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April 2017

Huckabee: I'd rather have Obama as president than have Comcast service

Former Gov Mike Huckabee (R-AR) vented frustration about his Comcast service in a series of tweets April 17, with the former Republican presidential hopeful saying that he would prefer to have President Obama back in office than continue to deal with the company. Huckabee blasted the cable company to his more than 600,000 followers. "How bad is @comcast service? I'd rather have Obama back as President than have Comcast,” he tweeted.

Georgia special election: one local penny for every $10 in national cash

Tom Price, Georgia's 6th congressional district’s longtime Republican US House member, stepped down earlier in 2017 to join President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. That sparked April 18’s special election to fill his seat, which has suddenly made the district the unlikely focus of national political interests willing to spend unprecedented amounts of money.

The barrage of TV ads, e-mail messages and robo-calls, often from organizations headquartered hundreds of miles away, have left some district residents feeling like pawns, not players, in their own congressional election — and some candidates as if they’ve lost control of the race. Through April 16, super PACs, nonprofits and other groups independent of any candidate’s campaign have spent $9 million on the Georgia 6th race. Just one of these outside groups spending money to influence the Georgia 6th election — Athens (GA)-based Better Georgia Inc. — is headquartered within state lines. When the candidates’ own campaign money is excluded, the Georgia 6th special election has attracted about one Georgia penny for every $10 in national cash.

Google Fiber could get FCC help in fights to compete against AT&T

Google Fiber and other Internet service providers that want to build new networks might get good news from the Federal Communications Commission, which is considering rules that would speed up the process of attaching wires to utility poles. Current FCC rules allow for up to a five-month waiting period before new ISPs can install wires on utility poles that already hold the wires of incumbent providers. This is a problem for Internet users, who often don't have any choice of high-speed providers. The new FCC proposal from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai could shave a couple of months off the maximum waiting periods. The rules wouldn't eliminate all the problems that recently caused Google Fiber to cut its staff and pause fiber operations in 11 cities while it pursues wireless networking technology. But Google Fiber said the initial FCC proposal is a good step.

Google reaches $7.8M settlement with Russia in antitrust case

Google is paying a $7.8 million fine and agreeing to open up its Android mobile operating system to competitors' search engines in Russia. The settlement ends a two-year fight with Russian antitrust regulators.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) in 2015 found Google was violating competition laws by including its own search tool on the operating system. Google would preload its own apps, including the search engine, on phones running Android. Russian users didn't have the option of changing to a different search engine on those phones. Now, under the terms of the settlement, the Android operating system will no longer exclusively have Google apps preinstalled in Russia, and users will be able to pick their default search engines, according to the FAS. The $7.8 million fine is roughly 9 percent of Google's 2014 revenue in Russia. The decision will give an opportunity for the Russian search engine Yandex NV to increase its own market share in mobile search. Yandex had originally brought the complaint against Google.

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