July 2013

“We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.”
-- Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013

Spectrum and FCC Reform on today’s agenda http://benton.org/calendar/2013-07-24/

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
   NSA Director Lobbies House on Eve of Critical Vote
   Sen Wyden: Weak oversight of NSA may lead to massive location tracking
   Tech lobbying reports barely scratch NSA issue
   Republicans for Snowden - editorial
   Metadata Liberation Movement - editorial
   Does the NSA Tap That? What We Still Don't Know About Internet Surveillance - analysis [links to web]
   NSA says it can’t search its own e-mails

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   The First Americans - op-ed
   Seventeenth Quarterly Status Report to Congress Regarding BTOP - research
   FCC Releases NPRM on Modernizing the E-rate Program for Schools and Libraries - public notice
   OECD: U.S. Ranks in Middle of Global Broadband Pack
   See The 10 States With The Fastest Internet Connections
   Google Fiber, Provo Seal the Deal [links to web]
   Creating Internet Accountability [links to web]

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS
   Recap: Oversight of Incentive Auction Implementation
   LPTV Deserves Opportunity to be Heard
   FCC Plans Spectrum Auction
   Dish Emerges As LightSquared “Stalking Horse” Bidder [links to web]
   FCC Releases New Incentive Auction Repacking Information - press release [links to web]
   The biggest opportunity in mobile right now isn’t on smartphones (Hint: It’s feature phones) [links to web]
   Samsung vs. Apple Needs an Obama Intervention - op-ed
   Google will pay for free wireless in San Francisco parks [links to web]

OWNERSHIP
   MMTC: Diversity Doesn't Justify Retaining Cross-Ownership Rule
   Samsung vs. Apple Needs an Obama Intervention - op-ed

TELEVISION
   LPTV Deserves Opportunity to be Heard
   McCain a la Carte Bill Gets Lead Co-Sponsor: Sen. Blumenthal [links to web]
   Univision claims title as top prime time television network [links to web]

JOURNALISM
   A Growing Share of Latinos Get Their News in English - research
   There Is a 99.45% Chance That Nate Silver Is Changing Journalism [links to web]

EDUCATION
   FCC Releases NPRM on Modernizing the E-rate Program for Schools and Libraries - public notice
   Textbook publishers revamp e-books to fight used market [links to web]

LOBBYING
   Tech giants pour millions into lobbying efforts [links to web]
   Tech lobbying reports barely scratch NSA issue

COMPANY NEWS
   AT&T Misses Expectations as Costs Increase [links to web]
   Demand Woes Bite Apple [links to web]

STORIES FROM ABROAD
   World leaders are on Twitter, but they’re not using it [links to web]
   Telefónica to Buy KPN's German Unit in $10.7 Billion Deal [links to web]
   KPN's Gift to European Telecoms - analysis [links to web]
   Vivendi in Talks to Sell African Telecom Stake [links to web]

MORE ONLINE
   FCC’s Semiannual Regulatory Agenda [links to web]
   Parents: it’s 2013, stop blaming Apple for your kid’s $1,000 app bill [links to web]

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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

