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INTERNET/BROADBAND

BROADBAND GAPS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ianthe Jeanne Dugan]
Federal stimulus programs that devoted $7.2 billion to bringing high-speed Internet access to rural communities have left some areas without access and others complaining they have too much. The Federal Communications Commission says some 19 million Americans, about 6% of the population, lack high-speed service, down from 26 million a year ago. Federal funds so far have fueled about 86,000 miles of broadband infrastructure, linking 12,000 town hubs, schools, hospitals, libraries and other anchors. These core networks, known as "middle mile," are then tapped by private enterprises that take the signals the "final mile" to individual homes and businesses. Later this week, a House subcommittee on communications and technology will examine the situation at a hearing titled "Is the Broadband Stimulus Working?" Witnesses will discuss allegations of waste, according to a committee memo, and "review whether taxpayers are getting a good return on their investment."
benton.org/node/146208 | Wall Street Journal
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COMCAST AND OBAMA
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Edward Luce]
[Commentary] If Dwight Eisenhower had General Motors and George W. Bush had Halliburton, Barack Obama arguably has Comcast. US presidents are often linked to one or two corporations that donate a lot of money to them and then benefit from their actions. Comcast, which is America’s largest cable television and internet provider and is a near monopoly in most of its largest cities, is no exception. The company’s meteoric rise in the past decade parallels the relative decline of internet service in the US. The Federal Communications Commission has been a good friend to Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the two largest cable providers that dominate US broadband. In contrast to the spread of electricity and telephones, where the US was far ahead of the rest of the world, Washington has abjured the same regulatory promotion for the internet. Through brilliantly effective lobbying, US cable companies have escaped the universal access and affordability clauses that were imposed on telecoms and electricity companies in earlier eras. Will Washington continue to tolerate America’s internet mediocrity (which afflicts both businesses and consumers)? Or will Mr Obama belatedly decide that it merits the kind of zealous priority his 20th-century predecessors brought to the critical technologies of their day?
benton.org/node/146207 | Financial Times
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BTOP OVERSIGHT
[SOURCE: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, AUTHOR: Lawrence Strickling]
As the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) nears completion, National Telecommunications and Information Administration staff is continuing to work closely with our grantees to ensure that projects are wrapping up on time and within budget, delivering the promised broadband benefits to the communities they serve. Ensuring projects meet their milestones and protecting taxpayer funds is of paramount importance to NTIA. Our staff performs extensive and diligent oversight and provides technical assistance to our recipients tailored to their needs. This oversight involves a significant level of effort, and requires our staff to sometimes take tough enforcement action to protect taxpayer funds. NTIA oversees our projects in a number of ways. Staff remains in close and frequent contact with award recipients via regularly scheduled conference calls, email exchanges, drop-in calls on specific administrative or programmatic topics, and in-person conferences. These contacts serve as a means to reinforce the terms and conditions associated with each award and help ensure that NTIA quickly addresses challenges that arise. Additionally, recipients must report quarterly and annually to NTIA on key financial and programmatic activities. These reports are posted publicly and provide detailed information on progress in achieving program outcomes, use of funds, challenges faced, and expected future progress. Finally, NTIA conducts site visits to projects and has conducted over 150 oversight visits representing more than 94 percent of BTOP federal award dollars. As issues arise, NTIA utilizes tools such as technical assistance, Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), Corrective Action Plans (CAPs), award suspension, or award termination, to highlight concerns and provide opportunities for recipients to get back on track.
benton.org/node/146186 | National Telecommunications and Information Administration
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

