1. Monthly archive
  2. July 2016

July 2016

Ofcom calls on BT for “legally separate” Openreach

Openreach should become a “legally separate” company within the BT Group, the UK telecommunications regulator said in a long-awaited verdict on the future of the telecoms group’s profitable infrastructure arm.

Ofcom said that Openreach, which owns the fibres and wires that allow homes and businesses in Britain to get broadband connections, should have an independent board and chairman, as well as control over its own budget.

The regulator stopped short of recommending a full-blown break-up — an option favoured by rivals TalkTalk, Sky and Vodafone. But it said that complete structural separation, with Openreach and BT under distinct ownership, remained an option if the infrastructure division does not act “more independently” and “take decisions for the good of the wider telecoms industry and its customers”.

Frontier sued for alleged misuse of $40.5 Million in federal broadband stimulus funds

Frontier's woes in West Virginia have come to a new head as competitive provider Citynet is suing Frontier over abusing $40.5 million in federal stimulus funds to build a broadband network that would lock out competitors in the state. In the lawsuit, Citynet accuses Frontier of double-billing, claiming that it falsified records and charged excess fees not authorized by the federal grant that funded the telco's broadband expansion project it completed in 2014.

West Virginia Homeland Security Chief Jimmy Gianato, Chief Technology Officer Gale Given, and former Commerce Secretary Kelly Goes have also been named in the suit. Citynet claims these three state leaders willingly participated in a scheme to abuse government funds. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2014 and Citynet recently updated the suit when the U.S. Justice Department said it would not weigh in. At issue is a $126.3 million federal stimulus broadband grant awarded to West Virginia in 2010. This grant was aimed at providing broadband internet to 1,064 public facilities -- including a mix of schools, libraries, health clinics, courthouses and state police detachments.

FCC Approves Telcordia As the Next Local Number Portability Administrator

The Federal Communications Commission released an Order giving final approval to a recommendation that Telcordia Technologies serve as the nation’s next Local Number Portability Administrator, or LNPA. The LNPA oversees the critical system that allows consumers and businesses to keep their phone numbers when they switch providers, promoting choice and competition. Acting on the recommendation of its numbering advisory committee, the North American Numbering Council, the Commission found that Telcordia can meet the strict conditions set by the FCC to ensure reliability, security, and competitive neutrality of the numbering system.

Specifically, the FCC found that:
The LNPA contract contains terms and conditions to ensure that effective public safety services and law enforcement and national security operations are supported.
The terms and conditions of the LNPA contract ensure that the Government’s interests are protected by a rigorous audit program that monitors for and ensures compliance, backstopped by robust enforcement tools, throughout the term of the contract.
Telcordia has submitted a Code of Conduct and Voting Trust Agreement ensuring that Telcordia will be an impartial LNPA.
Telcordia has effectively engaged in post-selection risk reduction activities to address the evolving cybersecurity threat environment.

What does the US government know about Russia and the DNC hack?

[Commentary] Potentially unpleasant news for FBI Director Jim Comey: We need you to intervene in the 2016 election again. There is significant evidence that individuals acting at the direction of or on the behalf of Russia—the degree of coordination is unclear—are attempting to use organizational doxing to influence the United States presidential election.

As Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith noted, this raises a number of scary questions regarding preserving the integrity of US election results. It is not entirely clear what is motivating the DNC document dumps or the apparent targeting of Hillary Clinton; some speculate the aim it to benefit Donald Trump, though a plausible goal might simply be to insert a degree of chaos into US politics. Understanding the ultimate goal of the hack and leaks, however, is not all that important to deciding how exactly we should respond. What is critical to mitigating the harm is sufficiently strong public attribution.

How Spectrum Enables Agencies to Fight Wildfires

The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and the National Interagency Incident Communications Division (NIICD) are responsible for coordinating communications when federal agencies are managing wildfires. Portable radios, which require access to radio frequency spectrum, are the primary communications tool for firefighters. As crews respond, Communications Duty Officers at the NIICD work to secure the needed frequencies – in a matter of hours.

The NIICD has access to about 50 frequencies as a baseline, and can secure more by working with frequency managers at the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, the Department of the Interior and the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as federal agency members that make up NTIA’s Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee and Frequency Assignment Subcommittee. Some of those baseline frequencies are “clear” – meaning there are no other users – but others are shared by more than one federal agency. Frequency managers must ensure there is no interference as firefighters begin to use a particular frequency. The NIICD is a partnership between the five federal agencies that are responsible for managing fires on more than 676 million acres of land: the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, and US Fish and Wildlife Service, along with the US Forest Service.

Netflix’s cable box deal with Comcast won’t exempt it from data caps

Netflix and Comcast will be available on the same cable box later in 2016, but Netflix video will still count against Comcast data caps. The deal raised questions about whether Netflix would be exempt from Comcast data caps, but it has already been decided. A Comcast spokesperson answered "yes" when asked if Netflix will continue counting against data caps after being integrated into Comcast cable boxes. "All data that flows over the public Internet (which includes Netflix) counts toward a customer’s monthly data usage," Comcast said.

Comcast imposes 1TB monthly caps in portions of its territory, with overage fees ranging from $10 to $200 a month unless customers pay an extra $50 for unlimited data. Comcast and Netflix have had a rocky relationship, with some of their squabbles centering on data caps and data cap exemptions (also known as zero-rating). In 2012, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings accused Comcast of "no longer following net neutrality principles" when the cable company exempted its Xfinity on-demand video for the Xbox 360 from data caps, while counting Netflix, HBO, and Hulu usage against the cap. In 2014, Netflix and Comcast fought over whether Netflix should have to pay to send video traffic directly into Comcast's network. Netflix paid up.

How Sponsored Content Is Becoming King in a Facebook World

For some publishers unsettled by a fast-changing online advertising business, sponsored content has provided much-needed relief. In recent years, publications large and small have invested in teams to make sponsored content — written stories, videos or podcasts that look and feel like journalistic content — hoping to make up for declines in conventional advertising. To varying degrees, they have succeeded. Younger companies like Vice and BuzzFeed have built whole businesses around the concept. But as the relationship between publishers and social platforms like Facebook grows closer — and as more straightforward forms of advertising are devalued by ad-blocking and industry automation, the role, and definition, of sponsored content has shifted.

Now, publishers, social media companies and advertisers are negotiating new relationships. Audiences have migrated away from news websites and toward Facebook and other social media destinations, which for a competitive price can provide advertisers access to larger and more finely targeted groups of people, challenging the value of a publisher’s own channels. With a weaker claim over audiences, publishers have been left to compete for advertising on different terms, leaning less on the size or demographics of their readerships, and more on the sorts of campaigns they can engineer for advertisers — campaigns that are then used across the Internet.

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