NSA VOTE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: James Risen, Charlie Savage]
The Obama Administration scrambled to slow Congressional opposition to the National Security Agency’s domestic spying operations as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on legislation that would block the agency’s collection of records about every phone call dialed or received inside the United States. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the NSA director, met with Democrats and Republicans to lobby against a Republican-sponsored amendment to a military appropriations bill that would stop the financing for its phone data collection program. The White House issued a statement praising the idea of a debate about surveillance but denouncing “the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle” the call tracking program, urging lawmakers to vote down the legislation and instead conduct a “reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation.” “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process,” the White House statement said.
benton.org/node/156422 | New York Times | Financial Times
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WYDEN ON NSA
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Rob Pegoraro]
In a speech at the Center for American Progress, Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) denounced the combination of an "always expanding, omnipresent surveillance state" and a covert corpus of law that hardly restraints it. "That's not the way we do it in America!" he said, his voice rising. "We don't keep laws secret!" "You simply cannot have an informed debate," he continued. "And when the American people are in the dark, they cannot make fully informed decisions about who should represent them." Most tellingly, Wyden repeatedly invoked the possibility of the NSA doing location-tracking. In its first report on the leaks, The Guardian said that the location data is part of what the NSA gets in its dragnet collection of telephone data; but the secret Verizon court order it published didn't specifically mention location data. "Most of us here have a computer in our pocket that can potentially be used to track and monitor us 24/7," Sen Wyden remarked early on, before vaguely warning of the prospect of "a surveillance state that cannot be reversed." Later he added: "Without additional protections in the law, every single one of us... may be and can be tracked and monitored anywhere we are at any time." And again: "Today, government officials openly tell the press that they have the authority to effectively turn America's cell phones and smartphones into location-enabled homing beacons." Sen Wyden blamed this on Congress's lenient post-9/11 lawmaking (in which he has lately been a vocal dissenting minority) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's subsequent sweeping expansion of the NSA's reach.
benton.org/node/156388 | Ars Technica
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LITTLE NSA LOBBYING
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm]
Tech companies have publicly petitioned Washington for the ability to disclose more about their work with the National Security Agency — but lobbying reports don’t show the industry’s giants making a play for sweeping changes to U.S. law. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft together spent more than $8 million to canvass lawmakers from April to June on issues like immigration and cybersecurity, according to newly released federal disclosures. But the documents also reflect they’ve largely avoided an all-out offensive on the government’s powers to seek foreign suspects’ Internet communications, tech insiders tell Politico. Only two of those tech leaders — Facebook and Microsoft — even mentioned the related laws in their latest lobbying reports. The industry’s top lobbyists say the silence speaks only to the sensitivity of the surveillance fight. “They’re engaged on the issue on Capitol Hill, more in the sense they’re there to answer questions,” one insider said, “but I wouldn’t say it’s a lobbying push.”
benton.org/node/156421 | Politico
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REPUBLICANS FOR SNOWDEN
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Few things are more dangerous than Congress in heat, and so it is this week as a libertarian-left wing coalition in the House of Representatives is rushing to neuter one of the National Security Agency's antiterror surveillance programs. The chief instigator is Rep Justin Amash (R-MI), the 33-year-old second-termer who has made opposition to the country's post-9/11 security programs a personal crusade. In previous years, he's attempted to ban the military interrogation and detention of any terrorist caught on U.S. soil. The effect would be to treat terrorists better if they blow up Times Square—where they'd receive U.S. civilian due-process protections if captured—than if they stayed overseas. Rep Amash lost on the House floor, but you catch his drift. Now he's back with an amendment to this year's defense spending bill that would bar the NSA from collecting metadata except when specific individuals are already being investigated and are subject to a court order. This would effectively end one of the two programs exposed by admitted NSA leaker and fugitive, Edward Snowden. Metadata are the general phone records—numbers called, duration of the calls—not the content of the conversations. Searching through metadata amounts to searching the haystack to find a needle. But under Amash's amendment, the NSA could only gather metadata if it has already found the needle.
benton.org/node/156419 | Wall Street Journal
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METADATA LIBERATION MOVEMENT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Holman Jenkins Jr]
[Commentary] With respect to the famous metadata surveillance, why is it conducted by a secret agency at all? This is the program that anonymously collects data about electronic transactions—from the time, duration and numbers involved in a phone call, to email connections, to financial transactions—everything but the actual content. It may be that Americans have nothing to fear from computers raking through piles of anonymous data. The threat to liberty and privacy comes only when computers kick up red flags for an actual human being to look at, which now means an employee of an agency necessarily removed from popular oversight. The biggest problem, then, with metadata surveillance may simply be that the wrong agencies are in charge of it. One particular reason why this matters is that the potential of metadata surveillance might actually be quite large but is being squandered by secret agencies whose narrow interest is only looking for terrorists.
benton.org/node/156417 | Wall Street Journal
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NSA CAN’T SEARCH NSA E-MAIL
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Justin Elliott]
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA as part of a freedom of information request to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' e-mail? The agency says it doesn't have the technology. "There's no central method to search an e-mail at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," said NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker. The system is "a little antiquated and archaic," she added.
benton.org/node/156374 | Ars Technica
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

