March 2014

FCC Sets Stage for Auction Of 65 Mhz Of Spectrum For Mobile Broadband

The Commission adopted a Report and Order that advances ongoing efforts to make more spectrum available for flexible use wireless services, including mobile broadband.

The Report and Order represents significant progress in the Commission’s ongoing effort to make available and promote efficient use of spectrum, including through sharing.

Access to these bands will help wireless companies meet growing consumer demand for mobile data by enabling faster wireless speeds and more capacity. Specifically, the Report and Order sets flexible-use regulatory, licensing, and technical rules for 65 megahertz of spectrum in the AWS-3 band, which includes the 1695-1710 MHz, 1755-1780 MHz, and 2155-2180 MHz bands.

The Report and Order establishes a band plan that makes spectrum available in a mix of spectrum block and geographic license area sizes to meet the needs of large and small wireless providers. The Report and Order also establishes construction deadlines and other service rules, including a requirement that AWS-3 devices be interoperable within AWS-3 and AWS-1 frequencies. The Report and Order is the result of years of work across multiple federal agencies and in coordination with industry stakeholders to make 40 megahertz (of the total 65 megahertz) of the AWS-3 spectrum available for commercial use.

This spectrum will be available on a shared basis with federal incumbents in accordance with detailed plans for these agencies to relocate out of the frequencies or share within the frequencies. Chairman Wheeler, Commissioners Clyburn and Rosenworcel, with Commissioners Pai and O’Rielly approving in part and concurring in part. Chairman Wheeler, Commissioners Clyburn, Rosenworcel, Pai and O’Rielly issued statements.

Cisco Predicts the US Maintains Lead in Mobile Broadband Usage

In 2014, the number of cellphones is expected to exceed the worldwide population. The usage of mobile devices has increased rapidly over the past several years.

Recently Cisco released their updated Visual Networking Index (VNI) survey, which includes data on the volume of mobile traffic. The Cisco VNI survey uses analyst projections, Cisco forecasts, and direct data collection. This forecast predicts that an even larger number of mobile phone subscribers will use more data than in previous years. Global usage is expected to increase exponentially.

Cisco predicts that worldwide monthly usage will reach 15.9 exabytes per month by 2018. 2013’s forecast predicted 1.6 exabytes per month missing by only 0.1 exabytes. They predict a future Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 61 percent. The estimated CAGR from the previous year was 66 percent. Despite this slow down increased numbers of subscriptions, usage of 4G devices, and higher numbers of people using bandwidth intensive applications like streaming video will drive up the volume of mobile data.

The United States held its position as the leader in mobile traffic and is projected to remain in that position until at least 2018. Currently the United States accounts for 24 percent of global mobile traffic. By 2018 that number is expected to decline to 17 percent. In 2018, the United States, China, India, Japan, and Korea are estimated to use the largest volumes of mobile data. By 2018 those five countries are predicted to use about half of all mobile traffic. The United States ranks near the bottom of the 25 countries for which data is available with a CAGR of 0.5.

Google Is Central to Latest Apple-Samsung Case

Apple and Samsung Electronics are squaring off in a new round of their long-running patent feud. This time, however, the docket might as well read Apple v. Google.

The trial, which starts in US District Court in San Jose (CA) on March 31, 2014, shows how the battle lines are drawn across the mobile-phone landscape.

Apple and Samsung are the biggest makers of smartphones and reap most of the industry's profits. But when it comes to software, the world is divided between Apple and Google, whose dominant operating systems give them control over the apps where smartphone users spend most of their time.

In this case, Apple is accusing Samsung of violating five of its software patents. Samsung contends that it licensed four of those features as part of Google's Android operating system, and that Google had been working on the technology before Apple filed its patents.

"Google will be a lot more front and center than in previous cases," said Michael Carrier, a patent expert and law professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Google vs. Apple makes it more of a clash of the titans on the same turf."

