July 2009

Ofcom reveals lagging broadband speeds

A report published on Tuesday by Ofcom, Britain's telecoms regulator, highlights the gap between the broadband speeds that Internet companies advertise and the online experiences of their customers. The report, the first to quantify the gap, compares the speeds of the nine largest fixed-line Internet service providers. Speeds are important because more and more people want to watch video over the Internet, on services such as the BBC iPlayer and Google's YouTube. The most common broadband packages in the UK are those offering download speeds of "up to" 8 megabits per second. Ofcom found that Tiscali and AOL, both owned by Carphone Warehouse, supplied average download speeds of 3.2-3.7Mbps and 3.3-3.9Mbps respectively in April to customers on the packages offering up to 8Mbps. Ofcom found that AOL, BT, Orange and Tiscali had capacity constraints in their networks that meant Internet customers suffered slower broadband speeds at peak usage times. BT described Ofcom's report as "unreliable", adding: "BT Retail provides broadband to customers in rural areas?.?.?.?this means we have customers whose lines are at the limit of broadband service, with resulting lower average speeds."

Britain publishes Twitter guide for ministers

The British government has published a guide to help ministers understand how to use the social networking site Twitter, with the aim of extending its news and corporate messages online. With government departments such as the Foreign Office and Downing Street already tweeting, the 20-page guide details how ministers should provide an "informal" and "human" voice. The guide, written by Neil Williams of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), asks ministers to tweet "a minimum 2 and a maximum of 10 tweets per working day, with a minimum gap of 30 minutes between tweets to avoid flooding our followers." Ministers are also encouraged to tweet with credibility and bear in mind relevant issues while avoiding commercially or politically sensitive information. Campaign messages are not appropriate unless there is a current element involved.

FCC Still Awaiting Official Word On New Commissioners

The Federal Communications Commission is awaiting official word on when new Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker will be sworn in. The two were confirmed by the Senate on Friday.

The Misguided Urge to Regulate Wireless

[Commentary] Federal regulators have been asked to investigate wireless carriers' exclusive handset deals. But calls for regulation are perverse. These products are precisely the disruptive technologies that policymakers should herald. Yes, we need to investigate them—to figure out how to encourage more of the same. Customers are not hostage to subsidized handsets or to the two-year contracts typically attached. All U.S. networks offer prepaid cards at 10¢ or 20¢ per minute, allowing customers to bring their own phones. The flexibility isn't free: Contracts pencil out to about 5¢ per minute. This "volume discount" rewards users who commit to supporting the network—those $50 billion-and-up megastructures of spectrum, fiber, real estate, base stations, and millions of mobile radios. In this deep recession it is curious that iconic innovations demonstrating robust growth are inspiring regulatory attention. In truth, the key policy issues here involve little more than how to control crowds on iPhone model release days and how to discipline State Dept. officials whose "Crackberry" habits disrupt high-level government meetings. When Washington turns its regulatory gaze on the very killer apps we should be celebrating, we've found what needs fixing.

Panelists Say Broadband's Regulatory Honeymoon Over

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski will most likely focus the agency's efforts in the broadband space for the foreseeable future, according to a panel session at the Independent Show, and that could spell more regulation for the product in the future American Cable Association outside counsel Chris Cinnamon warned that recent efforts in the broadband space -- including the broadband stimulus plan -- could mean that the FCC will be exerting more authority over the space. "I think the days of the light regulatory touch on broadband are rapidly coming to a close," Cinnamon said during the panel discussion. He added that for the first time, the federal government will have a substantial amount of money invested in broadband infrastructure -through the $7.2 billion Broadband Technologies Opportunities (BTOP) program -- and will have a vested financial interest in how some facilities are managed. Cinnamon added that there is talk that additional legislation is on the horizon -- he mentioned speculation of a truth in billing law for broadband service that is circulating around Washington. "That is the first step in a customer service, consumer protection," Cinnamon added. "There is the potential for a lot more to follow."

Product ads gain more screen time

Advertisers are inserting themselves more deeply into TV shows than anyone thought possible just four or five years ago. The practice of product placement - in which advertisers pay to have their products or logos appear on screen during a program - has been intensifying for years. Even so, TV networks were once more vigilant about how much screen time they'd give advertisers during most dramas or comedies for fear of offending viewers. Now media outlets are loosening their restrictions. The result? Eye-popping appearances by advertisers in places where viewers would normally expect to see story line and character development. The flailing economy "makes everything at least discussable," said Peter Tortorici, a former CBS executive who is president of WPP Group's Group M Entertainment, a specialist in creating deals that weave advertisers into content. This new willingness often creates "very positive" ideas for integrating products into shows, he said, but "some of it will result in mistakes."

Can commercial media learn anything from National Public Radio's new look and business plan?

National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller has overseen a relaunch of NPR.org with a strategy to transform NPR into the No. 1 destination for free news on and beyond the radio. Of local journalism she says, "That's where a big void is happening in journalism now. It's the worst at the local level. I'm worried about locals. It's scary. It happens to be where the biggest crisis in journalism is happening. [Take the L.A. Times as an example.] They shut down their investigative journalism unit. They've closed bureaus all over the world. It's a travesty. We can go market by market. We want to increase the output and platforms on which stations create content in local communities, with a focus on accountability journalism."

Health Care Debate Dominates News

Health care reform, an issue that has long simmered on the media back burner, finally exploded into the headlines last week, accounting for one-quarter of the overall coverage. Yet late in the week, the health care debate took a back seat to the arrest of a black professor that exposed the "third rail" of American society—race. Together, the two stories accounted for nearly 40% of the coverage from July 20-26. And in both cases, Barack Obama played a key role.

Media Coalition Members Against Ban on Media Depictions of Animal Cruelty

Independent filmmakers fear that films like Apocalypse Now (in which a live water buffalo was hacked to death), documentaries about cruelty to animals, or even TV news footage of then-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wolf hunting in Alaska, could earn their creators and distributors prison sentences if a 1999 law is restored by the Supreme Court. A number of members of The Media Coalition have asked the High Court to uphold a lower court's decision to strike down a law banning depictions of animal cruelty, saying the law is overbroad and, as the Obama Administration is interpreting it, could give the federal government "substantial power to decide whether certain words and images are worthy of First Amendment protection." Among those signing on to the friend of the court brief was the Independent Film & Television Alliiance, which represents distributors of independent films including documentaries. Not signing on were the Motion Picture Association of America.

Brioché and Trahern join Comcast

Comcast spent $2.8 million on lobbying during the first half of this year and is bringing on two new DC hires already familiar with the Capitol. Joe Trahern, a former lobbyist for General Motors, will be Comcast's senior director of federal government affairs. Before GM, Trahern served as chief of staff to Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA), as a staffer for Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and in political affairs at the White House under President Bill Clinton. Rudy Brioché joins as senior director of external affairs and public policy counsel. In that role, he will help define the company's public policy interests, which revolve around telecommunications law. He has served as a legal adviser to Federal Communications Commission member Jonathan Adelstein, now head of the Rural Utilities service and the Department of Agriculture, and before that worked for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ).

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