April 2013

INTERNET/BROADBAND

GOOGLE FIBER TO AUSTIN
[SOURCE: Google, AUTHOR: Milo Medin]
Google is pleased to announce with Mayor Lee Leffingwell that Austin, Texas is becoming a Google Fiber city. It’s a mecca for creativity and entrepreneurialism, with thriving artistic and tech communities, as well as the University of Texas and its new medical research hospital. We’re sure these folks will do amazing things with gigabit access, and we feel very privileged to have been welcomed to their community. Our goal is to start connecting homes in Austin by mid-2014. Customers there will have a similar choice of products as our customers in Kansas City: Gigabit Internet or Gigabit Internet plus our Google Fiber TV service with nearly 200 HD TV channels. We’re still working out pricing details, but we expect them to be roughly similar to Kansas City. Also, as in Kansas City, we’re going to offer customers a free Internet connection at 5 mbps for 7 years, provided they pay a one-time construction fee. We’re also planning to connect many public institutions as we build in Austin— schools, hospitals, community centers, etc. — at a gigabit for no charge. If you live in Austin and want to sign up for more information, please visit our website.
benton.org/node/149164 | Google
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AT&T IN AUSTIN
[SOURCE: AT&T, AUTHOR: Press release]
AT&T is prepared to build an advanced fiber optic infrastructure in Austin, Texas, capable of delivering speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. AT&T’s expanded fiber plans in Austin anticipate it will be granted the same terms and conditions as Google on issues such as geographic scope of offerings, rights of way, permitting, state licenses and any investment incentives. This expanded investment is not expected to materially alter AT&T’s anticipated 2013 capital expenditures.
benton.org/node/149182 | AT&T | GigaOm | Multichannel News
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THE DOWSIDES TO A GIG
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
Getting a gig is great, but as Kansas City and other gigabit towns can tell you, there’s a big learning curve. As Google even pointed out during its launch in Kansas City, equipment and event services such as SpeedTest.net weren’t ready to support gigabit connections. Now Ookla, which runs Speedtest.net, can support a gig, but devices like laptops that don’t support 802.11a/c standards might not. Mike Farmer, the CEO of Leap2, a Kansas City, Kan., startup that has a gig, says that his current MacBook is a bottleneck because, unless he hard-wires it, it can’t support a gig. But he has a bigger problem as well. “I can watch seven simultaneous YouTube streams in 1080p high-def and Netflix, while still having 750 Mbps left over,” he told me. When I asked what he does with the remaining 750 Mbps, there is silence. And that’s one of the downsides.
benton.org/node/149166 | GigaOm
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GIGABIT AUSTIN
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
AT&T executives will meet with Austin and Texas officials seeking the same concessions that Google is getting in order to build out its gigabit network. As someone who has followed telecom in Austin, and in Texas, this mostly means the ability to cherry pick where it will deploy its gigabit network. And that points to both the upside and downside of Google’s influence. Google has changed the economics of deploying fiber in part by its strategy of getting people to sign up in advance and then choosing to deploy where demand was greatest. This eliminates the need to pass homes that might not sign up for fiber and also lets Google roll out service to neighborhoods in bulk. Well, AT&T wants to do something similar. AT&T would like to follow a strategy where communities help drive demand for the gigabit service, Larry Solomon, an AT&T spokesman, said. When I asked if that means aggregating demand and then serving those communities he said that was something AT&T was interested in. But there’s a big downside to this plan for the end user and the cities. Having both Google and AT&T trying to convince customers to sign up for their respective gigabit service effectively splits the vote. Solomon didn’t comment on that possibility, but did say AT&T wants to offer competitive pricing and build offers around wireless and other AT&T products. Google hasn’t announced pricing for its services in Austin yet, but in Kansas City a gigabit costs $70 a