August 2012

AT&T's FaceTime fight is a very slippery slope

AT&T is vigorously defending its controversial plan to restrict wireless access to Apple's FaceTime app for certain iPhone customers. The heated battle between the carrier and its critics could have broad implications for how cell phone companies can control bandwidth-intensive apps in the future. AT&T's legal justification has a few glaring holes.

The company's tiered data plans are set up so that heavy data users pay more for their usage. So why restrict them from using a bandwidth-intensive app like FaceTime if AT&T already has safeguards in place to manage heavy downloads? If someone gobbles up lots of FaceTime data, they'll be paying AT&T for every bit of it. Other wireless providers have so far stayed mum on the issue. It will come to a head in a few weeks, when Apple is widely expected to release the latest version of its iOS mobile operating system. Apple announced in June that the update would open up FaceTime to cellular networks for the first time. Previously, the app had only been available over Wi-Fi networks.

When Wireless Sensors Meet Big Data

They're in vending machines, parking meters, home security systems, and even healthcare devices for the elderly. They are wireless sensors, a key component of the burgeoning machine-to-machine (M2M) industry where devices use wired and wireless connections to communicate with each other. Though far from new, M2M technology is expanding its reach at a dramatic rate. M2M connections will grow to 2.1 billion by 2021, up from roughly 100 million last year, according to research firm Analysis Mason. The dramatic growth of global smartphone usage is a major factor in M2M's popularity, of course, as are industrial applications in the transportation, emergency services, security, and retail sectors. A good chunk of M2M hookups are done via fixed lines, including DSL, ISDN, cable modem, and Ethernet connections. But the real growth is in the wireless arena, and it's being spearheaded by cellular carriers. "Faced with diminishing rates of growth in handset sales and declining residential ARPU (average revenue per user), these mobile operators have latched onto a new area of device growth: the connecting of all things in the world, rather than all people," wrote Analysis Mason analyst Steve Hilton in a November 2011 report.

FCC to study data caps, and may raise broadband speed threshold

With Comcast, Verizon and other broadband providers beginning to offer broadband Internet services with download speeds of 300 Mbps and faster, the Federal Communications Commission says it may need to change the definition for what it considers broadband.

Since 2010, the FCC has said that Internet service providers had to offer download speeds of 4 Mbps and upload speeds of 1 Mbps for their products to be considered broadband. In a notice of inquiry issued on Tuesday, the FCC said that the threshold may need to be raised to reflect the demands required by consumers relying more on broadband services to download high-definition video and to access the Internet on multiple devices in their homes. The commission, which released its Eighth Annual Broadband Progress Report on Tuesday, said it is also considering whether to gauge the impact that broadband usage caps and tiered data plans in next year's report. "If we add a data capacity threshold for fixed broadband in the next report, what data capacity threshold or thresholds should we adopt," the FCC asks in the notice of inquiry. "What data capacity limits do most fixed broadband providers offer today? How often, and under what circumstances, do consumers exceed these limits?"

Wi-fi guy gets a fair chance

Anyone with a smartphone or tablet computer knows the drill: When you need a fast connection to the Internet, you find a Wi-Fi hot spot. That's fine with Duran Johnson, the well-traveled president of DragNFly Wireless Inc. of Eden Prairie (MN), who puts free Wi-Fi hot spots in restaurants, athletic clubs and shopping centers, and this year will provide free Wi-Fi at the Minnesota State Fair. Last week, Johnson was in midtown Manhattan visiting a customer -- Equinox -- an athletic club chain that offers DragNFly's Wi-Fi service free to its customers. Never afraid to hustle business, Johnson's nine-year-old company made a bid to install Wi-Fi at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport earlier this year. He was passed over for a Miami firm with previous airport experience. But that unsuccessful bid caught the eye of State Fair officials, who agreed to have DragNFly provide a free Wi-Fi hot spot near the grandstand for fairgoers.

WiFli Wants To Bring Internet Access To The Entire Planet

Bringing universal Internet access to the entire planet is an audacious goal, but one that isn’t entirely out of place at Singularity University’s graduate studies program, where students are asked over the course of a summer to come up with projects that could affect 1 billion people in 10 years. Universal Internet access--a project idea from some of this summer’s Singularity students--certainly fits the bill. The project, dubbed WiFli, wants to use empty wireless frequency spectra along with cheap hardware to bring the Internet to the world’s poor on the cheap. "[We want] Internet connectivity at low costs for the disenfranchised. It’s a way of stopping poverty and job loss," says team member Federico Pistono.

Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output from April 2012 Through June 2012

The Congressional Budget Office provides estimates of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s (ARRA) impact on employment and economic output in the second quarter of calendar year 2012 (April 2012 through June 2012), as well as over the entire period since February 2009.

CBO estimates that ARRA’s policies had the following effects in the second quarter of calendar year 2012 compared with what would have occurred otherwise:

They raised real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 0.1 percent and 0.8 percent,
They lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.1 percentage points and 0.6 percentage points,
They increased the number of people employed by between 0.2 million and 1.2 million, and
They increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 0.2 million to 1.3 million. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)

CBO estimates that the legislation will increase budget deficits by about $833 billion over the 2009–2019 period. By CBO’s estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010, and more than 90 percent of ARRA’s budgetary impact was realized by the end of June 2012. The effects of ARRA on output peaked in the first half of 2010 and have since diminished, CBO estimates. The effects on employment are estimated to lag slightly behind the effects on output; CBO estimates that the employment effects began to wane at the end of 2010 and continued to do so through the second quarter of 2012. Still, CBO estimates that, compared with what would have occurred otherwise, in 2012 ARRA will:

Raise real GDP by between 0.1 percent and 0.8 percent, and
Increase the number of FTE jobs by between 0.2 million and 1.2 million.

Why a trillion TV ads matter

Television viewers are forecast to watch nearly a trillion ads in 2012, according to a report to be published by Deloitte on behalf of the Media Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, (23-25 August 2012). The average viewer watched 49 adverts per day in the first quarter of this year, a figure that does not include fast-forwarded commercials, adverts watched by under four year olds, or TV video-on-demand adverts watched on computers or mobile devices. TV advertising made the greatest impact in 2012 for the fourth year in a row, with 57% of viewers rating it highest, 58% in 2011, 56% in 2010, and 64% in 2009. In 2012 TV adverts are way ahead of newspaper adverts at 15% and magazine adverts at 13%. TV adverts continue to be regarded as having made more of an impression on viewers relative to online display media. Only 1% rated banner adverts within smartphone apps as having most impact, compared to 3% picking banner adverts on websites, a fall from 8% in 2009. Only 4% chose adverts or sponsored links in internet search engines and 3% selected video adverts on websites, the same as 2010 and 2011.

Donations by Media Companies Tilt Heavily to Obama

Wall Street may lean Republican this presidential election cycle, but the New York media world is staunchly Democratic.

All the major media companies, driven largely by their Hollywood film and television businesses, have made larger contributions to President Barack Obama than to his rival, former Gov Mitt Romney (R-MA), according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington-based research group that publishes the Open Secrets Web site. The center’s numbers represent donations by a company’s PAC and any employees who listed that company as their employer. Even companies whose news outlets are often perceived as having a conservative bias have given significantly more money to Mr. Obama. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, for example, has contributed $58,825 to Obama’s campaign, compared with $2,750 to Romney. The conglomerate, which owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and the 20th Century Fox studios, gave roughly the same amount to Romney’s Republican primary competitors Rick Perry and Ron Paul as it did to Romney.

Obama campaign first to accept donations via text message

President Obama's campaign announced that it would become the first political campaign to accept donations via text message, with supporters able to make contributions up to $50 per cellphone billing cycle by firing off a quick text.

Supporters can make the donations by texting "GIVE" to 62262 — numbers that correspond to the spelling of "Obama" using a telephone keypad. “Grassroots giving is powering this campaign,” said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a statement. “Accepting small donations by text message will help us engage even more grassroots supporters who want to play a role by donating whatever they can afford to the campaign — and get the president reelected in November.” The campaign said that the service should be immediately available for subscribers to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular. Other carriers — including AT&T, the nation's second largest wireless provider — are expected to enable the service soon.

Will Text Message Donations Help Carriers Influence Policy?

[Commentary] We may never know if a wireless carrier decides to use control over text message donations in order to reward or punish a candidate because of the position that candidate takes on an issue. The problem is that even the threat could have a subtle influence on policy decisions, and those threats can be hard to track. That is why it is critical for the Federal Communications Commission to recognize that text messaging deserves the same protection as voice calling. Today, no campaign worries that crossing a wireless carrier will result in its phone number being disconnected. Going forward, no campaign should have to worry that text message donations will end because of a policy disagreement.

Benton

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