October 22, 2012 (A Social Contract for Broadband)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2012
This week’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2012-10-21--P1W/
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Draft Order would give Companies Cyber Threat Info
Now it gets interesting: How to build a social contract for broadband - op-ed
Broadband Construction Season [links to web]
USDA Announces Broadband and Communications Projects - press release [links to web]
SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
The Myth of the Wireless Spectrum Crisis - op-ed
Another Week, Another Wireless Deal - analysis
Will AT&T Try To Crash the Sprint/SoftBank Party? - analysis
The Mobile Wave Rolls On
Verizon CFO: Our 700 MHz spectrum sale is not a 'fire sale' [links to web]
A fond farewell to T-Mobile’s 200 MB plan - analysis [links to web]
Google has $8 billion in mobile revenue: is that good or bad? [links to web]
PRIVACY
As Microsoft Shifts Its Privacy Rules, an Uproar Is Absent
How Verizon’s Privacy Policy Affects You - press release [links to web]
CONTENT
Is Google a free speech opportunist? - analysis
When the Web’s Chaos Takes an Ugly Turn [links to web]
Tweets Spawn Ad Campaigns [links to web]
EDUCATION
Free Online Education Is Now Illegal in Minnesota [links to web]
Minnesota’s archaic online ed ban raises questions - analysis [links to web]
Minnesota clarifies: Free online ed is OK
FCC Releases Machine Readable Data on E-rate Program - press release [links to web]
Apple Sees Schools Buoying Tablet Lead With IPad in Class [links to web]
TELEVISION
Reviving a Murrow Idea: Primetime Docs - editorial [links to web]
How We Watch What We Watch: The Future Of TV [links to web]
Roger Ailes Signs Up for Another 4 Years at Fox News [links to web]
Tweets Spawn Ad Campaigns [links to web]
PATENTS
Google Weighs Mobile-Patent Antitrust Settlement
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Social Media and Political Engagement - research
The ad war endgame: Advantage, Obama?
Why TV scoops up campaign cash - op-ed
Some Surprising TV Shows for Reaching Independent Voters
Nate Silver on political polling in the cellphone and social media age [links to web]
During debates voters turn to mobile for instant answers [links to web]
Awash in ads in Roanoke [links to web]
How Many Techies Does It Take to Reelect a President? T4O Launches “Innovator Series” Videos for Obama. [links to web]
Facebook campaign advertisements don’t work, says new study [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
News Corp: LA Times, Chicago Tribune Reports Are False [links to web]
San Diego developer eyes purchase of Tribune [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Upgrading the White House Homepage [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
French media to Google: pay us for news searches [links to web]
Google News faces mass newspaper boycott in Brazil [links to web]
India, A New Facebook Testing Ground [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
DRAFT ORDER WOULD GIVE COMPANIES CYBERTHREAT INFO
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Richard Lardner]
Apparently, a new White House executive order would direct U.S. spy agencies to share the latest intelligence about cyberthreats with companies operating electric grids, water plants, railroads and other vital industries to help protect them from electronic attacks. The seven-page draft order, which is being finalized, takes shape as the Obama Administration expresses growing concern that Iran could be the first country to use cyberterrorism against the United States. The military is ready to retaliate if the U.S. is hit by cyberweapons, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said. But the U.S. also is poorly prepared to prevent such an attack, which could damage or knock out critical services that are part of everyday life. The draft order would put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of organizing an information-sharing network that rapidly distributes sanitized summaries of top-secret intelligence reports about known cyberthreats that identify a specific target. With these warnings, known as tear lines, the owners and operators of essential U.S. businesses would be better able to block potential attackers from gaining access to their computer systems. The draft retains a section that requires Homeland Security to identify the vital systems that, if hit by cyberattack, could "reasonably result in a debilitating impact" on national and economic security. Other sections establish a program to encourage companies to adopt voluntary security standards and direct federal agencies to determine whether existing cyber security regulations are adequate. The draft order directs the department to work with the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the director of national intelligence and the Justice Department to quickly establish the information-sharing mechanism. Selected employees at critical infrastructure companies would receive security clearances allowing them to receive the information, according to the document. Federal agencies would be required to assess whether the order raises any privacy or civil liberties risks. To foster a two-way exchange of information, the government would ask businesses to tell the government about cyberthreats or cyberattacks. There would be no requirement to do so.
