August 2011

How Google plans to change the way you watch TV

Google chairman Eric Schmidt was on a diplomacy mission last week, reaching out to broadcasters in the UK and urging them to embrace changes in the way that viewers watch TV, as enabled by the Internet.

Giving the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Schmidt provided a view into how TV is changing and made a plea for broadcasters to work with the search giant to enable that future. “You ignore the Internet at your peril,” Schmidt told the audience. “The Internet is fundamental to the future of television for one simple reason: because it’s what people want.” For Schmidt, people want the experience that the Internet brings, because it enables things that traditional TV cannot: “It makes TV more personal, more participative, more pertinent.”

It’s official: Google wants to own your online identity

[Commentary] Ever since Google launched its new Google+ social network, we and others have pointed out that the search giant clearly has more in mind than just providing a nice place for people to share photos of their pets. For one thing, Google needs to tap into the “social signals” that people provide through networks like Facebook so it can improve its search results. But there’s a larger motive as well: as chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt admitted in an interview in Edinburgh over the weekend, Google is taking a hard line on the real-name issue because it sees Google+ as an “identity service” or platform on which it can build other products.

Fairness Doctrine Demise Gives Rise to the Public Interest

[Commentary] On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission made it official: the Fairness Doctrine is dead and buried.

It's not like there's been any serious talk about restoring it, (although Newt Gingrich supported the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine back in the Reagan years.) These days, the only people really talking about restoring the Fairness Doctrine were former right wing radio talk host Mike Pence (R-IN), who sponsored the Broadcaster Freedom Act , and right wing radio talkers like Sean Hannity, who have spent years on radio microphones trying to make the Fairness Doctrine a boogey man to the American people.

There is much energy around restoring the Public into the Public Interest. A grassroots movement started earlier this year in Florida, when the UU Legislative Ministry supported an 11 city media reform tour featuring Broadcast Blues. But it is really finding its legs next month with the 2011 Wisconsin Media Reform Tour featuring Broadcast Blues. (Broadcast Blues is the 2009 documentary film I made which delves into issues of public interest obligations of broadcasters.) Thanks to the organizing efforts of local folks, I'll be traveling to eight cities in Wisconsin, showing the film, then surveying citizens as to their specific public interest needs. Next, we'll work on how to approach their local broadcasters, not just by email, but with personal visits, and convey to the broadcasters what they need. In some cases, friendly visits will get great results: heck, the manager of the station could be somebody you went to high school with. But other times, protests, boycotts, maybe even legal petitions to deny the stations' licenses may need to be filed. We'll do whatever it takes to restore the public -- all the public -- into the public interest obligations of broadcasters. But unlike the Fairness Doctrine, this is a bottom up approach. This is "We the People" holding both broadcasters -- and the FCC accountable to us. We are taking back that which we already own: our public airwaves.

Public Interest Groups Ask FCC to Declare BART Actions Unlawful

On August 11, 2011, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), anticipating protests and demonstrations in its stations, shut down access to cellular communications, disrupted mobile phone and data service to a massive number of consumers for up to four hours. On August 29, Public Knowledge, along with a coalition of other public interest organizations, urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to immediately find that BART violated federal law and to clarify that local government agencies may not interfere with access to mobile phone networks.

In the petition, the groups said, “The Commission must act immediately to clarify that local governments do not have blanket authority to interrupt access to [mobile phone] networks. Allowing local governments to interrupt access to wireless communications networks threatens the stability of the network, endangers public safety, and infringes the right of members of the public to access the phone system.

The groups also noted that it has been settled law for decades that local government agencies have no authority to shut down mobile phone service on mere suspicion of illegal activity without due process.

In addition to Public Knowledge, the following groups signed on to the petition: the Broadband Institute of California, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Center for Media Justice, Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Media Access Project, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation.

