April 2013

Verizon, New York City to Test Way to Spread Fiber Network

Verizon Communications and New York City agreed to test a method to more quickly install fiber-optic cables under sidewalks, potentially enabling the company to offer faster connections in more neighborhoods. The pilot program allows Verizon to use “micro-trenching” or “saw cutting,” in which narrow, shallow grooves are carved out of the ground, opening space for cables, the city said in a statement.

The trial will start with 12 sites across the five boroughs, after which the government and the company will assess whether it can be adopted citywide. The plan would help Verizon, the nation’s second-largest phone company, sell higher Internet speeds and television service in more parts of the city, competing with Time Warner Cable and RCN. Verizon is counting on those offerings to help keep its phone customers from switching to cable. While Verizon has been offering its fiber-optic service, called FiOS, in parts of New York City since 2008, it still hasn’t reached every neighborhood. The program could also help the carrier provide service to areas affected by Superstorm Sandy last year, the city said.

Senate to Hear From Telecoms on Rural Communications

The Senate Commerce Committee’s Communications Subcommittee announced the witness list for an April 9 hearing on rural communications and the "challenges facing companies serving rural consumers" and the list include smaller cable operators and telecom providers intimately familiar with the issue. Among those challenges, according to cable operators are not being overbuilt by government broadband stimulus money, and continuing to get subsidies as the FCC migrates the Universal Service Fund from phone to broadband. Scheduled to testify are Steven Davis from CenturyLink, John Strode of Ritter Communications, Patricia Jo Boyers of BOYCOM Cablevision Inc., and Leroy Carlson Jr. of Telephone & Data Systems.

Moving Together Beyond Dubai

Today the world’s citizens are benefitting from the growth and innovation of the Internet. The Internet has flourished because of the approach taken from its infancy to resolve technical and policy questions. Known as the multistakeholder process, it involves the full involvement of all stakeholders, consensus-based decision-making and operating in an open, transparent and accountable manner. The multistakeholder model has promoted freedom of expression, both online and off. It has ensured the Internet is a robust, open platform for innovation, investment, economic growth and the creation of wealth throughout the world, including in developing countries.

For these reasons, the United States Government is committed to the multistakeholder model as the appropriate process for addressing Internet policy and governance issues. We believe that the Internet’s decentralized, multistakeholder processes enable us all to benefit from the engagement of all interested parties. By encouraging the participation of industry, civil society, technical and academic experts, and governments from around the globe, multistakeholder processes result in broader and more creative problem solving than traditional governmental approaches.

The road to HD Voice on mobile phones is a bumpy one

To make an HD voice call, you need to meet all of the following stipulations.

Your phone needs to be HD-capable. Not just HD capable, but support the HD-Voice codec used by your carrier. In the case of T-Mobile, that means the iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy S 3, the HTC One S and probably most newer generation smartphones. For Sprint, that does not include the iPhone because Apple isn’t supporting the CDMA HD-Voice codec, but it does include the HTC Evo 4G.
The phone you’re calling needs to HD-capable. Not only does the recipient need an HD device, it needs to be running on another HD-compatible network using the same HD technology as your device. Even if a Sprint and a T-Mobile customers both have the right phones, they can’t make HD calls to one another. If either customer called any other carrier or any wireline number, those voice connections also would revert to “standard-definition.”
Both phones need to be connected to an HD-capable base station. Just because a carrier supports HD-voice doesn’t mean it supports it in all places. Sprint, for instance is enabling it as it upgrades its CDMA systems as part of its Network Vision overhaul (basically everywhere it offers LTE). When Verizon and AT&T launch their voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) services, both caller and recipient will have to be on LTE networks for the conversation to transmit in HD. T-Mobile, however, appears to upgraded its entire network to support HD.

Lawmakers to the Public: Follow Me

A report released by the Congressional Research Service on March 22 assessed how members of the 112th Congress use Facebook and Twitter. The CRS said that social media technology has “arguably served to enhance” the ability of lawmakers to represent their constituents, and looked to see how exactly the technologies were being used. The study analyzed data on both services from August 2011 to October 2011, along with the service adoption rates as of January 2012. Some of the report’s highlights:

Approximately 84 percent of the 112th Congress was registered on Twitter, and 90 percent had a registered account on Facebook.
House Republicans had the highest adoption rates on Facebook and Twitter as of January 2012 -- 94.7 percent and 87.3 percent for both services, respectively. Senate Democrats had the lowest adoption rates -- 78 percent for Facebook and 77 percent for Twitter.
Senate Republicans were the most active on Twitter and Facebook. They had 1.53 Tweets per day and .84 posts on Facebook. House Democrats were the least active on both services, with approximately 1 Tweet per day, and .49 posts on Facebook per day, according to the report.

