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  2. December 2013

December 2013

Back-End Errors at US Health Website Jeopardize Sign-Up

There’s no way to tell how many people who think they’ve signed up for health insurance through the US exchange actually have, after about 1 in 4 enrollments sent to insurers from the federal website had garbled included incomplete information. The data transmission errors have been reduced to 1 in 10 since Nov. 30, the government said on Dec. 6. Still, the acknowledgment suggests consumers need to be vigilant about their health plan purchases.

Letters from insurers confirming coverage can take a week or more, and the Obama administration now says people should call their companies if they aren’t contacted within that time. With repairs to the front end of healthcare.gov leading to a spurt of 29,000 new enrollments in the first two days of December, US officials are now focusing on what happens after customers select a plan on the website. Enrollment isn’t complete until consumers make their first payment, which is due Dec. 31 for insurance coverage that will begin on Jan. 1. “It’s time for people to move toward locking in coverage and paying for it,” said Joel Ario, a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions, in a telephone interview. Insurers will face “a tall challenge” trying to resolve enrollment errors as the time shortens before coverage begins Jan. 1, he said.

National Broadband Plans: From Vision to Strategy to Execution

Blair Levin delivered a speech in Qatar at a symposium marking the release of the country’s National Broadband Plan. Asked to provide some comments on it in the context of outlining lessons learned from National Broadband Plans around the world, Levin suggested, “The execution of the Plan is more important than the Plan itself. Good execution can correct for any errors in the Plan. A great plan with lousy execution will ultimately fail.”

He also noted that Plans erred in focusing too much on aspirations, saying ”Aspiration is easy, execution is hard.” The US National Broadband Plan architect also explained how the Federal Communications Commission tried to send that message to policy makers in the United States with use of Shakespeare “but we were probably too subtle.” Levin also noted that all Broadband Plans have the same four foundation stones: use spectrum more efficiently; drive fiber deeper into the network; get everyone on the network in one or more places; use the platform to deliver public goods more effectively. Consistent with the theme of execution, he noted that whether the country achieved the stated goals of competition and speed has very little to do with the goals themselves and everything to do with how the country “allocates spectrum and creates incentives to deploy fiber.” Levin said that while spectrum is not more important than the other three, “it is, however, the most important to get right because it is harder to course correct. If initial efforts fail to drive fiber deeper, get everyone on, and use the platform well, you can adjust rapidly. If you allocate spectrum in ways that do not work well, the embedded owners and users of the spectrum will make it difficult to shift.”

Where Freedom of the Press Is Muffled

While it was heartening to see the White House at the forefront of the effort to ensure an unfettered press in China this past week, government officials in Britain, a supposedly advanced democracy and the United States’ closest ally, might do well to consider Vice President Joe Biden’s words. (Some of his colleagues in the Justice Department, which has ferociously prosecuted leakers, might take heed as well, but that’s a matter for a different day.)

“Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences,” he said. Two days before VP Biden made his comments, Alan Rusbridger, the editor in chief of The Guardian, a British newspaper, was compelled to appear before a parliamentary committee to be questioned about the newspaper’s coverage of national security material leaked by Edward J. Snowden. Rather than asking Rusbridger how a 30-year-old in Hawaii not directly employed by the government had access to so many vital secrets, the committee sought to intimidate and raised the question of whether The Guardian, in sharing the Snowden leaks with other news organizations, might have engaged in criminal activity.

EU data protection rules hit by surprise legal objection

US tech companies such as Facebook and Google face the prospect of dealing with 28 different European data protection watchdogs after one of the EU’s chief legal advisers raised a surprise objection to a proposed data protection law.

The tech industry had lobbied for a key provision in the EU proposal, known as the “one-stop shop” rule, which would allow companies to submit to a single privacy regulator rather than competing national ones. That provision was meant to minimize the burden of complying with the new rules. But Hubert Legal, head of the legal service for the European Council, which represents the EU’s national governments, said the rule -- while helping companies -- undermined citizens’ human rights. “The problem is the results you get in terms of respecting the functioning of justice and people’s rights is actually a very bad outcome a very bad result and as your legal adviser I have to tell you it’s a bad outcome,” Hubert told EU justice ministers meeting in Brussels.

TV’s reign over ad spending to end after three decades

Television’s hold on advertising budgets is beginning to falter, with forecasts indicating its share of global advertising is to peak after three decades of growth. Television is expected to capture 40.2 percent of the $532 billion global ad market in 2013 before falling to 39.3 per cent of the total market in 2016, according to Publicis’ ZenithOptimedia.

