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The U.S. government spent about $2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven't proved they are eligible to receive them.
The Lifeline program -- begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren't cut off from jobs, families and emergency services -- is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service. Suspecting that many of the new subscribers were ineligible, the Federal Communications Commission tightened the rules last year and required carriers to verify that existing subscribers were eligible. The agency estimated 15% of users would be weeded out, but far more were dropped. A review of five top recipients of Lifeline support conducted by the FCC for the Journal showed that 41% of their more than six million subscribers either couldn't demonstrate their eligibility or didn't respond to requests for certification. The carriers—AT&T; Telrite; Tag Mobile USA; Verizon Communications; and the Virgin Mobile USA unit of Sprint Nextel -- accounted for 34% of total Lifeline subscribers last May. Two of the other largest providers, TracFone Wireless and Nexus Communications, asked the FCC to keep their counts confidential. Results for the full program weren't available.
Millions Improperly Claimed US Phone Subsidies
[Commentary] I've heard from dozens of AT&T customers in recent weeks about big jumps in their bills for basic landlines and measured phone service, which provides customers with a fixed number of local calls each month. Welcome to the exciting world of deregulation, where state officials allow phone companies to do as they please in hopes of encouraging a more competitive marketplace. Since 2011, the California Public Utilities Commission has allowed phone companies to raise — or lower — basic phone rates whenever they choose, rather than seek approval from regulators. Since then, costs have steadily gone up.
Phone rate hikes have landline customers ready to cut the cord
A series of recent court rulings suggests that the smartphone patent wars are now grinding toward a stalemate, with Apple unable to show that its sales have been seriously damaged when rivals, notably Samsung, imitated its products. That, in turn, may usher in a new phase in the complex relationship between the two dominant companies in the growing mobile computing business.
Apple bought some $8 billion worth of parts from Samsung last year, analysts estimate. Samsung, meanwhile, has benefited immensely from the market insight it gained from the Apple relationship, and from producing smartphones and tablets that closely resemble Apple's. While the two companies compete fiercely in the high-end smartphone business -- where together they control half the sales and virtually all of the profits -- their strengths and weaknesses are in many ways complementary. As their legal war winds down, it is increasingly clear that Apple and Samsung have plenty of common interests as they work to beat back other potential challengers, such as BlackBerry or Microsoft.
Apple and Samsung: A completely new form of tech rivalry Samsung Girds for Life After Apple in Disruption Devotion (Bloomberg)
Over the past year, Samsung’s quiet Silicon Valley presence has grown from a whisper to a shout, as the consumer electronics behemoth turns the home turf of rivals like Apple and Google into a beachhead for its U.S. operations.
Samsung obviously knows how to do hardware. What it needs to do better is tackle what’s actually on your phone. Hence, Samsung’s Open Innovation Center. The Center’s strategy is four-pronged. There’s the accelerator arm, which gives small startup teams access to important Samsung plans and people (not to mention providing a steady paycheck). The M&A team aims to leap on promising talent early on, while the venture arm will make small, early-stage investments in the startups Samsung sees as the “next big things.” And the partnerships team will work with all other startups who want to work with Samsung, just not necessarily for Samsung.
Setting Up Shop in the Valley and NYC, Samsung Aims to Boost Its Software Side Samsung Girds for Life After Apple in Disruption Devotion (Bloomberg)
On February 7, the websites that were closest to Facebook started crashing, and the world learned the potential downside to giving Facebook such a central role on the Internet.
The problem arose from the Facebook Connect API, a clever bit of JavaScript that allows website developers to integrate their sites with Facebook. The developers need merely add this library to their main page, then users can easily share the website with their Facebook friends. It's intended to be a virtuous feedback loop that allows users to share, Facebook to gain more status updates, and websites to increase their traffic. It went wrong when Facebook started mishandling its end of the connection. The API will normally check to see if a user is logged in, then build a box full of information about the user that's seamlessly integrated with the website. For a bit less than an hour last Thursday, the API's background requests for information about the user were redirected to an error page, a result that confused the API and led it to take over the Web page and replace it with a big error message from Facebook. Instead of seeing the news or the weather or whatever their destination would normally display, users saw just a Facebook error. The small technical glitch highlighted just how powerful the Facebook API can be and just how much control websites cede to Facebook when they include its JavaScript library.