benton.org/node/137601 | Associated Press
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BROADBAND SOCIAL CONTRACT
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Blair Levin]
[Commentary] For a century, our country has benefited from a communications social contract in telephone, broadcast, and multi-channel video in which through law, regulation, and franchise agreements, providers obtain public benefits in exchange for providing certain, limited public obligations. But how will we write the terms of the social contract between communities and communications providers in building the next infrastructure of world-class IP communications for the 21st century? The question regarding how to build it has become increasingly important as Internet communications begin to supplant 20th Century methods of delivering voice and video, but it remains unanswered. When we developed the National Broadband Plan, we expressed our concern that the current social contracts governing communications would not create a critical mass of communities with world-leading bandwidth, without which the United States might lose its international leadership in developing the next generation of broadband applications. The best outcome for the country would be if Time-Warner, AT&T and others seized this moment to offer to deploy the kind of network Google deployed in other communities if those communities would provide the kind of inducements Kansas City offered. If they did so, they would find willing partners. And those partnerships would spark a race to the top that would catalyze new investments, new economic growth, and a new generation of American leadership in delivering the benefits of broadband.
[Levin became a communications & society fellow with the Aspen Institute after serving as Executive Director of the National Broadband Planning effort. He is currently Executive Director of Gig.U, a project within the Institute that seeks to accelerate the deployment of next generation networks and services by using university communities as test-beds.]
benton.org/node/137568 | GigaOm
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
SPECTRUM CRISIS?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Tim Farrar]
[Commentary] Last week, CTIA trumpeted the latest results of their semi-annual wireless industry survey with the headline “Consumer Data Traffic Increased 104 Percent.” Among their conclusions were that Americans have a voracious appetite for mobile data, and that the wireless industry in turn needs more spectrum to meet those demands. However, underlying the statistics are numbers that tell a far different story: in fact, there was a dramatic slowdown in wireless traffic growth during the first half of 2012. Of course, CTIA doesn’t want anyone to realize that, because it is significantly at variance with CTIA’s narrative of an impending “spectrum crunch” into which so much lobbying effort has been invested. What was the cause of this dramatic slowdown in traffic growth? We can’t yet say with complete confidence, but it’s not an extravagant leap of logic to connect it with the widely announced adoption of data caps by the major wireless providers in the spring of 2012. It’s understandable that consumers would become skittish about data consumption and seek out free Wi-Fi alternatives whenever possible. And there’s anecdotal evidence that supports the hypothesis.
[Farrar is President of Telecom, Media and Finance Associates, a consulting and research firm in Menlo Park, Calif., which specializes in technical and financial analysis across the satellite and telecom sectors]
benton.org/node/137594 | GigaOm
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ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER WIRELESS DEAL
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
[Commentary] It is not every week that we focus on consolidation of ownership in the wireless industry. OK, you are right, frequent reader, it is almost every week. On October 15, Sprint Nextel announced that it had agreed to sell 70 percent of itself to SoftBank of Japan for $20.1 billion. SoftBank, a big Japanese telecommunications company, said it would pay $8 billion to buy newly issued Sprint stock worth about $5.25 a share. It will then pay $12.1 billion to buy existing stock from other investors at $7.30 a share, a premium to current levels. The parties hope to close the deal – after gaining approval from regulators and Sprint shareholders – in the middle of 2013. For Sprint, the deal provides some much-needed cash as it tries to compete with Verizon Wireless, which controls 32 percent of the market, and AT&T Mobility, which has a 30 percent market share. Sprint is the third-largest carrier with a 16 percent share.
http://benton.org/node/137522
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AT&T VS SPRINT/SOFTBANK?
[SOURCE: Tales of the sausage Factory, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
[Commentary] After Sprint moved to take control of Clearwire, AT&T went out of its way to suggest the deal might night not be good for America. Brad Burns, an AT&T V.P., said in a statement:
“Softbank’s acquisition of Sprint and the control it gains over Clearwire will give one of Japan’s largest wireless companies control of significantly more U.S. wireless spectrum than any other company. We expect that fact and others will be fully explored in the regulatory review process. This is one more example of a very dynamic and competitive U.S. wireless marketplace, which is an important fact for U.S. regulators to recognize.” So what’s up with that? AT&T probably wants to emphasize how much spectrum its rivals (other than Verizon) control. Pointing out the foreign ownership is simply an accent for emphasis (if you will pardon the pun). ‘Look, the company that owns the most spectrum isn’t even American! How can you put U.S. carriers like AT&T at a disadvantage by limiting our spectrum while letting foreign carriers control oodles more spectrum than we do?’ By forcing Sprint to formally argue how it needs this much spectrum, and getting the FCC to acknowledge that it serves the public interest to allow a foreign company to control this much spectrum, AT&T strengthens its hand (at least rhetorically) in the pending spectrum aggregation proceeding.
