November 2015

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2015

See our calendar of upcoming events https://www.benton.org/calendar

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   When Will the Internet be Cheaper?
   Districts Still Struggling to Equip Schools With High-Speed Internet
   Crossing the Digital Divide on Chicago’s Toughest Streets - op-ed
   Cincinnati Bell's Fox: Metered broadband pricing will happen over time [links to Fierce]
   Broadband is Coming—Is Your Library Ready? [links to American Library Association]
   Net Neutrality Trumping Privacy Undercuts The US-EU Data Safe Harbor [links to Scott Cleland op-ed]

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
   FCC Revises Auction Data, Dates, Few Prices
   Verizon Gets Coy About TV Spectrum Auction Role [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
   AT&T will bid in 600 MHz auction, would like to get a 20 MHz nationwide block of spectrum [links to Fierce]
   LPTV Group Wants FCC to Reopen Auction Rulemaking [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
   FCC: We aren’t banning DD-WRT on Wi-Fi routers [links to Benton summary]
   The Wi-Fi/LTE Unlicensed Debate: A Path Forward - press release
   Liberty Chief Malone Says Wireless Will Have ‘Enormous' Importance to Cable Bundle [links to Multichannel News]

OWNERSHIP
   Charter's CEO on TWC, Bright House mergers: 'Everyone has had their say. We're ready to close' [links to Fierce]
   The Web of Deals That John Malone Weaves [links to Benton summary]

TELEVISION
   Broadcasters Must Be Nimble to Survive [links to TVNewsCheck]
   Cox can legally force you to rent its cable boxes, a federal judge says [links to Washington Post]
   Why are DraftKings and FanDuel all over your TV? Because they want to be ‘too big to ban.’ [links to Washington Post]
   comScore: Viewers who watch on both TV and online are more engaged than TV-only users [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
   Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance: TV Heading Toward Spectrum Crisis [links to TVNewsCheck]

JOURNALISM
   Why you should fear for the future of news – ad revenue [links to Washington Post]
   As celebrities impose photography restrictions, news organizations push back [links to Poynter]

ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
   GOP candidates pushes cyberwar with China [links to Hill, The]
   Sen Paul: Gov Christie has 'learning problem' when it comes to encryption [links to Hill, The]
   Democrats scheduled debates on days when no one will watch [links to Benton summary]

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   Governments Requests Rise for Facebook User Data, Blocking [links to Benton summary]
   Where Americans Can Be Tracked Without a Warrant [links to nextgov]

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
   FCC’s Emergency Alert Debate Might Not Include FM

GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
   A decade into a project to digitize U.S. immigration forms, just 1 is online [links to Washington Post]
   DHS defends ‘reboot’ of online immigration system [links to Hill, The]
   Data enthusiasts must do more to help public-sector leaders understand how data techniques and tools can help them change real outcomes [links to Government Technology]

TRADE
   President Obama pitches TPP to online businesses [links to Hill, The]

LOBBYING
   Corporations as single-issue community organizers [links to Washington Post]
   Tech companies, labor advocates, and think tankers of all stripes call for sweeping reforms to the social safety net [links to Washington Post]

COMPANY NEWS
   Verizon offers $10-a-day global roaming that uses your existing data plan [links to Ars Technica]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   Europe, tech giants face off over consumer privacy [links to USAToday]

