November 2011

AT&T, rivals spar over deal's jobs impact

AT&T has claimed its acquisition of T-Mobile would create up to 96,000 jobs, and it has pledged not to eliminate thousands more — an argument it hopes will put political pressure on regulators still deciding the fate of the deal. Foes of the deal, including Sprint and public interest groups, say the deal will actually kill jobs — and they’re demanding that TV stations stop airing commercials in which AT&T says otherwise.

The furor over the jobs numbers bubbled up this week with a flurry of blog posts, reports, press conferences and letters to the Federal communications Commission, which is weighing whether the deal is in the public interest. AT&T bases its job figures on a report by the Economic Policy Institute, which estimates that the deal — and the additional $8 billion AT&T says it will invest in its network to reach 97 percent of the U.S. population — will create between 55,000 and 96,000 jobs over seven years. AT&T has also promised to move 5,000 call center jobs back to the United States from overseas if the deal is approved, and said no one employed by AT&T and T-Mobile at the time of the deal would lose their jobs. AT&T also pledged to eliminate jobs at out-sourcing locations before reducing U.S.-based jobs. Sprint and public interest groups including Public Knowledge and Media Access Project say the 96,000 jobs claim is bogus.

Sprint commissioned its own economic study showing the merger will actually result in “many thousands of lost jobs.” While AT&T says it will invest an additional $8 billion, the study points out that the company has told Wall Street that the merger will result in a $10 billion net reduction in reduced capital spending. And the study says AT&T has eliminated thousands of jobs during previous mergers, so there’s no reason to expect the company to behave differently this time. Labor economist John Neumark, who wrote the report, estimated that the merger would end up destroying between 34,000 and 60,000 jobs as a result of finding new “efficiencies” within the companies.

Cain’s Bad Stretch

While his support continued to hold in the polls, businessman and GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was the focus of a much tougher narrative in the news media last week, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The week, October 31 through November 6, was also the third consecutive one in which negative assertions of Cain in the press outnumbered positive, a turn in his narrative that predated allegations of sexual harassment. Last week, with the news media focused on reports that the trade association Cain once ran compensated women who had alleged he had sexually harassed them, 39% percent of the statements about Cain across a broad spectrum of news media were negative, while 26% were positive (and 36% were neutral). That 13 point differential between negative and positive coverage is the worst week Cain has undergone in press coverage so far, looking across six months of coverage in some 11,500 news outlets, a sample that represents the bulk of what Americans see in the media. But the tone of the narrative had already begun to turn negative for Cain the week of October 17-23, as he began to see more media scrutiny of his 9-9-9 tax plan and other aspects of his positions while he gained in the polls. The new PEJ study, which updates an earlier October 17 report on the tone of campaign news coverage, also compares two samples of news media with each other-that broad spectrum of news media and an "elite" media sample of 47 outlets that are among the largest and most popular.

The National Broadband Map: "Far from Perfect"

Mentioning the National Broadband Map (NBM) is likely to bring up negative reactions in certain telecom circles, but few have gone beyond complaining to actually identifying the map’s specific data limitations and making recommendations for improving the map in future updates. Tony H. Grubesic from Drexel University’s College of Information Science and Technology gave a fascinating presentation at the September 23-25, 2011 Telecom Policy Research Conference about the inaccuracies of the map; and his paper, “The U.S. National Broadband Map: Data Limitations and Implications,” was released recently.

Grubesic’s paper does not argue that the NBM is a complete failure; rather he believes that it is a good start and a definite improvement over previous methods of disseminating broadband data (like the Form 477 database). However, “there are a number of issues associated with data integrity, spatial uncertainty and accuracy within the NBM that need to be addressed. Grubesic’s paper covers several interesting—and alarming—aspects of the NBM. His analysis primarily looks at wireline broadband service for Columbus, Ohio and nearby suburb Dublin. First, he discusses the strengths and weaknesses of using Census blocks. He evaluates the differences in the map’s data between large (greater than 2 square miles) and small (less than 2 square miles) Census blocks. Data was collected differently for large and small blocks, although the map makes no specific differentiation between them. As a result, “One outstanding problem…is whether or not the reported presence of a broadband provider in a block is truly indicative of service availability.”

Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites

As social media use has become pervasive in the lives of American teens, a new study finds that 69% of the teenagers who use social networking sites say their peers are mostly kind to one another on such sites. Still, 88% of these teens say they have witnessed people being mean and cruel to another person on the sites, and 15% report that they have been the target of mean or cruel behavior on social network sites. Adult social network users are less likely to say they witness or experience this type of behavior, but they still report that it is prevalent: 69% of the adults who use social networking sites say they have seen people be mean and cruel to others on those sites. Social media use is widespread among teens. Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of online teens are users of social media sites.

Teens of all ages and backgrounds are witnessing these mean behaviors online and are reacting in a variety of ways:

90% of teen social media users say they have ignored the mean behavior they have witnessed on a social network site.
80% say they have personally defended a victim of meanness and cruelty.
79% say they have told someone to stop their mean behavior on a social network site.
However, 21% of social media-using teens say they have personally joined in on the harassment of others on a social network site.

In addition to probing the behaviors that teens witness or experience on social network sites, this study also examines instances of bullying that happen online and offline.

