June 2012

In the wake of the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to sunset the viewability rule effective next December, a coalition of over 200 TV stations has sprung up to lobby against that change.

According to a release issued by the lobbying/public affairs firm Podesta Group, Voices for Local TV has been formed to try and generate congressional pressure on the FCC to reverse course and extend the rule another three years. A Podesta spokesperson said the National Association of Broadcasters is not a member of the newly formed coalition, but a number of broadcasters are, including Ion and Young Broadcasting, in a list supplied by Podesta that represents over 200 TV stations.

[Commentary] This morning I went through what has become a semi-annual ritual. My Comcast broadband bill arrived, and it included an unannounced price hike, from $52.55 to $80.51.

I picked up the phone and called Comcast, telling the customer service representative that I wanted to cancel my service. I told her that I liked Comcast’s service, but that the price was getting too high so I was going to switch to Verizon DSL. This was a lie—Verizon DSL in my area is unlikely to be fast enough to be an adequate substitute for cable. After trying to upsell me to a “triple play” package and putting me on hold for a minute, she offered me a $10 discount. I probably should have held out for a bigger discount. But I wasn’t actually prepared to have her actually cancel my service, and $10 is better than nothing. I’ll probably call back when I’m better prepared. I’ve been going through this routine every few months for at least five years—first with Charter in St. Louis, now with Comcast in Philadelphia. At first, I would call up and ask if they had any discounts available. But I’ve found that honesty doesn’t get results; the most reliable way to get big discounts is to pretend you’re actually going to cancel. I’ve done this a half-dozen times and they’ve never called my bluff.

[Commentary] Good news, the Federal Communications Commission has decides to one again reboot its seven year old proceeding on “special access.” Given that I have been flogging the FCC since 2006 to do something about this, with occasional reminders since then, I am obviously pleased. AT&T, one of the chief beneficiaries of the current deregulated regime because they face little to no competition in its service territory, is less pleased.

Mind you, AT&T is not alone in this. Telcos generally have monopolies on special access circuits in their service territories, and the three largest telcos -- AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink -- therefore control most of the market. But in its service territory, each telco maintains a near-monopoly on special access. On June 4, FCC Chairman Genachowski told reporters he had circulated and order that would (a) freeze current special access prices, preventing AT&T from implementing yet-another rate hike on some special access services; and, (b) use its authority over the telcos to compel AT&T and the other special access providers to provide data that will prove whether or not the telcos are able to charge monopoly-level prices in their service territories, or not. In its blog post criticizing this move, AT&T’s chief argument against the FCC denying it yet another rate hike and demanding AT&T and the other telcos fork over data critical to determining if they are charging monopoly rents is: “Why you bringing up old stuff?”

In its ongoing efforts to safeguard consumers’ private information, the FTC has charged two businesses with illegally exposing the sensitive personal information of thousands of consumers by allowing peer to peer file-sharing software to be installed on their corporate computer systems. Settlements with the debt collection business and auto dealer will bar misrepresentations about their privacy, security, confidentiality, and integrity of any personal information. Both companies must establish and maintain comprehensive information security programs.

P2P technology can be used in many ways, such as to play games, make online telephone calls, and, through P2P file-sharing software, share music, video, and documents. But the FTC has found that P2P software can pose significant data security risks. A 2010 FTC examination of P2P-related breaches uncovered a wide range of sensitive consumer data available on P2P networks, including health-related information, financial records, and driver's license and social security numbers. Files shared to a P2P network are available for viewing or downloading by any computer user with access to the network. Generally, a file that has been shared cannot be permanently removed from the P2P network. In addition, files can be shared among computers long after they have been deleted from the original source computer.

The FTC alleged that EPN, Inc., a debt collector based in Provo, Utah whose clients have included healthcare providers, commercial credit organizations and retailers, failed to implement reasonable security measures for personal information on its computers and networks. As a result of these failures, EPN's chief operating officer was able to install P2P file-sharing software on the EPN computer system, causing sensitive information including Social Security numbers, health insurance numbers and medical diagnosis codes of 3,800 hospital patients to be made available to any computer connected to the P2P network.