July 21, 2010 (FCC Finds Too Many Americans Lack Access to Broadband)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 2010
Today's events http://bit.ly/9eDn3K
INTERNET/BROADBAND
FCC Finds 14 to 24 Million Americans Lack Access to Broadband
See also:FCC: Broadband Deployment Not Reaching All Americans
Levin Encourages Digital Citizenship
Broadband Essential to Promoting Equality and Economic Opportunity in the 21st Century
Empowering Americans with Disabilities Through Technology
Get towns in the broadband discussion
Should broadband data hogs pay more? ISP economics say "no"
Texas Agriculture Commissioner draws fire over broadband map contract
WIRELESS
New LTE network embraces the 'dumb pipe'
NAB Outlines Spectrum Policy for White House
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
State Department is taking right steps to foster Internet freedom
Venezuela: Opposition TV Station to Get Government Delegate
Report: IT dashboard plagued by outdated data
Bringing government up to data
Will Crowdsourcing Public Opinion Lead to Government Action?
TELEVISION AND RADIO
The FCC Policy Was a Mistake
Newspaper Guild: Keep Media Cross-Ownership Ban
JOURNALISM
Google To FTC: Government Role In Helping News Industry Should Be Limited
KIDS AND MEDIA
Schools and parents have a role in ending cyberbullying
NEWS FROM ABROAD
These headlines presented in partnership with:
Emerging Markets Will Bring A Third of Global Mobile Data Revenues by 2014
Swedish Pirate Party launches anonymous, log-free ISP
DoCoMo Aims to Reshape Itself to Maintain Lead
Recent Comments on:
Broadband grants mean millions more for higher education
INTERNET/BROADBAND
FCC 706 REPORT
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
New research from the Federal Communications Commission finds that between 14 and 24 million Americans still lack access to broadband, and the immediate prospects for deployment to them are bleak. This report underscores the need for comprehensive reform of the Universal Service Fund, innovative approaches to unleashing new spectrum, and removal of barriers to infrastructure investment. The report concludes that the goal of universal availability -- deployment to all Americans -- is not being met in a timely way, and proposes to address key recommendations from the FCC's National Broadband Plan to connect all Americans as quickly as possible, including:
Reforming the FCC's universal service programs to support broadband through public-private partnerships;
Unleashing spectrum for mobile broadband;
Reducing barriers to infrastructure investment, including delays in access to poles and rights-of-way;
Collecting better broadband data to assist policymakers and consumers.
The report also takes the long-overdue step of updating a key standard - speed - used to determine whether households are served by broadband. It upgrades the standard from 200 kilobits per second downstream, a standard set over a decade ago when web pages were largely text-based, to 4 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. This is a minimum speed generally required for using today's video-rich broadband applications and services, while retaining sufficient capacity for basic web browsing and e-mail.
benton.org/node/39705 | Federal Communications Commission | MediaWeek
Recommend this Headline
back to top
DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP
[SOURCE: BroadbandBreakfast.com, AUTHOR: David Cup]
Capital and Telecommunications policy conference, Blair Levin, the principal author of the National Broadband Plan, addressed, universal first-class digital citizenship. The notion that teaching is restricted to ink and paper is wrong and Levin says that the digital platform is inherently self improving, leading to comprehensive devices and enhanced learning. Levin says that this means that a generation from now, everyone will have the opportunity to be a first class digital citizen. he said the Universal Service Fund is "heading for a train wreck" on its current path. The fund, he says, must be reformed to address broadband -- without reform the necessary funds for the National Broadband Plan will not be available. Access to broadband is a crucial element to first-class citizenship, in rural areas and low-income areas where it is either expensive or unavailable, the fund would subsidize private sector penetration.
