1. Monthly archive
  2. October 2015

October 2015

New York City Council to Examine Verizon’s FiOS Rollout

For the better part of a year, New York City officials and Verizon spokespeople have been publicly debating the rollout of Verizon’s promised FiOS rollout across all five boroughs. Verizon says they delivered FiOS to everyone who wanted it in all of NYC by the end of November 2014 (they had promised by the end of June, 2014, so they admitted to being late). NYC, however, has contended that more than 40,000 official requests for FiOS service have gone unanswered and that Verizon hasn’t fulfilled its end of the FiOS rollout agreement.

The disagreement will go to another level Oct 14, when the NYC Council has an official oversight hearing on Verizon’s progress in completing the FiOS rollout. Committee on Technology Chair James Vacca, along with Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises Chair Donovan Richards and Committee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Vincent Gentile will hear testimony from advocates pushing for a completed rollout along with Verizon to explain the delay. The Council will present its own findings on customer concerns, which are consistent with the results of a Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) audit of the franchise agreement.

Statement of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai on Promoting Broadcast Ownership Diversity

Throughout my time at the Federal Communications Commission, I have worked on ways for the FCC to foster diversity in the broadcast industry. And Oct 13, I had the privilege of visiting three African-American-owned broadcasters in the State of Mississippi. From these meetings, I heard about the opportunities and challenges facing minority broadcasters and gained additional insight into what the FCC can do to help them succeed.

I came away from my visits in Mississippi with a renewed appreciation for the challenges minority broadcasters face and a renewed determination to fight for policies that help them thrive. That includes the FCC enabling AM broadcasters to acquire FM translators. That means the FCC allowing pro-competitive arrangements like joint sales agreements that can promote minority ownership. And it means establishing an incubator program to make it easier for minority entrepreneurs to enter the broadcast business. I hope that these and other policies find bipartisan support in the months and years ahead.

In spectrum auction, stations advised to take skeptical view of opening bids

Consultants are warning public TV licensees not to put too much weight on the opening bids for 2016’s spectrum auction, which the Federal Communications Commission is expected to release as soon as the week of Oct 13. So say John Lawson, former president of the Association of Public Television Stations, and Vincent Curren, former Corporation for Public Broadcasting COO. Over-the-air viewership is growing, they said, and innovations in broadcast technology holds promise for new revenue models for stations that continue to broadcast over the air.

In addition, the cellular carriers who will buy spectrum won’t be interested in most markets. “Many stations are going through a lot of effort, which you have to do, figuring out your strategy and making your decision to participate in the auction,” Curren said. “And many of those stations will wind up without having any of their bids accepted.” APTS officials also warned that stations in many markets were not likely to see bids. Outside of the largest markets, they said, licensees will be lucky to see half of opening bids when the bidding process ends.

In Choreographed Campaigns, Candidates Stumble Over Choice of Music

It has become as much a part of the presidential campaign season as the baby kiss or the candidate selfie: the inevitable moment when a musician denounces a politician for using his or her song without permission. It happened recently, when Steven Tyler of Aerosmith demanded that Trump stop using his band’s 1973 hit “Dream On” at campaign events. At a time when every detail in a political campaign seems minutely choreographed, it can be puzzling why so many politicians risk a public shaming from popular musicians. One theory attributes the problem simply to the wide gulf between the worlds of politics and entertainment.

“There are more candidates, more media, and fewer campaign staff who are knowledgeable about these issues,” said Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America, which circulates to political campaigns a set of guidelines about copyright issues in music. “The bench of people who know about music licensing can’t be that deep.” The disputes also point to what experts say is a legal gray area over licensing rules for music in political campaigns. The issue gets more complicated when the uses of these songs are captured on video and shared on social media -- as they almost inevitably are.

Where the right to know comes from

[Commentary] The idea of transparency in government as we know it today did not wait for the Internet to become part of American political culture. But nor did the founding fathers develop it. The First Amendment, although enshrining free speech and press by forbidding the federal government to make laws abridging them, said nothing about government release of information to the public. Very little before Freedom of Information Act institutionalized disclosure practices. Would we have inaugurated these practices without direct “political” intervention on the part of the news media?

