January 2012

Some Countries Are More Social Than Others, Survey Finds

In the big cities of India and China, it seems, people can’t help being social. Nearly everyone who uses the Internet there is also active on social networks, according to a vast global survey by Forrester Research, and most of them do much more than read and watch what’s posted online.

Three out of four of them write blog posts or upload pictures and music. Cultures reveal themselves online. Italians are twice as likely to visit a social networking site as Germans. The Japanese prefer anonymity and eschew Facebook, which demands real names, for the more flexible Japanese network called Mixi. Europeans and Americans seem to be equally passive: less than a fourth post any content at all. They use social media heavily, though: 86 percent among online Americans and 79 percent among online Europeans, according to Forrester. The online survey was collected from 95,000 Internet users in 18 countries. Three-fourths of Facebook users are outside the United States, as is more than half of the Twitterverse. In China, India, Mexico and Brazil – countries where Internet penetration is lower than in the United States and Europe — 93 percent of those who are online use social networks at least once a month, the Forrester report found.

Paula Kerger, PBS Chief, Calls For Viewers To Oppose Mitt Romney's Stance Towards TV Funding

PBS chief Paula Kerger wants viewers to oppose Mitt Romney's call to end funding of public broadcasting.

She recognized the United States has to make tough budget decisions but defended PBS as an effective public-private partnership. Kerger says that while she can make the argument, elected officials listen to their constituents. Romney has criticized public funding for PBS while campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination. He has said he doesn't intend to "kill Big Bird" of "Sesame Street" but that public TV shows will have to become ad-supported. Kerger says that federal rules governing public broadcasting prohibit commercials.

American Community Television: California Punts on PEG Accessibility

The Office of Attorney General Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) said it will wait for the Federal Communications Commission to weigh in on whether digital cable public access (PEG) channels are insufficiently accessible to the blind and deaf community.

Harris’s office also said the FCC's ongoing implementation of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 is reason to hold off on a decision. The American Community Television says that the blind and vision-impaired can't access the U-Verse channels through the on-screen menus and has complained about the issue before. AT&T countered when ACT first called for AG investigations that its programming can be "easily and quickly accessed, is high quality and offers many benefits."

2011 ends with almost 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions

In a world of 7 billion people, the number of mobile phone subscriptions has reached 5.9 billion.

The International Telecommunications Union found that mobile phone subscriptions have now penetrated 87 percent of the entire world and 79 percent of all developing countries. Among all those mobile phone users, mobile broadband subscriptions number almost 1.2 billion. Such subscriptions have jumped 45 percent each year for the past four year and now outnumber fixed broadband subscriptions by 2 to 1. To push forward with mobile broadband, 159 nations across the world have kicked off 3G networks, though 2G coverage is still twice as high as 3G. Overall, people in developed countries typically use both mobile and fixed broadband, while those in less developed economies often have access only to mobile broadband services.

Switching over to fixed broadband, one-third of the 1.8 billion household around the world now have Internet access, up from one-fifth just five years ago. In developing nations, 25 percent of all homes have a PC and 20 percent have Internet access. Overall, a full one-third of the 7 billion people on the planet use the Internet, and 45 percent of them are under the age of 25.

Cell Carriers Show Little Interest in CES

Wireless carriers will have a lower profile than in previous years at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest technology conventions in the world.

The carriers will have booths on the show floor at CES 2012, which will start on Jan 8 in Las Vegas (NV). But Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile won’t deliver keynote speeches. That means they are unlikely to make major announcements about handsets or their networks at the conference. Their lack of more active involvement is unusual, as each company has in the past used C.E.S. as a stage for announcements. Of the big four, AT&T will be the only major American carrier actively participating. Several executives, including Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s chief executive, will speak at the company’s annual developers summit, which will be held at the show. The low profile of the three other big carriers suggests that they may be leaning toward smaller, more focused trade shows like the Mobile World Congress, which centers on the mobile industry, or CTIA, hosted by the Wireless Association, said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst with the research firm Forrester.

Disney and Comcast Link Up for Another 10 Years

Comcast has re-upped its distribution deal with Disney, which means the country’s largest cable company will continue to pipe programming from ABC, ESPN and other channels into its subscribers’ homes for another 10 years. The deal will also give Comcast customers more ways to watch those shows, including the ability to stream some of the programs live, on the go, on laptops, iPhones and iPads.

While there are digital goodies and benefits included in the new deal, this is still fundamentally about good old-fashioned TV, just like the 10-year deal that Comcast signed with CBS in 2010: It means Comcast (funded by its customers) will pay Disney an increasingly big chunk of money each year, in exchange for a big bundle of programming.
That underscores how difficult it will be for would-be Web-only “over the top” services to truly change the TV paradigm: When Disney and the other big-media companies are still able to bundle their channels together in exchange for big guaranteed revenue streams, they don’t have any incentive to break that up and offer “a la carte” programming.

Chinese telecom firm denies helping Iran squelch dissent

Huawei pushed back against six members of Congress who are calling for a State Department investigation into the company's activities in Iran.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s technology is being used to track dissidents and silence dissent in Iran, in violation of a 2010 U.S. sanctions law. Huawei spokesman Bill Plummer called the allegations completely baseless. He acknowledged that Huawei set up location-based services, including those that allow police to track locations of users, but said that these are standard features on networks throughout the world. He said the company does not expect the State Department to impose any sanctions on the Chinese company and noted the firm does not have any U.S. government contracts.

National Conference of State Legislatures ranks healthcare among top 2012 priorities

The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) published its annual listing of top priorities for the coming year, and healthcare and health information technology issues were chief concerns for 2012.

NCSL lists health exchanges of both current varieties – insurance and information – as a “dominant issue for legislative sessions.” More specifically, health insurance exchanges (HIX), for participating states, will be a priority this year as states work toward the January 1, 2013 deadline to have a HIX plan in place – a particularly tricky matter as HIX’s represent the rare opportunity to upgrade state’s IT infrastructure with federal funding but the feds have yet to issue final rules.

On the health information exchange (HIE) front, the issue will be how to get healthcare providers to adopt EHRs. “Essentially, instead of having a different health record at each doctor or provider you visit, an EHR will serve as one file that all of your doctors can see,” NCSL added. In addition to serving as a single patient history, EHRs will form the foundation of HIEs. “By mid-year 2012, every state should have Medicaid EHR Incentive programs in place and will be working toward building an HIE by late 2014 or early 2015 as required by deadlines attached to federal cooperative agreements.”

Survey: Majority Of Free Mobile Apps Have Privacy Policies

Mobile app developers appear more likely to offer privacy policies now than last year, according to a recent report by the Future of Privacy Forum.

The think tank recently surveyed top apps and found that 66% of the free apps and 33% of paid apps how have privacy policies. Three-quarters of the free apps with privacy policies made the documents accessible in the app or through a link within the app. Half of the paid apps with privacy policies did the same. For the more recent study, released last week, the Future of Privacy Forum examined the top 10 free and paid mobile apps across the Android, iOS and BlackBerry platforms.

Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the industry-funded think tank, suggests that free apps are more likely to rely on advertising, and therefore, more likely to disclose how they use data than paid apps.

5 Mobile Things That Won't Happen In 2012

Plenty of good things and plenty of bad things happened throughout 2011 in the mobile industry and the same will be true of 2012. Looking ahead a wee bit, here are a few things that we might like to see happen next year--but probably won't.

The end of patent lawsuits.
The return of unlimited data.
Widely available mobile payments.
A solid competitor to AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
A viable competitor to Android.

Benton

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