GAO SPECTRUM MANAGAMENT REPORT
[SOURCE: Government Accountability Office, AUTHOR: Mark Goldstein]
The growth of commercial wireless broadband services and government missions, including public safety and defense, has increased demand for radio-frequency spectrum. The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 directed GAO to study spectrum efficiency and receiver performance; GAO studied four areas related to improving receiver performance, including
1) actions taken by manufacturers and commercial licensees,
2) actions taken by the federal government,
3) challenges, and
4) options identified by stakeholders.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which manages commercial and other nonfederal spectrum use, believes it lacks general authority to impose receiver standards and rather relies on the marketplace to improve receiver performance. In specific cases, FCC has provided incentives for nonfederal spectrum users to improve receivers. Both NTIA and FCC have taken additional actions to improve receiver performance, like undertaking studies and hosting public workshops. Although industry and government have taken actions, stakeholders identified three challenges to improving receiver performance:
Lack of coordination across industries when developing voluntary standards: Standards are often developed for a single industry and not coordinated with those using adjacent spectrum.
Lack of incentives for manufacturers or spectrum users to incur costs associated with using more robust receivers: The benefits of improved receiver performance, namely freed-up spectrum for new services and users, often accrue to others and not those incurring the costs to improve receivers.
Difficulty accommodating a changing spectrum environment: When spectrum is repurposed for a new use, upgrading or replacing receivers currently in use to mitigate interference can be difficult and take considerable time.
The GAO recommends that the FCC should consider collecting information on the practical effects of options to improve receiver performance. FCC replied that it had initiated such a fact-gathering process; GAO believes FCC's process to date may not provide information on the practical effects of these options.
[GAO-13-265]
benton.org/node/146180 | Government Accountability Office
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OWNERSHIP

MEDIA OWNERSHIP REVIEW
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Doug Halonen]
Minority Media and Telecommunications Council President David Honig is recommending that the Federal Communications Commission put off a decision on whether to rein in broadcast joint sales agreements (JSAs) until at least 2014. Under a controversial agency proposal said to be backed by the FCC’s Democratic majority, JSAs for which more than 15% of the advertising time is sold by the dominant station would have to be unwound within two years or the stations counted as jointly owned. Broadcasters say that the proposal, which is included in the agency’s long-pending media regulation review, could have a devastatingly negative impact on their operations. Honig wants the FCC postpone action on the JSA issue to reduce the heat being generated over the agency’s media ownership rule package. “It’s just to keep the thing less contentious than it already is,” Honig said. Honig also said the MMTC is planning to formally ask the FCC — perhaps as soon as Feb 25 — to hold off on a vote on its media ownership review proposals for at least a couple of months, while an MMTC-sponsored study looks into what impact FCC crossownership rules have on minority ownership. Honig said he had no idea what the study — which would be overseen by Mark Fratrik, VP for research at BIA Kelsey — would find, but could serve as the basis for FCC action.
benton.org/node/146190 | TVNewsCheck
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DIVERSITY

WOMEN IN THE MEDIA
[SOURCE: Women’s Media Center, AUTHOR: Diana Mitsu Klos]
This is the second report on the status of women in media. An avalanche of new surveys, studies and reports point to stubborn gender inequality in the ways that women are employed and represented in news, entertainment and technology-related media:
At its current pace, it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in leadership roles in government/politics, business, entrepreneurship and nonprofits.
Only 17 women at media and technology companies are on Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business.
By a nearly 3 to 1 margin, male front-page bylines at top newspapers outnumbered female bylines in coverage of the 2012 presidential election. Men were also far more likely to be quoted than women in newspapers, television and public radio. That’s also the case in coverage of abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood and women’s rights.
On Sunday TV talk shows, one survey found that only 25 percent of guests were female.
Another study found women comprised only 14 percent of those interviewed and 29 percent of roundtable guests. There was some overlap among the shows tracked in the two studies.
In both legacy and online news sites, women are too often relegated to writing about the “pink topics” of food, family, furniture and fashion.
Forty-seven percent of gamers are women, but 88 percent of video games developers are male.
Talk radio and sports talk radio hosts are overwhelmingly male.
benton.org/node/146163 | Women’s Media Center
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PRIVACY