month and a gigabit plus TV costs $120 per month. If AT&T gets its way with city and state officials and goes head to head with Google in the neighborhoods, we’re looking at what could become — at best — a network buildout in areas where people own their own homes (Google had to develop special programs for attracting landlords to commit, which made Google Fiber in low-income areas a tougher sell) and already know they want a gigabit. At worst, neighbors who are split between Google or AT&T will not meet the threshold to get a buildout, and no one gets a gig. And frankly, it’s dumb that both AT&T and Google might spent dollars building out fiber to the home in the same neighborhoods. Will streets get torn up twice? Will your broadband provider be determined for the life of your home based on the decisions that occur during a few pre-determined fiber sign-up periods?
benton.org/node/149221 | GigaOm | ars technica
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GOOGLE TV
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Peter Kafka]
When it comes to the TV part of Fiber, Google is acting just like any other pay TV company — you give it a bunch of money, and it gives you a bunch of channels, no matter which ones you actually watch. That’s the bundle concept that ties together the entire TV Industrial Complex, and while lots of people are always talking about breaking the bundle, no one’s done it yet. And Google doesn’t seem interested in trying to do it. Google is annoyingly vague about the TV channels it will have in Austin (and any other details about its offering). But it’s reasonable to assume that it’s going to look a lot like the ones it offers in Kansas City. At least some of the programmers it works with in Kansas City have deals that will allow Google to roll over the same offering into new territories, industry executives say. And there’s no reason for the channels not to support the move. Google gives the cable programmers what they want, which means deals to take all of their networks, at rates that are as least as high as the ones they negotiated with AT&T and Verizon, the last two big guys to enter the pay TV world.
benton.org/node/149184 | Wall Street Journal
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CHARTER DANGLES CARROT
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Jeff Baumgartner]
Charter Communications has promised to expand the reach of its 100 Megabits per second high-speed Internet service tier by an additional 200,000 homes and go all-digital in every market if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) grants the MSO a temporary set-top waiver that will help Charter deploy a new downloadable video security system. Those are two of three voluntary conditions and "additional assurances" Charter president and CEO Tom Rutledge outlined in an April 4 filing, delivered as the FCC continues to weigh Charter's request for a two-year waiver that would let the operator deploy set-tops capable of running the new downloadable security system alongside an integrated version of its legacy conditional access platform. The proposed dual-security box would not support a CableCARD interface. To help Charter secure the waiver, here's what Rutledge is proposing:
Charter will convert 100% of its systems -- including its entire rural footprint -- to all-digital within nine months after the end of the two-year waiver.
Charter will make broadband Internet access service of 100 Mbps or greater available to 200,000 additional homes within two years of grant of the waiver. Charter declined to say how many of its 3.8 million residential cable modem customers currently have access to the MSO's 100 Mbps Ultra cable modem tier today, which is paired with a 5 Mbps upstream, but the vast majority of its plant has the pieces in place to deliver such speeds. According to a 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Charter ended 2012 with DOCSIS 3.0 deployed to 94 percent of its homes passed, "allowing us to offer multiple tiers of Internet services with speeds up to 100 Mbits download to our residential customers." About 98 percent of Charter's cable network supported 550 MHz or more of capacity at the end of 2012.
Charter will continue to provide CableCARDs for new CableCARD devices (such as a TiVo DVR) until such time as a third-party retail device with downloadable security is available for use by Charter subscribers.
benton.org/node/149168 | Multichannel News
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CYBERSECURITY

