December 2010

Approval Talks Delay Comcast-NBC Deal

The long-awaited completion of the takeover of NBC Universal by Comcast will have to wait until 2011.

NBC Universal CEO Jeffrey Zucker sent a memo to staff members Dec 22 explaining that regulatory approval of the deal, under which Comcast will acquire 51 percent of NBC Universal from the General Electric Company, will not be finalized by the end of December, as Comcast executives had hoped. The delays have to do with some lingering issues involving what concessions Comcast will be asked to accept in order to win acceptance by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is preparing to circulate its order for the deal, perhaps as early as Dec 23. The order will include unspecified conditions to protect against consumer harm. Regulatory approval could come in early January.

Comcast/NBCU: ACA Says Baseball-Style Arbitration Condition Is No Help

Amid talk at the Federal Communications Commission that Chairman Julius Genachowski could be circulating the Comcast/NBCU decision -- approval with conditions -- to the other commissioners as early as Dec 22, the American Cable Association was pushing against what it understands to be one of the conditions -- baseball-style arbitration -- that the cable group says does not help its members.

In an ex parte filing on a Dec 20 meeting with John Flynn, senior counsel to the chairman for transactions, ACA executives said they understood the FCC was proposing requiring outside arbitration on programming disputes, but one that would not make it a "usable remedy" for smaller operators. ACA said its understanding was that Comcast-NBCU would be required by the FCC to reimburse smaller MVPDs for arbitration fees if Comcast lost, but not if it won. In any event, ACA has argued that baseball-style arbitration does not help its members, who are smaller and mid-sized operators without the deep pockets of the larger players.

Will Google follow Microsoft in EU probe?

Google's Internet search algorithm is the technology world's equivalent of the Coca-Cola formula: a top-secret corporate crown jewel. But pressure is growing on Google to lift the veil on some of its inner workings as European regulators investigate complaints that Google's search engine unfairly discriminates against certain websites.

The case underscores the increased scrutiny over Google's influence in the Internet industry and could set the stage for the kind of long-running regulatory battle fought in the past by technology giants like Microsoft. Odds are that the world's No. 1 search engine will seek to keep prying eyes -- even those of the European Commission, known in many circles globally as the toughest watchdog -- away from the ranking algorithms that are the core of its business.

How Uncle Sam invented television

The first in a four part series exploring the major transition that television is currently undergoing.

Broadcast TV station owners can sit on their licenses and discuss "current marketplace realities" with the Federal Communications Commission because, seventy years ago, Congress created that marketplace for them. To be sure, the United States didn't "invent" TV itself. That honor goes to John Logie Baird, Philo Farnsworth, and Vladimir Zworykin, among other innovators. But the government literally created the business model and framework in which broadcast TV flourished. In fact, for a crucial period of time, politicians protected over-the-air broadcasters from other business models, most notably the telephone company and cable TV. Now, regulators face the challenge of uninventing that framework. Here's a history of what they built -- the story of the government invention of television up to the present, one that begins even before television really got underway.

Over half of late-20s crowd own cell phones only

Fifty-one percent of 25- to 29-year-olds live in households that have kicked the landline habit, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is the first time that wireless-only households have surpassed landline households among any age group, according to the CDC's report released yesterday. The report, which surveyed 17,619 households over the six months that ended in June, also showed a 2 point rise of cell-phone-only households among late-twentysomethings compared with the previous six months. Looking at other age groups, around 40 percent of people 18 to 24 and 30 to 34 live in cell phone-only households. After the age of 35, that figures drops off until age 65 when only 5 percent of the people are in households with cell phones only. Meanwhile, almost 40 percent of households with children under 3 rely on cell phones alone. Overall, the CDC found that 26 percent of U.S. homes used only wireless phones, while another 16 percent received all or almost all their calls on a cell phone even though they still have landlines.

Newspapers Top Broadcasters In Web Video Streaming

Newspapers surpassed broadcasters for the first time in the third quarter in total video minutes streamed and the number of video titles uploaded, according to the latest data from analytics firm TubeMogul and video-hosting service Brightcove. Newspaper sites had a total of 313 minutes of video streamed compared to 290 for broadcast sites. Meanwhile, the number of videos downloaded on newspaper sites surged 51% quarter-to-quarter (and 110% from a year ago) to 482,000, more than any other type of media company.