benton.org/node/39704 | BroadbandBreakfast.com
Recommend this Headline
back to top
BROADBAND AND EQUALITY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski]
Speaking that the Access to Capital and Telecommunications Conference, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said promoting equal opportunity, driving private sector investment, fostering an environment where new and emerging businesses can thrive are vitally important to our nation's future. And he said broadband will advance those goals. "We need to make "broad opportunity" available to every U.S. citizen. The National Broadband Plan puts us on the path to achieve this goal, but we'll need your help to get where we need to go. I look forward to working with you to seize the opportunities of broadband and bring the benefits of broadband to all Americans."
benton.org/node/39703 | Federal Communications Commission
Recommend this Headline
back to top
EMPOWERING THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski]
Speaking July 19 at the Americans with Disabilities Act 20th Anniversary Celebration, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski noted that communications technology has the power to transform lives for the better, and everyone should have access to communications. By implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws that followed, the FCC has helped set the stage for better and better innovations in communication. The FCC has adapted its rules year by year to help inventors and entrepreneurs make the best possible use of new technologies. Chairman Genachowski used the event to launch the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative, bringing together industry, academia, government, and business stakeholders in helping improve communications for the disability community.
benton.org/node/39702 | Federal Communications Commission
Recommend this Headline
back to top
COMMUNITIES UNITED FOR BROADBAND
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Sara Jerome]
Public Knowledge and Free Press versus AT&T, Verizon, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA). That's how the broadband world is sometimes summarized in Washington, according to Craig Settles, the founder of Communities United for Broadband (CUFB) and a broadband planning consultant. But government and media's reliance on this character list is a "consistent frustration," he said. Spats between ISPs and consumer activists leave out a key voice and fail to get at the heart of the nation's broadband issues, Settles says. The debate needs to add input from small businesses, mayors and towns. "It's like your parents are fighting over what your allowance should be, and you're like, 'I'm 17! I think I have a viable, credible voice,'" he said.
benton.org/node/39688 | Hill, The
Recommend this Headline
back to top
BROADBAND ECONOMICS
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
It is good to be an Internet service provider. In fact, it's better than being a cable operator, since there are no multibillion-dollar payments to content creators. Time Warner Cable's revenues from Internet access have soared in the last few years, surging from $2.7 billion in 2006 to $4.5 billion in 2009. Customer numbers have grown, too, from 7.6 million in 2007 to 8.9 million in 2009. But this growth doesn't translate into higher bandwidth costs for the company; in fact, bandwidth costs have dropped. TWC spent $164 million on data contracts in 2007, but only $132 million in 2009. What about investing in its infrastructure? That's down too as a percentage of revenue. TWC does spend billions each year building and improving its network ($3.2 billion in 2009), but the raw number alone is meaningless; what matters is relative investment, and it has declined even as subscribers increased and revenues surged. "Total CapEx [capital expenses] as a percentage of revenues for the year [2009] was 18.1 percent versus 20.5 percent in 2008," said the company a few months ago. In fact, CapEx has declined for the industry as a whole. As the National Broadband Plan noted, the big ISPs invested $48 billion in their networks in 2008 and $40 billion in 2009. (About half of this money can be chalked up to broadband; the rest of the improvements were done to aid cable or phone service.) To recap: subscribers up, revenues up, bandwidth costs down, infrastructure costs down. This might seem like a textbook case of "viability"; what were Time Warner execs talking about last year when data caps were held up as a necessary safeguard against doom? TWC's single biggest expense for Internet access is not network investment or bandwidth. It's labor. As Internet use increases, TWC techs, engineers, and executives need to make adjustments. Paying all of these people costs money, and those costs increase as the network is more heavily used.
benton.org/node/39687 | Ars Technica
Recommend this Headline
back to top
CONNECTED NATION IN TEXAS
[SOURCE: Dallas Morning News, AUTHOR: Jessica Meyers]
At an unveiling last month, the Texas Department of Agriculture touted its map of broadband Internet availability as the first step in closing a "digital divide" that denies rural Texans critical services. But a political divide has opened instead, as critics question the tool's accuracy and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples' relationship with the organization that created it. Staples' Democratic rival, Hank Gilbert, and a handful of local providers, consumer groups and mapping organizations say the agency tailored the application to fit Connected Nation, the nonprofit selected by the department and the Texas Public Utility Commission to create the map. The Agriculture Department and the company defend the process, while their critics contend that the map will direct federal stimulus money toward major telecommunications companies at the expense of smaller Internet providers.
