March 2011

AT&T merger could swell ranks of Communications Workers of America

If the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile is approved, T-Mobile USA's employees — who are not unionized — will become part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Stan Wylie, executive vice president at CWA Local 7800, near T-Mobile's hometown, said the merger may increase CWA's political clout. Thousands of local employees could become CWA members if the deal with AT&T is approved. "We know there are a lot of T-Mobile employees here who are looking forward to being represented, so we're looking forward to that," Wylie said.

AT&T Internet customers, your service contract is changing

All eyes might be on AT&T's pending acquisition of T-Mobile, but AT&T Internet customers shouldn't overlook some significant changes the company has just made to their service contract.

Perhaps the most noteworthy addition is a new provision that allows AT&T to limit the online activities of heavy users. Customers who hog bandwidth by downloading high-definition movies or vast quantities of digital music slow the pipeline for everyone else, said AT&T spokesman John Britton. So now AT&T says it will impose caps on data use or limit a customer's download speed — or even impose additional fees — if they're slurping too much online soup. "People have a right to behave however they want online," Britton said. "But we have a right to manage the bandwidth so that everyone has a good experience. This is targeting the top 2% of people who use about 20% of the bandwidth."

AT&T's contract changes include a few other eye-opening provisions. The company has inserted language allowing it to unilaterally upgrade a DSL user's service to U-verse. On the one hand, this is cool because U-verse is faster and more versatile than DSL. On the other, AT&T says U-verse would come with "applicable rates, terms and conditions, which may differ from your previous DSL service rates, terms and conditions." In other words, AT&T might charge you more for a level of service you never wanted or asked for.

One other provision of note: AT&T's contract now stipulates that the company can cancel your service "if you engage in conduct that is threatening, abusive or harassing" to the company's workers, or for "frequent use of profane or vulgar language" when dealing with service reps.

NPR suspends search for senior news exec

National Public Radio interim chief executive Joyce Slocum informed staff she has decided to stop the search for a senior vice president for news after consulting with members of the search advisory committee.

Ellen Weiss was forced to resign from that position in January over her role in the firing of news analyst Juan Williams. Slocum said the decision was driven by the fact that several candidates for the senior news position have indicated interest in the CEO position; the two people would have to work closely. "It’s only fair that the CEO have a key role in selecting the [senior vice president] News and that the [senior vice president] News know who his or her long-term boss will be when coming into the position," Slocum said. "I know that we all want to fill these roles as quickly as possible with permanent leadership. At the same time, I think we all want to follow the best possible process for each of these enormously important hiring decisions. This approach will help accomplish both objectives."

TV Station Groups Post Huge Gains

For the fourth consecutive quarter in a row, major TV station groups posted eye-popping double-digit gains -- as well as seeing rising profit margins, some nearing performance levels of the 1980s and 1990s.

New York-based media investment/adviser M.C. Alcamo & Co. says profit margins for TV stations grew by 10 points to 40% for some 15 broadcasting companies it covers in the fourth quarter 2010. This was against a 30% profit margin number in fourth-quarter 2009. These results near the 50% or more gains that virtually all TV stations groups had garnered decades ago. Some, like Sinclair Broadcast Group and Meredith Corp., got to this magical mark, posting the quarter's highest profit margins of 51% for all TV companies. For the 15 broadcasting companies it covers, M.C. Alcamo says revenues rose 27.1% to $371.8 million -- in part helped by the turnaround from major ad categories such as automotive marketers, as well as a surging political ad market. The best performers: Fisher Communications grew 49% in revenue to $18.9 million; Gray Television added on 47.8% to $37.1 million.

Chairman Darrell Issa bloated Julius Genachowski's visits

Democrats on the House oversight committee accused the panel’s chairman of inflating the number of White House visits made by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to suggest the Obama Administration meddled in the development of network neutrality policy.

According to the latest Democratic analysis of the meetings, Chairman Genachowski made only 34 visits to the White House between January 2009 and November 2010. That’s far shy of the 81 visits Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). Democratic staffers accused Issa of headline hunting. "He's sniffing into network neutrality because it is a hot-button issue," said one Democratic staffer. "This has almost become a pattern where they shoot off at the hip. It's become a pattern, and it's problematic and creating a distraction."

A well-tread path from DC to Silicon Valley

Robert Gibbs may be the latest Washingtonian wooed by the stock options and geek cache of Silicon Valley.

Al Gore headed west to try his hand at venture capital after the 2000 race. President Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart also joined Oracle for a stint back then to burnish the bad-boy image of Larry Ellison. More recently, last year Jill Hazelbaker became head of communications at Google. She had served as communications chief for McCain 2008 and worked on media strategy for Michael Bloomberg’s 2010 reelection. For campaign and White House veterans, the allure of Silicon Valley is a chance to earn money but also something more. “What you see with Facebook is what Google has experienced — a tech company, after a while, experiences growing pains,” said Bill Whalen, research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who follows California and national politics. One growing pain is how to navigate the federal government. “Facebook, which is going to go public next year, has to think about becoming a political target, becoming an example of how technology is leading us astray,” Whalen added.

Co-op Tactics for Community Broadband

[Commentary] If you’re Wally Bowen (founder and executive director of Mountain Area Information Network - MAIN), Larry Baumgart (CEO of Virtual Networking Service Inc), or another community IT advocate, the battle for broadband resembles the Charge of the Light Brigade. “Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon in front of them.” On the left is the FCC with broadband policies a growing number of people feel will be less-than-effective at bringing broadband to under-served communities. To the right incumbent telcos are increasing their anti-municipal network wars in state legislatures. And in front are communities that may be shortchanging themselves with a one-dimensional view of what constitutes community broadband.

The Community Broadband Fight In North Carolina

[Commentary] The problem with fighting extremely bad corporate-sponsored legislation is that it has a distressing tendency to re-emerge time and again long after a human being would have gotten a clue and gone away. So it is with the fight by corporate carriers against local governments providing any sort of broadband. Most of us thought this fight over about 5 years ago, when the majority of carriers realized that municipal networks not only were not a threat, but were potential customers. Since then, excluding the occasional flair up around projects like Lafayette’s fiber build, things have generally been quiet on this front. As a result, we have a number of useful munibroadband networks (see this map) and, surprise surprise, big carriers continue to make money hand over fist.

What's Yours Is Mine: Using a Wireless Network You Don't Own

Earlier this month, a Dutch court ruled that breaking into an encrypted router to use somebody else's Wi-Fi connection is not a criminal offense. How do things work in the United States? Well, it's not exactly clear.

There are laws regarding the unauthorized access of a network in each of the 50 states, but a consensus has not yet been reached on how piggybacking, or the access of open wireless networks without the intent to do harm, should be treated in the courts. "The reason we lack a definitive answer," Ryan Singel wrote in the April 2011 issue of Wired, "is that authorities tend to prosecute open Wi-Fi usage only when they are piling charges onto real hacking crimes in order to snag a plea deal. As a result, authorized use, as it applies to the vaguely worded CFAA [Computer Fraud and Abuse Act], has never been laid out definitively in court."

ICANN Requests Independence

In comments filed at the US Department of Commerce, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is urging the government to privatize ICANN, allowing for global participation in the management of Internet names and addresses. ICANN says the current agreement with Commerce "undermine[s] global confidence in the security and stability of unique identifers".

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