CISPA DEBATE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Jennifer Martinez, Brendan Sasso]
The House Intelligence Committee will meet behind closed doors on the afternoon of April 10 to mark up a controversial cybersecurity bill before it heads to the floor for a vote, which could come as early as next week. The Intelligence panel will weigh a handful of amendments to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which is expected to be the cornerstone bill in a set of cyber-focused measures that the House is set to vote on this month. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) have agreed to back a handful of amendments that they say are intended to address the concerns of privacy advocates and the White House. The bill is aimed at encouraging intelligence-sharing about cyber threats between the government and industry, but privacy groups have warned that the measure would put the privacy of people's personal information at risk.
benton.org/node/149223 | Hill, The
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TELEVISION

BROADCAST TV
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jon Healey]
[Commentary] The number of people watching broadcast TV with the aid of an antenna is a fraction of what it used to be; about 90% of U.S. homes tune in these channels via some form of pay TV. If Fox decided to shut down its transmitters tomorrow, it would cut off only 10% of its viewers, many of whom might quickly sign up for cable just so they could keep watching "American Idol." And doing so would not only end the threat Aereo poses to the retransmission fees Fox receives from pay-TV operators, it could conceivably enable them to demand higher amounts from those operators -- and from the Aereos of the world. Such a shift from free to pay is contemplatable mainly because the four major broadcasters' programming is more popular than everything else on TV. That's likely to remain true even if they lose all their viewers in homes that rely on antennas. One might argue that networks should try to capitalize on the viewers brought to them by Aereo and its ilk, rather than cutting them off. More viewers should mean more advertising dollars, after all. But if Dish successfully defends the ad-skipping function of its set-top boxes, it may not take long for someone to come up with a service that combines that with Aereo's offering. Such a service wouldn't pay the broadcasters for their programs, and advertisers wouldn't pay them for the viewers. The federal government has tried to prod broadcasters to give up at least some of their airwaves so the spectrum could be auctioned off for more innovative uses, but the big networks have shown little interest in doing so. It would be richly ironic if a TV-over-the-Internet service caused network executives to change their minds.
benton.org/node/149186 | Los Angeles Times
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CABLE VS THE OPEN INTERNET
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Quentin Hardy]
Cable television companies are distressed about how quickly Internet and mobile viewing are stealing customers. Now, technology firms want to sell them ways to offer the personal choice of mobile, while justifying the goodies that come to someone who pays for a subscription. Companies as diverse as Cisco Systems, known for enterprise networking equipment, and Adobe, with its origins in graphics, are working closely with cable companies and other broadcasters to deal with competition from Internet broadcasting. They don’t want people to stop watching video on their phones, or away from their living room boxes, but they do want to control it. “All the cable companies recognize that there is a fundamental shift in video consumption, driven by device proliferation and broadband over the air,” said Jeremy Helfand, vice president for video at Adobe. “They have gone from a fear of cannibalizing their business to looking for opportunities for revenue growth.” What the cable providers do not have is a strong background in managing people across many different devices, or creating an Internet experience that is attractive for the extras it offers subscribers.
benton.org/node/149241 | New York Times
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OWNERSHIP

DIVERSITY STUDIES
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Civil rights groups are pressing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to finally commission court-ordered diversity studies before he heads for he steps down from the FCC. He is expected to leave within the next several weeks. Chairman Genachowski agreed to hold off on voting his media ownership proposal until a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council study on the effects of cross-ownership rules was completed, but that is separate from the series of diversity studies the FCC is supposed to conduct to inform and justify diversity initiatives. According to the groups, they have had meetings with FCC staffers that indicate the studies are ready to be put out for public comment on structure and methodology. They want that process to go forward ASAP, and not to be trumped by a single study. "While we support the Commission's apparent desire not to rush to an imperfect decision in the Quadrennial Review docket," they wrote, "we are concerned that the decision to await input from a single, narrowly focused, study before the Commission makes a decision in the Quadrennial Review docket could further delay the comprehensive studies." Also signing on to the letter were the American Civil Liberties Union, Asian American Justice Center, Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, National Urban League, NAACP, National Council of La Raza, National Consumer Law Center, National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Organization for Women Foundation, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the United Church of Christ, Office of Communication.
benton.org/node/149216 | Broadcasting&Cable
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EDUCATION

ELIGIBILITY OF BUNDLED COMPONENTS UNDER THE SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
In this public notice, the Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) seeks comment on a proposal to clarify the schools and libraries universal service support program (informally known as the E-rate program) requirements for bundling devices, equipment and services that are ineligible for E-rate support (“ineligible components”) with E-rate eligible services and products. In 2012, the Bureau sought comment on a petition filed by the State E-rate Coordinators Alliance (SECA) seeking clarification of how the FCC’s rules requiring cost allocation of ineligible components aligns with language in the Bureau's 2010 Gift Rule Clarification Order that allowed, under limited circumstances, the bundling of ineligible end-user devices and equipment without cost allocation. Having considered the comments filed in response to the SECA Petition Public Notice, the Bureau now proposes and seeks comment on additional clarifications to remove any potential uncertainty regarding the Commission’s requirement for applicants to cost allocate ineligible components when those ineligible components are bundled with eligible services. [CC Docket No. 02-6; GN Docket No. 09-51]
benton.org/node/149218 | Federal Communications Commission
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ADVERTISING

FACEBOOK DATA TARGETING
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Evelyn Rusli]
Gunning to win more advertising dollars, Facebook is using new ways to cull personal information from outside the social network and match it with data submitted by its billion-plus users. The efforts are winning over advertisers but are further raising privacy concerns as Facebook harnesses a mosaic of information about its users. On April 10, Facebook officially plans to roll out a new advertiser tool to help advertisers directly target Facebook users based on their offline spending history. The tool marries what Facebook already knows about people's friends and "likes" with vast troves of information from third-party data marketers such as Datalogix Inc., Acxiom Corp. and Alliance Data Systems Corp.'s Epsilon. That includes data on the Web pages that consumers visit, the email lists they have signed up for, and the way they are spending money online and offline.
benton.org/node/149240 | Wall Street Journal
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TELECOM