benton.org/node/39685 | Dallas Morning News
Recommend this Headline
back to top
WIRELESS
LIGHTSQUARED AND DUMB PIPES
[SOURCE: Connected Planet, AUTHOR: Kevin Fitchard]
Harbinger Capital Partners has formalized its plans to create the first wholesale-only 4G network in the US, announcing an ambitious plan to build out a nationwide long-term evolution footprint covering 92% of the population in five years, supplemented by satellites that will increase its population penetration to 100%. Nokia Siemens Networks won the infrastructure contract for the project and will manage network operations, creating a deal it estimates will be worth $7 billion over eight years. Called LightSquared, the new operator will sell 4G and satellite broadband connections by the gigabyte to national and regional wireless, wireline and cable operators; retailers; device-makers; and Web-content providers. "We will be the first quote-unquote 'dumb' wireless pipe," said Frank Boulben, its chief marketing officer, who has joined the new company after previous executive stints at Orange and Vodafone. "As we're not [launching] our own brand, we're not competing with our customers. We can only make money if our customers make money."
benton.org/node/39686 | Connected Planet
Recommend this Headline
back to top
NAB SPECTRUM PLAN
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith outlined the association's spectrum policy in a July 19 letter to Lawrence Summers, director of the White House's Economic Policy Council. Smith told Summers that he thought a "holistic" approach to spectrum policy could find spectrum to repurpose without compromising broadcasters' ability to deliver a robust service to viewers. Smith said he had no problem with incentive auctions that were truly voluntary, but said that any spectrum policy must make sure that 1) viewers still have access to broadcast digital offerings including multicast channels and mobile DTV; 2) that stations who do not give up spectrum do not suffer reduced coverage or signal degradation and interference; 3) viewers must be able to benefit from innovative new uses of broadcast spectrum by broadcasters themselves, including on-demand programming and 3DTV; and 4) broadcasters should not be charged a user fee for remaining on their spectrum.
benton.org/node/39701 | Broadcasting&Cable
Recommend this Headline
back to top
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
STATE DEPARTMENT AND INTERNET FREEDOM
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Billions of people live in countries where the Internet is not free. Confined behind the elaborate firewalls of authoritarian regimes such as China and Iran, they find their rights to expression threatened online and off -- by elaborate systems of monitoring and censorship and by harsh laws that punish bloggers with imprisonment or even death. In January, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke powerfully in support of Internet freedom, saying, "We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it." Since then, the State Department has brought the issue of online freedom to the table in its diplomacy around the world and joined with Internet providers and social media companies to foster public-private partnership in Internet freedom. Such collaboration is key, since authoritarian regimes so often contract out the daily work of censorship to private companies. Congress, too, has showed commitment to openness online, allocating $35 million in funding between the 2009 and 2010 budgets for work that promotes Internet freedom. This money has yet to be spent, but the State Department finally has sent the names of designated recipients of the 2009 budget's $5 million in Internet freedom funding to Congress for its approval and soon will begin the process for distributing this year's grants. A cyberspace without walls or barriers, where people can assemble and express themselves freely, without fear of censorship or imprisonment, will make the world safer for the United States and for democracies everywhere. Continued public-private partnership, prioritization of Internet freedom in diplomacy and the wise deployment of allocated funds will move this ideal closer to reality.
benton.org/node/39713 | Washington Post
Recommend this Headline
back to top
CHÁVEZ AND THE MEDIA
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Frank Jack Daniel]
The Venezuelan government will put a representative on the board of Globovisión, the country's most influential opposition television station, President Hugo Chávez, said July 20. Globovision rejected the move, saying the government could not simply appoint a board member just because it held a stake in the company. President Chávez also said his government was preparing to revoke the license of a small TV station run by the Roman Catholic Church in Caracas.