Groups say ICANN unprepared for gTLD launch

The delegation of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is premature and could cause risks to the security and stability of the Domain Name System (DNS) and affect the working of the whole Internet, Verisign has warned.

As ICANN pushes for an April 23 launch of the first new gTLDs, Verisign has raised concerns in a report outlining new gTLD security and stability issues, sent to ICANN and filed with the Securities Exchange Commission. The risks named in the report should be addressed in a timely manner by ICANN, otherwise the broader implications of new gTLDs to parties that rely on the Internet DNS will be "far-reaching," Verisign said. Security concerns from Verisign and other organizations indicate ICANN may be headed for a "train wreck," said the Association of National Advertisers, a trade group.

Parents' group fights FCC bid to loosen indecency rules

The Parents Television Council, a media watchdog group, is pushing back against the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to soften its policy against indecent radio and TV content.

The FCC issued a request for public comment on a proposal that would focus on penalizing only "egregious" indecency cases. The proposal would be a shift away from the agency's policy, adopted during the Bush administration, of penalizing even "fleeting expletives." Tim Winter, the president of the Parents Television Council, said that the FCC's announcement is "deeply vexing." "It unnecessarily weakens a decency law that withstood a ferocious, 10-year constitutional attack waged by the broadcast industry. It invites yet another wave of special interest pressure to obviate the intent of Congress and the will of the American people," Winter said. "The FCC is supposed to represent the interests of the American public, not the interests of the entertainment industry," he added. "Either material is legally indecent or it is not," Winter said. "It is unnecessary for indecent content to be repeated many times in order to be actionable, and it is unwise for the FCC to pursue a new course which will guarantee nothing but a new rash of new litigation."

ACLU, FreedomWorks officials oppose House Judiciary's draft cyber bill

Over a dozen officials from cyber liberties and conservative advocacy groups voiced opposition to a draft cybersecurity bill that would stiffen the penalties for the anti-hacking law used to charge Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

Top representatives from the Center for Democracy and Technology, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform Digital Liberty arm and the Tea Party-affiliated FreedomWorks, among others, urged leaders of the House Judiciary Committee in a letter to reject the language proposed in the draft bill, which may be considered for markup as early as this month. The officials said the draft bill would dangerously expand the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) so it would give prosecutors "a free hand" to go after ordinary Internet users for violating a website's terms of service or employer's computer policy. "It is unreasonable to expand CFAA penalties when the statute already makes illegal so much of what Americans do with computers every day," the letter reads. "Expanding the scope of the CFAA to cover even more conduct is even more dangerous."

President Obama 'Limiting Press Access In Ways That Past Administrations Wouldn't Have Dared'

Capitalizing on the possibilities of the digital age, the Obama White House is generating its own content like no president before, and refining its media strategies in the second term in hopes of telling a more compelling story than in the first. At the same time, it is limiting press access in ways that past administrations wouldn't have dared, and the President is answering to the public in more controlled settings than his predecessors.

It's raising new questions about what's lost when the White House tries to make an end run around the media, functioning, in effect, as its own news agency. Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary to President Bill Clinton, sees an inclination by the Obama White House to "self-publish," coupled with tactics "I never would have dreamed of in terms of restricting access" for independent news organizations. "What gets lost are those revealing moments when the president's held accountable by the representatives of the public who are there in the form of the media," says McCurry.

Income, Education Levels Impact TV Viewing

Higher education and income levels correspond with less TV usage, particularly at the early and late parts of the day.

For example those with four years of college or more watch an average of an hour and 14 minutes of primetime versus those with just a high school education who watch two hours and eight minutes a day, per Nielsen. Those with just high-school educations watch an average of one hour and 16 minutes of morning TV versus 48 minutes for those with four years or more of college. Those with just high-school educations watch two hour of daytime programming versus an hour and seven minutes for those with four years or more of college. Income levels in other daytimes correspond in similar ways -- 54 minutes in the morning for those making $100,000; an hour and 12 minutes in the morning for those making less than $30,000. Daytime programming: an hour and 58 minutes for those making $30,000 or less; an hour and 12 minutes for those making $100,000 or more.

Benton

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