March 2010

The FCC's Misguided Spectrum Quest

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission talks a good game about letting broadcast spectrum find its "highest and best" use, but predictably degenerates into simply trying to pry spectrum away from its previous favorite technology (broadcast) and give it to its new favorite (mobile broadband). This is a mistake for several reasons.

More spectrum is always better, but new pricing models and techniques for managing traffic will surely help to deal with the mobile broadband megatrend. Meanwhile, the FCC needs to see a bigger picture. The fixed and mobile networks are one, and both are in danger of being swamped by video (90% of all Internet traffic by 2013, predicts Cisco). Both would benefit hugely from a policy that really does let spectrum flow to its most valued uses, whether broadcast or broadband. And that's exactly what would happen, willy nilly, if Washington were to roll back its antiquated ownership restrictions on America's other, unrecognized wireless industry -- its over-the-air broadcasters. This is especially important now because TV is about to be overhauled dramatically as "over the top" services challenge cable and satellite. Broadcast has real advantages in the digital age. It can deliver bits without ripping up the streets or hanging wires all over town, without placing satellites in orbit. And unlike mobile or fixed broadband, it can deliver the same bits to many viewers without sending congestion-creating individual streams to each.

Bottom line: In the future, a revamped and transformed broadcast sector will lift a large amount of video load off the fixed and mobile networks -- if we let it. The FCC claims it doesn't pick winning and losing technologies. But its musty regulatory hang-ups do exactly that, implicitly favoring one-to-one technologies over one-to-many -- i.e. favoring mobile broadband over broadcast.

Iran blocking foreign, domestic Web sites to curb anti-government activists

Ever since the disputed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June elections led to wide-scale protests, Iran's leaders have been cracking down on the tech-savvy opposition movement with the Revolutionary Guard and police blocking millions of foreign and domestic Web sites, including some Google services, CNN and the BBC.

Iran's leaders say these measures are necessary to counter efforts by the United States and other Western countries. "They are trying to defeat the Islamic republic through the Internet," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, said in January. But until this week, government authorities had been aided by U.S. trade policy that prevented American companies from exporting social media technology to Iran as part of a broad effort to prevent the spread of technology to the Islamic republic. Now, the Treasury Department, at the request of the State Department, has decided to allow companies such as Google and Microsoft to export free mass-market software to Iran, as well as Sudan and Cuba. The U.S. action comes at a time when Iranian authorities have created cyber-intelligence units that are developing new methods to seek out and snare the opposition, including fake Facebook accounts. Authorities also are contemplating the creation of a national Internet that would approve which sites could be available in the Islamic republic. The government has also enacted a law that threatens bloggers with jail time if they "defame sanctities" -- a broad accusation in Iran -- in their postings. The new efforts mean that every time opposition bloggers in Iran fire up a laptop, they risk a visit by the cyber-police.

Clash of the media titans in Israel

Media Titan to Rivals: Drop Dead! That's tabloid shorthand for the Darwinian clash unfolding between Israel's three biggest newspaper barons.

The story begins with a publicity-shy publisher who built a paper so popular and powerful it was deemed a monopoly. Nipping at his heels is a scrappy businessman who once wiretapped competitors and later destroyed an incriminating document by swallowing it. But it didn't become a battle royal until a Jewish-American billionaire, borrowing a page from Fox News, launched a "fair and balanced" newspaper to counter what he called liberal media. "It's turning into a jungle," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a member of Israel's parliament and a respected former journalist. "The media organizations are trying to destroy one another."

LifeLock settles FTC and state allegations that it misled consumers

Its chief executive prominently displays his Social Security number in ads for his identity-theft protection company. But LifeLock Inc. couldn't protect customers from the company's own misleading advertising, according to state and federal authorities.

In a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from California and 34 other states, LifeLock agreed Tuesday to tone down claims about the effectiveness of its service and to pay $11 million to customers and $1 million for the costs of the investigation. The FTC and the states alleged that the Tempe, Ariz., company misled customers by claiming to offer absolute protection against identity theft, when in reality there was no surefire way to keep thieves from assuming a victim's identity. "LifeLock sold Californians a false sense of security against identity theft with advertisements that were chock full of inflated claims and promises," California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said.

IBM will research mobile access for the aged and illiterate

IBM is teaming with researchers in academic institutions in Japan and India to explore an open, common user interface for mobile devices that will make them easier for aged or illiterate people around the world to use.

The company is doing the research with the National Institute of Design (NID) in India and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo, it said Tuesday. The findings of the research and any applications or technology developed will be released to the open-source community, said Nitendra Rajput, Open Collaborative Research lead at IBM Research India. IBM's Open Collaborative Research program aims to promote innovation through research collaboration between universities and industry. Working with the open-source community will help speed up the adoption of the technologies, and attract developers to build applications for the target populations, Rajput added. The research is focused on improving access to the mobile phone because of the affordability and proliferation of these devices, Rajput said. The researchers expect that the mobile phone rather than the PC will be the key device by which the aged and the illiterate will access IT because of its relative simplicity of use.