benton.org/node/137571 | Tales of the Sausage Factory | GigaOm
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MOBILE WAVE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Steve Lohr]
Google’s Android software versus Apple‘s iOS, says Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, “is the defining competition in the industry today.” The battle in smartphone and tablet technology — to build so-called platform ecosystems of partners, developers and users — is the underlying theme in not only Google’s seemingly disappointing quarterly performance, but also in a string of recent tech company and industry reports. The once-dominant personal computer platform is in retreat. The quarterly results this week from Microsoft, Intel and Advanced Micro Devices all point in that direction. Yes, there is a product-transition issue as the mainstream PC world pauses while waiting for the upcoming release of Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system. But the report from IDC last week showed that even Apple’s shipments of Macintosh computers were off 7 percent in the third quarter. Still, people buying fewer personal computers and more smartphones and tablets is a trend that warms the hearts in Apple’s headquarters. That is a tradeoff the company will take gladly, given Apple’s lofty profit margins on iPhones and iPads. The other mobile technology heavyweight, Google, is making a tradeoff of its own. Yes, its profit margins are slipping a bit as more people increasingly use its search and other services on smartphones and tablets. The price paid by advertisers per click is less on mobile devices than on the bigger screens of PCs. But the mobile ad market is embryonic, although growing rapidly. The business models haven’t been figured out yet. Recall, though, that Google was founded and well underway before it figured out the search ad model that made the company an Internet cash register.
benton.org/node/137575 | New York Times
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PRIVACY
MICROSOFT PRIVACY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Edward Wyatt, Nick Wingfield]
Microsoft instituted a policy on October 19 that gives the company broad leeway over how it gathers and uses personal information from consumers of its free, Web-based products like e-mail, search and instant messaging. Almost no one noticed, however, even though Microsoft’s policy changes are much the same as those that Google made to its privacy rules this year. Google’s expanded powers drew scathing criticism from privacy advocates, probing inquiries from regulators and broadside attacks from rivals. Those included Microsoft, which bought full-page newspaper ads telling Google users that Google did not care about their privacy, an accusation it quickly denied. The difference in the two events illustrates the confusion surrounding Internet consumer privacy. No single authority oversees the collection of personal information from Web users by Internet companies. Though most companies have written privacy policies, they are often stated in such broad, ambiguous language that they seem to allow virtually any use of customers’ personal information.
benton.org/node/137608 | New York Times
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CONTENT
FREE SPEECH OPPORTUNIST?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Jeff John Roberts]
Rumors are swirling that the federal government is about to sue Google over claims that the company rigs its search results. Google has responded by invoking its right to free speech — but not everyone is buying this. Tim Wu, a prominent law professor at Columbia, is not convinced that Google is invoking its First Amendment rights in good faith. He suggests that Google and other big companies are cynically invoking constitutional freedoms as part of a corporate deregulation agenda. In Wu’s view, search results are not really speech in the first space. Instead, he argues, Google’s algorithms are closer to other automated communication tools like navigation devices or even car alarms. Google, of course, doesn’t share this view. The company prefers to be compared to a newspaper editor — whose choice of what to put in the paper is an undisputed free speech right. In practical terms, this means Google should be able to favor its own restaurant reviews over competing services like Yelp. So who is right?
benton.org/node/137592 | GigaOm
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EDUCATION
MINNESOTA OK WITH FREE ONLINE ED
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Nick Anderson]
Minnesotans, rest assured: Your state government believes you are entitled to free online higher education. The Minnesota Office of Higher Education said, “Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free. No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.” Larry Pogemiller, director of the office, said a 20-year-old statute requiring institutional registration clearly did not envision free online, not-for-credit offerings. “When the legislature convenes in January, my intent is to work with the Governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-day circumstances,” said Pogemiller. “Until that time, I see no reason for our office to require registration of free, not-for-credit offerings.”
benton.org/node/137579 | Washington Post
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PATENTS
GOOGLE WEIGHS SETTLEMENT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amir Efrati]
Apparently, Google is weighing whether to settle a potential claim by U.S. authorities that it violated antitrust law in the way it handles mobile-device patents. At issue is whether Google improperly refused to grant patent licenses to some mobile device competitors and sought court injunctions against them to stop their products from being sold. A broader probe of the company's search business is continuing separately, but no decisions have been made to press a case against Google. The Federal Trade Commission, which has been conducting an antitrust investigation of the Internet giant's business for more than a year, in recent months began probing Google's handling of patents that it acquired when it closed the $12.5 billion purchase of device-maker Motorola Mobility in May. Google inherited a slew of lawsuits filed by Motorola against competitors for violating its patents as well as cases in which Motorola is being sued for refusing to license patents. Courts and antitrust authorities around the world have been grappling over the proper handling of patents regarded as "essential" to particular technologies. Groups that set technical standards often require companies to license such patents on reasonable financial terms.
