BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2011
A look ahead to August http://benton.org/calendar/2011-08/
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Republicans demand network neutrality documents
Online marketers hit hard by California's new online-sales tax [links to web]
SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
NAB Runs Full Court Press on Auction Action
Analyst says key FCC staff excluded in LightSquared decision
Los Angeles County starting over on emergency communications system
IEEE sets standard for 'white spaces' networking at up to 22 Mbps
Steve Perlman unveils white paper explaining “impossible” wireless data rates
In US Smartphone Market, Android is Top Operating System, Apple is Top Manufacturer - research
Apple vs. Samsung: the real battle for mobile supremacy - analysis
'Apple will push its legal claims hard and unrelentingly' [links to web]
Verizon Wireless Approves $10 Billion Distribution to Co-Owners
LABOR
Facing Call for Concessions, Verizon Workers Vote to Authorize Strike
TELEVISION
Congressional Intent for Set-Top Boxes Unfulfilled, Groups say [links to web]
JOURNALISM
In Baring Facts of Train Crash, Blogs Erode China Censorship
Real time and the evolution of the news story - analysis [links to web]
9/11 Families Meeting Eric Holder Over Murdoch Phone Hacking [links to web]
Norway Attacks Lead Online - research [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Microsoft use of low-tax havens drives down tax bill
What makes China telecom Huawei so scary?
Verizon Wireless Approves $10 Billion Distribution to Co-Owners
BSkyB Board Is Said to Keep James Murdoch as Chairman [links to web]
PRIVACY
How You Can Help Netflix Integrate With Facebook In The US [links to web]
CYBERSECURITY
China vs. U.S.: The cyber Cold War is raging
Defense cyber strategy avoids tackling the most critical issues - op-ed [links to web]
Senators introduce data-security bill [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Feds stonewall on cell phone tracking of Americans
In Baring Facts of Train Crash, Blogs Erode China Censorship
White House Launches Government Accountability and Transparency Board - press release [links to web]
Social Media: Federal Agencies Need Policies and Procedures for Managing and Protecting Information They Access and Disseminate - research [links to web]
Bill Mandates Publishing Agency Reports to Congress
MORE ONLINE
Forget the free coffee -- employees really, really want an iPhone [links to web]
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
GOP REQUESTS NETWORK NEUTRALITY DOCS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Gautham Nagesh]
The House Commerce Committee pressed the Federal Communications Commission for all documentation of the rulemaking process behind the agency's network neutrality regulations. Reps Fred Upton (R-MI), Cliff Stearns (R-FL), and Greg Walden (R-OR) requested all communications between June 25, 2009, and December 21, 2010, when the rules were passed, between any FCC staffer and the Obama Administration as well as all memos, analysis and reports related to the network neutrality. The lawmakers also seek all communications regarding the Open Internet conditions attached to the FCC's approval of Comcast purchasing a majority stake in NBC Universal.
The lawmakers cited reports that FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus attended White House meetings where network neutrality rules were debated as evidence the FCC's rules passed in December were politically motivated. The Reps also pointed to an investigation from Judicial Watch that unearthed e-mails from the advocacy group Free Press to aides of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps advocating strongly for network neutrality, which Commissioner Copps supported.
The lawmakers request a response by August 12. The FCC indicated it plans to comply with the request.
benton.org/node/84521 | Hill, The | B&C | Free Press | Public Knowledge
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
NAB VS SPECTRUM AUCTIONS
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Kim McAvoy]
The National Association of Broadcasters is cranking up its grassroots lobbying machine out of concern that Congress may vote on a debt reduction package this week that will grant the Federal Communications Commission authority to conduct incentive auctions of broadcast TV spectrum without adequate protections for broadcasters who choose not to participate in the auctions. "It’s all hands on deck for us,” says NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton. "We think this is about as big a threat as there is in terms of the future of our business. We have one chance to get this right."
