October 2013

Comcast Shows Growth in Internet Subscribers

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, told a familiar story through its third-quarter earnings: overall growth despite continued slippage in television subscribers and unflattering comparisons to 2012. The biggest part of the sprawling company, Comcast Cable, reported a 5.2 percent uptick in revenue by signing up more broadband Internet users and by squeezing about $10 more a month from its average television subscriber.

Thus, Comcast came out ahead, even though it lost 129,000 of its 21.6 million TV subscribers in the quarter, slightly more than it lost in the same period in 2012. These trends -- increases on the broadband side and decreases on the television side -- have been evident in Comcast’s earnings for years amid stiff competition from Verizon and AT&T’s TV services and changes in consumer behavior. Of course, many of Comcast’s customers pay the company for an all-inclusive package of TV, broadband and phone. But the company is rapidly approaching the point where it will have more broadband subscribers than TV subscribers.

Who tracks the trackers that track you online? You can, with Lightbeam.

When your browser landed on this article, it didn't just talk to the friendly servers at washingtonpost.com. It also made contact with Chartbeat, a company that helps us understand where else you've been on the Web, and how you're interacting with the site. Your browser also connected to a personalized news applet called Trove, various marketing plug-ins and a social bookmarking service run by a company known as AddThis.

To help you see which sites are sending your information to third parties, the folks at Mozilla have designed a way to visualize these trackers. It's called Lightbeam. (Unfortunately, the tool works only on Mozilla's Firefox browser). When you launch it, it shows up blank -- an empty canvas waiting for your browsing history to turn it into a detailed online portrait of you. So what can consumers do with this information? Mozilla hopes they'll become more conscious of the Web's underlying connective tissue. Beyond that, the company doesn't get much into specifics.

Stiff resistance to state technology taxes

As the nation moves from a tangible goods-based economy to a service-based economy, a few states are trying to keep revenues robust by taxing technological services such as software upgrades and cloud computing. But a backlash from the high-tech industry has quashed most efforts. As a result, the US has a patchwork quilt of state taxes on technological services.

Some states that have tried to impose such taxes have failed spectacularly, and most have not tried at all. According to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank that studies taxes, only 10 states (Connecticut, New Mexico, Hawaii, South Dakota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia) and the District of Columbia tax all writing or updating of software. Only New Mexico, Hawaii and South Dakota levy their general sales taxes on all software services. States with sales taxes do, however, levy those taxes on software that is sold on CDs or other hard storage materials. About half the states also tax "canned" (non-altered) software that can be downloaded, according to the Tax Foundation. Elia Peterson, an analyst with the foundation, said in a recent paper that states are reluctant to tax computer services in large part because it "is an especially mobile industry and could easily move to a lower tax state."

To Some, Selling Spectrum Could Makes Sense

For some group owners, especially those with multiple stations in major markets, the Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming incentive auction is starting to look like an opportunity to reap a cash windfall.

LIN Media CEO Vince Sadusky and CTO Brett Jenkins acknowledged that the station group might sell some of its TV spectrum in the FCC’s planned incentive auction. It would be a way of turning Class A low-power stations and full-power duopoly stations into cash, Sadusky said. "[W]e think that there could be a value creation capability option." Both LIN and Meredith say they’re considering participating. And for others like Ion and Univision, the financial rewards are very tempting.

Redesigning Commerce.gov

After having the same look and feel on our website since 2010, Commerce.gov is embarking on a fresh redesign to put the user in the driver seat.

Drawing on anonymized user input, we have made some significant changes and are excited to announce the launch of our new site -- Beta.Commerce.gov. First, you’ll notice that we’ve made search front and center. To improve the user experience, the navigation bar follows the user down the page. On the home page, major statements and announcements are now front and center. The Beta.Commerce.Gov is a media gallery with photo sets and videos. So now when you visit our site using a mobile device, you won't just see a page scaled to your smaller screen -- instead, you'll see a page optimized for viewing on your device.

