April 2014

In Baker, CTIA Gets a Spectrum Czar -- and at a Crucial Time

Nearly six months after launching a nationwide executive search to find a replacement for its retiring president and CEO, Steve Largent, CTIA-The Wireless Association finally has a new leader.

And it didn’t have to look too far, either. Meredith Attwell Baker, the former Republican Federal Communications Commissioner and acting administrator of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, will take over as president and CEO of CTIA on June 2.

In Baker, CTIA is getting an influential Washington insider and lobbyist who has a deep understanding of spectrum policy -- at a time when both the FCC and the NTIA are carrying out an ambitious Obama Administration plan to double the country’s supply of airwaves for use in high-speed wireless Internet service by 2020.

In a statement accompanying the news release, Baker wasted no time in outlining three spectrum policy priorities. Specifically, she said she will “place more emphasis on technical and engineering expertise related to spectrum and wireless technologies; work with commercial and government users to produce a viable five-year plan for the future of spectrum usage; and begin to regularly assess how efficiently spectrum is being used.”

The FCC Caved on Net Neutrality. But It Didn't Really Have a Choice.

Consumer-advocacy groups and liberal lawmakers are going ballistic over news that the Federal Communications Commission plans to advance watered-down network neutrality rules.

The new regulations would allow Internet service providers to charge websites for special "fast lanes" in at least some cases. But the truth is that the FCC is boxed into a corner without many good options. Commission officials argue the stronger rules that advocates want probably wouldn't survive in court.

Consumer groups have a simple solution for the FCC's dilemma: reclassify broadband providers as common carriers. That move would likely allow the FCC to just reinstate the old rules and ban websites from paying for faster service. But reclassification has much bigger implications than just net neutrality.

The FCC would be applying a massive regulatory regime currently used for phone companies on broadband providers. It's debatable whether it's a politically viable option. Congressional Republicans and business groups would launch an all-out war, warning the FCC could kill the Internet economy.

Reclassification could derail the other items on Chairman Wheeler's agenda, such as an auction of airwave licenses, a network technology transition, and the president's proposal to improve Internet access in schools. But consumer groups argue that protecting an open Internet is worth the fight.

No airwaves for you! Verizon, AT&T will face bidding limits in incentive auction

The Federal Communications Commission laid out all of its proposed rules for the 2015 controversial broadcast airwave incentive auction, save one. It didn’t address the most contentious rule of them all: whether the countries’ two mega-carriers AT&T and Verizon will have free rein in the auction or face restrictions on how many airwaves they can buy.

The FCC is now taking a whack at the political piñata, and AT&T and Verizon aren’t going to be pleased with what comes out. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has begun circulating proposed rules for low-band spectrum auction -- of which the incentive auction is most definitely one -- that would limit Verizon and AT&T’s ability to bid on all licenses in markets where competition for frequencies is particular intense.

What means in areas where there’s the most demand for mobile broadband airwaves, such as the big cities, the FCC will set aside up to 30 MHz of airwaves for carriers that don’t already own a lot of low-band spectrum.

Forget speed, T-Mobile has started building a more resilient LTE network

T-Mobile is bucking the trend of focusing single-mindedly on faster networks. Using a new antenna technology, it’s building better, more consistent mobile data networks.

T-Mobile will roll out the new technology to multiple cities.

So if you’re a T-Mobile subscriber with an LTE handset, 4×2 MIMO basically means you’re going to get a more resilient connection as you move throughout the network. You won’t actually see your peak speeds improve, but you’ll be able to maintain a fast, consistent connection far more often, even when the network starts getting crowded.

Are You Ready for a Driver’s License for the Internet?

The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) has adopted an online authentication tool the agency is using to ensure that the benefits it issues, like food assistance, are going to the right people.

Such incarnations of online authentication technology are sprouting up in state government agencies around the country, led by a White House vision of a new, central form of identification, what some are calling “a driver’s license for the Internet.”

The DCF reported that in 2013 it saved about $14.7 million through the use of an online authentication tool, with an initial investment of about $1 million and a total contract of just under $3 million. The DCF says the technology is saving so much money because it saves staff the time of verifying identities manually, and even better, there’s been a reduction in cases of identity fraud.

Not everyone thinks a driver’s license for the Internet is a great idea. Lee Tien, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is skeptical whether the government’s main motivation with such a program would even be fraud prevention -- and not tracking. “We think it’s a terrible idea,” Tien said. “The main substantive issue is that much of what we do on the Internet is plain old speech: writing comments, posting on blogs or whatever. And one of the things about speech in the United States, especially under the First Amendment of the Constitution, is that you have a right to speak anonymously. […] Any mandatory type of ID online runs really directly counter to that.”

Schools Could Be on Internet 'Slow Track' Under Proposed FCC Rules

Questions arose about whether schools will have to stand in line for acceptable speeds of Internet access under proposed new rules floated by the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

FCC commissioners received the rules, in advance of a May 15 vote. As written, the proposed rules would impact "net neutrality," which refers to the open and free flow of content on the Internet, regardless of where it originates.

The new rules would leave an opening for broadband Internet providers like Verizon Communications, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, to give preferential treatment to content providers that pay for the privilege of higher priority service.