THE FIRST AMERICANS
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Michael Copps]
[Commentary] I write this flying back from the Native Public Media and Native American Journalists Association joint conference in Tempe, AZ. The weekend left me with conflicting conclusions. On the one hand, I saw excitement, entrepreneurship, and a host of innovative approaches to bring telecommunications and media infrastructure to Native lands. I saw clever and information-filled websites, learned about new radio and Internet news outlets, and sensed high hopes that upcoming spectrum auctions would hasten the arrival of wireless and high-speed broadband to Indian Country and other Native areas. On the other hand, high-speed broadband service remains a stranger to most Native Americans—and by “most” I mean 90-95 per cent of them. It has been aptly remarked that the nation’s first Americans are also the least-served Americans when it comes to the availability of communications infrastructure. And get this: only about two-thirds of our sisters and brothers living in Indian Country have even plain old telephone service! No gigabytes for them, no DSL, a paucity of wireless, very little ability to make that 9-1-1 emergency call that can spell the difference between survival and death. Not even a pay phone nearby. Most folks reading this will be, like me, hard-put to even grasp how crippling these gaps are. So today’s reality in Indian Country is not a slowly-shrinking communications gap that is on its way to closure. It is instead a widening communications gap consigning yet another generation of Native Americans to a future bereft of the tools they need to become fully participating citizens in Twenty-first Century life.
http://benton.org/node/156336
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BTOP REPORT
[SOURCE: National Telecommunications and Information Administration]
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) provides this Quarterly Report on the status of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP or Program). This Report focuses on the Program’s activities from January 1 to March 31, 2013. As of March 31, 2013, 182 BTOP projects remained in active status, and 42 BTOP projects had completed their project activities. BTOP recipients deployed more than 6,500 network miles during the past quarter, bringing the total number of miles to more than 93,000. Through March 2013, recipients were deploying infrastructure in 47 states, four territories, and the District of Columbia. NTIA expects the pace of network construction to remain strong through summer 2013. BTOP recipients connected approximately 1,800 community anchor institutions, which is an increase of 15 percent from last quarter and brings the total number of institutions connected to more than 14,000 across 44 states, 3 territories, and the District of Columbia. Through March 2013, 65 BTOP recipients installed more than 42,000 new workstations in Public Computer Centers (PCCs) across 38 states, one territory, and the District of Columbia. Recipients installing workstations also continue to develop and implement training programs and educational courses. During the quarter, PCCs provided 1.13 million hours of training to 340,000 users. Through March 2013, Sustainable Broadband Adoption (SBA) grant recipients reported that nearly 540,000 households and 4,800 businesses
subscribed to broadband services, many of whom received digital literacy or job training. During the second quarter of FY13, BTOP recipients spent more than $194 million in federal grant funds. These funds were matched by recipient contributions of nearly $85 million. Cumulatively, federal outlays for the Program totaled $2.8 billion through March 31, 2013, while total recipient matching contributions exceeded $1.1 billion.
benton.org/node/156395 | National Telecommunications and Information Administration
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E-RATE NPRM RELEASED
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
The Federal Communications Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in order to initiate a thorough review and update of the E-rate program (more formally known as the schools and libraries universal service support mechanism), building on reforms adopted in 2010 as well as the FCC’s reforms of each of the other universal service programs. There is strong evidence and growing consensus that E-rate needs to sharpen its focus and provide schools and libraries with high-capacity broadband connections. In June, President Barack Obama announced the ConnectED initiative aimed at connecting all schools to the digital age. The ConnectED initiative seeks to connect schools and libraries serving 99 percent of our students to next-generation high-capacity broadband (with speeds of no less than 100 Mbps and a target speed of 1 Gbps) and to provide high-capacity wireless connectivity within those schools and libraries within five years. The FCC seeks comment on ways to comprehensively modernize E-rate, including improving the efficiency and administration of the program. Comments in the proceeding are due September 16, 2013; Reply Comments are due October 16, 2013. [WC Docket No. 13-184]
benton.org/node/156392 | Federal Communications Commission
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OECD BROADBAND RANKINGS
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Has U.S. broadband subscriber growth stalled? The U.S. ranked near the middle of 34 developed and developing nations measured by the number of wired broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, according to new research from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD is an international organization that promotes policies aimed at improving the economic and social well-being of people around the world. The U.S. has about 28.8 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, according to the OECD, giving the country a ranking of 15 out of 34 OECD nations, behind 12 European countries, Canada and Korea. The top 5 countries were Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Korea and France, all of which had at least 36 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Data was collected as of year-end 2012. The U.S. saw an increase of 1.5% in broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants between June 2012 and December 2012, ranking it in the middle of the pack there, too. Thirteen European countries, Mexico and Chile saw greater growth. Mexico topped the list with a 5.2% increase in broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in the six-month study period, followed by Greece, Poland, Slovak Republic and Portugal. All of those countries had six-month growth rates of at least 3.9%.
benton.org/node/156372 | telecompetitor
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AKAMAI STATE OF THE INTERNET REPORT
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: Elise Hu]
In the latest Akamai State of the Internet report, Vermont, New Hampshire and Delaware top the list of states with the fastest average connection speeds, and make the top 10 states with fastest peak connection speeds, too. "One key thing that stood out was the significant levels of growth [in connection speeds], for the most part. We saw double digit percentage growth — which is an encouraging trend," said David Belson, editor of Akamai's report. Belson says it's not just smaller populations that contribute to faster connection speeds. "It may also be states with stronger competition for broadband services," he says. "At least on a community level, if there's only one provider, the chances of getting very high speed services for reasonably prices is low. But when you put Verizon FiOS and Comcast and RCN and others in the same neighborhood, there's more contention for the customer dollar. So you'll see them start getting more competitive for speed and pricing."
benton.org/node/156389 | National Public Radio
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SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