Among teens, 19% report having experienced bullying anywhere – in person, by text message, by phone call or online – in the last 12 months.
12% of all teens report being bullied in person in the last 12 months
9% of all teens say they were bullied by text message in the last 12 months
8% say they have experienced some type of online bullying – such as through email, a social network site or instant messaging
7% of teens say they’ve been bullied by voice calls over the phone.

Google+ Is Dead

[Commentary] Shortly after Google launched its new social network in June, many companies—including several online magazines, Slate among them—attempted to create “brand profiles” on the service. The rush was a testament to Google’s power to drive a flood of users to any new site it launches. Though Google+ was pretty rough around the edges, many observers called it a credible alternative to Facebook, so it made sense for companies to get in on the ground floor. Yet Google seemed completely surprised by this turn of events. A product manager posted a message discouraging businesses from creating Google+ profiles, and the company began shutting down the profiles posted by renegade firms. This prompted many creative workarounds—TechCrunch jokingly created a page for a fellow named Techathew Cruncherin—but Google was unmoved. (Cruncherin’s profile was shut down.) The episode illustrated a persistent and likely fatal problem for Google’s effort to take on Facebook: There’s nothing to do on Google+, and every time someone figures out a possible use for it, Google turns out the lights.

Sens. Kerry and McCain press agencies for final privacy reports

Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AR) pressed the Department of Commerce and the Federal Trade Commission to release their final reports on consumer privacy protections.

Both agencies released draft reports last December that identified gaps in current privacy protections, but neither has issued its final report. “Consumers are confused and concerned about how their information is collected and distributed, and firms collecting information on people are not bound to any common set of practices and are making them up as they go along," the senators wrote. "Congress and the public could use the guidance of the expert agencies in the form of final reports to help make sense of current practices and how to best protect innovation without sacrificing people’s privacy." In their letter the senators note the draft reports both concluded that industry self-regulation had failed to provide adequate privacy protections for consumers, suggesting the need for legislation. "And both reports presented what the expert staff at your agencies considered would constitute a better framework for addressing privacy issues in commerce. We leaned heavily on those frameworks to construct S.799, the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights," the letter states.

Barnes & Noble Urges U.S. to Probe Microsoft on Mobile Patents

Barnes & Noble asked U.S. regulators to investigate whether Microsoft seeks to monopolize the mobile-device market by demanding patent royalties on electronics running on Google’s Android operating system.

“Microsoft is embarking on a campaign of asserting trivial and outmoded patents against manufacturers of Android devices,” Barnes & Noble said in an Oct. 17 letter to Gene Kimmelman, the Justice Department’s chief counsel for competition policy. “Microsoft is attempting to raise its rivals’ costs in order to drive out competition and to deter innovation in mobile devices.” The world’s largest software maker accused Barnes & Noble of infringing five patents and filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, seeking to block imports of the Nook readers. Barnes & Noble made its letters to the Justice Department public in a filing with the commission.

Communications Workers of America: AT&T's T-Mobile buy would create 100,000 jobs

AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA would create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States, the Communications Workers of America said, again putting its weight behind the deal. CWA said a new analysis has found that the deal, which would combine the second- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, would create an additional 96,000 jobs, alongside the 5,000 outsourced jobs AT&T has pledged to bring back. The CWA also lashed out at opponents of the deal, noting that their concerns over lost jobs stemmed from "sloppy research and the inability to distinguish between the change in the number of wireline and wireless jobs." The union was specifically targeting a study that was commissioned by Sprint Nextel, and it said the company's arguments are "misguided and misleading."

Disconnect: Nielsen Finds No Relationship Between Clicks And Sales

In case there was any confusion, Nielsen reiterated this week that it has found virtually no relationship between clicks and brand metrics, or offline sales.

Hammering home the point, it just released a case study on a campaign for an unnamed household product, which attempted to demonstrate the disconnect between marketers’ short- and long-term campaign goals. Targeting women 25-54, the secret consumer packaged goods advertiser was only able to reach its intended audience 27% of the time. Worse still, Nielsen found high frequency rates for older demographics, including both males and females. “The advertiser was understandably concerned about the percentage of audience reached, and the disproportionate number of impressions delivered to older demographics and males,” according to Nielsen. What went wrong? Perhaps its overreliance on -- or bad taste in -- ad networks, Nielsen suggested.

Understanding the FCC Approach to ICC Reform

Twelve days after the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt an order to transition today’s voice-focused universal service plan to focus instead on universal broadband, the order has not yet been released to the public. While stakeholders contemplate what’s up with that, we thought we’d take the opportunity to provide a run-down on the access charge recovery mechanism outlined by the FCC at the time the order was adopted. That’s a task that was too complex to undertake as part of our initial reporting on this topic, but which we promised we would get to. Access charges, also known as inter-carrier compensation (ICC), are the per-minute fees that carriers pay to one another for terminating voice traffic to each other’s customers. In many rural markets, these charges tend to be proportionately higher than in urban/metro areas to help cover the high costs of building and maintaining communications networks in those rural areas. But the access charge system has become increasingly less viable as a means of recovering network costs as more and more customers opt to go wireless-only. In addition, high access charges in rural areas have given rise to a range of avoidance schemes— including the particularly alarming and increasingly used option of not terminating calls to those areas at all. For these reasons, the FCC’s Universal Service reform order calls for phasing out per-minute access charges over the next five to nine years and creating a recovery mechanism so that carriers can still collect at least part of the funding they would otherwise have obtained through the access charge system.

Benton

Search