FTC’s New Chief Technologist Lays Out The Limits Of ‘Do Not Track’

There’s already been plenty of speculation about what the Federal Trade Commission’s “Do Not Track” proposal will mean for online publishers and advertisers. But what they may not realize is just how much tracking will be perfectly fine, even if Do Not Track becomes the law of the land.

As the FTC’s first-ever chief technologist made clear in an interview published today, the agency isn't looking to regulate direct, first-party tracking at all. Nor is the government likely to seek new privacy rules over mobile devices, at least for now. Ed Felten clarified what the FTC would be looking for as it ramps up privacy enforcement: 1) The FTC isn't looking to regulate first-party tracking. 2) Do Not Track probably won't apply to mobile -- for now. 3) It still isn't clear how enforcement will work.

Critical Infrastructure Protection Month

On December 3 of this year, the President issued a Proclamation that December is .

In the Proclamation, President Barack Obama said, "[M]y Administration is committed to delivering the necessary information, tools, and resources to areas where critical infrastructure exists in order to maintain and enhance its security and resilience." This effort is a central focus for the Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau. The Bureau’s mission is to ensure public safety and homeland security by advancing state-of-the-art communications that are accessible, reliable, resilient, and secure, in coordination with public and private partners. As part of the nation’s national security protection programs, the Bureau is a key contributor in protecting communications facilities that are a critical component of the nation’s infrastructure. There are several critical infrastructure sectors and each sector has an Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC). As part of our responsibilities in critical infrastructure protection, we support the Communications ISAC by providing subject matter expert liaison staff. The mission of the Communications ISAC is to facilitate voluntary collaboration and information sharing among government and industry in support of Executive Order 12472 and the national critical infrastructure protection goals of Presidential Decision Directive 63. The intent is to gather information on vulnerabilities, threats, intrusions, and anomalies from multiple sources in order to perform analysis with the goal of averting or mitigating impact upon the telecommunications infrastructure.

On the Waterfront With The FCC

[Commentary] For all the sturm und drang surrounding the Federal Communications Commission’s actions on network neutrality – they could end up being toothless. For all of the overheated rhetoric about a “government takeover” of the Internet, and for all of the news stories about regulating Internet traffic, the situation at the end of the day is much less clear. There is much less than meets the eye. That’s because of the dichotomy of what is a rule, and what is a discussion of a rule.

For example, if the FCC had said, it is a violation of our rules to offer a “pay for priority” service or to offer “specialized” services outside of the Internet that might siphon off bandwidth from the Internet everyone uses. At that point, carriers would know what is allowed and what is not. They could challenge it, of course, but the rule would be clear. That’s not what the FCC did. Instead, the text of the FCC order as part of the discussion of Net Neutrality simply says, in essence, “We don't think pay for priority is a good idea,” and might be considered “unreasonable discrimination.” Is that informal opinion that’s not a part of the central rule enforceable? If you think that’s a court case waiting to happen, you’re right. If it was that important, why didn't the FCC simply ban the practice? Because of loopholes like this, the future of any number of companies that exist now is in jeopardy because the rules will allow giant telephone and cable companies to create their own version of the same service as one that already exists, to offer it on different terms and conditions that would put a competitor at a disadvantage – say a better video streaming experience that the in-house service can get but which others don't have.

Was It Google And Verizon Or The FCC That Just Screwed Us On Mobile Net Neutrality?

In the Federal Communications Commission's release about the network neutrality order adopted Dec 21 is a section on Measured Steps for Mobile Broadband. It reads, in part, "Further, we recognize that there have been meaningful recent moves toward openness, including the introduction of open operating systems like Android. In addition, we anticipate soon seeing the effects on the market of the openness conditions we imposed on mobile providers that operate on upper 700 MHz C-Block spectrum, which includes Verizon Wireless, one of the largest mobile wireless carriers in the US. In light of these considerations, we conclude it is appropriate to take measured steps at this time to protect the openness of the Internet when accessed through mobile broadband." The entire section reads much like the joint network neutrality proposal offered by Google and Verizon. But what the hell does an open operating system have anything to do with network access?

Benton

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