September 2013

[Commentary] Verizon is suing to overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s Open Internet Order. The rules do three major things: they (1) require broadband providers to be transparent about their practices; (2) prevent them from blocking sites, and in many cases, applications, services, and devices; and (3) prevent most providers from unreasonably discriminating against certain traffic. The rules are meant to implement the principles of network neutrality. They advance a lot of those principles, but many only partially, because of compromises at the bargaining table. Those various compromises and carveouts were enough to satisfy most of the Internet service providers involved, but apparently not enough for Verizon, which brought the court challenge that will be heard soon. But Verizon can't get the rules overturned just because it doesn't like them—they have to make the case that the rules can't legally be enforced.

Microsoft wants to build a better mobile phone through its acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business. One way it hopes to do that? By improving its maps applications to better compete against Google's.

"An effective alternative to Google" and "more than one digital map of the world" are needed, Microsoft said in a presentation on the strategic rationale for the deal, which was posted to the company's website. Microsoft will acquire several new mapping and location services as part of its acquisition of Nokia's Devices & Services business. Chief among them are Nokia's Here Drive, Here Maps and Here Transit. All three were designed to help people travel more efficiently and reduce carbon emissions in the process. Here Transport was geared toward public transportation, offering public transportation route planning in hundreds of cities around the world, according to the Nokia Apps & Services landing page. Here Maps and Here Drive, meanwhile, were designed to help people in cars "plot the most optimal route to their destination," Nokia said. The three mapping apps were made available for all Windows 8 smartphones in July.

There were millions of losers in the August skirmish between CBS and Time Warner Cable. CBS was not one of them.

Time Warner Cable and the 3.2 million viewers whose TV screens went dark when the cable giant unplugged CBS on Aug. 3 turned out to be the ones who got the short end of the stick. Time Warner grudgingly gave in to CBS’ demands for total control over its programming distribution to online devices like iPads, phones and set-top boxes. Those steps promise to give it the ability to “cut the cord” from cable companies. Along with a hefty raise — TWC now will pay CBS around $2 for each subscriber, up from just $.50 (a fee sure to be passed along to consumers) — the network also gained the ability to sell the same content to new distributors, like Intel and Sony, along with other emerging technologies.

Apple's share of the US smartphone market grew to 43.4% from 35.6% between May and July according to a Kantar World Panel survey, a gain of 7.8 percentage points that came almost entirely out of the hide of Google's Android (down 7.6 points). The world turns out to be a mosaic of very different smartphone preferences. In Spain, for example, Androids still outnumber iPhones by nearly 15 to 1 despite Apple's 3 percentage point gain, while iOS's market share actually shrank in China (-3.9%) and Germany (-2.1%).