACK
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Marcy Gordon, Martha Mendoza]
When Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants united in outrage over the National Security Agency's unfettered spying, telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint -- whose customers are also the targets of secret government spying -- remained noticeably mum. But now the phone companies are speaking up. In closed-door meetings with policymakers they are taking a less accommodating stance with government and rattling the historically tight bond between telecom and the surveillance community. "It's been extremely unusual for telecoms to resist any requests from the government," says software engineer Zaki Manian of Palo Alto, who advocates against mass government surveillance. "The telecom companies have a long history of providing raw data dumps to the government and typically taking some money in return and calling it a day," Manian says. Technology companies typically comply with requests for information about individual users but resist demands for bulk data. But telecommunications companies share a connection with government unlike that of any other industry. They "have been tied to our national security agencies for all of their history," says Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who was a special assistant to President Barack Obama for science, technology and innovation policy.
benton.org/node/175676 | Associated Press
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DID SPRINT OVERCHARGE US?
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Jon Brodkin]
The US government filed suit against Sprint, alleging that the company overcharged government agencies when submitting expense reimbursement requests for wiretap operations that spied on Sprint customers. Sprint "knowingly submitted false claims to federal law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), US Marshals Service (USMS), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and others, by including unallowable costs in their charges for carrying out court orders authorizing wiretaps, pen registers, and trap devices," US attorneys wrote in a suit filed in US District Court in Northern California. Sprint denies the allegations, which the US says cost the government $21 million. The lawsuit says that carriers are "prohibited from using their intercept charges to recover the costs of modifying equipment, facilities or services that were incurred to comply with CALEA [Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act]." Despite that rule, Sprint's reimbursement claims "included the costs of financing Sprint’s investment in CALEA equipment, including the cost of debt, cost of equity, and associated taxes. ... By including these unallowable costs in its intercept charges, Sprint inflated its charges by approximately 58 percent. As a result of Defendants’ false claims, the United States paid over $21 million in unallowable costs from January 1, 2007 to July 31, 2010."
benton.org/node/175675 | Ars Technica
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POLICYMAKERS

FCC COMISSIONER PAI’S BULLY PULPIT GRAB LEADS TO PUSHBACK
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has used his “bully pulpit” powers to get broadcasters and cable operators to commit to improving their closed captions and wireless companies to agree to cellphone unlocking. But he has the ability to back that “speak softly” -- and sometimes loudly, as with cellphones -- approach with agenda items and FCC bureau actions. Meanwhile, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has managed to parlay his own bully pulpit into one of the highest profiles for a minority commissioner in recent memory, including appearances on cable news networks and headlines generated in major newspapers. Commissioner Pai recently has been heralded in some quarters as something of a First Amendment savior.
benton.org/node/175640 | Broadcasting&Cable
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

UKRAINE’S BROADBAND CONNECTION
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Andrea Peterson]
Doug Madory, a researcher at Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm, thinks Ukraine's infrastructure is more robust than that of other countries that have faced total Internet blackouts in the past. "Ukraine is not Syria or Sudan," he explains. "It is served by many ISPs with many independent terrestrial connections to neighboring countries. Due to this, it would be difficult to have a national blackout in a place like Ukraine." Speaking at the opening of RightsCon, an online freedom conference currently being held in San Francisco, Ukrainian free speech advocate and Mass Information Institute director Oksana Romaniuk praised the role of the Internet in helping citizens organize and share information during recent demonstrations. But meanwhile in Russia, some Web sites linked to Ukrainian protests have been censored.
benton.org/node/175673 | Washington Post
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RUSSIA WAGES MEDIA WAR ALONGSIDE CRIMEA INVASION
[SOURCE: Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Michael Calderone, Luke Johnson]
One of the first casualties in the Russian invasion of Crimea was independent television. Black Sea TV, the peninsula's only independent channel, was shut down. The head editor, Oleksandra Kvitko, said a Crimean governing body had decided to close the station, claiming there had been threats against its journalists. The crackdown on independent media is a hallmark of Kremlin-style manipulation. Such press tightening began early on during the presidency of Vladimir Putin and has continued, most recently, in the run-up to the Sochi Olympics. Russian media chiefs defended their reporting against charges of bias, even as recent coverage demonstrated the Kremlin's control of the news. Following the ouster of pro-Kremlin president Victor Yanukovych, Russian TV anchors have suggested that supporters of Ukraine’s new interim government would have sided with the fascists in World War II -- or the "Great Patriotic War," the term commonly used in Russia -- and that Western-facing protesters largely belonged to the extreme right. Coverage of clashes in Kiev, however, shifted to the fate of the Crimean peninsula, home to predominately Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Reuters reported that Russian state television had begun showing Ukrainians in Crimea “saying they would not follow orders from Kiev." Russia’s state-controlled media has undergone a shift in recent months toward increased centralization and control.
benton.org/node/175661 | Huffington Post
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SEPARATING FIBER UPTAKE WHEAT FROM GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY CHAFF
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Bronwyn Howell]
[Commentary] Recently, New Zealand’s Communications Minister Amy Adams addressed the progress of the country’s subsidized broadband project -- two years after the first cables were laid, “the total number of end users who can connect to the UFB network (comes) to 363,109 people, meaning 27 percent of the project has been completed.” Despite having rolled out fiber past more than 25 percent of the targeted premises, at the end of 2013 only a paltry 5.5 percent of potential users have subscribed. This is despite the subsidized prices being set so as to make them more attractive than ADSL for those wanting a faster connection. However, Adams claims that New Zealand fiber uptake was consistent with overseas experiences. “By comparison, in Singapore uptake was about 2 percent when 20 percent of the network was built and in the UK, uptake was about 3 percent when 24 percent of the network was built.” Unfortunately for Adams, her numbers don’t appear to stack up. Her selective comparators ignore any cases that do not adopt the peculiar structure of 1) separation of retail and network operations and 2) heavy central government subsidization. If these blinkers are removed, then the truly sorry state of New Zealand’s low fiber uptake is revealed. First, it is unthinkable that a commercial network operator would be satisfied with achieving only 5 percent uptake after two years of operation. Furthermore, New Zealand itself has seen much higher uptake rates when project structures have been based on competition and private investment. It appears as though an important lesson to be learned from New Zealand is that the institutional arrangements under which governments subsidize fiber networks are at least as important, if not more, than the size of the subsidy itself. Adams has little room for either comfort or complacency. [Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a faculty member of Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand]
benton.org/node/175624 | American Enterprise Institute
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Benton

Daily Digest

Analysis

March 2014

Epix signs agreement with Time Warner Cable

March 4, 2014 (Comcast to FCC: We Have Overdelivered)

Telecom giants reportedly join tech firms in pushing back against NSA

Lawsuit: Sprint charged US government $21 million too much for spying expenses

Has Privacy Become a Luxury Good?

Ukraine is in turmoil, but it’s still online. Here’s why.

Encouraging News For Rural Communities in the Farm Bill and FCC’s IP Transition Order

Dish to Curtail Ad Skipping on Hopper Devices for ABC Shows

ABC's Oscars Streaming Outage Shows Web Limitations for TV Networks

CBS Puts New Ads in Old Programs for On-Demand Viewers