The focus of NAB's concern is the debt reduction plan authored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Reid’s proposal, like the pending Senate bill (S.911), would permit the FCC to conduct incentive auctions of TV spectrum and share the proceeds with broadcasters who give up spectrum. But Reid’s proposal is worrisome because, unlike S. 911, it does not contain any "replication or interference protections" for local TV stations that chose not to relinquish their spectrum, according to industry sources familiar with the plan.
benton.org/node/84518 | TVNewsCheck
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NEW LIGHTSQUARED QUESTIONS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
Staff at the Federal Communications Commission told an equities analyst they weren't consulted about a crucial waiver that fast-tracked billionaire Philip Falcone’s satellite broadband venture LightSquared. If true, the situation could bring more scrutiny to the FCC, which has supported LightSquared’s mobile broadband ambitions even as the GPS industry has warned the network would interfere with key aviation, aerospace and other GPS technologies. Patrick Comack, senior telecom equities analyst at Zachary Investment Research, said that staff in the international bureau told him they did not see a waiver that was approved Jan. 26 by bureau chief Mindel de la Torre. The staff would typically work on such a waiver pertaining to satellite spectrum licenses.
benton.org/node/84529 | Washington Post
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LA COUNTY EMERGENCY SYSTEM
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Joel Rubin]
Los Angeles County leaders Thursday put the county at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds when they voted to scrap years of planning for a vast emergency communications system and restart the search for companies to build the complex project. The drastic decision came three years after officials from the county and the many independent cities within its borders launched the massive project, which is expected to cost about $700 million to design and build. The communication system is intended to allow the scores of police, fire and other emergency-response agencies in the sprawling county to communicate and share data during major incidents such as an earthquake or terrorist attack. In early June, however, county attorneys raised concerns that the nearly completed contract violated state rules on how contracts for publicly funded projects must be structured and awarded, said Patrick Mallon, the project's executive director.
benton.org/node/84528 | Los Angeles Times
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WHITE SPACES STANDARD
[SOURCE: IDG News Service, AUTHOR: Stephen Lawson]
A just-published standard for using the abandoned "white spaces" between TV channels could offer wireless networking at speeds of as much as 22 Mbps over distances as great as 62 miles. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers announced on Wednesday that it has published the IEEE 802.22 standard, which defines the unlicensed use of frequencies between TV channels in the VHF and UHF bands. The IEEE 802.22 Working Group began its standards effort after the U.S. Federal Communications Commission started exploring the use of these frequencies by unlicensed devices. But the group said its standard could be used around the world, especially in rural areas and developing countries where there tend to be more vacant TV channels.
benton.org/node/84450 | IDG News Service
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DISTRIBUTED INPUT DISTRIBUTED OUTPUT
[SOURCE: VentureBeat, AUTHOR: Dean Takahashi]
People have called Steve Perlman’s new wireless technology impossible. Today, he’s releasing a white paper that aims to show how it can really work. Perlman’s “distributed input distributed output” technology, or DIDO, allows each wireless user on a network to use the full data capacity of shared spectrum simultaneously with a bunch of other users. It does so by eliminating interference between users sharing the same spectrum. That’s a phenomenal invention that appears to violate the laws of physics, and Perlman calls it a “cloud wireless system." The technology gets around Shannon’s Law — a physics law that figures the upper limit for data that can go through a wireless channel. The new technology can transmit data at speeds that are about 10 times the limits determined by Shannon’s Law, and Perlman thinks that could hit 1,000 times the limit eventually.
benton.org/node/84453 | VentureBeat | read the white paper
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ANDROID AND APPLE
[SOURCE: Nielsen, AUTHOR: ]
According to June data from Nielsen, Google’s Android operating system (OS) now claims the largest share of the U.S. consumer smartphone market with 39 percent. Apple’s iOS is in second place with 28 percent, while RIM Blackberry is down to 20 percent. However, because Apple is the only company manufacturing smartphones with the iOS operating system, it is clearly the top smartphone manufacturer in the United States. Other leading manufacturers include HTC, whose Android phones represents 14 percent of the smartphone market and whose Windows Mobile/WP7 devices account for 6 percent of the market; and Motorola, whose Android devices are owned by 11 percent of smartphone consumers. Samsung’s Android devices are used by 8 percent of smartphone owners while their Windows Mobile/WP7 phones are used by 2 percent of smartphone owners.