Comcast head: Time Warner deal ‘not scary’

Comcast’s proposed $45 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable is “not particularly scary,” according to Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen.

In an interview on C-SPAN’s “The Communicators,” Cohen said that the planned deal would be good for consumers and help the cable industry compete against satellite, telecoms and online video companies.

“We’re going to have a serious governmental review of the transaction, but I’ll be honest with you: I think the transaction is a lot less scary, it's a lot less large and a lot less complicated than some people would like to make it,” he said.

The deal would combine the two largest cable companies, but executives have been quick to point out that the two giants do not currently compete in the same markets and Comcast has already pledged to drop some customers so that it takes up less than 30 percent of the market.

“In no local market will there be any less choice after the transaction than there is before the transaction,” Cohen said. Instead, the merger will help the cable industry build infrastructure, do research and invest for the future, in order to fight against satellite television, online video companies like Netflix and major telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T, he said.

NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought -- study

Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the US National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers.

Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw -- or "back door" -- that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption.

A group of professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and elsewhere now say they have discovered that a second NSA tool exacerbated the RSA software's vulnerability. The professors found that the tool, known as the "Extended Random" extension for secure websites, could help crack a version of RSA's Dual Elliptic Curve software tens of thousands of times faster, according to an advance copy of their research shared with Reuters. While Extended Random was not widely adopted, the new research sheds light on how the NSA extended the reach of its surveillance under cover of advising companies on protection.

Mr. Smith Goes Off On Washington

A Q&A with National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith. He has his sleeves rolled up for a brawl. On Capitol Hill, the NAB is fighting to keep the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) reauthorization bill from being a referendum on retransmission, a draft bill on which the association went along with restrictions on coordinated retransmission only because it was, frankly, the best deal it could get.

In the Supreme Court, broadcasters are trying to keep Aereo from delivering a body blow to their businesses models. At the FCC, they’ve been preparing for a March 31s vote on limiting joint sales agreements (JSAs) and coordinated retransmission, an incentive auction that Smith says could wind up in court if the FCC doesn’t change direction, and what Smith suggests is an FCC bias against his members. Smith said that he would like to see something like the National Broadband Plan for broadcasters, but hopes Chairman Wheeler will adopt a more negotiable mood.

“We’re trying to show [the FCC] that there is a third way that is not just in the interests of broadcasters but in the interests of the American people, specifically minorities and small markets,” Smith said. One thing Smith proposes is to raise the ownership attribution trigger on JSAs from 15% of a station’s sales to 30%.

Referring to Chairman Wheeer’s signal that sharing arrangements should be disallowed using the competitiveness argument, Smith sees it as an attack against broadcasters: “If you were really serious about being fair, you would also take on the interconnections between cable and wireless [the NAB has asked the FCC to look into the cable/telco/satellite ad consortia]. What is good for them ought to be good for us, too. But it seems to only be applied against us.” Smith also commented on the, the need for preventing interference in future spectrum auctions, and the uncertainty of blackout provisions.

The gig economy is here, and it’s not a pretty picture

The discussion about the changing nature of work -- specifically with regard to the shift away from full-time employment to a freelancer-dominated, gig economy -- has been growing.

A number of items crossed my radar screen, including a number of financing announcements that demonstrate that employment has become increasingly precarious for most people.

A new report has been released by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKES), and it makes for scary reading. The report collates a great deal of data about the state of work in the UK and other countries, and casts a futures approach toward trends analysis. The skinny is that things are bad in the UK, with a marketplace and workforce that is the least educated in the EU after Spain, and with low growth projected. But the scenarios they concoct for the future all seem to converge into a dystopic future, where several trends prevail:

The only group that has any hope of stable employment are the well-trained and well-educated, but even they have modest hopes for increased pay.
The middle-skilled tier of workers are being pushed out by a number of trends: use of freelancers, migration of work to other countries (notably Asia), and automation.
Those in the bottom-skilled tier of workers are increasingly likely to be working as freelancers: part-time, ‘zero hours’ contract positions, which lack the benefits and stability of full-time employment.

