BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2016
States Again Can Restrict Community Broadband's Growth
INTERNET/BROADBAND
‘Wireless fiber’ could give us gigabit Internet speeds with no cables at all
Google’s High-Speed Web Plans Hit Snags
FCC Releases Preliminary List of Census Blocks for Connect America Fund Auction
Cable and telecom firms score a huge win in their war to kill municipal broadband - Michael Hiltzik analysis [links to Benton summary]
CLIC Reiterates Its Support for Local Choice and the Principle of ‘One Touch’ - press release [links to Benton summary]
500+ gigabit Internet projects are operational or in the planning stages around the world [links to telecompetitor]
Editorial: A two-year effort to find an alternative to US oversight of Icann has produced only uncertainty [links to Wall Street Journal]
WIRELESS
Can't afford the latest smartphone? You can lease one, but it won't be cheap [links to Los Angeles Times]
CONTENT
The copyright case that should worry all Internet providers
DOJ and FTC Seek Views on Proposed Update of the Antitrust Guidelines for Licensing of Intellectual Property [links to Department of Justice]
Will the Olympics Break Your Internet? [links to GigaOm]
ELECTION 2016
Two people write Trump’s tweets. He writes the angrier ones. [links to Washington Post]
Examining the strange afterlife of Donald Trump’s old tweets [links to Medium]
Tech mobilizes to get out the vote [links to Hill, The]
Israeli journalist: It’s ‘not far-fetched’ to say Trump’s rhetoric could spur political violence [links to Washington Post]
Trump’s campaign continues to blame ‘disgusting and corrupt’ media [links to Washington Post]
Donald Trump blames the media for his own failure to run a general election campaign [links to Washington Post]
Gov Pence: Media blacklist an 'ongoing discussion in the campaign' [links to Hill, The]
Commentary: Lazy media exposes its true hypocrisy in campaign coverage [links to Hill, The]
As Trump wars with the media, Clinton moves just as slowly to allow reporters full coverage, bucking tradition [links to Politico]
ADVERTISING
Ad blockers strike back against Facebook [links to CNNMoney]
Despite Missing Olympics Guarantees, NBC Says It Doesn't Owe Make-Goods Yet [links to AdAge]
TELEVISION
Legacy TV Regulations Push TV Bills Up and Threaten Online TV - George Mason University analysis [links to Benton summary]
BTIG Research: 705,000 people dropped their cable subscriptions to the top eight providers in the 12 months ended in June [links to Media life]
Creative Ways Local TV Stations Are Showing the Olympics Despite Rigid Rules [links to AdWeek]
U.S. Cable Industry Revenue Forecast to Hit $141 Billion in 2026 [links to telecompetitor]
OWNERSHIP
Papers: A Medium You Don’t Want to Follow - Harry Jessell editorial [links to Benton summary]
Michael Ferro’s Fight to Keep Control of Tribune Publishing [links to New York Times]
LABOR
More Than Half of Women in Advertising Have Been Sexually Harassed [links to AdAge]
SECURITY
Hacker posts personal info of House Democrats and staff [links to Associated Press]
Pentagon's Pokémon orders: game must go outside for security reasons [links to Guardian, The]
DNC creates cybersecurity advisory board following hack [links to Politico]
KIDS AND MEDIA
Baltimore is paying kids to code [links to CNNMoney]
Apple's iPads open up new worlds for Oakland youth [links to USAToday]
LOBBYING
Spotify picks up lobbyist amid fight with Apple [links to Hill, The]
COMPANY NEWS
Alphabet one year later [links to Wall Street Journal]
How ESPN Could Rebound Amid Cable-Cutting [links to Wall Street Journal]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Syrian Internet Outages Correspond Exactly to National High School Test Schedule [links to Vice]
Hassles mount for journalists in Turkey after failed coup [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
European Commission could require “over-the-top” services to abide by “security and confidentiality provisions” [links to Financial Times]
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
WIRELESS FIBER
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
So, you're on the hunt for a new home-Internet provider. The one you like seems to offer fast, reliable service, but its footprint ends just short of where you happen to live — and there aren't many other options in your area. Too bad: Looks like you'll be sticking with slow speeds and lackluster customer support while your luckiest neighbors get to surf without interruption. For many Americans, this isn't hypothetical. It's reality. Until now, there weren't many ways around this problem. But thanks to a technology some Internet service providers (ISPs) expect to roll out next year, Americans dreaming of better, faster broadband may actually be able to get it. To understand how, let's start with key concepts about how Internet service works. Most residential broadband today runs over cables that are laid in the ground or strung on telephone poles, that then branch off and tunnel directly into your house. Laying these cables is costly, which is why many Internet providers expand slowly — or not at all, if they're worried the returns can't justify the outlays. Cellular Internet is a little different. Cell towers are expensive, too, but they create a one-to-many connection that serves thousands of mobile devices wirelessly — rather than creating a dedicated pipe to a single, fixed destination such as a home or business. The speeds aren't quite as fast on mobile data as what you get with fixed broadband, but for basic Web browsing and video, it's good enough. Now, imagine if you could take the convenience of cellular data and combine it with the superfast download speeds associated with fixed, wired broadband. What might that look like?
