November 2012

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

TELECOM SERVICE IMPROVES IN SANDY HIT AREAS
[SOURCE: Dow Jones, AUTHOR: Thomas Gryta]
Telecom companies continued to show improvement in their services over the weekend in areas hit by Hurricane Sandy, but challenges remain in some pockets of the hardest-hit spots. Some outages continue as the restoration of commercial power hasn't yet occurred in some areas and infrastructure damage poses hurdles to repairing damaged or unconnected equipment. The wireless carriers are generally providing public charging stations and other resources; many have provided flexibility for customers to delay paying their bills without risk of a service disconnection. Cellular networks are a collection of individual sites that connect wireless devices to a core, wired network, but they also require power to function. While backup generators and batteries provide some cushion, obtaining fuel and gaining access to the cell sites themselves can make it harder to keep power flowing. Restoring power will help the situation, but some sites are also down because they have no connection to the core network or because equipment is damaged. The wireless carriers have had technicians working on the problems around the clock. Verizon Wireless said 98.1% of its cell sites are working in the area impacted by Sandy.
benton.org/node/138527 | Dow Jones
Recommend this Headline
back to top

WIRELESS RESISTS CALLS TO BACK UP CELL TOWERS
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Gerry Smith]
One key factor helps explain why communities ravaged by Hurricane Sandy could not use cell phones to call for help and communicate with the outside world: mobile telephone companies have for years lobbied to kill rules that would have forced them to maintain backup power at their cell phone towers. After Hurricane Katrina knocked out communications along the Gulf Coast, federal regulators proposed that wireless companies have backup power at all cell towers. But the wireless industry sued to block the requirement, saying it would be a financial burden and regulators didn't have authority to impose it. An appeals court later sided with the industry.
benton.org/node/138526 | Huffington Post, The
Recommend this Headline
back to top

CPB AID FOR SANDY-IMPACTED STATIONS
[SOURCE: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is providing New York-based public media stations WNET and WNYC with emergency grants of $250,000 each to address their urgent and critical needs in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Stations will use the funds, available immediately, to continue broadcasting news and information about relief efforts to communities throughout New York and New Jersey, as well as to repair station infrastructure damaged in the storm.
benton.org/node/138555 | Corporation for Public Broadcasting | B&C
Recommend this Headline
back to top

MEDIA AND ELECTIONS

THE ELECTION AND THE FCC
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
For those of us in the broadband policy world, the choices the electorate makes on November 6 could have repercussions for everything from network neutrality to how much wireless spectrum is released. Let’s take a look at what folks in D.C. circles see ahead depending on who wins. As a general rule, a Romney victory would most benefit the incumbent telcos, according to a report from Stifel Nicolaus: “We believe the two Bells would gain the most from a Republican victory and de-regulatory telecom thrust, while some of their rivals would do better under the Democrats, including non-Bell wireless carriers, CLECs, and other upstarts. We suspect that cable will do fairly well under either party, with some risks, and that midsize telcos, DBS, edge/tech giants, and broadcasters face various trade-offs.” The reason for this can be summed up in a pithy quote provided by Richard Bennett, a senior research fellow at the industry-dominated think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. When I asked what was at stake for the FCC and telecom policy in this year’s elections, he said, “It’s either going to get down to Chairman McDowell or Chairman Levin,” referring to current Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell or a Democrat heading up the FCC in the model of Blair Levin. Bennett said that Levin, who helped write the National Broadband Plan and is now spearheading a gigabit fiber project to connect U.S. universities, might not actually take on the Chairman role, but someone who thinks like he does would be a likely candidate.
benton.org/node/138553 | GigaOm
Recommend this Headline
back to top

OUR BROADBAND ELECTION
[SOURCE: BroadbandBreakfast.com, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
[Commentary] Whether President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins the presidential election contest, no one expects a repeat of the funding made available by the Recovery Act. But at the same time, no one expects that the Universal Service Fund will be diminished. The past four years have already brought substantial changes in America’s broadband capabilities. These data-driven tools are now available to everyone. And that’s why the next administration – whether a second term for Obama or for a Romney administration – will continue to unfold the next chapter of high-speed internet in America.
benton.org/node/138550 | BroadbandBreakfast.com
Recommend this Headline
back to top