That counterfactual is not something anyone can answer with certainty. All we can say with assurance is that FOIA, in fact, came into existence with considerable active and self-conscious assistance from the press.

[Michael Schudson is a sociologist and historian of the news media and a professor at the Columbia Journalism School]

New research highlights libraries’ expanded roles

A majority of our nation’s nearly 17,000 public libraries provide programs to help identify health insurance resources and also training to increase familiarity with new technologies, according to a new study from the American Library Association (ALA). 2015’s Digital Inclusion Survey caps two decades of research on public libraries and the Internet and the expanded roles libraries are playing in their communities. The Digital Inclusion Survey finds that:

  • Virtually all libraries (98 percent) offer free public Wi-Fi access
  • 95 percent of libraries offer summer reading programs to forestall the “summer slide” in reading achievement experienced when learning takes a holiday between school terms
  • Close to 90 percent of libraries offer basic digital literacy training, and a significant majority support training related to new technology devices (62 percent), safe online practices (57 percent) and social media use (56 percent)
  • 76 percent of libraries assist patrons in using online government programs and services
  • The vast majority of libraries provide programs that support people in applying for jobs (73 percent), access and using online job opportunity resources (68 percent) and using online business information resources (48 percent)
  • A significant majority of libraries host social connection events for adults (61 percent) and teens (60 percent) such as book discussion groups or gaming programs
  • 45 percent of libraries provide early-learning technologies for pre-K children
  • More than one-third of all libraries provide literacy, GED prep, STEAM and afterschool programs

Remarks of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, International Institute of Communications Annual Conference

The United States and other governments along with the World Bank, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and major corporations have sponsored a “Global Connect” initiative that seeks to connect an additional 1.5 billion people to the Internet by 2020. It also seeks to make information and communication technologies a development priority equivalent to other forms of critical infrastructure. It is a source of great personal pride that the Federal Communications Commission staff participates so extensively in these contributions to the increase in human capital. The exchange of experiences, the conviction that there is significant value in describing and hearing how different organizations have approached similar challenges and opportunities, of course, is what brings us together today. As it happens, the FCC has experiences that coincide very closely with the four themes of this conference:

  • Connecting the Unconnected
  • The Internet of Everything
  • OTT convergence
  • Competition

So, consistent with the conviction that the exchange of experience has value, I will very briefly describe a few of our initiatives that would be relevant to these themes in the international context.

Remarks of Brendan Carr, Legal Advisor to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, At New Direction's Digital Single Market Summit

As a leading think tank in Europe, New Direction plays a key role in advancing free market and limited government principles on this side of the Atlantic. It’s a pleasure to join you in Brussels to discuss policies that can encourage investment in broadband networks. The European Commission’s consideration of the Digital Single Market is certainly one of the most prominent of these efforts. So I welcome the chance to join today’s forum and discuss some lessons that one might draw from the US broadband experience...

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision to adopt heavy-handed network neutrality regulations is resulting in less investment and reduced deployment. It will inevitably lead to less robust competition in the broadband market. But despite the FCC’s U turn, I am optimistic that the US will return to the successful, lighttouch approach to the Internet that spurred massive investments in our broadband infrastructure. Efforts are underway in both the courts and Congress to reverse the FCC’s decision. And following 2016’s presidential election, the composition of the FCC could be substantially different than it is today.

AT&T blasts cable mergers, says cable companies should compete instead

AT&T, which just completed a $48.5 billion purchase of rival DirecTV, is now really worried that cable companies are merging too often and not competing against each other. Cable companies are coordinating and could end up acting as "a single national cable company," AT&T claimed. AT&T submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission Oct 13, explaining its views on Charter's proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks. AT&T started the letter by saying that it doesn't oppose the merger and then spent a few pages arguing that cable companies should compete against each other instead of merging.

AT&T's views here are strikingly similar to those of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who has urged cable companies to compete against each other and played a key role in blocking Comcast's proposed takeover of TWC. But AT&T just wants cable companies -- those using coaxial cable -- to compete against each other. A traditional telecommunication company buying the nation's biggest satellite TV operator, despite already offering a pay-TV service of its own, was just fine, AT&T said. AT&T urged the FCC to "review the [Charter/TWC] transaction carefully and consider the impact of cable consolidation and coordination on emerging competition."

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