How Carriers Hamstring Your Smart Phone

A team at the University of Michigan and Microsoft Research has uncovered, for the first time, the frequently suboptimal network practices of more than 100 cellular carriers. By recruiting almost 400 volunteers to run an app on their phones that probes a carrier's networks, the team discovered, for example, that one of the four major U.S. carriers is slowing its network performance by up to 50 percent. They also found carrier policies that drained users' phone batteries at an accelerated rate, and security vulnerabilities that could leave devices open to complete takeover by hackers.

Wireless Data Caps: Will They Really Cost You More?

Unlimited data plans are going extinct, and users are wondering how they can avoid paying higher fees for their Web-surfing and Facebook-checking habits.

In July, Verizon Wireless became the most recent carrier to switch from $30-per-month "all you can eat" data pricing to tiered data pricing. To see what effect the move to tiered pricing is likely to have on everyday users, we asked ten subscribers with smartphones to look at how much data they've been using per month for the past few months. Most of the respondents found that they hadn't been exceeding the 2GB data cap; but the larger their phone's screen was, the more data they tended to use, simply because those phones do a better job of streaming video and audio, and are easier to use for recreation and for checking email. For now, if you're already a Verizon customer with a data plan, you can keep the unlimited-data provision of your contract until you upgrade to a smartphone from a feature phone. Even then, you can keep your $30-per-month plan, but you'll pay extra if you use more than 2GB per month.

At the moment, it appears that most smartphone users don't consume more than 2 GB, meaning that most Verizon customers won't see a change in their fees under the new plans. But as phones get bigger screens, 4G networking capabilities, 3D gaming systems, and other features in the near future, many people will be tempted over the 2GB line by the improved experience.

Twitter hires Hill, FCC veteran Crowell to head global policy

Twitter named Capitol Hill and Federal Communications Commission veteran Colin Crowell as its head of global public policy, expanding its presence in Washington (DC) as social media firms fall in the crosshairs of debates over global speech rights and online privacy. Crowell will join the company in mid-September. He spent two decades as a legislative aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA).

Sens. Rockefeller and Hutchison push for public safety network

Sens Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, reiterated their support for a public safety broadband network in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission.

The senators, pointing to communications problems following last week’s East Coast earthquake, said the FCC needs to work harder to protect communications networks during emergencies, both for consumers using commercial networks and for emergency responders. “Despite being six years from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and ten years from the tragic events of 9/11, we still do not have an interoperable wireless broadband network for public safety,” the senators wrote. “We must not allow any more potentially life-threatening disasters to occur before our nation’s first responders get the interoperable public safety communications system they need to keep us safe. And, as the communications troubles following the earthquake reminded us, we cannot require public safety to rely exclusively on commercial networks for their mission-critical, advanced wireless communications needs.”

Deutsche Telekom: US staffing not linked to AT&T deal

Deutsche Telekom said it had not been cutting jobs at its US arm T-Mobile USA in anticipation of the unit's sale to AT&T, as reported by a German online magazine. "In the past 12 months the workforce has been reduced by 2,000 but that is in line with normal fluctuations." The U.S. unit employs 36,000 people at present.

Broadband, the poor relation among utilities

[Commentary] Broadband Internet is supposed to be a utility — many people even say it’s a human right. But the providers don't see it that way when you move house.

I arrived in my new home a week ago. There was energy and power. The water was flowing. None of these presented any problem whatsoever. It was just a matter of changing the customer names on the accounts and reading the meters. But it was a different matter when it came to communications. The phone was disconnected and there was no prospect of broadband Internet until almost two weeks away. That length of wait to get service delivered does not in my view merit the title of a utility, with its connotations of reliable, always-on provision. What irks me most of all is that I, like a growing number of other people, work from home and the broadband connection is critical for that work. Everyone is up-in-arms when there is so much as a two-hour outage of an online service such as Amazon or Microsoft BPOS. Routinely inflicting two-week outages on economically significant workers like this ought to be a national scandal.