FOX COVERAGE OF THE CANDIDATES UNEQUAL
[SOURCE: Media Matters for America, AUTHOR: Solange Uwimana]
Fox News' election coverage continues to overwhelmingly favor Mitt Romney just a day before Election Day. On Nov 5, Fox News kicked off election coverage by airing Romney's entire campaign speech live in Orlando, Florida, but did not extend the same coverage to President Obama's speech in Madison, Wisconsin later in the day. America's Newsroom started airing footage from Romney's campaign rally at the top of the 9 a.m. ET hour and went live to his speech three minutes later. Romney spoke uninterrupted for about 26 minutes before co-host Martha MacCallum returned to provide a positive overview of what he had just said. By contrast, Happening Now cut away from Obama's speech in Madison after just eight minutes. Co-host Jenna Lee then told viewers: "If you'd like to watch the president and what he has to say in Madison, you can do so at FoxNews.com." Since last week, Fox News has provided significantly less coverage to Obama campaign speeches, airing two hours and 48 minutes of Romney's speeches, as compared with 27 minutes of Obama's speeches from the morning of November 1 to 5 p.m. ET on November 4. So for every minute of airtime Fox News gave Obama, Romney was afforded a little over six minutes.
benton.org/node/138552 | Media Matters for America
Recommend this Headline
back to top

BECK-ROMNEY BRIDGE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Amy Chozick]
On radio and on his Internet network, the influential conservative pundit Glenn Beck frequently invokes God, religious freedom and the founding fathers, but he does not regularly discuss his own Mormon faith. But in early September, he broke with practice and hosted a special one-hour show, asking his audience, “Does Mitt Romney’s Mormonism make him too scary or weird to be elected to president of the United States?” Beck has not always supported Romney. (“I think he’s an honorable man, but I don’t trust him,” he said last year.) But as perhaps the best-known Mormon after the Republican presidential candidate and a major influence on evangelical Christians, Mr. Beck has emerged as an unlikely theological bridge between the first Mormon presidential nominee and a critical electorate. At the same time, Beck’s defense of his and Romney’s shared faith speaks to the long-frayed relationship between evangelical Christians and Mormons and raises the question of whether evangelicals will ultimately put aside religious differences and vote on common conservative issues.
benton.org/node/138520 | New York Times
Recommend this Headline
back to top

CAMPAIGN WEBSITES
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Chris Dannen]
A political campaign website has a singular purpose: vacuum up personal information and donations. How they do it is a matter of priorities. Content-heavy sites are slow to load and expensive to operate; running one in a cost-conscious manner means eliminating unnecessary server requests, tracking user behavior, optimizing every interaction, and shaving kilobytes off pages. So who does it better, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? The answer could provide yet another clue into how effective each man would be leading the country's economic recovery. A side-by-side comparison reveals that neither site is perfect--and that they are not very similar.
benton.org/node/138519 | Fast Company
Recommend this Headline
back to top

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE ELECTION
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
The 2012 race marks the first time a new type of high-level campaign staffer — the digital director — had a seat in the top tier of the presidential campaigns as well as most major congressional races. In the case of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, theirs were senior staffers with significantly more input than ever before and multimillion-dollar budgets. Nearly every major Senate race had a prominent social media guru, too. After November 6, the political world will start looking back to see how it worked and what might change next time. Here are five burning questions to be answered once the votes are counted:
Was social media worth the hype?
Which social media channels mattered most — and least?
What becomes of Obama’s much-vaunted e-mail list?
Speaking of e-mail, is it still the king of online fundraising?
Where does mobile fit in the campaign ecosystem?
benton.org/node/138551 | Politico
Recommend this Headline
back to top

ELECTION APPS AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Somini Sengupta]
How well does the next president of the United States know you? Depends on your apps. By virtue of what you install on your computer or cellphone, your political preferences can become part of the soup of data that ad networks can mine — in this case on behalf of the presidential hopefuls, who are making their last push for reluctant or undecided voters. The Facebook apps of the Obama and Romney campaigns inhale a lot of information about you and your friends. Like many apps on Facebook, they gather your Facebook ‘likes’ and locations, along with your Facebook friends’ ‘likes’ and locations. Both can post content on your behalf; the Obama campaign app can even post what political contributions you have made. Brian Kennish, founder of Disconnect.me, which offers browser plug-ins to stave off the data collection, points out the weirdest feature. The Obama app “initiates an unencrypted client-side request to get your profile,” which means that if you’re using a public wireless connection, anyone with access to the network can see you’re using the app. As for the campaigns’ mobile apps, both have little pieces of code embedded in them to enable tracking. Both the Obama and Romney mobile apps send user data to a variety of companies, to serve ads and analyze user behavior, according to an analysis of both by PrivacyChoice, a firm based in Santa Cruz.
benton.org/node/138548 | New York Times
Recommend this Headline
back to top