benton.org/node/39712 | Reuters
Recommend this Headline
back to top
GAO REPORT ON IT DASHBOARD
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Robert Brodsky]
A public website the Obama administration launched last year to shine a light on $80 billion in federal information technology spending contains inaccurate or outdated data on scheduling and performance, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. The IT Dashboard, which was unveiled in June 2009, provides detailed information on about 800 major IT investments, including assessments of the programs' performance against cost and scheduling targets, known as ratings. But in a report to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Government Accountability Office investigators found "notable discrepancies" with the ratings of four of eight projects examined. The findings disappointed lawmakers who have been critical of federal IT spending. Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra disagreed with many of GAO's findings, noting the watchdog mistakenly presumed its "own calculations set the standard for accuracy." Some of the discrepancies found by investigators were relatively minor, he added. Kundra also criticized GAO for failing to acknowledge several technical changes officials have made to the dashboard's ratings criteria and for not highlighting how the site has "improved transparency, accountability and oversight." In its final report, GAO relented to the criticisms, adding details about the dashboard's use of trend data and improved oversight capabilities and enhancements to investment management processes. Kundra plans to update the dashboard later this month to include new cost and schedule calculations.
benton.org/node/39700 | nextgov | GAO | Highlights of GAO report
Recommend this Headline
back to top
BRINGING GOVERNMENT UP TO DATA
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Abby Phillip, Kim Hart]
Technology drove Barack Obama's presidential campaign. And Obama's three tech "chiefs" drive his administration's technology. Their goal: Create government websites that are more like an Apple app store than the Department of Motor Vehicles. And for Vivek Kundra, Jeffrey Zients and Aneesh Chopra, that means trying to turn Obama's vision of data-driven and digital government into reality. "In our personal lives, we live in a culture where 'there's an app for that,' but for whatever reason we came into Washington, and it still looks like a culture where 'there's a form for that,'" said Chopra. But it's not just creating whiz-bang websites. In the current political climate, the stakes are high for the president and congressional Democrats, who need to prove that government can handle the challenge posed by their overhaul of the health insurance industry and other initiatives, by minimizing paperwork, lines and months of delay that have become typical of the government experience. Technology, they believe, can be the answer.
benton.org/node/39699 | Politico
Recommend this Headline
back to top
CROWDSOURCING AND GOVERNMENT ACTION
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Austin Carr]
Washington has launched a series of democratic idea incubators that aim to align government action with public opinion. Taking advantage of a platform called IdeaScale, these open government initiatives enable the public to submit and vote on ideas for anything from state budgets and federal transparency to health care priorities and education. While this may sound like big step forward for the typically tech- agnostic public sector, the results, at least so far, demonstrate why crowdsourcing may be an ineffective government tool. Crowdsourcing relies on the assumption that the public will be able to produce better ideas, or in this case, at least ones the government has yet considered. But lawmakers can't pass bills simply because they've captured public opinion--legislation today is so complicated that it's perhaps beyond the public's capacity to offer a fix. Take the FCC's Broadband IdeaScale page, in which it asks voters to brainstorm ideas on creating a National Broadband Plan. Of the 249 proposals submitted, the most popular reads: "Bring the United States mobile broadband pricing in line with the rest of the world." The submission includes a helpful list of countries that provide less expensive Internet access. Other popular ideas range from "catching up with Korea" to "promot[ing] telecommuting--reduce time and energy waste." As you might guess, these ideas are not exactly novel, and they are absolutely not easy to enact.
