September 2013

What Not To Do On 9/11, Starring AT&T, the $9.11 Newspaper Deal, Others

[Commentary] It's safe to assume disguising a smartphone sell as a 9/11 commemorative tweet is in poor taste. Unfortunately, AT&T didn't get the memo before it posted a photo with the caption "Never forget" to both its corporate Twitter account and Facebook page. AT&T removed the BlackBerry Z10's branding in the photo, but within minutes a maelstrom of angry tweets began pouring in scorning the company for its decision to post. AT&T posted an apology shortly after deleting the original tweet. And AT&T isn't the only brand to have caused offense on 9/11. The Lakers' social media team posted a slightly confusing photo of Kobe Bryant with the hashtag #NEVERFORGET, which has also since been deleted.

Senators: Illegal NSA spying still secret

Sens Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) are warning that the Administration has still not revealed the full scope of the National Security Agency's privacy violations.

Sens Wyden and Udall, who both have access to classified information as members of the Intelligence Committee, warned that "some significant information — particularly about violations pertaining to the bulk e-mail records collection program — remains classified." When the Administration first acknowledged NSA privacy violations, Sens. Wyden and Udall said the admission was only the "tip of a larger iceberg." "With the documents declassified and released by the Director of National Intelligence the public now has new information about the size and shape of that iceberg," they said.

Ad Wars Heat Up in Washington Over Retransmission Reform

Now that CBS and Time Warner Cable have resolved their retransmission consent differences, the rhetoric is turning to Washington, where ads have been popping up in Capitol Hill publications on both sides of the issue. The timing of the ads is no coincidence.

They are placed to catch the attention of lawmakers as two House subcommittees hold hearings on the reauthorization of a satellite bill, both of which have quickly turned into hearings on a variety of TV and video issues. One ad takes two quotes from CBS CEO Les Moonves, who on the one hand said that his company is only looking for fair value for its TV content, but also said it was absurd to suggest radio stations should pay royalties for music over the air. An ad from the broadcasters screams one statistic: 90 percent—the percent of retransmission consent blackouts that are caused by just three companies, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV and Dish.

FCC's Pai: Marketplace Should Set Value of Auctioned Broadcast Spectrum

Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai plans to tell Congress that the FCC should not set reserve prices in the broadcast incentive auction based on how many viewers a station has or the station’s value as an ongoing broadcast operation.

"The prices paid to broadcasters should be determined by the auction process, not by government fiat," he said in prepared testimony for a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the FCC's budget. Commissioner Pai and the other commissioners are witnesses at the hearing. The Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition (TV stations pondering selling their spectrum), led by Executive Director Preston Padden, has been arguing that the FCC could discourage broadcasters from participating by paying larger stations more than smaller ones, or "scoring" them on size or audience or population when the value of a station's spectrum to the government should instead be how it affects other stations in the repacking process.

Meet The Inspiring Woman Breaking News About Syria As She Reinvents Digital Journalism

In December 2012, Lara Setrakian launched Syria Deeply, a single-topic news site that’s changing both the way journalists cover a global crisis and the way the global news audience receives information. It’s also just the first in what Setrakian hopes is a series of “Deeply” sites to come, tackling everything from Congo to the war on drugs.

While her audience didn’t have the scale of the nightly news, Setrakian says that never bothered her. “I’m very satisfied serving the niche,” she says. “I love the niche. Let me live in the long tail the rest of my days. I felt only abundance, not scarcity." She simultaneously began to recognize what she calls a “fundamental deficit in how we cover the world as an American press pool,” as news organizations closed foreign bureaus and declined to send correspondents to the Middle East, despite its obvious importance.

A Fiber-Optic Network For Fire Island

It is no secret that last year’s storm either destroyed or literally washed away our longtime copper landline network on the western side of Fire Island. Our first objective was to restore voice service, and to do so in a reliable and resilient way. We looked to do this without disrupting the already-damaged environment or getting in the way of other people working to restore the homes and businesses hit by the storm. Because of the monumental damage to our landline network, and the limited amount of time we had to restore services, we offered a state-of-the-art wireless product, Voice Link that was able to provide reliable home voice service to our customers.

