October 2013

Telecommunications giant Motorola Solutions drew the ire of a national police group after one of the company’s consultants urged Virginia cops to contact state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli with criticisms about a $7 billion project to create a new post-Sept. 11 wireless network for first responders.

The consultant met in September with Virginia representatives of the Fraternal Order of Police, documents and sources indicate. In a follow-up email after the meeting, the consultant urged the trade union’s members to relay concerns about the network to Cuccinelli, the state’s Republican candidate for governor, as well as Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who heads a subcommittee that determines its budget. Motorola Solutions has labored extensively this year to highlight flaws with the network, known as FirstNet, which could cut into one of the company’s key sources of revenue. But a company spokesman said it never sent the consultant and that he isn’t a lobbyist. And the consultant in question, Col. Kenneth Morckel, who works with the Ohio-based First Response Enterprises, said he didn’t travel to Virginia on behalf of Motorola Solutions. “Most of the conversation,” he said, “revolved around my involvement” with the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

[Commentary] Billions of machines talking to each other automatically, using tiny slivers of unused radio waves to improve the environment, healthcare and transport. This may seem like the stuff of science fiction, but the UK is taking an important step in the development of a new wireless technology.

Ofcom has announced the participants in a pilot that could lead to a nationwide rollout of “white space” technology next year. White spaces are the unused gaps in the radio spectrum all around us. Using them will make the UK one of the first countries to test a technology that could help to avert a global data capacity crunch. The work to ensure a future pipeline of spectrum to meet the demands is unrelenting. Britain must innovate to develop new technologies – like white spaces – that make the best use of this resource. We must match technical innovation with creativity and flexibility in the way that we manage spectrum. We must always look for opportunities to reuse spectrum more efficiently, including future release of prime spectrum, and we must seek new opportunities to share and to exploit existing allocations. By doing so we can help develop one of the world’s leading wireless economies.

[Richards is chief executive of Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator]

Portugal Telecom and its Brazilian affiliate Oi said they would combine operations to form a new Brazil-based company with more than 100 million subscribers as global telecom companies scramble to gain market share.

The deal is the latest in a wave of consolidations. It is the second major Latin America-Europe telecom deal announced this year, after America Movil, of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, launched a takeover of Dutch telecommunications firm Royal KPN in a deal that could be worth €7.2 billion ($9.7 billion). The merger comes at a difficult moment for both Oi and PT. The Brazilian firm is weighed down with enormous debts but must continue to invest to remain competitive. PT, meanwhile, has a small and struggling market at home. Portugal's economy has been in a recession as a result of government cutbacks implemented in the wake of the European sovereign-debt crisis.

A fascinating pair of studies led by political scientist Gary King uses rigorously observed patterns of censorship on Chinese social media to show just how systematically the Community Party works to avoid grassroots gatherings of any kind. Two points stand out among their findings.

First, China’s censorship infrastructure is incredibly efficient: Objectionable posts are removed with a near-perfect elimination rate and typically within 24 hours of their posting. Second, King and his team found that Chinese censors focus on posts that refer to, instigate, or are otherwise linked to grassroots collective action such as protests, demonstrations, and even apolitical mass activities, and that the regime seems comparatively more comfortable with criticism of the government.

King suggests at least two reasons for this. 1) Allowing some criticism might mollify citizens who want to blow off some steam, thereby keeping them from expressing these feelings more violently. 2) This relative leniency is a useful way for the central government to learn about problems that require attention. King cites the political scientist Martin Dimitrov, who argues that “regimes collapse when its people stop bringing grievances to the state”—because they no longer see the state as legitimate. Calls to collective action, however, are regarded as dangerous and are not tolerated at all—even when they have little to do with politics. “In some ways, it’s the same in America,” he continues. Large technology companies in the United States are required by law to monitor and censor illegal content such as child pornography, and, as recent revelations about NSA spying reveal, Washington has the ability to pressure businesses to get information it wants.