October 2012

In the four years since Comcast implemented the country’s first real broadband cap (it took effect on Oct. 1, 2008) the percentage of subscribers with caps on their broadband service has risen to 64 percent. Meanwhile, the Federal Communications Commission only began formally wondering if data caps might need some sort of oversight, or at least sort of qualifier in the last few months.

This is a dereliction of duty from the agency that’s supposed to ensure that broadband is available across the country, an agency whose chairman gives countless speeches emphasizing how important broadband is in the home and as a source for innovation. Yet as the basic pricing for broadband service has changed, the FCC has not kept up. It hasn’t distributed data on the consumers affected, established any sort of independent group to ensure that ISPs were tracking customers’ broadband usage fairly and doesn’t even insist that ISPs who implement caps provide meters to their customers.

There are signals that the agency may be waking up to the problem, so here’s what the FCC at a minimum needs to do if caps are going to be a way of life going forward.

• If ISPs cap broadband, the FCC should track how those caps affect consumers.
• Would you like a meter with that cap?
• If I have a meter, is it accurate?

In an address at an Accuracy In Media event, former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said: “We are at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role of that the media plays in whether we maintain a free democracy or not. Later in the speech, Caddell calls the press the ‘enemy of the American people.’” But Caddell and many others are using information generated by the media to attack the media. Fun times. If only Caddell would storm the White House briefing room and show the same ferocity that he spouts in front of a group of media critics! Then perhaps he could demonstrate how the media functions as a friend of the American people.

Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, said that destructive cyberattacks against critical infrastructure could be thwarted if it was easier for the government and industry to share information with one another about malware and other threats. He recommended that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lead any effort to facilitate the transfer of threat information between American companies and government agencies. The role of DHS on cybersecurity has been one of the key stumbling blocks for moving legislation through Congress.

Advertisers came out swinging today against Microsoft’s new browser, Windows 8, which automatically defaults to Do Not Track. The move by Microsoft to include this feature setting stunned the Internet and ad communities which had agreed and received government support to implement an opt-in Do Not Track feature across all browsers by the end of the year. Despite repeated pleas to Microsoft from advertisers and even Federal Trade Commissioner chairman Jon Leibowitz to change course, Microsoft hasn’t budged and recently defended its decision in a recent AdWeek column. Hoping to put more pressure on Microsoft and requesting an “immediate dialogue” to talk about the decision, the board of directors for the Association of National Advertisers, representing more than 450 companies and 10,000 brands, wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft execs.