RECAP OF INCENTIVE AUCTION OVERSIGHT HEARING
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Kevin Taglang]
The House Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee held an oversight hearing on the Federal Communications Commission’s implementation of provisions of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act which authorized broadcast spectrum incentive auctions. Lawmakers and witnesses all agreed on the importance of the auction, which could be the last time that a significant amount of low-frequency spectrum becomes available. Low-frequency spectrum is particularly valuable because it is able to travel farther and penetrate walls. Gary Epstein, the co-lead of the FCC's Incentive Auction Task Force, said the FCC is still planning to hold the auction by 2014, but he expressed little confidence that the agency will meet the goal.
Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) said the key to getting the auction right for broadcasters and wireless companies is that broadcasters exiting the business should get market value for their stations, that broadcasters remaining in the businesses get certainty about their continued viability, and that wireless companies be "courted as participants not subjected to economic manipulation." Chairman Walden said that certainty for broadcasters means they will not be interfered with by stations in Canada and Mexico, and that the FCC should take into account unique challenges like those of low-power translators, which boost TV signals over tough terrain to hard-to-reach places.
Officials from AT&T and T-Mobile offered competing plans for how the FCC should structure its auction of spectrum licenses. Joan Marsh, AT&T's vice president of federal regulatory affairs, argued that the FCC should allow "unfettered participation" by all qualified bidders. She argued that unrestricted competition for the spectrum is the only way to maximize the government's revenue. But Kathleen Ham, T-Mobile's vice president of federal regulatory affairs, warned that the auction is the government's "last, best chance" to prevent Verizon and AT&T from dominating the wireless industry. Republicans on the subcommittee largely sided with AT&T's call for few limits on auction participation, while Democrats encouraged the FCC to use the auction to promote industry competition. Democrats also argued that the FCC should set aside a large amount of spectrum for unlicensed use.
Rick Kaplan, executive vice president of strategic planning for the National Association of Broadcasters, argued that the FCC should ensure that TV stations that choose not to participate in the auction do not have to bear any of the costs of the subsequent reshuffling of frequencies. Preston Padden, the executive director of a group representing TV stations that want to sell their licenses, urged the FCC to pay the broadcasters based on the value of their spectrum, rather than the value of their business.
benton.org/node/156397 | House Commerce Committee | The Hill | B&C | B&C | Multichannel News | AdWeek | FCC | AT&T
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LPTV AND SPECTRUM AUCTIONS
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: Rod Payne]
[Commentary] The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing on spectrum incentive auctions had one glaring oversight. Not one representative from the low-power television industry was invited. Why is this so egregious? Simply put, no other group has more to lose in the incentive auction and related repacking than does LPTV. It is the only group that has nothing to gain and everything to lose, especially if the repack is as aggressive as some would like it to be. Consider these four facts:
LPTV stations cannot enter the auction.
If no spectrum remains in their market after the repack, LPTV stations will be involuntarily wiped out with no compensation.
LPTV stations get no reimbursement if their spectrum is taken away and they are forced to move to another channel to exist.
Millions of TV viewers may lose their only source of free information and free entertainment.
[Payne is a low-power TV operator and chairman of the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance, a group dedicated to preserving spectrum for TV broadcasting]
benton.org/node/156366 | TVNewsCheck
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FCC PLANS SPECTRUM AUCTION
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ryan Knutson]
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed to include a slice of spectrum now controlled by the military in its first significant auction of airwaves in half a decade. The move comes after the Defense Department offered to compromise with wireless carriers and relocate its operations from spectrum now used for purposes like training pilots in the Pentagon's drone program. A provision in a congressional jobs bill in 2012 mandated that the FCC license spectrum in the 2155-to-2180 megahertz band by February 2015. Carriers have pressed to include spectrum in the 1755-to-1780 megahertz band as well in order to create complementary channels for uploading and downloading mobile data. The FCC issued what is known as a notice of proposed rulemaking, indicating that it plans to auction spectrum across several bands, including 1755-to-1780 megahertz. Taken together, the next auction will be known as AWS-3, the FCC said. It is the first significant auction since 2008, and it is expected to take place in the fall of 2014. Now that the FCC has proposed rules, interested parties have until Oct. 16 to weigh in.
benton.org/node/156415 | Wall Street Journal
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SAMSUNG VS APPLE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Randal Milch]
[Commentary] By early August, the Obama administration must decide whether to veto the U.S. International Trade Commission’s decision to bar certain Apple iPhone 4s and iPad 2s alleged to have infringed on a Samsung patent. Should it? The president can veto the ITC's decision "for policy reasons," according to statute. But a president hasn't vetoed an ITC decision since 1987, and what spare guidance on veto decisions exists dates from a Carter-era case that had nothing to do with patents. The paucity of vetoes, and the absence of any patent-tailored standards to guide such a decision, have created the potential for an anti-consumer exclusion order from to ITC to go unchecked. The White House can remedy this problem by adopting a set of clear principles for patent infringement cases. Here are three instances under which the president should veto an exclusion order:
When the patent holder isn't practicing the technology itself. Courts have routinely found shutdown relief inappropriate for non-practicing entities. Patent trolls shouldn't be permitted to exclude products from our shores.
When the patent holder has already agreed to license the patent on reasonable terms as part of standards setting. If the patent holder has previously agreed that a reasonable licensing fee is all it needs to be made whole, it shouldn't get shutdown relief at the ITC.
When the infringing piece of the product isn't that important to the overall product, and doesn't drive consumer demand for the product at issue. There are more than 250,000 patents relevant to today's smartphones. It makes no sense that exclusion could occur for infringement of the most minor patent.
[Milch is executive vice president of public policy and general counsel of Verizon Communications]
benton.org/node/156409 | Wall Street Journal
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OWNERSHIP