benton.org/node/84452 | Nielsen
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APPLE VS SAMSUNG
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Erica Ogg]
We hear so often that the future of mobile will boil down to an entrenched battle between Apple and Google, or the iPhone and Android. But that’s far too broad a way of looking at things. True, Android has established itself as the dominant smartphone OS, but that includes many smartphones from different companies, compared to just Apple and its iPhone. There is, however, a particular hardware maker making excellent use of Android to take it to Apple on several fronts. That’s Samsung. And how the battle between the two plays out over the next few years is going to be fascinating. The best illustration of the brewing brouhaha came just last week when Apple announced that between April and June of this year it sold more than 20 million iPhones. Wall Street gossip indicates Samsung may announce somewhere between 19 million and 21 million smartphones sold during the second quarter with its earnings results. In other words, the two are pretty much neck and neck in smartphone momentum right now.
benton.org/node/84476 | GigaOm
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VERIZON DIVIDENDS
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Olga Kharif]
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, approved a $10 billion distribution to owners Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, the first payout of that kind in more than five years. The payment will be made on Jan. 31 and distributed to the two companies in proportion to their ownership in Verizon Wireless, the company said. New York- based Verizon Communications holds 55 percent of the wireless venture, while Newbury, England-based Vodafone owns 45 percent. Verizon Wireless will still have enough funds to buy assets, such as any divestitures that may be part of AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA, said spokesman Peter Thonis. Verizon Wireless generates more than $10 billion in cash annually, leaving it with money to make its own deals, Thonis said.
benton.org/node/84533 | Bloomberg | WSJ | FT
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LABOR
VERIZON WORKERS OK STRIKE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Steven Greenhouse]
Verizon Communications is seeking major concessions from 45,000 unionized workers in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, as it copes with a long-term drop in revenue and profits in its old-fashioned telephone business and intense competition in television and Internet services. But the union leaders are resisting any suggestion of givebacks, saying the overall company is making plenty of money. The company earned $6.9 billion in net income for the first six months of this year, amid strong growth in its majority-owned Verizon Wireless cellphone operation. And Verizon’s hefty investment in its FiOS TV and Internet services is starting to pay off. The battle lines between the sides were drawn more sharply on Thursday, when the Communication Workers of America announced that in balloting by 35,000 of its members at Verizon, 91 percent had authorized their leaders to call a strike as soon as Aug. 7, after the contract expires. Verizon and union officials agree that the company’s demands are far more sweeping than in previous years. Verizon says it is pushing hard for flexibility and to hold down costs because its wireline business — which, unlike its wireless operation, is heavily unionized — faces such intense competition, much of it nonunion.
benton.org/node/84531 | New York Times
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OWNERSHIP
MICROSOFT TAX HAVENS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Lynnley Browning]
If you want to know why tax from surging corporate profits isn't making much of a dent in the United States' crippling budget deficit, a glance at Microsoft's recent results provides some clues. Things were rosy in the giant software company's just-ended fiscal fourth quarter, which produced record sales of nearly $17.4 billion, a 30 percent increase in after-tax profit, and a 35 percent gain in earnings per share. But for the Internal Revenue Service and foreign tax authorities, things weren't so rosy. Microsoft reported only $445 million in taxes in the U.S. and other foreign countries, just 7 percent of its $6.32 billion in pre-tax profit. Given the rancor in Congress and in the country about how to tackle the nation's budget deficit and debt, including how companies stash profits overseas and enjoy lucrative tax breaks, it is instructive to see how the top brass at Microsoft's headquarters achieved this eye-popping tax result.
