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January 2017

Trump Adds Wireless Entrepreneur to FCC Landing Team

President-elect Donald Trump has added a fourth member to the Federal Communications Commission landing team, the volunteers working on transitioning the agency to Republican majority control come Jan 20. David Morken is the newest member, currently the co-founder and CEO of Republica Wireless parent company, Bandwidth.com. Morken combines a couple of life experiences that appear to hold a lot of weight with the incoming President. He is a former member of the US military (a Marine) and an entrepreneur/disruptor who built an "overnight success" through a decade of hard work growing a business. Bandwidth.com, which started as a URL generating sales leads for other telecoms, built out its network on the theory that Wi-Fi could be the primary network and cellular (Sprint) the backup, which would allow it to charge less ($19 a month at launch) for voice and broadband.

FCC's 5 biggest battles for Trump's first year

Here are 5 looming fights for the Federal Communications Commission in President-elect Donald Trump's first year:
1. Network Neutrality: The fate of the agency's net neutrality rules will be the FCC's biggest fight of the year.
2. Set-top cable boxes: The FCC's lone, remaining Democratic commissioner, Mignon Clyburn, supports FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's set-top proposal. But its unclear how much of a fight Clyburn can put up.
3. Broadband privacy: Chairman Wheeler's new privacy rules for broadband providers were another high-profile item from his tenure. It's unclear, though, if the FCC's Republican Commissioners would agree to scale them back. Internet companies and consumer groups, though, are likely to keep up pressure for the rules.
4. AT&T-Time Warner merger: The Justice Department will be looking into the proposed deal, but its unclear yet if the FCC will take up its own review.
5. Business data services: Chairman Wheeler also hoped to pass a major reform of the market for so-called special access deals, but dropped those plans after Trump's victory.

If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama

[Commentary] If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the FBI to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: President Barack Obama.

Over the past eight years, the Obama Administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists. Under President Obama, the Justice Department and the FBI have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases.

How Amazon, Google, and Facebook Will Bring Down Telcos

The internet was supposed to alleviate media conglomeration. Instead, it may compound it. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and a handful of others are displacing media companies and telecommunication companies. They already host much of the content you consume, and produce more and more of it. They own much of the infrastructure carrying that data, and they’re starting to sell Internet access. These tech titans didn’t plan to take down the telecommunication companies. But they depend upon you having fast, reliable internet, so they’re bringing everything in-house. This promises to make things drastically better for you as a consumer, so if you hate big telecoms, you’ll feel schadenfreude at their demise. But you might end up with more of the same as the new guard becomes the old guard.

French Law Giving Workers 'The Right To Disconnect' Goes Into Effect

If you've been glued to your smart phone checking work email throughout the holiday season, you might want to consider relocating. French workers will have the "right to disconnect" outside of work hours, thanks to a new law going into effect Jan 1. Companies with more than 50 employees will be obligated to set up hours — normally during the evening and weekend — when staff are not to send or respond to emails.

The French government said at the time that an intervention was necessary, for the health and well-being of their workers. "All the studies show there is far more work-related stress today than there used to be, and that the stress is constant," said member of parliament Benoit Hamon. "Employees physically leave the office, but they do not leave their work. They remain attached by a kind of electronic leash - like a dog. The texts, the messages, the emails - they colonize the life of the individual to the point where he or she eventually breaks down."

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