MILLION PUPPET MARCH
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Maura Judkis]
It might have been the friendliest rally to ever come to the Mall — especially three days before the election. Puppets and toddlers danced. Grown-ups in furry costumes sang. A girl dressed as Cookie Monster handed out Chips Ahoy to passersby. There was even a puppet-themed wedding. The Million Puppet March — a political rally against Mitt Romney’s debate remarks about Big Bird and cutting funding to public television — may not have actually been a million puppets strong, but furry monsters came from far and near in a post-Halloween parade of support for PBS.
benton.org/node/138547 | Washington Post
Recommend this Headline
back to top

HOUSE AD WARS
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Sasha Chavkin]
As Americans cast their votes for the next president, the Obama campaign and its supporters have maintained an unexpected advantage in the ad wars -- defying predictions that the Democrat would be drowned out by a flood of cash from deep-pocketed conservative groups (at least before a spending splurge by outside groups this past weekend). But outside groups have propelled Republicans to a strong advantage in another set of races: the battle for the US House of Representatives. Republican candidates have run more ads than their Democratic opponents in 104 contested races, while Democrats hold the edge in 77, according to spot counts by Kantar Media’s CMAG. And the Republican edge in the House is driven primarily by outside groups such as super PACs and nonprofits.
benton.org/node/138546 | Columbia Journalism Review
Recommend this Headline
back to top

THE REAL LOSER: TRUTH
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kevin Kruse]
[Commentary] While the line between fact and fiction in politics has always been fuzzy, a confluence of factors has strained our civic discourse, if it can still be called that, to the breaking point. The economic boom and middle-class expansion of the postwar era encouraged relative deference for officials, journalists and scholars. It’s true that reporters and politicians had far cozier relationships, but the slower news cycle allowed more time for verification and analysis. Candidates accordingly believed that being caught in an outright lie could damage their careers. (As Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”) They tended only to bend the truth, not break it. At least four factors since the 1970s have lowered the cost for politicians who lie and, more important, repeat their fabrications through their attack ads.
First is the overall decline in respect for institutions and professionals of all kinds, from scientists and lawyers to journalists and civil servants.
Second are changes in media regulation and ownership.
A third trend developed as political operatives realized they had more room to stretch the truth.
A fourth factor: most news organizations (with notable exceptions) abandoned their roles as political referees. Many resorted to an atrophied style that resembled stenography more than journalism, presenting all claims as equally valid. Fact checking, once a foundation for all reporting, was now deemed the province of a specialized few.
benton.org/node/138566 | New York Times
Recommend this Headline
back to top

PRIVACY

TRAIL OF CLICKS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Natasha Singer]
Washington is pushing Silicon Valley on children’s privacy, and Silicon Valley is pushing back. Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have all objected to portions of a federal effort to strengthen online privacy protections for children. In addition, media giants like Viacom and Disney, cable operators, marketing associations, technology groups and a trade group representing toy makers are arguing that the Federal Trade Commission’s proposed rule changes seem so onerous that, rather than enhance online protections for children, they threaten to deter companies from offering children’s Web sites and services altogether. “If adopted, the effect of these new rules would be to slow the deployment of applications that provide tremendous benefits to children, and to slow the economic growth and job creation generated by the app economy,” Catherine A. Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, wrote in comments to the agency. But the underlying concern, for both the industry and regulators, is not so much about online products for children themselves. It is about the data collection and data mining mechanisms that facilitate digital marketing on apps and Web sites for children — and a debate over whether these practices could put children at greater risk.
benton.org/node/138561 | New York Times
Recommend this Headline
back to top

DO NOT TRACK STANDSTILL
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
Little progress has been made toward implementing a “Do Not Track” button for the Web more than nine months after a highly publicized launch event at the White House. Advertisers, privacy groups and government officials came together in February to tout their agreement to give Internet users an easy way to opt out of online tracking. But stakeholders involved in the effort are "not really any closer to an agreement" to make the feature happen, according to Mike Zaneis, general counsel of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Jonathan Mayer, a privacy advocate and graduate student at Stanford University, said negotiations are at a "standstill," with the two sides unlikely to bridge their differences on core issues.
benton.org/node/138541 | Hill, The
Recommend this Headline
back to top