FACEBOOK PRIVACY
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Katy Bachman]
There's always inherent risk—as well as opportunity—when you make it up as you go. Facebook's new plan to work with big data vendors to connect consumers' offline purchasing data with its member profiles for targeted ads has once again put the social network in the crosshairs of the privacy hawks, even as it has potential advertisers excited. The timing isn't good for Facebook, just as lawmakers and regulators are investigating whether or not offline data collected by data brokers, when combined with online data, may violate consumers' privacy. As soon as next week, Facebook will announce it is expanding its custom audiences ad program that allows advertisers to link their customer lists with Facebook users to include offline third-party databases advertisers contract with including Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon. The three databases—Facebook users, advertiser customer lists and third-party databases—would be anonymously matched via user emails and phone numbers for targeting more relevant ads. While attractive to advertisers, privacy advocates are alarmed.
benton.org/node/146188 | AdWeek
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CONTENT

NASCAR CRASH VIDEO
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Mathew Ingram]
At a NASCAR event, debris created by a serious crash flew into the stands and injured a number of fans. As with many such events, a bystander caught the disaster on video and quickly uploaded it to YouTube, but within a matter of minutes it was removed due to a copyright claim by NASCAR. It seemed like yet another case of a commercial entity taking advantage of copyright law to smother free speech — until Google reinstated the video and said NASCAR had overstepped its bounds. In this case at least, the search giant did the right thing. And as Jason Pontin of MIT’s Technology Review pointed out in a recent essay on free speech in a digital era, our speech is to a large degree controlled by private corporations like Google and Twitter and Apple, and in many ways we are still coming to grips with what that means for us as a society.
benton.org/node/146202 | paidContent.org | Public Knowledge
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CYBERSECURITY

TEST OF US-CHINA TIES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Sanger]
When the Obama administration circulated to the nation’s Internet providers last week a lengthy confidential list of computer addresses linked to a hacking group that has stolen terabytes of data from American corporations, it left out one crucial fact: that nearly every one of the digital addresses could be traced to the neighborhood in Shanghai that is headquarters to the Chinese military’s cybercommand. That deliberate omission underscored the heightened sensitivities inside the Obama administration over just how directly to confront China’s untested new leadership over the hacking issue, as the administration escalates demands that China halt the state-sponsored attacks that Beijing insists it is not mounting. The issue illustrates how different the worsening cyber-cold war between the world’s two largest economies is from the more familiar superpower conflicts of past decades — in some ways less dangerous, in others more complex and pernicious.
benton.org/node/146213 | New York Times
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HTC-FTC SETTLEMENT
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Mobile device manufacturer HTC America has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company failed to take reasonable steps to secure the software it developed for its smartphones and tablet computers, introducing security flaws that placed sensitive information about millions of consumers at risk. The settlement requires HTC America to develop and release software patches to fix vulnerabilities found in millions of HTC devices. In addition, the settlement requires HTC America to establish a comprehensive security program designed to address security risks during the development of HTC devices and to undergo independent security assessments every other year for the next 20 years. The settlement not only requires the establishment of a comprehensive security program, but also prohibits HTC America from making any false or misleading statements about the security and privacy of consumers’ data on HTC devices. HTC America and its network operator partners are also in the process of deploying the security patches required by the settlement to consumers’ devices. Many consumers have already received the required security updates. The FTC encourages consumers to apply the updates as soon as possible.
benton.org/node/146179 | Federal Trade Commission | Washington Post | LATimes | The Hill
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TELEVISION

NETFLIX AND BIG DATA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
[Commentary] In the television business, there is no such thing as a sure thing. You can have a gold-plated director, a bankable star and a popular concept and still, it’s just a roll of the dice. Or is it? In any business, the ability to see into the future is the killer app, and Netflix may be getting close with “House of Cards.” The series, directed by David Fincher, starring Kevin Spacey and based on a popular British series, is already the most streamed piece of content in the United States and 40 other countries, according to Netflix. The spooky part about that? Executives at the company knew it would be a hit before anyone shouted “action.” Big bets are now being informed by Big Data, and no one knows more about audiences than Netflix. A third of the downloads on the Internet during peak periods on any given day are devoted to streamed movies from the service, according to Sandvine, a networking provider. And last year, by some estimates, more people watched movies streamed online than on physical DVDs. Film and television producers have always used data, holding previews for focus groups and logging the results, but as a technology company that distributes and now produces content, Netflix has mind-boggling access to consumer sentiment in real time.
benton.org/node/146200 | New York Times
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HEALTH

