May 2008

Special Report: Broadband in America

According to Leichtman Research, more than 60 percent of US homes now have broadband connections. The combined total number of broadband subscribers is over 56 million at the end of first quarter 2007. In the past year alone, the top broadband providers added 10 million subscribers. But a decade of rapid growth may be coming to an end. The end of 2007 marked the third quarter in a row of declining adoption numbers, and many researchers say that the industry may have finally run out of room to grow. UBS research analyst John Hodulik is one of them. He calculates that about 76 percent of eligible homes (that is, homes that have both a PC and access to broadband service) have already signed up, so there's not much potential for further expansion.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2302118,00.asp

Hill Staff: Net Neutrality Law Unlikely In 2008

Speaking at the annual cable industry convention in New Orleans, there seemed to some consensus among top Congressional aides that there will be no network Neutrality legislation enacted in 2008. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) has introduced legislation (HR 5353) that would establish non-discriminatory Internet access as national policy, but his GOP colleagues fear it would set the stage for the Federal Communications Commission to over-regulate broadband access providers. Aides said only some troubling development in the broadband market could motivate Congress to act this year.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6562363.html?nid=4262

White House to NBC: Air Full Bush Interview

In a strongly-worded e-mail to NBC News president Steve Capus Monday, White House counselor Ed Gillespie said NBC edited an interview with President George Bush to make it look as though the president was agreeing with interviewer Richard Engel when he was not. "This deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured story line is utterly misleading and irresponsible," Gillespie wrote, "and I hereby request in the interest of fairness and accuracy that the network air the president's responses to both initial questions in full on the two programs that used the excerpts." Gillespie also took the opportunity to criticize NBC for once describing the Iraq war as a "civil war" and for reporting that government figures came just short of an official declaration of recession, then threw in a shot at MSNBC: "Mr. Capus, I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the 'news' as reported on NBC and the 'opinion' as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing blurring of those lines," he said. "I welcome your response to this letter and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network's viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network-news division. NBC defended the interview in a statement Monday.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6562373.html?rssid=193

Obama -- Let's Challenge the Murdochization of Our Media

[Commentary] In a speech Sunday, Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) said he would pursue a vigorous antitrust policy if he becomes U.S. president and singled out the media industry as one area where government regulators would need to be watchful as consolidation increases. His statement signals a key opening for media and democracy reformers and the movement they have spawned in this last decade. Working with this movement, an Obama Administration could effectively challenge the destructive and concentrated attack by corporate media consolidation on the integrity of our democracy. Sen Obama will have smart allies among this movement, such as the media advocacy group Free Press. He will also find allies in the current Congress and in the two Democratic Commissioners on the FCC, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, who are committed to defending a free, independent and diverse media.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/322037/obama_let_s_challe...

People Still Seek News From TV

A new national online study from Crawford Johnson & Northcott finds that 87% percent of respondents said they were either actively seeking information about the presidential election or paying attention to it. And they continue to seek that information on TV. The top three sources among respondents who are at least paying attention to the election are national network television news (ABC, NBC, CBS), local television news, and cable television news (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News). Local news seems to play a greater role in how African-Americans and Hispanics are following the campaign than white respondents, the study found. Also, Democrats say they rely on local news to a greater extent than Republicans or Independents.
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/05/19/daily.5/

Candidates' Telecom Policy Vision

At the cable industry convention in New Orleans, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman William Kennard spelled out various elements of Sen Barack Obama's telecom policy vision on a panel with other proxies for the major presidential candidates. Former FCC chairman Michael Powell stood in for Republican Party presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and former FCC Democrat Susan Ness addressed the policy views of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). According to Kennard, Sen Obama (D-IL) would likely exempt tier-pricing models from Network Neutrality regulation if broadband network owners used them to maintain congestion-free access to the Internet. Kennard, an outside communications policy adviser to Sen Obama, said Obama has consistently supported net neutrality regulation while recognizing that network owners need to manage their systems and attract investment capital. "Where that has typically led us is to supporting tier pricing systems as long as they're not discriminatory," said Kennard. Powell outlined a bold free-market blueprint for the Internet from a potential McCain administration. "While he supports Internet freedom, he's very, very skeptical of efforts to create new legislation," Powell said. After Kennard mentioned that net neutrality was a complex and evolving issue, Powell said the lack of stability suggested that Internet regulation was inappropriate. "That's exactly when Congress ought to leave their pen in their pocket," Powell said. "I think there's nothing worse than the legislature passing a poor understanding of technical concepts, a poor understanding of the consequences of the statute that finally once on the books, you'll have a heck of a time ever removing."
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6562007.html?nid=4262

Pursuit of Yahoo Shows Microsoft Needs a Franchise

Two weeks after walking away from takeover talks with Yahoo, Microsoft made clear on Sunday that it still needed to create an Internet powerhouse that could rival Google -- and that its interest in Yahoo had not waned. Microsoft said on Sunday that it had approached Yahoo, this time with an ostensibly narrower aim: a collaboration on Internet advertising. But it hinted that it could still seek a takeover down the road. The renewed talks reflect both Microsoft’s fears and Yahoo’s potential ills. Microsoft wants to head off any collaboration on advertising between Yahoo and the market leader, Google. At the same time, Microsoft is seeking to capitalize on the perceived weakness of Yahoo, which is facing a proxy battle with the activist investor Carl C. Icahn over the failed takeover talks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/technology/19soft.html?ref=todayspaper
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Democracy and the Web

[Commentary] Users of the Internet take for granted their ability to access all Web sites on an equal basis. That could change, however, if Internet service providers started discriminating among content, to make more money or to suppress ideas they do not like. A new Network Neutrality bill has been introduced in the House, which would prohibit this sort of content discrimination. Congress has delayed on this important issue too long and should pass net neutrality legislation now. Cable and telecommunications companies are fighting net neutrality with lobbyists and campaign contributions, but these special interests should not be allowed to set Internet policy. It is the job of Congress to protect the Internet’s democratic form.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/opinion/19mon2.html?ref=todayspaper
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Net Gain

The US, once the undisputed leader in the technological revolution, now lags a growing number of countries in the speed, cost and availability of high-speed Internet. While cable and telecom companies are spending billions to upgrade their service, they're focusing their efforts mostly on larger U.S. cities for now. Smaller ones say they need to fill the vacuum themselves or risk falling further behind and losing highly-paid jobs. It's a risky bet. Some municipal Internet efforts, including wireless projects known as Wi-Fi, have failed in recent months. EarthLink Inc. confirmed last week it was pulling the plug on its wireless partnership with Philadelphia. A number of towns have abandoned a municipal fiber initiative in Utah, called Utopia, amid financial difficulties.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121115846391602439.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
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Sandvine Gets Agnostic About Bandwidth

Sandvine, the Canadian company whose technology has been at the center of the storm surrounding Comcast’s peer-to-peer bandwidth-throttling practices, has created an extension to its platform that will scale back Internet connections in what it calls an “application-agnostic” fashion. The FairShare system, which works with Sandvine’s network switches, allows service providers to curtail bandwidth based on subscriber-usage metrics from various sources to balance available bandwidth and resources among all subscribers.

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