It is because of this commitment that we have decided to deploy fiber to the western portion of the island. The main driver of this was simply that our customers told us they were interested in a wider set of services beyond voice - services that no other company was willing or able to provide. While the island now has an advanced wireless network, we will soon begin building a fiber optic network that will enable state-of-the art wireline voice and broadband services. We expect to have the fiber network completed in time for the summer 2014 season. Residents of western Fire Island will now have the benefits of both our advanced wireless and fiber-optic networks.

[Tom Maguire is Senior Vice President - National Operations Support]

Verizon Wireless Completes Sale of Spectrum to AT&T

Verizon Wireless announced it completed the sale of 39 lower 700 MHz B Block spectrum licenses to AT&T in exchange for $1.9 billion, together with the transfer to Verizon Wireless of certain AWS-1 licenses, under an agreement announced in January 2013.

The AWS licenses cover certain western markets, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Albuquerque (NM), Fresno (CA), and Portland (OR) and will be used to add capacity to Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network, the largest in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission approved the spectrum license transfers on September 3rd.

[Robin B. Nicol is executive director of Corporate Communications at Verizon Wireless]

European Commission pushes for net neutrality and end to roaming fees

The European Commission (EC) agreed to adopt its ambitious "connected continent" plan, which includes wide-reaching network neutrality and telecoms regulation.

After aiming to put an end to roaming fees in 2014, the EC has unveiled its plan to coax carriers into doing so. New legislation approved by the EC doesn't represent a demand to end roaming, but instead looks to make life difficult for Europe's carriers if they don't get on board with the plan. Starting in 2014, all carriers will have to stop charging for incoming calls received when abroad. The plan for other roaming fees is to persuade carriers to adopt a "roam like at home" strategy, whereby all minutes, text messages, and data from your monthly plan can be used in any EU member state without extra charge. Should carriers implement charge-free roaming by 2014, they'll enjoy lighter regulations moving forward. If any carrier doesn't move over to the "roam like at home" system, its customers will be free to choose another provider for international calls, texts, and data, without changing their SIM card or receiving a second bill. It's hoped that the threat of giving carriers' customers free choice will push the telecommunications industry into dropping roaming fees. The EC also adopted a network neutrality plan that closely tracks the US Federal Communication Commission's Open Internet policy. The new rules forbid Internet service providers from throttling or blocking Internet content, or from "traffic shaping" practices.

Broadband gap: Google Fiber isn't the only revolution in Kansas City

Kansas City, a metropolitan area of about 2 million that straddles the border between Kansas state and Missouri, seems an unlikely place to see what the future of Internet connectivity could look like. But nearly three years after Google announced that this Midwestern metropolis best known for jazz and barbecue would become the first place in the world to get the company’s experimental, ultra-high-speed broadband Internet service — Google Fiber — Kansas City is looking more futuristic.

That’s because Kansas City is also home to another experimental broadband Internet service effort that hasn’t received nearly as much international attention as Google Fiber. Just over a year ago, right around the same time Google actually began installing fiber in KC, a ragtag alliance of affordable Internet advocates began building their own nonprofit wireless Internet service specifically designed for low-income households, a system they call the KC Freedom Network. Even though it can’t match Google Fiber in terms of raw speed, the KC Freedom Network offers something to users they say Google does not: truly affordable Internet. The KC Freedom Network doesn't charge anything for many of its users, but eventually hopes to offer internet for $20 a year.

How far did the NSA go to weaken cryptography standards?

[Commentary] The Guardian's bombshell cryptography story revealed that one secret document showed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had worked covertly to get its own version of a draft security standard issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) approved for worldwide use in 2006. “Eventually, NSA became the sole editor,” the document states. NIST is usually seen as an impartial judge of standards, so this was potentially catastrophic. The agency denied the allegations, saying they would never "deliberately weaken a cryptographic standard," but the damage was done. Had the NSA been poisoning the well of cryptography? Miles Smid was on the NIST working group that approved the standard. He says any NSA involvement was fully disclosed and happened before the group ever convened. "NIST is part of the government and so is the NSA. The NSA has submitted candidate algorithms in the past, and NIST treats them like any other submissions," Smid said. In any case, it's still unclear just how alarmed the crypto world should be. But at the same time, the problem is much bigger than a single bad standard. We now have confirmation that the NSA purposefully spread a bad algorithm, which calls into question much more than just a single program.

Benton

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