As advertisers phase out cookies, what’s the alternative?

[Commentary] What will become of the humble cookie? The tiny data files sent from websites to browsers have come under much scrutiny recently, particularly from privacy advocates and policy makers.

Even advertisers agree that the web needs a viable alternative that balances privacy concerns with marketers’ desire to target users effectively. Many industry leaders have grimly declared “the death of the cookie” sometime within the next few years. What’s the cause of their cynicism? Here are some of the most common critiques:

Privacy concerns: Critics argue that third-parties collect and store excessive data on consumers, often without their knowledge. Consumers agree -- 57 percent of Internet users are either “concerned” or “very concerned” about their online privacy, according to a recent study by analytics firm Annalect. Law makers are concerned as well, and have tasked industry and consumer groups with defining a browser-based “Do Not Track” standard that would allow users to easily opt out of tracking.
Limited reach: Cookies aren’t effective in mobile environments (third-party cookies are blocked by default on iOS devices, for instance). This can be limiting for advertisers, given that we spend more time on mobile devices than we do laptops and PCs.
Poor cross-device tracking: Cookies can’t provide cross-device targeting capabilities (i.e. targeting the same user across mobile and desktop devices).

[Wedlake is an analyst at Thomvest Ventures, focusing on advertising technology]

Alarm Company Opposes Legislation Targeting TDM-to-IP Transition

AT&T’s plans for TDM-to-IP transition trials are clashing with efforts to de-regulate telecom -- an initiative the company also has been championing.

Consumer advocates and ADT, one of the nation’s largest alarm companies, are asking Kentucky lawmakers to delay passing a telecom deregulation bill until the TDM-to-IP transition trials, to be overseen by the FCC, are completed, reports Public News Service. According to an AT&T proposal, TDM-to-IP transition trials would begin in late 2014 or early 2015 and run into 2017. The Kentucky bill would allow major phone companies to stop providing landline service in parts of the state, Public News Service reports. If the bill were to pass, consumers would have to rely on VoIP over a broadband connection or a cellular service. And if that were to occur, “there is some likelihood that alarm systems and/or medical alert systems may not be able to send signals to ADT’s monitoring centers,” ADT Vice President of Industry Relations Steve Shapiro told Public News Service.

How a Chinese Tech Firm Became the NSA’s Surveillance Nightmare

The National Security Agency’s global spy operation may seem unstoppable, but there’s at least one target that has proven to be a formidable obstacle: the Chinese communications technology firm Huawei, whose growth could threaten the agency’s much-publicized digital spying powers.

An unfamiliar name to American consumers, Huawei produces products that are swiftly being installed in the Internet backbone in many regions of the world, displacing some of the western-built equipment that the NSA knows -- and presumably knows how to exploit -- so well. That obstacle is growing bigger each year as routers and other networking equipment made by Huawei Technologies and its offshoot, Huawei Marine Networks, become more ubiquitous. The NSA and other US agencies have long been concerned that the Chinese government or military -- Huawei’s founder is a former officer in the People’s Liberation Army -- may have installed backdoors in Huawei equipment, enabling it for surveillance. But an even bigger concern is that with the growing ubiquity of Huawei products, the NSA’s own surveillance network could grow dark in areas where the equipment is used. For that reason, as the latest Snowden revelations showed, the spy agency reportedly hacked Huawei as part of an operation launched in 2007. The plan involved stealing source code for some of Huawei’s products in the hope of finding vulnerabilities. Such security holes could allow the NSA to exploit the products and spy on traffic in countries where Huawei equipment is used -- such as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, and Cuba. “Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,” an internal NSA document obtained by Snowden noted in 2010, according to the New York Times. “We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products … to gain access to networks of interest” around the world.

Benton

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