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INTERNET/BROADBAND

MEASURING BROADBAND AMERICA 2013
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission released the results of its ongoing, nationwide performance study of residential broadband service in its third “Measuring Broadband America” report. The report continues the Commission’s efforts towards bringing greater clarity and competition to the home broadband services marketplace. This year’s report reveals that most broadband providers continue to improve service performance by delivering actual speeds that meet - or exceed - advertised speeds during the past year and that consumers are subscribing to faster speed tiers and receiving faster speeds than ever before. This year’s report indicates three key areas of improvement:
First, most broadband providers continue to closely meet or exceed the speeds they advertise. In the time period measured for the August 2011 report, the average broadband provider delivered 87 percent of advertised download speed during times when bandwidth demand was at its peak. During the time period measured for the July 2012 report, that number rose to 96 percent. In this year’s report, ISPs maintained their performance levels, delivering 97 percent of advertised speeds during peak periods. One provider significantly improved actual performance speeds by 13 percent from the previous report. FCC analysis indicates that the improvements of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in meeting their advertised speeds were largely driven by improvements in network performance, and not downward adjustments to the speed tiers offered.
Second, consumers of broadband providers covered by the report are continuing to migrate to faster speed tiers and receiving faster speeds than ever before. The FCC found that the average speed tier subscribed to by consumers increased from 14.3 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 15.6 Mbps. Nearly half of consumers who subscribed to speeds of less than 1 Mbps six months ago have adopted higher speeds, and nearly a quarter of the users who subscribed to speeds between 1 Mbps and 3 Mbps have upgraded to faster speed tiers.
Third, significant improvements have been made to satellite broadband technology service quality. For the first time, the report includes results on satellite technology based on test results from ViaSat, a major satellite services provider. Although satellite technology has the highest overall latency, test results indicate that during peak periods, 90 percent of satellite consumers received 140 percent or better of the advertised speed of 12 Mbps. In addition, there was very little difference between peak and non-peak performance.
benton.org/node/145742 | Federal Communications Commission | read the report | USAToday | The Hill | ars technica
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SOME BROADBAND IS BETTER THAN OTHERS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
The Federal Communications Commission’s third and most recent broadband quality report has determined that some types of broadband are still better than others, with fiber to the home and satellite generally offering more than the promised upload and download speeds at times of peak usage. But of course, that’s not the only stat users might care about, which is why the FCC measures 13 different variables as part of its data collection efforts. The data comes from Sam Knows and special routers sitting inside roughly 10,000 homes. Those routers report on upload and download speeds, latency and customers’ service tiers to create a nationwide picture of broadband quality. And in general people should be pretty happy. As the chart above shows, people are mostly getting what they pay for, with customers of AT&T most likely to feel short-changed. What’s most surprising about this data is that satellite has moved from being pretty spotty to achieving high throughputs even at peak times, thanks to new satellites launched in the last two years. Sure, the service maxes out at 12 Mbps, but customers are getting those 12 Mbps and then some.
benton.org/node/145741 | GigaOm
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FCC’S GENACHOWSKI ON PROPOSED MUNICIPAL BROADBAND LEGISLATION
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski]
The National Broadband Plan stated that when private investment isn’t a feasible option for broadband deployment, local governments ‘have the right to move forward and build networks that serve their constituents as they deem appropriate.’ If a community can’t gain access to broadband services that meet its needs, then it should be able to serve its own residents directly. Proposals that would tie the hands of innovative communities that want to build their own high-speed networks will slow progress to our nation’s broadband goals and will hurt economic development and job creation in those areas. I urge state and local leaders to focus instead on proposals that incentivize investment in broadband infrastructure, remove barriers to broadband build-out, and ensure widespread access to high-speed networks.
benton.org/node/145785 | Federal Communications Commission
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CYBERSECURITY

