December 2009

Insider Pushes Ma Bell Beyond Just Phones

Glenn Lurie spends most days thinking up ways to put cellphone chips everywhere but phones. Picture frames, computers, even children's toys. He dreams up new, untested calling-rate plans and develops strategies to put stodgy AT&T atop new and unproven markets. Lurie is in charge of a bet AT&T is making that wireless services for new gadgets could substantially increase its $124 billion-a-year business. The secretive group -- AT&T won't disclose the group's budget or staff size -- is on a mission to entrench the nation's largest phone company in services for new wireless devices. A number of these devices, such as e-readers and netbooks, are already on store shelves. AT&T has jumped into the nascent market and taken an early lead by supporting more devices than competitors. Last week, it disclosed a deal to carry on its network an electronic-book reader from British start-up Interead Ltd., adding a fifth e-reader to a lineup that already includes Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's upcoming Nook. Lurie and AT&T are thinking more broadly than e-readers and netbooks. Next year, they plan to announce wireless-network services for advanced car-entertainment systems, home appliances, such as smart refrigerators, and handheld game consoles. Revenue projections vary, but Lurie agrees with an estimate from industry research group Rethink Wireless that cellular operators will collect $90 billion a year by 2013 from servicing these devices.

Americans have gone text-crazy

According to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau, Americans fired off 110 billion text messages in December 2008. In the same month in 2007, they sent 48 billion. Not surprisingly, the trend is especially prevalent among teenagers, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist for the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Teens are still developing their communication habits. Adults have preset ones already," she said. So why is texting a teen trend? It's efficient, and it's private. Teens can text silently in a car's back seat or in the family room without potential for embarrassment, Lenhart said.

Never Listen to Céline? Radio Meter Begs to Differ

As the radio industry converts from measuring ratings through surveys to monitoring listeners electronically using so-called Portable People Meters, it is finding that what people say they do and what they actually do is different. Apparently, more men mellow out to Air Supply than are willing to admit it. But the new system has serious repercussions, especially for classical radio. When 12 major areas, including New York and Los Angeles, switched to the system last year, classical radio's market share fell 10.7 percent in those areas, a significant drop, according to a study by Research Director, a ratings consultancy. Talk radio, a largely conservative format, turns out to have fewer fans than previously thought. Mainstream formats like oldies, news and country have fared better. Meanwhile, smooth jazz has hit a low note. The makeup and size of Arbitron's sample is an issue for some Hispanic and urban broadcasters, who say metered readings undercount minority audiences and hurt their stations disproportionately.

Music Business Heads Into Virtual World

With its deal this month to buy the Web music service Lala, Apple may be pointing the way to the future of music. In this future, the digital music files on people's computers could join vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs in the dusty vault of fading music formats. Instead, music fans will use their always-online computers and smartphones to visit a vast Internet jukebox, where Gregorian chants, Lady Gaga tracks and the several centuries of music in between are instantly available. For a small but growing cadre of music lovers, the vision is not that outlandish.

House takes steps to boost cybersecurity

House leaders have asked the chamber's security officials to implement a new cybersecurity training regimen for aides and take additional measures to protect sensitive information from potential hackers. After a six-week review prompted by The Washington Post's disclosure of the ethics committee's secretive deliberations, Daniel P. Beard, the House's chief administrative officer, recommended technology security updates that focused mostly on making staff aware of the security risks on the Internet. "Changes in security policies will make it clear that all sensitive House information will remain on House equipment at all times, it will be encrypted when stored on mobile devices and must not be transmitted on any public access system," Beard wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-OH). Beard undertook the review after a junior staffer took home a sensitive computer file that included a document naming every member of Congress the panel was investigating and updating most of the nearly three dozen investigations. In many cases, the lawmaker's ethics troubles had not been revealed publicly.

Academics, Activists Talk Network Neutrality At FCC Workshop

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission held a workshop on codification and expansion of open Internet (Network Neutrality) guidelines. Academics, activists and independent content creators targeting minority audiences talked about the need for the regulations to keep deep-pocketed industry gatekeepers from blocking speech or pricing it out of the reach of the next big innovation.

Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin said that the First Amendment is all about participation, which is the Internet's "gift to mankind." But he said that participation means little if you have to get permission. He said the Internet is a way to "route around network gatekeepers." Network neutrality regulations, he argued, are necessary to preserve that gift of participation from private entities whose natural tendency is to favor their own business interests and shareholders.