After Victory Over Disney, Group Loses Its Lease

For a few days last fall, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood celebrated a big victory: the tiny advocacy group had successfully pushed the Walt Disney Company to offer full refunds to everyone who had bought the company's popular Baby Einstein videos from June 2004 to September 2009. But it did not take long for trouble to follow.

The group has been evicted from the Harvard-affiliated children's mental-health center in Boston that had housed and sponsored it for more than a decade. Campaign officials say they were forced out after Disney made contact with health center officials. Neither Disney nor officials of the center, the Judge Baker Children's Center, would comment about the eviction. Just days after the Disney refunds were described on the front page of The New York Times on Oct. 23, campaign officials said they were contacted by Judge Baker officials expressing unhappiness with the group's activities.

Many Nations Passing U.S. in Education

One of the world's foremost experts on comparing national school systems told lawmakers on Tuesday that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where he said 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds.

America's education advantage, unrivaled in the years after World War II, is eroding quickly as a greater proportion of students in more and more countries graduate from high school and college and score higher on achievement tests than students in the United States, said Andreas Schleicher, a senior education official at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which helps coordinate policies for 30 of the world's richest countries. "Among O.E.C.D. countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the U.S.," Schleicher said. About 7 in 10 American students get a high school diploma.

Schleicher's comments came in testimony before the Senate education committee and in a statement he delivered. The panel plans to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the main law governing federal policy on public schools.

Reps. Smith, Wu establish new Internet freedom caucus

Reps Chris Smith (R-NJ) and David Wu (D-OR) announced the formation of a bipartisan Global Internet Freedom Caucus to promote unfettered Web access in countries notorious for online censorship.

At a press conference early Tuesday, Rep Smith described that effort as crucial to stop the "concerted" attacks countries like Iran and China have launched recently to stifle political dissidents organizing on the Web. "Since 2006 it's become very clear -- and Google's recent difficulties in China underline this -- that IT companies are not powerful enough to stand up to a repressive governments," Smith told reporters. "Without US government support, they are inevitably forced to play a role in the repressive government's censorship and surveillance." So far, Reps Smith and Wu are the caucus' only members. However, Smith's office said late Tuesday that three to four additional lawmakers have signaled they are "agreeable" to the caucus' aims and are now "ready to sign on" to the effort.

Plans for National Broadband Access May Be in Danger

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is gearing up to release its plan for national broadband access on March 17. Open government advocates have hailed the plan's prerogative to increase civic participation in government policymaking.

John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation wrote that the FCC seems "committed to the sort of government policies that can help turn Internet access into a transformative tool for citizenship." If, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a democracy requires an informed citizenry, then broadband enables the masses to reach government information faster with fewer barriers to access. Further, national broadband access increases the capacity for tools that enable citizens to better interact with government information.

Funding for the FCC's plan is a potential roadblock for the effort. Currently, the FCC subsidizes telephone services to poor and rural areas through its Universal Service Fund and plans to establish its broadband-focused Connect America Fund within the existing program. The $8 billion Universal Service Fund is paid for out of surcharges affixed to consumer and business long-distance bills. To pay for extended broadband services, the FCC plans to propose several options to Congress, including a gradual phase-out of the Universal Service Fund telephone service to a focus entirely on broadband. However, the FCC is expected to request another $9 billion from Congress in addition to the $7.2 billion that legislators already provided for broadband lines in the economic stimulus package.

Another potential problem is that cost cuts may give an advantage to big business that could then undermine competition. Blogs on both Verizon's and AT&T's websites praised the agency's efforts. Verizon's vice president for regulatory affairs even called the FCC's plan "bold and practical." However, corporate support may stem from FCC not requiring companies to share broadband lines with rivals, thus favoring big companies and violating the principles of net neutrality. Both companies have ardently opposed any regulation related to net neutrality. The pricey and expansive vision is what critics contend will be the plan's failure. Most reports indicate that without being broken up, the plan is too large to make it into an omnibus bill. Currently, there are fears that the plan is so big that Congress is unlikely to do anything with it at all.

FCC Agenda for National Broadband Day Set

Two items on the Federal Communications Commission's March 16 agenda: 1) The Commission will consider a Broadband Mission Statement containing goals for US broadband policy and 2) a presentation of the National Broadband Plan. This will be a widely attended event which, in this case, means get there before the 10:30 start time if you want a seat.

The meeting site is fully accessible to people using wheelchairs or other mobility aids. Sign language interpreters, open captioning, and assistive listening devices will be provided on site. Other reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities are available upon request. In your request, include a description of the accommodation you will need and a way we can contact you if we need more information. Last minute requests will be accepted, but may be impossible to fill. Send an e-mail to: fcc504@fcc.gov or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (tty).

Benton

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