USING HIT TO REDUCE DISPARITIES
[SOURCE: ModernHealthcare.com, AUTHOR: Joseph Conn]
Health information technology can both benefit patients but also serve as a barrier to patients of color, immigrants and those who don't speak English well, according to a new report by four not-for-profit consumer and minority rights organizations. Their 24-page report, Equity in the Digital Age: How Health Information Technology Can Reduce Disparities, was presented at a White House summit on achieving e-health equity held by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the Office of Minority Health, both at HHS, and ZeroDivide, a not-for-profit using technology to benefit underserved communities. According to the report, the use of health information technology must respond to “the needs of all populations to make sure that it enhances access, facilitates enrollment and improves quality in a way that does not exacerbate existing health disparities for the most marginalized and underserved.” It recommended that mobile technology be leveraged to increase healthcare access for communities of color. The report also made several recommendations about using technology to minimize barriers in health insurance enrollment, which is expected to expand in minority and non-native English speaking populations with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Those technologies include developing online applications “that recognize complex mixed-status households” and web portals that take into account “differences in culture, language, and health literacy among its potential users,” the report said.
benton.org/node/146182 | ModernHealthcare.com | read the report
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AGENDA

POLICYMAKING IN A TIME OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSITIONS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Zachary Katz]
Technological transitions do not change the values Congress codified in the Communications Act and the Federal Communications Commission remains committed to advancing a set of core principles rooted in those values:
Competition. Over the last two decades, we've moved from monopoly toward competition in many areas of the communications market, a hugely positive trend. Take voice service: Today, most consumers and businesses have several options to choose from, including their local phone company, a cable company, multiple wireless providers, and Internet providers like Vonage and Skype. These choices exist because of massive private investment, and because of policies that created and maintain the conditions necessary for competition to flourish, including rules to ensure interconnection; consumer roaming across mobile carriers; number portability; and Internet openness, so broadband providers can't block competing voice apps and services. Still, competition challenges remain. For example, for robust residential broadband with no or high monthly usage limits, most consumers today have only one or two choices. Some have suggested that an all-Internet Protocol communications market will necessarily be robustly competitive -- "Deregulate for a competitive, all-IP world!" would be the bumper sticker -- eliminating the need for FCC policies to foster and protect competition. But basic economics and the facts on the ground show that's simply not true. Technological change brings great benefits, but it doesn't automatically bring vibrant competition, particularly in high-fixed-cost, network-effects-driven market segments. At the same time, it's also not true that all legacy regulations remain appropriate for promoting competition in today's marketplace. We must take a nuanced, data-driven approach to determining which policies to keep, which to eliminate, and which to add or modify.
Universal service and consumer protection. The U.S. largely succeeded in connecting all Americans to the dominant communications platform of the 20th century -- the telephone network -- and used a number of policies to protect and empower telephone consumers. In the 21st century, universal service and consumer protection remain vital goals. But we will not meet these goals, no matter how fast technology transitions proceed, without modern policies like the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, the Connect America Fund, and the Mobility Fund.
Public safety. Ongoing technology transitions promise to substantially improve public safety. For instance, 4G LTE and next generation 911 can enable first responders to access data, video, and images in ways that will help them save lives. At the same time, technology transitions present new risks. Last year's major natural disasters highlighted the fact that, unlike copper, fiber networks do not have an independent source of power, which means consumers and businesses can lose access to 911 and other vital services during an emergency. And IP networks bring with them significant cybersecurity threats. Policies and industry standards need to evolve to ensure that the resiliency of our networks is not diminished as a result of technology transitions.
benton.org/node/146173 | Federal Communications Commission
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RESEARCH