CYBERSECURITY BILL
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez]
Privacy advocates say a controversial cybersecurity bill will likely face tough odds of clearing Congress this year due to recent developments in the debate over how to protect critical infrastructure from hacker attacks. House Intelligence Committee leaders Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) re-introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known as CISPA. It is designed to remove legal barriers that prevent government and industry from sharing information about cyber threats in real time. Privacy groups that rallied against CISPA last year say the discussion about cybersecurity policy has changed significantly since 2012, and the cyber threat information-sharing bill will have a difficult time working its way through Congress unless additional privacy protections are baked into it. "Continuing with CISPA as is and without substantive changes will prevent any real movement on this issue," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "The bill is toxic. Right now, the Senate won't touch it if they choose to continue down that route. If anything, they're shooting themselves in the foot."
benton.org/node/145768 | Hill, The
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AMERICA VS CHINA’S HACKER SPIES
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Rebecca Greenfield]
Forget The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Chinese hackers are on a digital espionage campaign targeting a vast array of pretty much any major American organization "with intellectual property to protect," and now that there's a rare human side to combatting the malware attacks, we know there's not enough being done to stop the hackers yet. In a new cover story, Bloomberg Businessweek's Dune Lawrence and Michael Riley follow one of the American malware experts attempting to fight the war on hackers, and he reveals a long — even impossible — battle ahead. Since he began tracking Chinese hackers in 2004 at Dell SecureWorks, Joe Stewart has had two big successes in spy hunting, as he unveiled the identities of the hackers "Zhang" and "Cyb3rsleuth."* And he doesn't exactly deny Lawrence and Riley's assertion that the ongoing Chinese malware spying goes straight to the top: “Investigators at dozens of commercial security companies suspect many if not most of those hackers either are military or take their orders from some of China’s many intelligence or surveillance organizations.” Indeed, the BusinessWeek story builds on growing fears that Chinese hackers might be targeting a whole lot more than just a couple of newspapers in the United States.
benton.org/node/145728 | Atlantic, The | Bloomberg
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CHINESE ARMY UNIT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Sanger, David Barboza, Nicole Perlroth]
On the outskirts of Shanghai, in a run-down neighborhood dominated by a 12-story white office tower, sits a People’s Liberation Army base for China’s growing corps of cyberwarriors. The building off Datong Road, surrounded by restaurants, massage parlors and a wine importer, is the headquarters of P.L.A. Unit 61398. A growing body of digital forensic evidence — confirmed by American intelligence officials who say they have tapped into the activity of the army unit for years — leaves little doubt that an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies originate in and around the white tower. An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a case there is no other plausible explanation for why so many attacks come out of one comparatively small area.
benton.org/node/145816 | New York Times
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OUR CYBERSECURITY NEEDS TO IMPROVE
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Larry Magid]
[Commentary] The need for greater cybersecurity is essential to both national security and the economy. We're already at the point where an enormous amount of government and private business is transacted online. And there are parts of our physical infrastructure, including power plants and transportation systems, that are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Millions of people do the bulk of their banking online, and even if you're not one of them, your bank is connected to the Internet and your accounts are vulnerable to attack. Merely having a credit card, receiving government services or even applying for or attending school puts at least some of your data at risk. An attack on our physical infrastructure could hurt anyone, either by putting us at risk or -- more likely -- shutting down essential services that we all depend on. Whether you like it or not, we live in a global digital village where everyone's security affects everyone else. Clearly there is a role for businesses and government to protect citizen and consumer data, but individual users also have a civic responsibility to protect our own devices and the networks we access. A computer or smartphone infected with malware can spread that infection to other computers. Many cyberattacks take advantage of "zombie" networks of infected machines owned by innocent people whose machines have been unwittingly commandeered to help the hackers break into other machines and networks.
benton.org/node/145814 | San Jose Mercury News
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TIME TO ACT?
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] “America must … face the rapidly growing threat from cyber-attacks,” said President Barack Obama during the State of the Union address on February 12. “Now, we know hackers steal people’s identities and infiltrate private emails. We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets. Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, our air traffic control systems. We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy.” And with that the President announced that he had signed a new executive order aimed at strengthening U.S. cyber defenses, increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect national security, jobs, and privacy.
http://benton.org/node/145615
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

CELLPHONE UNLOCKING
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jon Healey]
Proponents of cellphone unlocking are trying to gain the White House's support through a petition drive, but they face a couple of non-trivial hurdles. First, they have until Feb 23 to reach 100,000 signatures — the new threshold the Obama administration set for responding to petitions on its We the People site — and they were more than 25,000 short as of this writing. And second, even if they hit their target and win over the administration, it's not clear the White House can do much to help.
benton.org/node/145804 | Los Angeles Times
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SPLITTING UP THE SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Who should be able to use the public airwaves? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is reorganizing the electromagnetic spectrum — which enables television signals to reach into Americans’ homes, radio into their cars, Wi-Fi into their coffee shops and 4G cellphone service into their pockets — and The Post’s Cecilia Kang reports that high-tech companies are doing battle with telecommunications firms over who will get which share. Under a law Congress passed last year, the rights to use the portion of the spectrum currently devoted to UHF television broadcasting will be reclaimed and auctioned off to mobile broadband companies. That’s good. To ensure that strong signals don’t interfere with one another, the FCC would create “guard bands” between the blocks it would license off. The FCC would then open up those guard bands for anyone to use for free, as long as they weren’t used to broadcast high-power signals. The FCC should base the size of the guard bands on the best reckoning of engineers on how wide they must be to serve their primary technical purpose. Anyone who has browsed recently through mobile- app stores knows that lots of useful innovation happens after spectrum is sold off. It’s very reasonable, though, for some of the public airwaves to be more publicly accessible, allowing free use of the spectrum that’s left over and enabling anyone from Google to would-be inventors tinkering in their garage to design low-power devices that would take advantage of it.
benton.org/node/145811 | Washington Post
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CHILDREN AND MEDIA