benton.org/headlines/wireless-fiber-could-give-us-gigabit-internet-speeds-no-cables-all | Washington Post
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GOOGLE HITS SNAGS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jack Nicas]
Alphabet is rethinking its high-speed internet business after initial rollouts proved more expensive and time consuming than anticipated, a stark contrast to the fanfare that greeted its launch six years ago. Google Fiber has spent hundreds of millions dollars digging up streets and laying fiber-optic cables in a handful of cities to offer web connections roughly 30 times faster than the US average. Now the company is hoping to use wireless technology to connect homes, rather than cables, in about a dozen new metro areas. Meanwhile, the company is trying to cut costs and accelerate its expansion elsewhere by leasing existing fiber or asking cities or power companies to build the networks instead of building its own.
benton.org/headlines/googles-high-speed-web-plans-hit-snags | Wall Street Journal
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CAF CENSUS BLOCKS
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
On August 11, the Federal Communications Commission released a preliminary list of census blocks eligible for the Connect America Fund auction. That auction will award funding to help cover the cost of bringing service to areas that cannot get broadband today or can only get low-speed broadband. The list also includes an estimate of the maximum amount of funding that will be available for each census block based on an FCC-developed cost model. The Connect America Fund auction will use a competitive bidding process to award funding, with funding for a group of census blocks or census tracts going to the service provider that offers to provide service for the lowest level of support. The preliminary list is based on the most recent data collected from Form 477 as of June 30, 2015. All broadband service providers are required to file Form 477, which collects data about where service is available at various speeds. Service providers have until the end of this month to advise the commission if they have deployed broadband at speeds of 10 Mbps downstream/ 1 Mbps upstream in any of the target census blocks since the Form 477 data was collected. Based on this data, the FCC will eliminate some locations from the Connect America Fund auction target list. In order to be eliminated, the newly served locations also must have a minimum usage allowance of 150 gigabytes at a price meeting the commission’s current reasonable comparability benchmark and must have a latency not exceeding 100 ms.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-releases-preliminary-list-census-blocks-connect-america-fund-auction | telecompetitor | FCC
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CONTENT
COPYRIGHT CASE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
Will Internet providers have to start cracking down harder on their own customers for suspected copyright infringement? That's one of the big questions being raised in the wake of an obscure court ruling that finds that Cox Communications is liable for the illegal music and movie downloads of its subscribers. A federal judge said Cox Communications will have to pay a $25 million penalty that a jury had awarded in December to BMG, the music rights company. BMG had been using a third-party company called Rightscorp to monitor the Internet for filesharing activity and notify Internet providers when it found evidence of it. The expectation was that Cox would pass along Rightscorp's notices to consumers. BMG claimed that Cox was dragging its feet and using a variety of technical means to keep the notices from reaching its affected customers. The court ruled in favor of BMG's argument that Cox should be held liable because it not only knew that its users were illegally downloading copyrighted content, it also took actions that contributed to it. The finding that Cox is liable for its customers' piracy should absolutely worry other Internet providers, according to legal analysts at the consumer group Public Knowledge.
benton.org/headlines/copyright-case-should-worry-all-internet-providers | Washington Post
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