WPP’s GroupM is also predicting that TV’s share of the global advertising market will decrease slightly in the coming year. The transition is the result of digital media chipping away at television’s dominance amid broader upheaval in the industry. ZenithOptimedia forecasts that the internet will boost its share of the ad market from 20.6 percent in 2013 to 26.6 percent in 2016. Within that category, mobile advertising will grow by an average of 50 percent a year between 2013 and 2016, contributing 36 percent of extra ad spending. TV will account for 34 percent of new ad spending, with newspapers and magazines declining by an average of 1 percent and 2 percent a year.

Analysis

National Broadband Plans: From Vision to Strategy to Execution

National Broadband Plans:
From Vision to Strategy to Execution

Speech As Prepared for Delivery

Thank you for inviting me to share in this important event on the Qatar National Broadband Plan.

We’re here to discuss the choices Qatar should make as to its broadband ecosystem. I thought I’d start by noting how different this is from many other policy debates.

T-Mobile Taps MetroPCS’ Spectrum to Boost LTE Network Speeds

T-Mobile has started rolling out higher-speed LTE service by tapping the airwaves it acquired as part of its MetroPCS acquisition.

T-Mobile quietly turned on the faster service in parts of North Dallas. The higher speeds come by combining T-Mobile’s LTE spectrum with that originally held by MetroPCS. Combining the spectrum allows so-called 20-by-20 service, or double the amount of spectrum T-Mobile had been able to offer in most markets. T-Mobile plans to eventually offer the expanded LTE service in 90 percent of the top 25 U.S. markets, but timing depends on how quickly it can move around some of its existing network traffic. T-Mobile had touted the increased bandwidth as one of the benefits of the MetroPCS deal, though it hadn’t committed to offering 20-by-20 service until next year. The company expects to have 10-by-10 LTE service in 40 of the top 50 markets by the end of the year. With each of the major carriers now offering LTE networks in most big cities, a race is on not just to add cities but also to improve the speeds and capacity of the LTE networks in existing markets.

Did T-Mobile actually change the wireless industry?

When T-Mobile announced its new approach to pricing, chief executive John Legere said that the move would change the wireless industry. Shortly after, Sprint also introduced plans that separate the cost of a phone from the data. With AT&T now taking the same approach, has T-Mobile actually succeeded in changing the industry?

Not so fast, said wireless industry analyst Jeff Kagan. While T-Mobile was certainly the first to move on this strategy, he said that framing AT&T’s move as a reaction probably gives the smaller carrier a bit too much credit. While T-Mobile was gaining subscribers, it was not eating into AT&T’s customer base heavily enough to prompt such a fast reaction. But, Kagan said, the fundamental change in these plans — separating the monthly cost of device and data — was a foreseeable change for the industry as smartphone growth in the United States slows. With fewer new smartphone subscribers, Kagan said, the major carriers have to work harder to keep customers from jumping ship to budget networks that may offer cheaper rates but fewer perks. More seasoned smartphone customers may decide, for example, that they’re happy to give up some coverage or call quality to save some money each month.

California regulators weigh need for stronger cellphone privacy rules

Amid growing concern about the hot-button issue of cellphone privacy, state regulators are considering whether California needs stronger protections. At issue before the Public Utilities Commission is whether it's time to update the state's more than two-decade-old telephone privacy rules, developed at the dawn of the hand-held cellphone era.

Consumer groups have urged the five-member commission to open an investigation. But the wireless industry, led by giant AT&T, is opposed to any changes. Commissioners, meanwhile, are divided on the question set for debate next month. Commissioner Catherine Sandoval, a law professor who specializes in telecommunications, said it's time to consider whether changes are needed. "New forms of personal information and new capacities for tracking that information" were unforeseen when earlier laws and regulations were written, she said. In particular, Sandoval noted that wireless carriers now track a user's location and match it to demographic data.

Cellphone data spying: It's not just the NSA

The National Security Agency isn't the only government entity secretly collecting data from people's cellphones. Local police are increasingly scooping it up, too. Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone users at a time, whether they are targets of an investigation or not, according to public records obtained by USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers and TV stations.

The records, from more than 125 police agencies in 33 states, reveal:

  • About one in four law-enforcement agencies have used a tactic known as a "tower dump," which gives police data about the identity, activity and location of any phone that connects to the targeted cellphone towers over a set span of time, usually an hour or two. A typical dump covers multiple towers, and wireless providers, and can net information from thousands of phones.
  • At least 25 police departments own a Stingray, a suitcase-size device that costs as much as $400,000 and acts as a fake cell tower. The system, typically installed in a vehicle so it can be moved into any neighborhood, tricks all nearby phones into connecting to it and feeding data to police. In some states, the devices are available to any local police department via state surveillance units. The federal government funds most of the purchases, via anti-terror grants.

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