benton.org/node/137604 | Wall Street Journal
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
[SOURCE: Pew Internet & American Life Project, AUTHOR: Lee Rainie, Aaron Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Henry Brady, Sidney Verba]
The use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many Americans. Some 60% of American adults use either social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter and a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that 66% of those social media users—or 39% of all American adults—have done at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media. Overall, there are mixed partisan and ideological patterns among social media users when it comes to using social media like social networking sites and Twitter. The social media users who talk about politics on a regular basis are the most likely to use social media for civic or political purposes. And the social media users who have firmer party and ideological ties—liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans—are, at times, more likely than moderates in both parties to use social media for these purposes. Some of these activities are more likely to be pursued by younger social media users compared with the social media users who are ages 50 or older. Younger users are more likely to post their own thoughts about issues, post links to political material, encourage others to take political action, belong to a political group on a social networking site, follow elected officials on social media, and like or promote political material others have posted.
benton.org/node/137559 | Pew Internet & American Life Project
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AD WAR ENDGAME
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Jamelle Bouie]
[Commentary] With fewer than three weeks before the presidential election, both sides have ramped up their advertising to an incredible extent. Over the last three weeks, the Obama campaign has purchased $40 million in swing state ad time, while the Romney campaign has spent $49 million. Overall, the Obama campaign is outspending its competitor, $300 million to $164 million. That said, the advantage shifts when you factor in outside groups: total spending from Team Romney — the campaign and Republican Super PACs — comes to $455 million. By contrast, total spending from Team Obama is $352 million. But the fact that Republicans are outspending Democrats hasn’t translated to actual ad saturation. By the end of last week, Obama and his allies had aired about 5,000 more ads than their Republican counterparts. Indeed, despite speculation that Team Obama was on the verge of conceding states like Virginia, Florida and North Carolina, the bulk of the campaign’s ad spending remains located in two of those states — two of the top six media markets for the Obama campaign are located in Virginia (the Hampton Roads area) and Florida (the Tampa area).
benton.org/node/137573 | Washington Post
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FREE TIME FOR CANDIDATES
[SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Michael Wollf]
[Commentary] In a curious inversion of reality, political dollars were the subject of a different sort of conversation I had the other day with the head of a large media company. He was giddy about the amounts — more than $3 billion spent on political advertising this year, the bulk of it going into local television. He was like a kid at Christmas. Owning television stations isn't the best business in the world — except if you have stations in swing states! Every four years, you find yourself with a golden goose. You print money. It makes your year — hell, it makes your four years! And if you add on a few contentious Senate races, such as the ones in Massachusetts or Montana or Virginia, well, the media business is a great place to be again. Almost all commentary about campaign finance is related to the bad odor of the people who spend this money and not a whit to what the overwhelming amount of it is spent on: television in battleground states. Sure, rich men have disproportionate political power and opportunities. But the savvy way to deal with this may not be to try to eliminate the money — virtually everybody's proscription — but to eliminate television, or at least, its cost. The principle problem may not be rich men trying to buy influence, but television's ability to game the system. The two main principles of marketing — not spending more than the sale is worth; focusing the most resources on the most susceptible buyers — are thrown out in presidential politics.
The solution is easy, and does not involve spending limits, free speech issues, or even banning Super PACs. Broadcast television is a regulated utility. It is perfectly legal, reasonable and, at least from the public's view, uncontroversial to require broadcast television to provide free air time to qualified candidates.
benton.org/node/137624 | USAToday
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REACHING INDEPENDENT VOTERS
[SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Katy Bachman]
Who knew that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia would be the top show in Washington, D.C. for reaching independent voters? Or that Ugly Betty in Miami, Heartland in Las Vegas, and My Name is Earl in Denver would also be fertile ground for independents? As election crunch time nears, candidates will be trying to target and reach independent voters, who are likely to make the difference on Nov. 6. An analysis by TiVo Research and Analytics matching voter registration records to viewing patterns produced lists of the top programs in five battleground markets most likely to deliver independent eyeballs. News still ranks as one of the best places to run political ads, but there's only so much inventory available. With markets already saturated with election advertising—markets like Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas are already airing more than 10,000 ads a week—programming other than news is a strong option, and in some cases, as the TiVo data suggests, may reach more independent voters.
benton.org/node/137622 | AdWeek
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