APPLE AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Wendy Davis]
Apple is asking California's highest court to rule that a state law limiting data collection by merchants who accept credit cards doesn't apply to online retailers. Imposing the Song-Beverly Act's requirements on Web retailers "threatens to produce unintended and absurd results," Apple argues in its legal papers. The 21-year-old privacy law bans retailers from requesting and storing the street addresses of consumers who pay by credit card. Apple argues that it doesn't make sense to apply the Song-Beverly law to online retailers, given that they can't verify identity by asking for a photo or comparing an in-store signature to the one on a card. California's Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments on November 7. The matter stems from a potential class-action lawsuit against Apple filed last year by David Krescent. He alleges that Apple violated California's law by requiring him to provide his address when he purchased media from the company.
benton.org/node/138537 | MediaPost
Recommend this Headline
back to top

INTERNET/BROADBAND

UNCLAIMED CONNECT AMERICA FUNDS
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Several Washington (DC) sources say the Federal Communications Commission is circulating a draft notice of proposed rulemaking about what to do with the $185 million in Connect America Phase 1 funding that has not been claimed, although none were familiar with the details in the proposed NPRM. According to widely circulating rumors, the NPRM includes a proposal that would direct the money toward incumbent carriers. Those were the carriers toward whom the funding initially was directed, but several of them opted not to accept it under the terms initially specified. At least one wireless carrier association has argued against directing the unclaimed funding to the telcos. “Wireless carriers offer the best opportunity to bring much needed broadband services to unserved and underserved areas, and it only makes sense for the FCC to consider proposals from wireless carriers,” said Steven K. Berry, president and CEO of the Competitive Carriers Association, in a statement. “Many of our members are ready and willing to build out these networks, but depend on USF support in order to do so. Wireless remains underfunded, and this could be an opportunity for the FCC to provide significant support for the services consumers want most.”
benton.org/node/138512 | telecompetitor
Recommend this Headline
back to top

CHICAGO BROADBAND
[SOURCE: CED, AUTHOR: Brian Santo]
Chicago intends to do what no American city even remotely its size has ever pulled off – get a municipal broadband network built. There isn’t a city in the country that doesn’t want better broadband infrastructure. Several cities, tiring of waiting for the market to create those networks, have attempted to build their own. The biggest ones have all failed, usually for one of two reasons: Some never got beyond the proposal stage, blocked by commercial interests complaining about the competition; of the few that actually got built, most were unable to monetize their networks. Chicago is trying a different route. “Chicago has no interest in being an Internet service provider, so the competitive issue is gone,” explained John Tolva, the city’s CTO. The city’s primary concern is economic development, and broadband is only one among several means to that end. So the city currently has out a request for interest (RFI), asking for ideas for how private interests can build and operate a gigabit fiber ring to connect a combination of a dozen existing and developing technology neighborhoods. The ring should support free Wi-Fi access in public places and should also be expandable to provide broadband access to underserved neighborhoods. The city will sift through the responses to the RFI, then craft a request for proposals (RFP). It would expect responses to the RFP by early next year and to begin implementing the plan shortly thereafter.
benton.org/node/138513 | CED
Recommend this Headline
back to top

OWNERSHIP

MEDIA OWNERSHIP ON NOV 30 AGENDA?
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Apparently, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said back in July that the FCC is on track to issue an order on its media ownership notice of proposed rulemaking by the end of the year and, according to FCC sources, he is expected to circulate an item for a vote at the Nov. 30 meeting. The chairman's office had no comment. The FCC has been reviewing its rules in response to a quadrennial congressional obligation to do so, and a court order from the Third Circuit. According to sources, broadcasters have been beating a path to commission staffers' doors lately to talk about media ownership issues. If the order follows the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the media ownership rules that the commissioners approved last December, it will scrap the radio/TV cross-ownership rules, essentially preserve the FCC's attempted loosening of the newspaper/TV cross-ownership rules, which the FCC tried to do under former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, but leave in place the radio and TV local market ownership caps.
benton.org/node/138515 | Broadcasting&Cable
Recommend this Headline
back to top

WHY NO ONE CARES ABOUT DIVERSITY
[SOURCE: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, AUTHOR: Joseph Miller]
[Commentary] How long should we wait for a regulatory or industry-led initiative to improve media diversity? Despite its mandate under Section 257 of the Communications Act, the Federal Communications Commission has failed to collect and aggregate minority ownership data in a form the public can use. With the exception of tiny glimmers of change in newsroom diversity, hiring, retention and promotion diversity at top media companies is dismal. Among Diversity Inc.’s Top 50 Companies for Diversity 2012, Cox Communications (#25) and Time Warner (#40) were the only media companies listed. Factoring in companies that are more relevant in a converged media industry, AT&T (#4) and Verizon Communications (#39) were also featured. But there is really not much need to look further than the senior management teams of top media companies, which are overwhelmingly white (Disney, Comcast, News Corporation, Viacom) despite the fact that minorities comprise 27.6 percent of the U.S. population, to see the lack of racial, ethnic and gender diversity among those who control so much of what we see and hear. But the most daunting challenge for policymakers is not to confirm whether these disparities exist—everyone knows they do—it is to address the underlying reasons for the lack of a political impetus to address them. Why don’t we care?
benton.org/node/138534 | Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
Recommend this Headline
back to top

