Benton RSS Feed

STRUCTURED 'NET NEUTRALITY IS THE KEY
[SOURCE: Network World, AUTHOR: Curt Monash]
[Commentary] Internet legislation should preserve radical openness in two areas: Internet bit transport and Internet content and applications. Fortunately, both goals are achievable through a scheme that follows seven policy-design principles: 1) 'Net neutrality should be preserved for the "Jeffersonian" part of the Internet --research, teaching, political discourse, and small-business commerce. 2) In general, content and application providers should be left almost wholly unregulated. 3) It's OK to regulate telecom carriers. They are natural oligopolists and are used to it. 4) It's OK to charge for high Quality of Service. The "Edisonian" part of the Internet will be stifled without substantial investment; somebody has to pay for it. 5) Any payment arrangements between content and application providers and consumer-facing carriers should be formulaic. There should be no scope for negotiation, so bias can't creep in. 6) Content and application providers should be allowed to subsidize communication costs. Consumers don't like paying on a bit-by-bit basis; they prefer subscriptions or free or ad-supported models. 7) Content and application providers shouldn't have to subsidize communication costs. There should be no business-arrangements requirements limiting innovators from getting started on the Internet. Tariff rebate passthrough is a policy and regulatory framework that satisfies all these principles.
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/042307monash.html?page=1

FCC TARGETS TAMPA BAY FOR HEARINGS
[SOURCE: Tampa Bay Business Journal, AUTHOR: Michael Hinman]
Media consolidation might make sense to the bottom line, but members of the Federal Communications Commission are expecting to get an earful against loosening even more restrictions on television and radio ownership when they visit Tampa today.
http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2007/04/30/story2.html?from_...

* Debate On Media Ownership Rules Ignores Realities Of Digital Age
[Media General editorial] "Our cross-media ownership benefits this community, no matter what critics say today about Big Media bogeymen."
http://www.tbo.com/news/opinion/editorials/MGBRCALK21F.html

* Media General’s Claims Debunked
The cover story of Tampa’s premiere alternative weekly, Creative Loafing, warns of the dangers of media consolidation — noting how thoroughly local giant Media General has been able to dominate the Tampa market.
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/blog/?p=88

BIG MEDIA'S ASSAULT ON DEMOCRACY
[SOURCE: The Seattle Times, AUTHOR: Ryan Blethen]
[Commentary] "Enough" is a word that means little to corporate media. The few bloated companies that remain atop the media food-chain have crossed the line from growing profits to actively pushing rule and law changes that will wound our nation. These mega-companies move from one industry to the next in the name of consolidation, driven by a Wall Street appetite that demands more every quarter. Companies once devoted to a particular sector are now behemoths that have control over almost everything read, watched or listened to.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003682648_ryan27.html

AT&T TAPS STEVENSON AS CEO
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Dionne Searcey dionne.searcey@wsj.com and Jessica E. Vascellaro]
AT&T announced on Friday that longtime Chairman and CEO Edward Whitacre will step down in June and be replaced by COO Randall Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson, who holds a master's degree in accounting from the University of Oklahoma, was a key architect of AT&T's recent acquisition of BellSouth Corp. He embraces the technology his company peddles using laptops and GSM cards, and is of a different ilk than Mr. Whitacre, who came to AT&T in 1963 as a facility engineer. Mr. Stephenson inherits unique challenges facing phone companies whose very core business -- landline phone service -- is diminishing in the age of wireless and Internet phone calls. While some phone companies, like Sprint-Nextel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., have shed landlines and focused on wireless service, a growth business, AT&T has cherished its landline service. It is bundling it with wireless and TV offerings and testing devices that will converge the two services. Like other large telecom players, AT&T will have to navigate new technologies that make communications easier for consumers and seek to bring them to market without cannibalizing traditional revenues too much. AT&T will turn its attention increasingly abroad as it aims to become the preferred provider of telecommunications services to multinational corporations around the world. Mr. Stephenson said Friday that, on the international scene, AT&T is going to look for business partners rather than make large acquisitions, though he added that the company may look for small acquisitions around the world to better serve large corporate clients. AT&T has a slew of new competitors, including Google and cable companies that in the past two years have aggressively entered the phone business.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117768601212684889.html?mod=us_business_...
(requires subscription)