How Facebook Connect took down the Web
Motorists caught talking on their cell phones or texting while driving would face far stiffer fines — up to $1,000 — under a bill that is being considered in the Oregon Legislature. The proposed law is intended to make motorists take the existing law more seriously. The maximum fine is currently $142.
Oregon bill would boost fines for drivers on phones
Researchers have long focused on the effects of cigarette and alcohol ads on children — and more recently, on the effects of subtler marketing through product placement in movies and TV shows. Studies show that advertising does help push children and adolescents toward unhealthy behaviors, but also that it is increasingly difficult to shield them as marketers exploit the Internet and social media.
In a study published last month in the journal Pediatrics, Jerry L. Grenard, a health researcher at Claremont Graduate University, and his colleagues followed almost 4,000 students from seventh through 10th grades, assessing their exposure to alcohol advertising on television and asking about their alcohol use. A large body of literature shows that advertising does increase the odds of underage drinking, Dr. Grenard noted. But his new results take the concerns a step further. “This study linked exposure to alcohol advertising to an increase in alcohol use among adolescents and then that in turn is associated with higher level of problems with drinking alcohol, getting drunk, missing school, getting into fights,” he said. Adolescents who see alcohol advertising are being sold something that we would prefer them not to consume in any amount. Food advertising raises different issues, since children will certainly eat and will certainly have — and express — food preferences.
How Advertising Targets Our Children
Disclosures last week about network intrusions at the New York Times and the Federal Reserve demonstrate that some companies have begun taking progressive steps to detect – and limit damage – from persistent cyberintruders. Thieves and spies are hacking into company networks as intensively as ever. But some large organizations are starting to limit the damage they can do, once inside. Information about successful defense strategies are being more widely shared for the greater good. "If you stop the bad actor from taking action on his or her objective, you win," says Steve Adegbite, director of cybersecurity at defense giant Lockheed Martin.
Companies use cyberdefense to limit damage
Delaware may become the first state with a broad spectrum of online gambling. But federal law will limit play to gamblers physically located within the state's borders, as verified with geolocation software.
The Delaware Lottery Office issued a request for proposals last week seeking bids from vendors to operate the state's centralized online gambling system with a strict stipulation that it would be up and running no later than Sept. 30. Though efforts in other states to legalize online gambling have been percolating for the past year or more, Delaware remains the only state to have legalized full-fledged online gambling.
Delaware hopes to be first in Internet gambling
[Commentary] Critics warn that ceasing Saturday postal service will be the first step down an irreversible “death spiral.” The controversy gets at a more fundamental question: Do we want the mail to remain a vital American institution in the digital age?
The Post Office Act of 1792, with a broad civic mandate, vastly expanded the postal network while admitting newspapers into the mail at an extremely low rate. No less impressively, it guaranteed the sanctity of personal correspondence by protecting letters from the prying eyes of government. In a stroke, the founders provided the entire population with low-cost access to information on public affairs, while establishing a right to personal privacy. The results were astounding. Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the skill with which postal administrators circulated hefty bundles of newspapers from New York and Philadelphia to the wilds of Detroit, then a thinly populated outpost on the western frontier. To his eyes, the post office was the only entity with the organizational capability to circulate the information of public significance that was essential to sustain America’s bold experiment with democracy. The German-born philosopher Francis Lieber called it an “element of civilization” — worthy of comparison with the printing press and the mariner’s compass.
[Richard R. John, a professor of journalism at Columbia, is the author of “Spreading the News: The American Postal System From Franklin to Morse.”]
How the Post Office Made America