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January 2014

FCC Sees Big Jump in Broadband Connections Above 6 Mbps

Americans’ appetite for higher-speed bandwidth is growing fast, according to a report from the Federal Communications Commission. More than 40 million (40.7 million) Americans subscribed to fixed broadband service with downstream rates greater than 6 Mbps and upload speeds above 768 kbps as of December 2012 -- nearly doubling since December 2009, when 20.6 million Internet connections had download speeds greater than 6 Mbps. Growth in higher-speed connections outpaced overall growth in fixed broadband subscribers, which increased from 80 million to 92.6 million over the same period. The rise in higher-speed connections is likely the result of increased use of video streaming -- and it’s good news for broadband service providers, who increasingly are relying on customer speed upgrades for revenue growth. Growth in connection speeds was even steeper on the mobile side. More than 31 million (31.6 million) mobile subscribers received speeds above 6 Mbps and upload speeds above 768 kbps as of December 2012 -- more than doubling in just a single year. As of December 2011, only 14.2 million mobile users received speeds above 6 Mbps, the FCC said.

[Jan 2]

Sen Brown to NFL: Kill blackout policy

Sen Sherrod Brown (D-OH) urged the NFL to kill its blackout policy amid reports the Cincinnati Bengals playoff game could be blocked from appearing on Cincinnati-area TV sets due to unsold tickets. “This is unacceptable at a time when the price of attending games continues to rise, and the economy is not yet where it needs to be,” Sen Brown said. “Fans, through local taxes, often help pay for the stadiums. They should be able to cheer on their local teams, especially during the playoffs.”

[Jan 2]

ABC to Limit New Episodes Online to Paying Subscribers for One Week

ABC starting Jan 6 will restrict next-day access to new episodes of TV shows to subscribers of participating pay-TV affiliates and Hulu Plus. Whereas ABC shows were available to anyone previously for free, under the new system only paying subscribers will have next-day access. The shows will be free without a subscription after one week. ABC follows Fox in restricting access to shows to paying subscribers -- clearly a move that will be unpopular for many consumers who have grown accustomed to free current TV shows online. Fox switched to the model in late 2011. When ABC announced the Watch ABC app in May, the network said it would eventually move Internet episodes to authenticated access. A representative said ABC started “doing some education about this to users on the ABC.com website and via the app” regarding the changes coming Jan 6 a few weeks ago.

[Dec 31]

Why Is Hard News a Hard Sell for Advertisers?

[Commentary] News organizations, those with their roots in newspapers as well as TV, have enjoyed an astonishing increase in consumption and now are far more current, enriched as they are by multimedia, by social media and citizen journalism. Furthermore their content is the most-shared across the internet. This suggests something significant. Advertisers and agencies might take note.

Digitally delivered news, both hard and soft, appears to combine reach, popularity, engagement and authority like no other collective of digital assets. And individual news outlets engage their readers and viewers frequently. The uncomfortable truth, however, is that the advertiser has not followed the user. If ever there was a misalignment of time spent and the allocation of advertiser dollars, this is it. Online, the received wisdom is that hard news is a hard sell and that the principal value of the traffic is as a gateway to more brand-friendly, but lower-traffic, features where the threat of atrocious adjacency is reduced. But the counterpoint to this has been running for years on page 3 of The New York Times, where Chanel, Tiffany and others have held their place a page turn from the hard-news triumphs and tragedies of the world on page one.

[Rob Norman is chief digital officer, global, at GroupM]

[Jan 1]

Happy Re/new Year!

We are thrilled to announce that we are forming our own new and independent media company, Revere Digital, with a pair of respected investors and partners -- the NBCUniversal News Group and Terry Semel’s Windsor Media.

Revere will be operating news sites and apps, as well as a series of conferences. First up is Re/code, a new tech and media news, reviews and analysis site launching, with the same talented team we’ve worked with for many years at the former All Things Digital site we ran for Dow Jones beginning in 2007. We are also immediately opening registration for our new premier executive tech conference, the Code Conference, to be held May 27 to 29, near Los Angeles. Like the site, the conference will be run by the same team that produced our former conferences under the D banner since 2003. We plan to offer other events with our primary event media partner, CNBC, throughout the year, with more details to come. Why have we chosen Re/code as the name for our new creation? Simply put: Because everything in tech and media is constantly being refreshed, renewed and reimagined. And this is the reinvention of ourselves.

[Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, founders of the D Conference and AllThingsD, are likewise the founders of this new venture]

[Jan 1]

French Contractors Jump Into Market for Secure Communications

In the Paris area, two security contractors are jumping into a burgeoning market for secure mobile phones and encrypted communications as revelations of widespread US government surveillance accelerate a security race among businesses, government agencies and hackers.