MMTC OWNERSHIP STUDY
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The Minority Media & Telecommunications Council told the Federal Communications Commission that the FCC should use MMTC’s diversity study as one piece of evidence — though not a dispositive one — that rules banning newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership, or other forms of cross-ownership, are not "sufficiently material" to justify tightening or retaining them. The study did identify one market in which the three respondents said cross-media interests had a competitive impact, so the MMTC’s July 23 filing provided a caveat about "singleton" stations, which are more likely to be minority- or women-owned than other stations. "We recommend that the commission be alert to the possibility that a cross-media combination, with strong newspaper, television and radio outlets in a medium (or small) market, can have sufficient market power to operate as a material detriment to minority and women ownership," the advocacy group said.
benton.org/node/156360 | Multichannel News
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JOURNALISM

WHERE LATINOS GET THEIR NEWS
[SOURCE: Pew Research Hispanic Center, AUTHOR: Mark Hugo Lopez, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera]
The language of news media consumption is changing for Hispanics: a growing share of Latino adults are consuming news in English from television, print, radio and internet outlets, and a declining share are doing so in Spanish, according to survey findings from the Pew Research Center. In 2012, 82% of Hispanic adults said they got at least some of their news in English, up from 78% who said the same in 2006. By contrast, the share who get at least some of their news in Spanish has declined, to 68% in 2012 from 78% in 2006. Half (50%) of Latino adults say they get their news in both languages, down from 57% in 2010. The rise in use of English news sources has been driven by an increase in the share of Hispanics who say they get their news exclusively in English. According to the survey, one-third (32%) of Hispanic adults in 2012 did this, up from 22% in 2006. By contrast, the share of Hispanic adults who get their news exclusively in Spanish has decreased to 18% in 2012 from 22% in 2006. These changes in news consumption patterns reflect several ongoing demographic trends within the Hispanic community.
benton.org/node/156356 | Pew Research Hispanic Center | NYTimes
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