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While smartphones have gone mainstream in many regions around the globe, adoption among emerging countries is still developing.
According to new research from Nielsen, China is the only country among the high-growth BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) markets where smartphones are predominant, owned by two-thirds of Chinese mobile subscribers as of the first half of 2012. In contrast, feature phones—devices with no touchscreen, QWERTY keypad or operating system—are still dominant in India and Russia, owned by 80 percent and 51 percent of mobile subscribers, respectively. There’s no clear favorite type of mobile device in Brazil, with mobile ownership split between 44 percent feature phones, 36 percent smartphones and 21 percent multimedia phones (touchscreen and/or QWERTY keypad, but no operating system).
Smartphones: Still Room to Grow in Emerging Countries
Liberty Media Corp, the holding company that announced plans last year to take over Sirius XM Radio, gained majority control of the satellite-radio provider with its latest purchase of 50 million shares.
Liberty Media now owns 1.99 billion common shares and 1.29 billion convertible shares. If the converted stock is added to the outstanding shares of New York-based Sirius, Liberty Media owns about 50.5 percent. Liberty plans to take control of the Sirius board, putting it in position to choose a new chief executive officer. James Meyer was named interim CEO in December, replacing Mel Karmazin, who resigned last year. Liberty will consider returning capital to Sirius shareholders with stock buybacks or a dividend, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said.
Liberty Gains Majority Control of Sirius
Epic battles over the limits on the number of TV or radio stations one company can own…the fight for open Internet …the biggest fine in FCC history …the current fight against predatory prison phone rates…rules promoting transparency for political advertising…public participation in merger reviews, like AT&T’s attempted purchase of T-Mobile. What do all of these events and decisions have in common? None of them would have been possible without the efforts of a man who turns 100 this week—Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker, founder of the media reform movement and founder of OC Inc.
Thanks to Parker’s efforts, members of the public can make their voices heard at the Federal Communications Commission, whether that means weighing in on the importance of media in our democracy or making sure people in prison are not exploited by telephone company gouging. But that was not always the case. Back in 1959, Everett Parker was serving as communications director of the newly formed United Church of Christ when the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young asked the denomination for its support in the early days of the civil rights movement. King complained that southern television stations were editing the nightly news shows to remove all coverage of the civil rights movement, and asked the denomination to help.
Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker, Father of the Media Reform Movement, Reaches 100 Years
[Commentary] America has always had media critics—from Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin in 1775 to the folks at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and Media Matters for America today. And they have played a vital role in exposing the mistakes and misdeeds first of subservient newspapers and more recently of broadcast and digital news outlets. But the media reform movement that steps from complaining about irresponsible and malicious broadcasters to actually holding them to account is a more recent phenomenon. And it is entirely reasonable to suggest that the man who initiated what we today understand as a national media reform movement is Dr. Everett C. Parker, the amazing activist who successfully challenged media complicity with the Southern segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s.
Dr. Parker wrote a new chapter in American history with the fight he led, as founding director of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, to deny the license renewal of a powerful Southern television station that refused to cover the civil rights movement. “Every movement has thousands of individuals, whose names we never know, forming its backbone,” recalls the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “The civil rights movement, for instance, was the product of countless individuals standing and working together throughout the South and across the country. But there are always those individuals who emerge to give a face to a movement—provide leadership, vision and moral authority. In the area of media reform, it was Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker.”
The Movement Dr. Parker Made: Father of Media Reform Turns 100
[Commentary] Everett Parker, who turned 100 on January 17, personifies the savvy, toughness, organizational genius and unstoppable perseverance that are the enablers of change. If you don’t know his story, you’re missing something important. You need to learn—and learn from—it. I’d suggest starting with Kay Mills’ fine book, Changing Channels: The Civil Rights Case that Transformed Television Channels, or with Robert K. Horwitz’s excellent article entitled “Broadcast Reform Revisited” in The Communication Review. Dr. Parker, then Director of the Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ, put media squarely in the middle of the Civil Rights crusade of the 1960s—right where it belonged (and still belongs). He did so by taking on the license renewal application of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, a station that somehow managed to ignore the fight for civil rights in the south and across America. Often the picture on the WLBT screen would be replaced with a notice like: Sorry, we’re having technical problems—just as, say, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was coming on the evening news. Civil rights news blackouts were common, and black Americans were conspicuous by their absence on a station that seemed more interested in white supremacy than equal rights for all. Dr. Parker thought this wasn’t how the peoples’ airwaves should be used and that WLBT was about as far away from serving the public interest as a station could get. He led the challenge to deny FCC relicensing to WLBT, courting and convincing other parties to join his crusade, and buttressing his case with overwhelming data gleaned from program logs and other telling evidence.