A tale of two Internets of things: Connectivity will invade your home and office in different ways

[Commentary] The promise of the Internet of things so far is just that -- promise. All industries are pretty much on the same page with regard to IoT -- the “looking into it” stage -- and most businesses are unsure what to do with this emerging set of technologies. But when it comes to the greater promise of IoT, changing a business from one of selling products to selling a service or offering a customer new products that are more profitable -- companies are struggling to figure it out.

Tough Job Ahead for New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler

The Federal Communications Commission, which has been run by just three commissioners for several months, will soon be back up to full force after the Senate confirmed Tom Wheeler as the new FCC chairman and long-term Congressional staffer Michael O’Rielly as FCC commissioner.

Wheeler noted that the telecommunications industry is in the middle of important changes. Wheeler is generally viewed favorably by telecom industry stakeholders, who perceive that he is already up to speed on key telecom industry issues. O’Rielly comes to the FCC from his position as an adviser to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Republican minority whip. “Both nominees are highly qualified for their positions,” said Walter B. McCormick Jr., president and CEO of USTelecom, adding that “we look forward to working with them on the critical issues that face the nation’s communications industry and consumers.” McCormick didn’t specify the “critical issues,” but I think most telecom industry stakeholders would agree that they include such thorny items as the TDM-to-IP transition, Universal Service reform, retransmission rights, and spectrum policy.

Infonetics Predicts Small Cell Mobile Backhaul Surge

The market for small, or low-power, outdoor cells is poised for a growth surge, according to Infonetics’ recently released “Small Cell Mobile Backhaul Equipment” report. Though revenue in the “nascent market” for outdoor small cell mobile backhaul equipment totaled just $39 million worldwide in 2012, “we look for outdoor small cells to really kick into high gear beginning in 2014, and predict a cumulative $6 billion will be spent globally on outdoor small cell backhaul equipment between 2013 and 2017,” report co-author and Infonetics’ directing analyst for microwave and carrier Wi-Fi Richard Webb said.

The Man Turning The Privacy Tables On Mark Zuckerberg

A Q&A with Michael Zimmer, an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

For almost 10 years, Facebook has used the information we've shared in the social network's pseudo public sphere for its own (usually advertising-related) purposes. Now, Zimmer wants to turn those tables with his just-launched project, The Zuckerberg Files, which compiles all of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public statements into a digital, searchable archive. "It's kind of playful to let him see what it's like to have all of your stuff data mined and used for some purpose you might not have originally intended," Zimmer told Fast Company. "Just like the stuff we put on Facebook." When asked why he chose Facebook and Zuckerberg for this venture, Zimmer replied that he chose Facebook because the company has such power to make changes to privacy settings, profiles and more, affecting millions of users.

Mr. President, We Can Handle the Truth

[Commentary] The newly adopted argument for US spying on foreign allies was that the President had no idea this was going on and that it was stopped. Now we weren't just spying on the Germans and others -- we were lying to them. And the White House was asking the American people to accept ignorance as its excuse.

What a fine choice. Either the President didn't know about programs he should have been aware of, or he knew and not only OKed the overreach, but then lied about it. This astonishingly lame response was then compounded by an idea that the President was considering reforms that would ban eavesdropping on presidents and prime ministers of allies. Quite apart from raising the tough question of who our "real" allies are or defining who is fair game for spying, this policy tweak is not reform but spin. What if there were 20 allies who qualified? Does this mean we solve the NSA surveillance overreach problem by exempting a small, pre-selected group out of hundreds of millions from the data and phone-records eavesdropping and warehousing efforts of the US government? However, the core issues of the gross and excessive surveillance associated with the NSA revelations are not about spying on friends. Wholesale harvesting of the emails and phone records of Americans is a dangerous departure from the principles of limiting government access to private information that has existed since the beginnings of the republic. Creating back doors by which Americans can be eavesdropped on via collecting overseas data resources is another worrisome dimension of these programs. Serially violating the privacy of tens of millions of foreign citizens is another. So is the suggestion that the threat of terrorism warrants such sweeping violations.

Benton

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