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INTERNET/BROADBAND

WHEN WILL THE INTERNET BE CHEAPER?
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Adrienne LaFrance]
Long distance telephone calls used to be expensive, per minute expenses; today long-distance calling barely exists. Not technically, and not culturally. Could the same happen for Internet access charges? “It's a very natural question to ask, but the metaphor fails for a number of reasons,” said Shane Greenstein, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. “First, in telephony, the Federal Communications Commission of the United States had direct regulatory authority over long-distance prices. There is nothing equivalent for the Internet today for long-distance data transmission [in the United States].” “It was a couple things that made the price of long distance go down,” said Gerald Faulhaber, a professor emeritus at Wharton who served as the FCC’s chief economist in the early 2000s. “It was bringing competition to long distance. But the other part of it was we began to stop the concept of regulating long-distance prices. We said, ‘Okay, you can charge what you want.’ What happened then was, in response to competition, long-distance rates went down.” What people sometimes forget, though, is that as long-distance prices fell, the price for local calls went up. (Then, of course, people abandoned landlines for cellphones, only complicating the economic picture—a paradigm shift the FCC didn’t fully grasp when it ditched long-distance regulation.)
benton.org/headlines/when-will-internet-be-cheaper-0 | Atlantic, The
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DISTRICTS STILL STRUGGLING WITH INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
[SOURCE: Education Week, AUTHOR: Benjamin Herold]
Affordable Internet service and cost-effective access to related infrastructure remain major hurdles for schools, although access to fiber-optic cables and faster wireless networks is improving, according to a new survey of school district leaders. "While progress is happening, policymakers and educators will need to keep their eyes focused on continued investments in robust, reliable education networks... to enable digital learning and address issues of digital equity," Keith Krueger, the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, writes in the group's third annual "E-rate and Infrastructure" report. The findings come at a time of increased scrutiny of schools' broadband access, given the connectivity goals set forth by President Barack Obama in 2013. To help meet those targets, the Federal Communications Commission last year approved an additional $1.5 billion per year in spending on the E-rate program, which subsidizes telecommunications services for schools and libraries through fees on consumers' telephone bills.
benton.org/headlines/districts-still-struggling-equip-schools-high-speed-internet | Education Week
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SMART CHICAGO
[SOURCE: Medium, AUTHOR: Susan Crawford]
[Commentary] Too often the “digital inclusion” crisis in America is seen as a low-emotional-valence issue that is both exhausting and impossible to fix. The facts behind the crisis are easy to tick off: In many cities in America, 40% or more of citizens don’t have high-speed Internet access at home. Data caps and overage charges make mobile wireless access by way of smartphones unattractive as a substitute for that wire, and about two-thirds of Americans say they wouldn’t want to rely on a smartphone alone for Internet access. If you can afford it, you probably have both smartphone access and a wire at home — about 85% of Americans with a smartphone also have home high-speed Internet access. A far larger portion of poorer Americans are smartphone-dependent than richer Americans. The successful Smart Chicago summer program, called Youth-Led Tech, combined crucial elements that meant the effort actually reached and held the attention of teenagers in Chicago neighborhoods. What Smart Chicago learned should be put to use by cities across the country; the group has posted online all the information it can about the program for just this reason. But cities will need substantial philanthropic and private support to pull this off. And they’ll need a local Smart Chicago.
benton.org/headlines/crossing-digital-divide-chicagos-toughest-streets | Medium
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

AUCTION REVISIONS
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Mark Miller]
The Federal Communications Commission’s Incentive Auction Task Force released revised baseline data and prices for the reverse auction as well as revised filing window dates. Among the revisions are the coverage area and population served for a small number of stations, and adjustments to population data for stations that are affected by these corrections. It is also updating the constraint files that will be used in the repacking process to reflect these corrections and adjustments. The commission said the revised data will be used to determine feasible channel assignments for each station. These revisions, it said, serve the commission’s statutory mandate to “make all reasonable efforts” to preserve each station’s coverage area and population served. The Task Force is also releasing revised reverse auction opening bid prices that it says have been recalculated to reflect the corrected baseline and constraint files.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-revises-auction-data-dates-few-prices | TVNewsCheck | FCC
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WI-FI/LTE DEBATE
[SOURCE: AT&T, AUTHOR: Joan Marsh]
I agree with Harold Feld that the answer to the Wi-Fi / LTE unlicensed debate should not be in new rules or regulations around the use of unlicensed bands – the very existence of which would redefine the unlicensed experience to the detriment of innovators and users. The answer instead should be found in the FCC’s existing authority to protect wireless services authorized by the 1996 Telecommunications Act from interference that is intentional or malicious. Section 333 of the Act states that “No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government.” This section has long provided the Commission with the authority to police interference into licensed operations and, more recently, albeit with some controversy, has been relied on by the FCC to police conduct in unlicensed bands. If this provision were broadly interpreted as applying to licensed and unlicensed services alike, it could provide protection against the very type of apocalyptic results that the Wi-Fi proponents fear. It could stand for the proposition that, while no existing unlicensed technology is entitled to any specific incumbency protections, no new unlicensed technology will be permitted to do the spectral equivalent of throwing existing users off park benches or flinging rocks at them.
benton.org/headlines/wi-filte-unlicensed-debate-path-forward | AT&T
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

EMERGENCY ALERT DEBATE
[SOURCE: Morning Consult, AUTHOR: Amir Nasr]
You may not know it, but there’s a radio in your smartphone. Whether iPhone or Galaxy, all smartphones contain a chip that receives FM radio signals. Most carriers don’t activate them, so they sit inert, forcing you to use Wi-Fi or cellular data to listen to the radio. Broadcasters have urged the Federal Communications Commission to give the FM chips a second life as an emergency communications system, but their pleas aren’t resonating: the chips aren’t on the agenda for the FCC’s upcoming meeting on the Wireless Emergency System. Public safety officials and broadcasters warn that individuals who are potentially in danger could be cut off from crucial information when the wireless networks get overloaded or damaged in an emergency, and FM radio bands would be a rugged, relatively failsafe means of communicating during a crisis. Leaving the chip deactivated means smartphone users turn to apps like Spotify or SoundCloud to stream music on their devices. Wireless service providers can profit from that, because users need data to power them. Some in the wireless network industry also doubt there’s a real market demand for FM-enabled phones. While broadcasters argue the demand for radio does still exist, public safety plays a central role in the push for carriers to enable FM radio receivers in smartphones.
benton.org/headlines/fccs-emergency-alert-debate-might-not-include-fm | Morning Consult
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