THE STATE OF RURAL COMMUNICATIONS
[SOURCE: Medill New Service, AUTHOR: Megan Hickey]
While scattered populations and difficult terrain make it hard to provide phone and Internet access in rural America, government regulatory burdens are an even bigger problem, the vice president of Arkansas-based Ritter Communications told a Senate hearing. John Strode told the hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, chaired by U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), that companies like his “serve approximately 5 percent of the nation’s population, but approximately 40 percent of the nation’s land mass.” His company employs about 280 people -180 from Arkansas. It provides phone lines to 33,000 homes and businesses - and serves thousands more broadband and basic cable subscribers. Over the years, assistance from the Federal Communications Commission and its Federal Universal Service Fund, among other types of aid, has helped to broaden service availability but more help is needed, Strode said. Cuts, caps and constraints on government funding are hurting companies’ cost recovery, he said. His Jonesboro-based company is hurt by cost limits in areas that are expensive to serve. Strode also criticized larger telephone companies. Other issues raised:
Patricia Jo Boyers, president of BOYCOM Cablevision and American Cable Association board member, said it was imperative that the government not subsidize her competition, a point seconded by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
Steven Davis, executive VP of CenturyLink, continued to push the Federal Communications Commission to raise its $775 per subscriber subsidy, saying that underestimated the cost and helped lead to the result that only $115 million of the $300 million available in the first tranche of Connect America Fund funding was applied for.
U.S. Cellular chair Leroy Carlson Jr. talked a lot about the upcoming incentive auctions, as well as a previous auction of wireless spectrum.
He said more spectrum is the raw material of the wireless business, and smaller companies like his must be able to compete for spectrum against the larger companies.
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/apr/10/us-regulations-hard-small...
State of Rural Communications (Senate Commerce Committee)
benton.org/node/149244 | Medill New Service | Senate Commerce Committee | Sen Thune | B&C
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LOBBYING

NEW SILICON VALLEY PAC
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Richard Waters, Anna Fifield]
It is said to have a $1 million joining fee and boasts some of technology’s biggest names among its members – including its founder, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. But Silicon Valley’s latest attempt to form a lobbying group has been attacked by rivals in the tech sector as an interference in politics that risks attracting negative publicity. The new organization, to be formally launched in the next few days, marks the first major super-Pac – or political action group – to emerge from the tech industry. Starting out with what insiders estimate will be $20 - $25 million in seed money from Zuckerberg, it is set to become Silicon Valley’s richest lobby group, with a total fundraising target of $50 million. As its first cause, the as-yet unnamed alliance has taken up immigration reform in order to boost the flow of engineers and other skilled workers to the US. But critics at tech companies not involved in the group warn that it risks drawing negative attention to the extreme wealth of some of its backers as well as attracting the sort of accusations of arrogance and naivety that have accompanied some earlier Silicon Valley attempts to shape policy debates in Washington.
benton.org/node/149239 | Financial Times
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

GOOGLE FAVORS IN-HOUSE SEARCH RESULTS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Alex Barker, Bede McCarthy]
Google faces having to offer users in Europe more choice of other specialized search engines after Brussels investigators found its results were favoring its in-house services to the detriment of consumers. One of the European Commission’s primary concerns, according to officials involved, is the visibility in search results of rival so-called “vertical search” services – in areas such as maps, finance or weather – that may provide more relevant results to a query. This specific finding indicates that alongside widely expected concessions to more clearly label Google’s own services, the US group will also need to offer solutions that give more prominence to rival specialist search services and consumers clearer alternatives. Google is this week submitting its final offer of concessions to the Commission, which aim to head off formal antitrust charges and a hefty fine. This is the first time Google has bowed to regulatory pressure over its search business but rivals including Microsoft fear the deal will still let Google off the hook.
benton.org/node/149234 | Financial Times
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Daily Digest

Analysis

April 2013

Key Differences Found In U.K., U.S. Mobile Searchers

Malayasia goes gaga for Google

Today's Quote 04.10.2013

April 10, 2013 (Austin, Texas)

US regulations hard on small phone firms, Sen Pryor, panel hear

Broadcasters Circle Wagons Against a TV Streaming Upstart

Arming Cable Against the Open Internet

Buy Signal: Facebook Widens Data Targeting

Silicon Valley lobby group draws critics

4 ways US can boost cybersecurity