This month, Bull SA -- a French maker of cybersecurity and intelligence gear -- is starting to ship a new €2,000 ($2,760) smartphone for businesses called the Hoox m2. Based on Google's Android software, it has been re-engineered to resist hacking and encrypt calls. "Unnecessary to speak in 'coded language,'" brags a marketing brochure. Just a few miles away, partly state-owned defense contractor Thales SA is selling an enterprise-software system dubbed Teopad. Priced in the "hundreds of euros" per license, the software will split any Android phone or tablet "in two," according to Thales, with one side for personal use and the other encrypted for sensitive business applications -- and secure phone calls. The dueling French companies are part of a growing niche -- spanning tiny firms and defense giants -- that is banking on growing demand for high-end encryption amid rising threats from organized hackers and growing fears of ubiquitous surveillance.

[Jan 1]

What is the role of phone manufacturers in ensuring mobile coverage?

Most people believe that good mobile coverage is simply a function of the network and is the sole responsibility of the mobile operator. However, new research shows that the quality of mobile coverage is largely dependent on the type of phones customers buy and how they use them. Should phone manufacturers be held responsible?

Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen of Aalborg University is the author of his study, “Limit values for Downlink Mobile Telephony in Denmark,” published in 2012. Pedersen’s painstaking study focused on how nine of the most popular phones perform when it comes to coverage. The results demonstrate definitively that the quality of the phone itself, most especially the phone’s antenna, plays a major role in the user’s experience of the network. One of the key findings of the study was that standards matter. To improve chances of good coverage, users should choose phones that are optimized for the network standards of their carriers. However, this can be a challenge as many handset manufacturers do not allow operators to publish data about which phones are optimal for their network, and handset manufacturers themselves are not required to disclose which network frequencies are optimal for their phones.

[Jan 2]

The Online Education Revolution Drifts Off Course

If 2012 was the "Year of the MOOC," (massive open online courses) as The New York Times famously called it, 2013 might be dubbed the year that online education fell back to earth. Faculty at several institutions rebelled against the rapid expansion of online learning — and the nation's largest MOOC providers are responding.

[Dec 31]

Brazil's Social Media Boom Sparks Calls For New Privacy Laws

The use of social media is exploding in Brazil. It's the third largest market for Facebook; fifth largest for Twitter. The controversial women-only app Lulu recently launched and quickly became the top downloaded app in the country, making Brazil Lulu's biggest market. But if you try to get onto Lulu in Brazil, you'll see a banner reading: "Lulu is on vacation, happy Christmas. We are renovating during the holidays and we will be back soon." Lulu has been faced with lawsuits by men who say their privacy has been violated, and the Public Prosecutor's Office has even launched an inquiry. Brazil's Congress is expected to pass sweeping Internet legislation in 2014 that will deal with issues of privacy, among other things.

[Jan 1]

Five tech issues to watch

[Commentary] The New Year could bring a flurry of activity on technology policy. Here’s a look at the five issues likely to dominate the tech agenda.

  1. NSA reform -- The push to rein in the National Security Agency is gaining momentum on Capitol Hill. A federal judge has declared the NSA's phone data collection unconstitutional (the government is expected to appeal), and President Barack Obama's own review group has recommended sweeping reforms.
  2. Patent legislation -- Congress passed major patent reform legislation just a few years ago, and most observers predicted it would be a generation before Congress returned to the issue. But the problem of "patent trolls" -- firms that use bogus patent suits to extort settlements out of businesses -- has escalated so quickly that Congress is now poised to pass new legislation to curb abuse.
  3. Network neutrality -- The controversy over net neutrality could be reignited in 2014. The DC Circuit is expected to rule on the Federal Communication Commission's regulations in January, and based on the oral argument in September, it's not looking good for the FCC. Two of the three judges on the panel appeared ready to strike down significant portions of the rules, which bar Internet service providers from discriminating between websites.
  4. Spectrum auction -- The top priority for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is holding a successful auction of spectrum -- the frequencies that carry all wireless traffic. The actual auction won't take place until 2015, but the FCC will have to make the most important decisions about the rules in 2014.
  5. Merger mania -- Speculation is swirling about whether Sprint, the third largest cellphone carrier, will try to buy T-Mobile, the No. 4 carrier. The cable industry could also see consolidation in 2014. Comcast, Charter and Cox are all reportedly interested in buying Time Warner Cable, the nation's second largest cable operator. In an unusual move, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai predicted that the FCC would block Comcast from acquiring Time Warner Cable.

[Jan 1]

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