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December 2016

In letter she handed to Trump, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh urges Broadband investment

Newly sworn-in Baltimore (MD) Mayor Catherine Pugh took the opportunity of a handshake in the bowels of M&T Bank Stadium during President-elect Donald Trump’s appearance at the Army-Navy game to hand-deliver a letter. Mayor Pugh is looking to get President-elect Trump’s attention politically, writing that the city is the “perfect place” to provide the big-dollar infrastructure spending that Trump said he will propose once he takes office.

Referencing the Smarter Baltimore report completed during Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s term, she said the city schools system will be applying for $8 million in funding from the federal government’s E-rate program that could help install fiber Internet in public schools. “The plan will strategically use the E-rate program to both enhance the City’s educational capabilities, while also leveraging private and City funds, to lay additional fiber to spur economic development, job creation and more robust internet access,” she writes. “A cost-effective fiber network will lead to competition, lower Broadband costs and more connectivity for Baltimore residents and businesses.” She said the city also wants to apply for grants from federal departments like the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.

CenturyLink Files Level 3 Merger With FCC

CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications have filed their merger (license transfer) applications with the Federal Communications Commission and their pre-merger notification to the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department.

The merger is valued at $34 billion including debt. Along with the AT&T-Time Warner merger, it will be one of the first big media mergers to be vetted primarily under the Donald Trump Administration. Trump has talked about reducing regulations but also about blocking consolidation among media outlets. The FTC or DOJ—they divide those reviews but DOJ almost always handles media mergers—will vet the deal for antitrust issues and either give it a green light, a green light with conditions agreed to by the parties, or file suit to block it. The FCC will vet the deal for public interest issues that go beyond a straight antitrust review but will look at competition issues as well and consult with DOJ—they coordinate their reviews and stay in touch. As the companies pointed out, that is the first regulatory step toward the merger. Among the pro-consumer benefits the companies are touting are better service, more competition, more broadband deployment and investment.

Mossberg: Why the AT&T-Time Warner merger is dangerous

If the $85 billion AT&T-Time Warner merger goes through, it would, in my view, represent an unhealthy concentration of power between a distributor and a maker of content. And it could be a threat to small players on the mobile web, if AT&T extends to its Time Warner content a technique called “zero-rating,” in which selected content and services don’t count against users’ data plan caps. That makes favored content much more attractive to users than similar content from other sources, which uses up your scarce data allotment.

For media companies, for consumers, for advertisers, the best solution is to keep distribution and content separate, so consumers and creators meet on a level playing field. AT&T, which seems more excited right now about owning media than running a network, should be forced to choose whether it wants to be in one business or the other.

Did the media become a ‘de facto instrument of Russian intelligence’?

Toward the end of its extensive dive into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the New York Times included this potent little sentence: Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the Democratic National Committee and [Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta e-mails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

The questions are: What if we don't immediately know where the e-mails came from? Do we ignore hacked e-mails until we can determine their origins? Do we ignore them completely, regardless of origin? And even if many of us agree to either approach, do we all agree to hold off together? How do we formalize that process? And what if some outlets decline to join us? The simplest solution probably would be a blanket ban on publicizing any hacked e-mails, but again, that would be easier said than done, and the information would still be out there for anybody to disseminate — again, without fact-checking and proper context. That's a recipe for plenty of additional misinformation after an election already plagued by “fake news.”

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