Reform: The Everett Parker Way
Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary Larry Strickling gave a speech at the Brookings Institution to discussing the progress of the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP), funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
The most compelling parts of Strickling’s speech were stories about communities affected by BTOP programs. One common denominator in these stories is broadband’s role in changing expectations. But NTIA has more than just anecdotes about its BTOP programs. In December, NTIA released a report entitled “Progress towards BTOP Goals: Interim Report on PCC and SBA Case Studies.” This report, written by NTIA consultant ASR Analytics, looks at PCC and SBA projects that try to increase broadband adoption through touching individuals. What is striking about the ASR report is its documentation of the impressive reach of BTOP grants in the PCC and SBA areas.
What do these findings suggest for a second term of the Obama Administration?
- First, broadband adoption – in spite of the progress that BTOP has facilitated – remains a problem.
- Second, the benefits to having more people online are growing. More and more key institutions in society – health care, government, education – are looking to use the Internet to deliver services as a way to cut costs and improve effectiveness.
Building Broadband Adoption Infrastructure
The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing next Tuesday to investigate wasteful spending by the federal government on technology systems and services. Steven VanRoekel, the White House chief information officer; Chris Niehaus, Microsoft's director of civic innovation; and Tom Davis, the former chairman of the Oversight Committee, are scheduled to testify.
House to investigate wasteful technology spending
As communications technology advances, the public safety community is looking to capitalize on the changes. “By history and tradition, we have many thousands of separate communications systems for emergency responders in this country,” said Jon Peha, professor of electrical engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief technologist with the Federal Communications Commission. “That means we have systems that don’t interoperate, are more prone to failure when we need them, and are vastly more expensive than they ought to be. We pay more and get less.” Traditional public safety communication systems don’t provide services that commercial users take for granted, such as data communication and the ability to send pictures or video. A system tested in August at the 2012 Republican National Convention (RNC) in the Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., area gave a glimpse into the possible future of public safety communications. Public safety agencies in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties worked with commercial vendors to test a Public Safety Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, which ran under special temporary authority from the FCC.
LTE Test Provides Insight into Nationwide Public Safety Network
Dish Network has asked the Federal Communications Commission to halt the regulatory-review “shot clock” for Softbank’s plans to buy a 70% stake in Sprint Nextel. Dish said many issues are unresolved in the acquisition review, which includes Sprint’s deal to buy the rest of majority-owned Clearwire. Dish says that uncertainty surrounding process could lead to major amendments to the Sprint/Softbank review.
Dish Asks FCC to Halt Sprint-Softbank Review Clock
Clearwire shareholder Taran Asset Management is joining the chorus of investors asking Sprint Nextel to raise its bid for the wireless-network operator after a counteroffer from Dish Network. The financial firm plans to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Jan 18, arguing that Clearwire is worth more than what Sprint is offering, said Chris Gleason, a principal at New York-based Taran. Taran, which Gleason said owns 3 million shares of Clearwire, is the latest investor to join the rallying cry for a higher bid. Crest Financial Ltd., a Houston-based firm, asked the FCC to block the deal because it undervalues Clearwire’s spectrum -- the airwaves that let mobile devices connect to wireless networks. New York-based Mount Kellett Capital Management LP, meanwhile, sent a letter to Clearwire’s board asking them to consider Dish’s offer.
Clearwire Investor Taran Seeks Higher Bid