January 2012

Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and internet services as the industry dominated by billionaire Carlos Slim gouges customers and keeps the economy from growing.

Mexico, the second-largest economy in Latin America, cannot reach its growth potential until the cost of phone and internet access comes down and more people have easy access to telecom services, a report from the Organization for Co-operation and Development said. From 2005 to 2009, Mexican consumers paid $13.4 billion a year excess for phone and internet services, with high fees disproportionately hitting the poor, according to the report. In total, overcharging cost the economy $129 billion over the five-year period, the report found, nearly 2 percent of the country's economic output.

Google is pushing back against complaints about its new privacy policy, saying users can still prevent the company from linking all the data it collects about them by turning off their search history, by skipping some of Google’s offerings or by using different Google accounts at different times.

In a letter to lawmakers who have raised questions about the new policy, the company says users will have plenty of ways to control how their personal data is collected and used — even though they can’t opt out of the privacy changes altogether. “The main change in the updated privacy policy is for users signed into Google Accounts,” Pablo Chavez, director of public policy for Google, said in the letter. “Individuals don’t need to sign in to use many of our services including Search, Maps, and YouTube. If a user is signed in, she can still edit or turn off her search history, switch Gmail chat to off the record, control the way Google tailors ads to her interests using our Ads Preferences Manager, use Incognito mode on Chrome, or use any of the other privacy tools we offer.”

House Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and Ranking Member G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) sent a letter to Google requesting a briefing on the company’s recently announced privacy changes. Members have concerns over how the changes will impact Google’s users, specifically users’ ability to opt out of information sharing and data collection.

“We applaud the move toward a shorter, simpler, streamlined policy, and believe that easier-to-understand terms of service are in the best interest of consumers. We are concerned, however, with other changes to Google’s privacy policy, particularly with how a user’s data will be collected, combined, archived, and used across services. These changes might not otherwise be troubling but for one significant change to your terms of service: Google will not permit users to opt out of this information collection and sharing across platforms and devises. While Google’s announcement suggests the company gives users ‘meaning choices about how [user information] is used’, denying users an option to opt out of sharing their information across platforms or devices that they may otherwise strive to keep separate (e.g., work computer versus personal Android phone) appears to significantly reduce the spirit and substance of ‘meaningful choice,’” wrote Reps Bono Mack and Butterfield.

The committee leaders requested a Google representative meet with members of the subcommittee no later than February 3, 2012, to discuss the recent changes to Google’s privacy policy and practices.

Mobile operators like AT&T and Verizon Wireless have used many a financial call and speech to spell out the impending doom that awaits us once they use up their precious frequency resources. They insist we are fast approaching a mobile datapocalypse where their networks will no longer be able to meet the enormous demands for mobile broadband. But are these claims of a spectrum crisis all red herrings?

A couple of telecom industry commentators think so, and they’re calling out the carriers, claiming they are using scare tactics to justify their recent consolidation sprees. DSLPrime and Fast News Net’s Dave Burnstein pointed out that AT&T’s yearly mobile data growth is only 40 percent, far lower than the 92 percent to 120 percent figures predicted by Cisco Systems, research firms and the FCC. Burnstein said that operators are raising the specter of higher data growth rates to scare regulators and lawmakers into giving them more airwaves and placing fewer restrictions on how they use them.