For schools, the issue is problematic. Unless educational services are offered preferential treatment by providers, "schools could find themselves even further challenged to make use of digital learning tools and services," said Douglas Levin, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association.

The proposed rules could impact ed-tech companies, too. Larger ones might be well-positioned to pay for fast-lane service, while smaller ones and start-ups could find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, said Amina Fazlullah, policy director of the Benton Foundation, a Washington-based organization that works to ensure that media and telecommunications serve the public interest. "Any net neutrality proposal must ensure the same quality access to online educational content as to entertainment and other commercial offerings," Fazlullah wrote. "We need to ensure that the Internet remains a medium for opportunity not just an opportunity for Internet providers to increase profits."

A dropbox for all that data from the Internet of Things

A couple of years ago, Andy Cronk had an idea for a database business. No longer were computers the only devices sharing data. Fitness trackers, cars, appliances and even buildings were producing digitized info that needed to be stored somewhere for analysis.

Cronk would start a company to service this new “Internet of Things.” He applied to a San Antonio tech-business bootcamp called TechStars Cloud in 2012 and, in exchange for signing away 6 percent of his company and a $100,000 loan, he got $18,000 in seed money and into the program. All this, despite a startling lack of progress: Cronk's company, TempoDB, had neither customers nor a functioning product. In fact, he and his two co-founders, Justin DeLay and Mike Yagley, had not written a single line of code.

Today the Internet of Things has evolved to a budding phenomenon: Stamford (CT)-based Gartner Inc. predicts that by 2020, the Internet of Things will consist of 26 billion devices generating $300 billion of revenue for companies like TempoDB. Cronk has signed on about 20 enterprise customers, including the Australian government, which uses his River North-based startup to track solar power usage.

FCC’s Tom Wheeler Says His Proposal Will Protect Net Neutrality. Here’s Why It Won’t.

[Commentary] Press reports indicate that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler will propose new Open Internet rules that would allow Internet service providers to implement so-called paid-priority schemes.

These would allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to charge extra fees to content companies to guarantee their content reaches end-users ahead of those that don’t pay. The proposal would also allow ISPs to favor their own content. Chairman Wheeler insists his proposal would “restore the concepts of Net Neutrality.”

He stated that the court “made it clear that the FCC could stop harmful conduct if it were found to not be ‘commercially reasonable.’ Acting within the constraints of the Court’s decision, the Notice will propose rules that establish a high bar for what is ‘commercially reasonable.’” But the judges were pretty clear here: Unless the FCC reclassifies ISPs as common carriers, it can’t impose any rules that stop ISPs from discriminating against content or favoring their own content.

Chairman Wheeler’s post ends with a promise that his rules will not permit ISPs to favor their own content. But nowhere in the legal history is there any suggestion that such moves would run afoul of the “commercially reasonable” standard. What’s more commercially reasonable than a company looking out for its own best interests? Nowhere in his post does Chairman Wheeler suggest that his rules will bar paid prioritization.

And unless the FCC reclassifies ISPs as common carriers, it can’t legally prohibit this practice. So instead of fighting for real Net Neutrality, the FCC instead has chosen to bless online discrimination.

Low-level federal judges balking at law enforcement requests for electronic evidence

Judges at the lowest levels of the federal judiciary are balking at sweeping requests by law enforcement officials for cellphone and other sensitive personal data, declaring the demands overly broad and at odds with basic constitutional rights.

This rising assertiveness by magistrate judges -- the worker bees of the federal court system -- has produced rulings that elate civil libertarians and frustrate investigators, forcing them to meet or challenge tighter rules for collecting electronic evidence.

Among the most aggressive opinions have come from DC Magistrate Judge John Facciola, a bow-tied court veteran who in recent months has blocked wide-ranging access to the Facebook page of Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis and the iPhone of the Georgetown University student accused of making ricin in his dorm room.

In another case, he deemed a law enforcement request for the entire contents of an e-mail account “repugnant” to the US Constitution.

For these and other cases, Judge Facciola has demanded more focused searches and insisted that authorities delete collected data that prove unrelated to a current investigation rather than keep them on file for unspecified future use. He also has taken the unusual step, for a magistrate judge, of issuing a series of formal, written opinions that detail his concerns, even about previously secret government investigations.

The FCC’s new net neutrality rules will kill Aereo, even if the Supreme Court doesn’t

[Commentary] We heard a lot about Aereo, the startup that could upend the television business if it survives a Supreme Court battle with television broadcasters. But even if it squeaks past the court's technologically challenged justices, it might not matter -- the company is still likely doomed. Here's why.

At heart, Aereo is an Internet company that operates on Internet pipes and serves Internet customers. Yes, the company's main business involves pulling broadcast TV signals out of the air. Critics say that practice violates copyright laws.

But technologically, Aereo stores its customers' TV shows in an online, cloud-based locker. Then it sends those shows, on-demand, over the Internet to its subscribers' waiting PCs, tablets and mobile phones. Incidentally, that makes Aereo subject to the Federal Communications Commission's new rules on network neutrality.

If Aereo loses its Supreme Court bid, the show's over and the question becomes irrelevant. But if Aereo survives, then it would be living in a world filled with Internet fast lanes and paid prioritization.

Benton

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