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

FEDS ORDERED TO DISCLOSE DATA
[SOURCE: Wired, AUTHOR: David Kravets]
A federal judge is ordering the Justice Department to disclose more information about its so-called “Going Dark” program, an initiative to extend its ability to wiretap virtually all forms of electronic communications. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of San Francisco concerns the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Passed in 1994, the law initially ordered phone companies to make their systems conform to a wiretap standard for real-time surveillance. The Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA in 2005 to apply to broadband providers like ISPs and colleges, but services like Google Talk, Skype or Facebook and encrypted enterprise Blackberry communications are not covered. The FBI has long clamored that these other communication services would become havens for criminals and that the feds would be left unable to surveil them, even though documents acquired by Wired shows that the FBI’s wiretapping system is robust and advanced. Little is known about the “Going Dark” program, though the FBI’s 2011 proposal to require backdoors in encryption found no backers in the White House. The FBI has never publicly reported a single instance in the last five years where encryption has prevented them from getting at the plaintext of messages.
benton.org/node/138511 | Wired
Recommend this Headline
back to top

STORIES FROM ABROAD

FINLAND’S BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Cyrus Farivar]
Back in 2009, Finland announced what might be the world’s most ambitious national broadband plan: a guaranteed minimum service level of 1Mbps for all homes and companies by 2010. That goal is then planned to be kicked up to 100Mbps, served via a fixed connection or wireless, by 2015. Three years into the program, Finnish government officials say they are well on the road to meeting that goal by providing subsidies mainly to local cooperatives that have sprung up to serve rural communities. To date, 86 percent of the 5.35 million Finnish population lives within two kilometers of a 100Mbps connection, and the expectation is that this will grow to 95 percent by 2015. By that definition, it looks like Finland will come very close to meeting its goal. (Finnish households are expected to pay for that final connection to the home, should they want the full 100Mbps fiber service.)
benton.org/node/138508 | Ars Technica
Recommend this Headline
back to top

EU BOOSTS RADIO SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Claire Davenport]
The European Commission is to release a swathe of radio spectrum to give mobile and internet companies more space for rolling out faster fourth-generation (4G) wireless services. The announcement means an extra 120 MHz of spectrum will be available for 4G from 2014 at the latest to try to accommodate a sharp rise in the use of such services on mobile devices. The radio spectrum, used by all wireless technologies for sending and receiving information, is becoming increasingly crowded as mobile demand adds to TV and radio broadcasting in using a resource also needed by emergency services and military telecommunications.
benton.org/node/138532 | Reuters
Recommend this Headline
back to top

FRANCE TO PROBE MOBILE UPSTART
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sam Schechner]
The French government asked the country's antitrust authority to study whether France's new cut-rate mobile-phone operator, Free Mobile, is benefiting from a sweetheart roaming agreement, potentially giving ammunition to incumbent companies that have argued the deal is forcing them to cut jobs. France's independent competition watchdog said that it will give an opinion by the end of February on whether Iliad SA's Free Mobile, France's fourth mobile-phone operator, would gain a "lasting advantage" over competitors if it extends its roaming agreement with partly state-owned France Télécom SA, the country's largest mobile-phone operator by subscribers. The government also asked the authority to weigh in on whether France's mobile operators can pool resources to roll out shared wireless networks in rural areas, as well as whether the operators can share wireless networks in urban areas "without harming competition, jobs and investment." The government request could signal a shift in French telecommunications and competition policy.
benton.org/node/138560 | Wall Street Journal
Recommend this Headline
back to top

Benton

Search

Benton

Daily Digest

Analysis

November 2012

The $20 ad campaign: small businesses find alternatives to Google AdWords

Smart meters not so clever about privacy, researchers find

Amazon to win out over Apple in e-book price tussle

Europe’s Telecoms Feel the Pain, Take It Out on Workers

How an Indonesian ISP took down the mighty Google for 30 minutes

November 6, 2012 (Election Day)

Speaking His Mind, Beyond the Forecast

The Real Loser: Truth

Dueling Bitterness on Cable News

Behind the record political ad dollars