CHILDREN’S VIEWING HABITS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Catherine Saint Louis]
Experts have long known that children imitate many of the deeds — good and bad — that they see on television. But it has rarely been shown that changing a young child’s viewing habits at home can lead to improved behavior. In a study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers reported the results of a program designed to limit the exposure of preschool children to violence-laden videos and television shows and increase their time with educational programming that encourages empathy. They found that the experiment reduced the children’s aggression toward others, compared with a group of children who were allowed to watch whatever they wanted. “Here we have an experiment that proposes a potential solution,” said Dr. Thomas N. Robinson, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford, who was not involved in the study. “Giving this intervention — exposing kids to less adult television, less aggression on television and more prosocial television — will have an effect on behavior.” While the research showed “a small to moderate effect” on the preschoolers’ behavior, he added, the broader public health impact could be “very meaningful.”
benton.org/node/145782 | New York Times
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OWNERSHIP

FCC MEDIA OWNERSHIP RULES
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Harry Jessell]
[Commentary] Republican Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai last week made a strong defense of joint sales and shared service agreements that allow broadcasters to operate second stations in markets where they are not allowed to own two under the current ownership rules. That I liked. What I didn't like was Pai's reminder that the Democratic majority still seems fixated on cracking down on virtual duopolies based on joint sales agreements (JSAs) and shared services agreements (SSAs) and limiting broadcasters in medium and small markets to the operation of just one station. The FCC should rule that virtual duopolies based on JSAs and SSAs are allowable only if the owners of the second stations are minorities or women. This would act as a powerful incentive for broadcasters to seek out such partners and give them the experience to eventually venture out on their own.
benton.org/node/145718 | TVNewsCheck
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ADVERTISING

IN THE DIGITAL BULLSEYE
[SOURCE: Center for Digital Democracy, AUTHOR: ]
The first in a series of new reports the Center for Digital Democracy will release in 2013 on digital consumer protection issues, including on multicultural digital target marketing. Digital marketing, including data collection, profiling, tracking and targeting, pervades the Internet experience. One of the less-discussed areas is the targeting of individuals because of their race or ethnicity. This report discusses how multicultural groups are "In the Digital Bullseye" with online advertisers and others focused on reaching African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and others. Data collected on each of us can include our financial status, health concerns, location, spending habits -- and also ethnicity and race. Multicultural groups are seen as vitally important markets for advertisers, bringing in new revenues and influencing overall cultural attitudes.
benton.org/node/145799 | Center for Digital Democracy | Multichannel News
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POLICYMAKERS

SELECTING A NEW FCC CHAIR
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] I want to know before the next FCC Chair bangs down the gavel for the first time that she or he actually intends to move a proactive public interest agenda. I want to know that she or he really “gets it” that our present news and information ecosystem has been harmfully diminished by years of hyper-consolidation and an almost equally long period of public policy abdication of critical public interest oversight responsibilities. So, yes, this is the time to seek and obtain tangible commitments. Without them, our news and information ecosystem will continue to hemorrhage. These issues go to the core of the challenges the nation confronts. They are central to their resolution. As for me, I don’t want to see any white smoke coming out of that chimney until we know the fire below is burning for the common good.
http://benton.org/node/145752/
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TELECOM

PHONE AID FOR POOR
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Spencer Ante]
Regulators looking into the burgeoning federal program to provide subsidized phone service for the poor are finding growing cause for concern. Last year, the government spent an estimated $2.2 billion on the Lifeline program, up from $819 million four years earlier, as dozens of small companies were authorized to start providing the service. Now, inquiries in states from Alaska to Florida are raising questions about the source of that growth, according to a review of documents in federal and state investigations. Investigators say they have turned up some unorthodox tactics by companies participating in the program, such as signing up customers in hospital rooms and enrolling subscribers by mailing them unsolicited phones. In other cases they have uncovered more straightforward attempts to sign up ineligible customers, according to federal and state documents. While the inquiries have touched only a small number of the dozens of companies that provide the wireless service, they reflect regulators' growing concern that a program aimed at ensuring people have the ability to call their families, jobs or for emergency help has got out of hand as the number of companies providing the service has exploded.
benton.org/node/145809 | Wall Street Journal
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February 19, 2013 (Measuring Broadband; The Next FCC Chair; Cybersecurity)

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