April 2012

Cellphone industry opposes California location privacy bill

The California Senate Public Safety Committee is hearing arguments on the California Location Privacy Bill (SB 1434). It's a new bill that would provide more consumer protection for law enforcement access to mobile phones.

As currently written, it would require a warrant before police gain access to location information, and would also require that mobile phone companies disclose how often and why they are giving up this information as a way to monitor proper use of this law. Not surprisingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California have been arguing in favor of the new bill. Who’s against? Why, it’s CTIA, the industry trade group of the cellphone industry.

How to expand students’ ed tech access -- and stay out of court

Finding the right balance between keeping students safe and letting them explore their world digitally was the focus of an April 21 session during the National School Boards Association’s 72nd annual conference, in which NSBA senior staff attorney Sonja Trainor gave advice on how school districts can open their doors to technology without getting sued. Cracking down on cyber bullying or harassment, searching students’ cell phones or laptops, and filtering school internet access are some of the areas where educators can get into trouble if they don’t know their proper legal boundaries, Trainor said. Here’s what she had to say about each of these areas.

The DSL death march continues

The slow death march of DSL continues, especially at two of the largest phone companies in America.

Last week, Verizon reported a loss of about 89,000 DSL connections and a boom in demand for its faster fiber optic service, FiOS, which added about 193,000 new subscribers. We are seeing similar trends at AT&T as well. Things are so bad at Ma Bell, that it buried the news at the bottom of the earnings release. A net addition of 103,000 broadband subscribers is an improvement from the fourth quarter of 2011 (ended December 31) when the company saw a net decline of 49,000 in total broadband subscribers. AT&T lost close to 615,000 classic DSL connections during the first quarter of 2012. In the fourth quarter of 2011, AT&T lost about 636,000 connections. With more people using broadband to access all sorts of bandwidth-consuming services such as Spotify, Netflix and MLB games, it is pretty clear that the classic DSL isn’t enough. The change in demand patterns is reflective of that.

T-Mobile is buying neither Verizon’s story, nor its spectrum

Verizon hasn’t exactly done a bang-up job selling its critics on the merits of its 4G spectrum consolidation plans.

Verizon is offering to part with a bunch of 700 MHz licenses if it gets permission to buy up the cable operators’ friendlier frequencies in the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) airwaves. But one of the operators who stood to benefit the most from that sale, T-Mobile, isn’t interested and is urging the FCC to kill the Verizon-cable deal. So why isn’t T-Mobile tantalized by Verizon’s offer?

Two reasons: 1) The spectrum Big Red is selling just doesn’t fit with T-Mobile’s LTE plans, no matter how meager they might be, and 2) T-Mobile probably feels it has a shot at getting those same cable AWS licenses if it convince the FCC to put the kibosh on Verizon’s sweetheart deal.

What if Facebook isn’t so special after all?

As the fateful day of Facebook’s initial public offering draws closer, the giant social network’s financial results are attracting more and more attention. And while there are some blockbuster numbers in its recently updated securities filing — including a mind-boggling 900 million active users, half a billion of whom use the site daily — there are also some potential red flags, including rapidly rising costs for marketing and other expenses. All of this raises the question that investors will need to answer before too long: Is Facebook unlike anything we have seen before, or is it just another modestly profitable Web business?

The future of TV isn’t TV, it’s broadband.

[Commentary] As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate’s Commerce Committee held a hearing today covering the future of television, but midway through the hearing I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t to be found in deregulation — it’s on the Internet. We just have to let it happen. And to do that, Congress needs to look at how broadband providers control access to content, through caps, specialized offerings and deals. Unfortunately, Congress didn’t do all of that. It danced around the problems of pipe owners also owning content providers and pay TV distribution businesses. It didn’t ask about caps on broadband and how that serves the interests of the pay TV business, and despite the fact that network neutrality was brought up several times and was cited by Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, and Amazon’s public policy lead Paul Misener, the way that Comcast is sidestepping network neutrality by not counting content streamed over the Xbox against its data cap was never mentioned.