benton.org/node/84464 | Reuters
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HUAWEI IN THE US
[SOURCE: CNNMoney, AUTHOR: Sheridan Prasso]
Huawei, the world's second-largest supplier of telecom and Internet gear, has little trouble garnering business around the globe. The Chinese company has customers in 130 countries, sells equipment to 45 of the world's top 50 telcos, and brought in $27 billion in revenue in 2010 -- enough to rank No. 352 on Fortune's Global 500 list. With sales on pace to grow another 10% this year, it's likely that Huawei (pronounced "HWAH-way") will soon race past Sweden's Ericsson and take over as the globe's No. 1 manufacturer of communications equipment. Yet success in the world's biggest telecom market, the U.S., has been hard to come by. Despite bidding again and again since it first entered America a decade ago, the company has yet to win a single big contract from the top-tier U.S. carriers. There are some good reasons for that. U.S. telecom companies have long relationships with home-grown suppliers. It's also true that for many years Huawei's gear just wasn't that good -- fine for emerging markets, perhaps, but not for the 24/7 service and reliability required by U.S. networks. Today, however, Huawei is building some of the best, most innovative, and fastest equipment in the industry. Quality is no longer an issue. But Huawei is facing resistance that goes beyond pure competition with its peers. Several members of Congress, joined by Gary Locke, the U.S. Commerce Secretary soon headed to Beijing as the next U.S. ambassador, have lobbied hard against Huawei. Meanwhile, U.S. regulators have blocked it from three acquisitions, and earlier this year forced it to unravel its purchase of a defunct California cloud-computing company called 3Leaf.
benton.org/node/84456 | CNNMoney
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CYBERSECURITY
CYBER COLD WAR RAGING
[SOURCE: CNNMoney, AUTHOR: David Goldman]
Experts say much more needs to be done by the government and corporations to ensure our national security.
"The problem is we have this thicket of 20th century rules that don't work in the 21st century," said Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security, in a talk last month hosted by analytics company Opera Solutions. "The concept of a 'person' as the only threat has lost is meaning. It may be a server; we can be at war with a network." In other words, protecting land, sea and air borders won't save you if your attackers are seconds away no matter where they are. For all the improvements that the government needs to make, the private sector lags further behind. A recent wave of cyberthreats began to scare corporations into beefing up their security, but companies have still been reluctant to spend. Still, experts say the nightmare scenario -- China disabling our defenses and attacking the country -- remains unlikely.
benton.org/node/84458 | CNNMoney
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
CELL PHONE TRACKING
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Timothy Lee]
In a letter to two US Senators, the Obama Administration has refused to publicly disclose the extent of government tracking of American citizens -- or even to describe the legal basis on which it is conducting such tracking. "We will get back to you," the letter says. Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) have emerged in recent months as the Senate's leading critics of unfettered government surveillance. In mid-July, they sent a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeking information about whether the federal government had "the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes." They also asked about the number of Americans whose communications have been intercepted (FISA warrants are only supposed to target non-Americans) and details on rumored incidents of intelligence officials failing to comply with the law. In a July 26 letter, Clapper aide Kathleen Turner politely brushed aside all of these questions. She refused to publicly divulge any details about the nature, extent, or legal basis of the government's domestic spying activities. Instead, she directed Wyden and Udall to classified materials the administration had already made available to members of Congress, and offered to discuss the Senators' concerns in greater detail in a classified briefing.
benton.org/node/84524 | Ars Technica
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CENSORSHIP, CHINA AND THE TRAIN WRECK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michael Wines, Sharon LaFraniere]
The swift and comprehensive blogs on the Chinese train accident stood this week in stark contrast to the stonewalling of the Railways Ministry, already stained by a bribery scandal. And they are a humbling example for the Communist Party news outlets and state television, whose blinkered coverage of rescued babies only belatedly gave way to careful reports on the public’s discontent. While the blogs have exposed wrongdoers and broken news before, this week’s performance may signal the arrival of weibos as a social force to be reckoned with, even in the face of government efforts to rein in the Internet’s influence. The government censors assigned to monitor public opinion have let most, though hardly all of the weibo posts stream onto the Web unimpeded. But many experts say they are riding a tiger. For the very nature of weibo posts, which spread faster than censors can react, makes weibos beyond easy control. And their mushrooming popularity makes controlling them a delicate matter.
benton.org/node/84537 | New York Times
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PUBLISHING AGENCY REPORTS
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Joseph Marks]
The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee introduced companion legislation to the Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act. The measure would require the Government Printing Office to publish agency reports to Congress online within 30 days of their submission. Digital copies of the reports would have to be searchable by report text, key words and by the federal agencies that produced the reports and the Congressional committee that received them. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) introduced the House version of the legislation in May. It was reported out of the House Oversight Committee June 22 and is awaiting action by the full House.
benton.org/node/84461 | nextgov
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