benton.org/node/39683 | Fast Company
Recommend this Headline
back to top
TELEVISION AND RADIO
POWELL ON INDECENCY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Powell]
[Commentary] Decency standards have value and are necessary for responsible media companies, but the court was right to strike down the current indecency policy. It is time now for the Supreme Court to revisit its half-century-old decision that broadcasting alone is undeserving of full First Amendment protection. While easy to fault the Federal Communications Commission's administration of the indecency laws, the real problem is the now-flawed constitutional foundation on which the law is built. Light years ago, the Supreme Court held broadcast content could be more aggressively regulated because it was a scarce resource that held a "uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans." Broadcasting then was a scarce medium without rival — a time before UHF, cable, satellite, or the Internet. If the case for lesser speech protection for broadcasting was ever sound, that case is eviscerated today by the sheer abundance and accessibility of other media sources, which enjoy full constitutional protection. We cannot have one First Amendment for broadcasting and another one for every other medium. This vestige of a bygone era provides fertile ground for mischief — culture wars, political agenda and moral mandates. It's high time for the high court to bring our laws into the 21st century. [Powell is a former FCC chairman]
benton.org/node/39689 | New York Times
Recommend this Headline
back to top
JOURNALISM
GOOGLE ASKS FTC TO LIMIT ROLE IN JOURNALISM
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Joseph Tartakoff]
Google just posted its response to proposals the Federal Trade Commission has said it is looking into in order to support the "reinvention of journalism." In the document, Google argues that the challenges facing the news industry are business problems, not legal problems, and can therefore "only be addressed effectively with business solutions," which it says it is helping the news industry develop. "The ultimate solutions that will result in a new online equilibrium for the news industry cannot ... be mandated by changes in the regulatory framework or a change in copyright laws," the company says. Google comes out against several of the proposals the FTC has said it is looking at. For instance, the company says there is no need to modify the Copyright Act to include specific guidelines for "aggregators and search engines," saying that interpretation of that law is best left to the courts. And it says it's opposed to any new antitrust exemptions that would let news sites put up pay walls together and also jointly charge news aggregators (including, presumably, Google News), saying that the changes would likely be ineffective and be harmful to consumers.
benton.org/node/39682 | paidContent.org
Recommend this Headline
back to top
KIDS AND MEDIA
PREVENTING CYBERBULLYING
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Lack of maturity, lack of supervision, and technology that can transmit messages instantly to millions of people: This is the volatile cocktail that lies at the root of cyberbullying. Today's high school and middle school students have been texting, e-mailing, instant messaging and posting on Facebook since they could reach a keyboard. But when this extensive technological knowledge combines with the raging hormones, limited impulse control and failure to understand consequences that mark the teenage years, the results can be devastating. Schools are generally empowered to deal with off-campus activities when they have a negative impact on campus life. Because anything created online is accessible from anywhere at any time, this line can be hard to draw. Schools can help themselves combat the problem by clearly banning cyberbullying in their acceptable-use policies and honor codes, as they do traditional bullying. But ultimately it is the role of parents to establish the terms of their children's activity online, setting clear limits and responding supportively and definitively if things go awry.
benton.org/node/39711 | Washington Post
Recommend this Headline
back to top
NEWS FROM ABROAD
These headlines presented in partnership with:
EMERGING MARKETS WILL BRING A THIRD OF GLOBAL MOBILE DATA REVENUES BY 2014
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Kevin Tofel]
Developed nations such as the U.S., Japan and the UK are driving mobile data demand, but emerging markets aren't far behind when it comes to mobile data service revenues. A new report from Informa Telecoms & Media suggests that by 2014, 36 percent of global mobile data revenues will come from nations like Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Poland and the Ukraine -- areas that, as compared to countries with national network coverage, lag in terms of 3G and 4G infrastructure. Informa estimates the mobile data services market will grow from $200 billion in 2009 to $340 billion in 2014. Such growth in areas where a 2G signal is standard gives hope to a company like Nokia, who focuses such services on emerging areas. Since bandwidth is limited or priced at a premium, optimizing something as simple as a weather report over SMS could provide farmers in a 2G area with timely information needed to maximize their harvest, for example. But don't count out the app stores just yet — once 3G arrives in the current 2G nations, consumers are expected to spend even more, as the Middle East and Africa could overtake North America's app store revenues by 2012.
benton.org/node/39708 | GigaOm | Informa
Recommend this Headline
back to top