Instead the call during the hearing was for a rewrite of the 1996 Telecoms Act, which deregulated the telecommunications agency, helped establish the rules that let the Internet grow and brought about the rise of competitive local exchange carriers. But in an election year, such a rewrite seems unlikely, and frankly, worrisome given the power that ISPs and content companies have in Washington at the moment. Instead, the law that might make headway is the The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act, which was proposed in December, and was the basis for the hearing.

Who’s eating up AT&T’s data capacity? It’s not new customers

What does a mobile network hosting 41.2 million smartphones look like? A network where growth in data traffic far exceeds data revenue growth. AT&T is selling a lot of smartphones and data plans, but even millions of new iPhones customers don’t fully account for the huge spikes in mobile data traffic that AT&T is experiencing.

AT&T’s first quarter earnings numbers show that new smartphone customers aren’t the ones straining its data networks. Rather AT&T’s chickens have come home to roost. Customers are finally starting to consume the big buckets of data AT&T is selling them, taking their fair share of network capacity while not paying more for the privilege. Consequently AT&T is seeing a massive increase in data traffic without seeing a corresponding jump in data revenues. If carriers from the beginning had set reasonable plan tiers that actually reflected how customers consumed data, operators could have gradually lowered prices as their networks became more efficient. It’s probably a stretch to say they would have come off as heroes, but their mobile data policies probably wouldn’t be vilified the way they are today. Instead, they chose to gouge customers by selling them far more gigabytes than they could possibly use. Now that customers are starting to actually use up those gigs, carriers are claiming they’re running out of capacity. Didn’t you guys see this coming?

Subscribers Jump At 'TV Network' Netflix

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings hammered home Monday that the company believes it is squarely in the TV business, saying that increased competition for exclusive content is “a natural outcome of us becoming a network like other cable networks."

He also used the term “Internet television” to describe the company, which finished the January-March quarter with 23.4 million streaming subscribers in the U.S., following 1.7 net additions in the quarter. The company predicts it will end the year at close to 29 million streaming customers in the U.S., which would be equal to about 30% of homes that pay for TV service. Netflix is moving to acquire exclusive rights to TV shows that have run elsewhere -- such as AMC’s “Breaking Bad” -- while launching content it produces itself, such as “Lilyhammer,” which came online in the first quarter.

Why the House Homeland Security Committee is on the cybersecurity sidelines

As the House considers as many as four cybersecurity bills later this week, the House Homeland Security Committee will be playing only a supporting role in what could be considered one of its signature issues. Conspicuously absent from the House's "Cyber Week" agenda is the Homeland Security Committee's Precise Act, which cleared a subcommittee by voice vote in February. Now, what was once a bipartisan bill is bogged down and on hold and the committee has been sidelined.

The committee will hold at least two hearings this week to highlight cyberthreats, but for a panel that oversees the agency deemed central to the government's civilian cybersecurity efforts, it is a significantly diminished role. House leaders have tapped lawmakers from the chamber's Intelligence and Armed Services committees to lead the efforts. According to House Homeland Security members, House GOP leadership pressed the sponsors of the Precise Act to remove sections that conflicted with other committees' work, or that were too similar to proposals disliked by Senate Republicans. But the changes sparked Democrats to drop their support, and now House leaders appear to be blocking the Precise Act from floor consideration until Democrats support it again.

GSA Tool Will Verify Federal Social Media Accounts

The General Services Administration is reportedly working on a validation tool to help people verify whether a Tumblr account, Facebook page or Twitter handle that purports to be from a federal official or agency is legitimate. The social media registry will help reporters, researchers and others ensure they're dealing with a credible source. It will be less helpful, though, at combatting the broad effects of misinformation spread by social media imitators and hackers who tend to prey on people who don't double check their news sources.

Benton

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