He was seconded by Andrew Schwartzman of Media Access Project, who suggested the harms were neither perceived or future. He cited several examples, including Verizon blocking an anti-abortion message and Comcast impeding BitTorrent traffic among those examples. As to their only being a few examples, he said what is known is only the tip of the iceberg, that it will become increasingly difficult to uncover those instances, and that the "greatest danger" is from what blockages we have not known about and do not now know about.

Joining in support of net neutrality regulations were Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition; Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit blog; Jonathan Moore, of minority-targeted online site Rowdy Orbit; Ruth Livier, writer and online content producer' and Garlin Gilchrist of the Center for Community Change.

Openness, Dynamism, and Availability to All

Speaking at the Federal Communications Commission's workshop on Speech, Democracy and the Open Internet, Commissioner Michael Copps again expressed support for building upon the FCC's Open Internet Principles, saying the Internet must never be about powerful gatekeepers and walled gardens. The genius of the Internet, he said, is "its openness, its dynamism, its availability to one and all." History teaches us that when a company has the technical capacity and a financial incentive to interfere, there will be some bad apples who will. Given what's at stake, we need hard and fast rules-not just idyllic principles and an honesty system arrangement to keep them from doing so. There are founded and unfounded fears in this debate-and we need to have all the facts while considering the future ramifications for this powerful tool. I don't believe that the importance of our Open Internet proceeding can be overstated-it is about safeguarding America's broadband users, whoever they are and however they choose to access the Internet, so that they may use the Internet to go freely to any legal content, so long as no harm is caused to the network.

McDowell: Network Neutrality Turns First Amendment on its Head

Speaking at the Federal Communications Commission's workshop on Speech, Democracy and the Open Internet, Commissioner Robert McDowell said that at no time in American history have we had more communications power at their fingertips. He celebrated the time, 15 years ago, when the Internet was privatized and allowed to grow largely unfettered by government mandates relying instead on self-governance. He expressed concerns about placing regulatory mandates on the Internet. Efforts to advance "First Amendment values" through additional government regulation, he said, risks turning over two hundred years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head. He said some may say that it's too early to judge the constitutional and policy implications of any net neutrality regulations on speech. I think the better approach is to start considering the potential ramifications now in an effort to avoid repeating old mistakes.

AT&T: Anti-Discrimination Rule Could Hinder Innovation

A hard and fast rule that prohibits Internet service providers from discriminating between content providers could "inadvertently limit the availability of creative and innovative services that consumers may want to purchase," AT&T argues in its latest statement about proposed neutrality regulations. In a letter submitted today to the Federal Communications Commission, the telecom argues that ISPs and Web companies should be free to enter into "voluntary" agreements "for the paid provision of certain value-added broadband services." AT&T adds that rather than a "strict nondiscrimination" rule, the FCC should instead focus on "unreasonable and anticompetitive" forms of discrimination. Broadband advocates were unimpressed with the telecom's stance.

Greater Broadband Transparency and Measurement

New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative (OTI) submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission on two areas vital to the future of the Internet: Broadband Consumer Information and Measurement. "Scientific research provides ample support for the FCC to craft sound mandates for broadband transparency and data collection," explained Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative. "The Open Technology Initiative's filing provides a prescriptive agenda detailing the technical infrastructure and disclosures needed to support both competition and innovation and draws upon pre-existing projects that have already proofed out the ideas presented. As OTI's comments make clear, providing consumers and policy-makers with the information they need to make informed decisions is a matter of political will, not technical feasibility." Currently, consumers have little information to make an informed decision among competing providers. Advertisements have neither the actual speed nor cost and important considerations; such as limitations, termination conditions, or early termination fees. Also troubling is the complete lack of access for researchers and policymakers to fundamental information on the inner workings of the Internet.

To address these concerns OTI provided the Commission with several policy recommendations including:

Clear and standardized disclosure rules across all fixed and mobile broadband services to ensure consumer have access to fundamental information about broadband service offerings.
Require advertisements to provide clear expectations of the service offering including the typical capabilities, not theoretical maximums, and the actual price of the service.
A focused FCC effort to measure and collect fundamental data on broadband service capabilities and Internet performance and traffic statistics.

Benton

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