EXPANDING PUBLIC ACCESS TO FEDERALLY-FUNDED RESEARCH
[SOURCE: The White House, AUTHOR: Michael Stebbins]
The Obama Administration is committed to the proposition that citizens deserve easy access to the results of scientific research their tax dollars have paid for. That’s why, in a policy memorandum released Feb 22, OSTP Director John Holdren has directed Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research. OSTP has been looking into this issue for some time, soliciting broad public input on multiple occasions and convening an interagency working group to develop a policy. The final policy reflects substantial inputs from scientists and scientific organizations, publishers, members of Congress, and other members of the public—over 65 thousand of whom recently signed a We the People petition asking for expanded public access to the results of taxpayer-funded research.
benton.org/node/146167 | White House, The | more from WH
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

EC PUSHES BACK GOOGLE DECISION
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Liz Gannes]
Thought that whole Google antitrust brouhaha was over? It’s really not. The European Union is now saying in the vaguest of terms that August or later is “a possible deadline.” “We can reach an agreement after the summer break. We can envisage this as a possible deadline,” European Commission head of competition Joaquin Almunia said. The slow turnaround comes as a bit of a surprise after Almunia had put pressure on Google to submit its proposed remedies to concerns about anticompetitive actions in search and advertising by the end of January — which the company did. But it’s really not that shocking after repeated lags in the European antitrust investigation of the company, which started way back in 2010.
benton.org/node/146176 | Wall Street Journal | Reuters
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TELECOM CEOs PREFER US REGULATORS
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Peter Svensson]
The CEOs of AT&T, Vodafone and Telefonica — three of the world's largest cellphone companies — had some rare words of praise for U.S. regulators, saying they're doing better than their European counterparts in promoting faster wireless data networks. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson told an audience at Mobile World Congress, the world's largest cellphone trade show, that the U.S. government's practice of selling phone companies large swathes of space of the airwaves for perpetual use was helping encourage companies, including AT&T, to build out large networks using the latest "LTE" technology. By contrast, many European countries lease out space on their airwaves for eight- to 15-year terms. The perpetual licenses in the U.S. gives phone companies the incentive to invest, Stephenson said. The large, contiguous slices of spectrum the U.S. sold in its latest auctions make it easy to build fast networks, he added.
benton.org/node/146196 | Associated Press | WSJ
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FREEDOM TO MERGE?
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Cornelius Rahn, Manuel Baigorri, Amy Thomson]
Europe’s telecommunications companies are preparing to ask the European Commission to allow more mergers within individual countries in exchange for their backing for the regulator’s push to develop a regional market, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, which represents 37 carriers, plans to submit a proposal to the European Union’s Brussels-based executive arm in the coming weeks that outlines the need to reduce fragmentation in fixed-line and wireless markets, said the people, asking not to be identified because the plan is private. ETNO, also based in Brussels, is of the view that three national wireless network operators and two fixed-line carriers are the maximum that domestic markets can sustain in the long term, the people said. The group is working on hiring an external consulting firm to help operators make their case, they said.
benton.org/node/146195 | Bloomberg
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MOBILE OPERATORS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Thomas, Bede McCarthy]
Eighteen of the world’s largest mobile operators from Telefónica to China Unicom have backed a new mobile operating system from Mozilla Firefox aimed at eroding Apple and Google’s smartphone dominance. A number of key manufacturers of handsets have also committed to produce the first Firefox phones, including LG, ZTE and Alcatel One Touch. These will supply Telefónica, for example, which will begin selling the devices in Brazil, Colombia, Spain and Venezuela by the middle of this year. Further launches are planned in Europe and Latin America in late 2013 and 2014. Paul Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm which supplied the chips for the new devices, said the new platform was targeted at cheaper, high-volume production. This, combined with the operators’ plans to launch the phone in mostly emerging markets this year, suggests the new alliance is not seeking to topple Apple’s App Store and Google Play in the US and western Europe, rather prevent a similar situation as consumers in emerging markets trade up to low-end smartphones.
benton.org/node/146194 | Financial Times | WSJ
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February 25, 2013 (Gaps Persist in High-Speed Web Access)

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