The Consumer Electronics Association said that unlicensed spectrum generates $62 billion annually to the US economy, led by Wi-Fi in and outside the home.
The report, Unlicensed Spectrum and the American Economy, comes as the government is freeing up more unlicensed spectrum, with cable operators standing to benefit. According to CEA, Wi-Fi and wireless LANs account for almost a third ($20.029 billion) of that $62 billion total.
Getting directions on the road from Google Maps and other smartphone apps is a popular alternative to the expensive navigation aids included in some cars.
The apps are also a gray area when it comes to laws banning the use of cellphones or texting while driving.
The Transportation Department wants to enter the argument. The department is intensifying its battle against distracted driving by seeking explicit authority from Congress to regulate navigation aids of all types, including apps on smartphones. The measure, included in the Obama Administration’s proposed transportation bill, would specify that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authority to set restrictions on the apps and later order changes if they are deemed dangerous, much the way it currently regulates mechanical features of cars.
The measure has the support of automakers, which already mostly comply with voluntary guidelines for built-in navigation systems, but it has run into stiff opposition from technology companies, which say that any such law would be impractical and impossible to enforce. It’s another example, they say, of federal regulators trying vainly to keep up with a rapidly changing industry.
Amazon is expected to introduce a smartphone at an event in Seattle, a long-rumored project that aims to close any remaining gap between the impulse to buy and the completed act, David Streitfeld reports.
Amazon has spent the last several years furiously investing billions of dollars on multiple fronts: constructing warehouses all over the country to deliver goods as fast as possible, building devices as varied as tablets and set-top boxes, and creating and licensing entertainment to stock those devices. It all adds up to a wildly ambitious venture without precedent in modern merchandising.
Wall Street has generally cheered as competitors — an ever growing group that now includes businesses like Walmart, eBay, Apple and Google -- regard these activities with increasing unease. Customers, meanwhile, are propelling Amazon toward the rarefied ranks of companies with revenue of $100 billion.
Pay-TV operators will be the primary directors of set-top box (STB) standardization and technological development, according to a new report from ABI Research, with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and semiconductor companies playing supporting roles.
Bigger than ever as a result of mergers and acquisitions, pay-TV operators, ABI says, “are at the top of the set-top box food chain.
“The largest operators are responsible for the functional definition and direction, and have significant ownership over at least the logical layers of the implementation. Multi-source supply agreements, in which operators purchase functionally equivalent units from multiple vendors, are the norm today.”
Recent mega mergers will drive homogenization of STBs across larger markets, according to ABI. “The current large scale pay-TV operators we are seeing, including Comcast-Time Warner, AT&T-DirecTV, and Liberty Global’s acquisition of Virgin Media and Ziggo, will in the long term better align set-top box requirements across larger markets,” Sam Rosen, ABI Research practice director, was quoted in a press release.
Broadcast networks, on the road to completing much of their upfront deal-making, are operating in a marketplace that is still concerned about weak pricing and volume gains.
"Broadcast is pretty much done; cable is moving slowly," says one veteran media-buying executive.
One issue of greater concern may be overall upfront broadcast volume. Initially, upfront broadcast volume was estimated to be down 1% to 3% from the $9.2 billion totals pulled in in 2013. Some of that money, according to executives, is being shifted to cable networks, which are poised to hit the $10 billion level in upfront advertising deals.
Network cable advertising sales executives believe much of the cable upfront process will take place soon. Some media executives are still alarmed that broadcast networks might be looking at greater overall volume losses in the upfront -- down about 5% versus 2013. This is due to viewership erosion, as well as TV marketers' efforts to shift money to cable networks and some digital video platforms.
But C7 still remains a wild card, other executives say -- depending on the number of upfront TV advertisers shifting to a C7 Nielsen viewing deal-making metric from C3. A marketplace shift to a C7 rating guarantee to marketers -- C7, the average commercial ratings plus seven days of time-shifted data -- could boost overall volume for national TV broadcasters about 2% to 3%. This will come from adding four days of viewing data from the current three days of time-shifted viewing metric.
Public television officials are raising the concern that the Federal Communications Commission’s planned spectrum incentive auction, intended to free airwaves for use by wireless broadband companies could leave parts of the country without over-the-air public television access.
The incentive auction, promising the possibility of millions of dollars to broadcast stations that give back some or all of their six megahertz of spectrum or move to another spot on the dial, will be open to commercial stations, as well. But the money could prove particularly enticing to public stations, many of which have tight budgets.
Public broadcasting officials worry that universities and states, including New Jersey, that hold public station licenses but are not primarily broadcasters may decide to give up some or all of their spectrum and use the proceeds for other needs, such as unfunded pension liabilities.
Columbia University's Tim Wu has only been a law professor for 12 years, but he's accomplished a lot during that time. He has contributed frequently to Slate, the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, written an influential book, and advised the Federal Trade Commission on Internet policy. Oh, and he coined the term network neutrality. Now he's hoping to add another item to his resume: Lieutenant Governor of New York.
Wu is running alongside Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor. In May, Teachout sought the endorsement of New York's Working Families Party.
New York's unusual election system allows a candidate to appear on more than one party's line on the ballot, and Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) ran on both the Democratic and Working Families lines in 2010. If Wu wins, he won't be able to do much about the tech policy issues he has focused on over the last decade.
Telecom regulation is primarily a federal issue, as are copyright and patent policy. But Wu has hinted that cracking down on Comcast could be on his agenda.
[Commentary] With the end of Federal Communications Commission enforcement of open Internet rules, a few select companies will very quickly be making major decisions on how fast most users will be able to access content across the web.
Video streaming, as we know, takes up a plurality of bandwidth usage (and will only increase in popularity). However, the danger isn’t just limited to video. The major ISPs in the United States -- Comcast and AT&T among others -- often also provide voice services that directly compete with many of the services provided by VoIP.
What’s more, the innovative possibilities of VoIP and VoIP-related technologies, like WebRTC, will also be throttled by the lack of open Internet standards. New VoIP technologies are often not just limited to voice; they incorporate video capabilities as well. VoIP services require simultaneous high quality upload and download streams, instead of just download streams as with a service like Netflix. As such, VoIP shares many of the same concerns as video streaming, and the dangers for VoIP services may be even greater.
[Aylarov is the CEO of Zingaya, which enables online calls from web pages]
Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) is setting his sights on the nation’s airwaves. The Florida Republican is launching a new effort to turn government-run chunks of spectrum into a tool for powering people’s cellphones and tablets.
He just introduced the first of three bills that he said were part of a multi-year effort to take advantage of the resource, which is suddenly in high demand.
“We know the crunch is coming, and there’s going to have to be a steady stream of availability to keep up with the pace of demand,” he said. “The reality is that as everything is going increasingly mobile -- every sector of our lives and of the economy is moving to mobile platforms -- the increase in demand on the system is going to exponentially grow,” he said.
Silicon Valley would be one of the winners if Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becomes the next House majority leader.
The GOP whip has been a frequent guest at major tech companies’ headquarters and has had their back on nearly every issue in recent years, industry insiders say.
“I think every time we’ve had something up or we’ve wanted to see progress on an issue, he’s been there for us,” said Andy Halataei, senior vice president of government relations at the Information Technology Industry Council. The trade group, which includes giants like AOL, Facebook and Microsoft, named McCarthy its legislator of the year in 2012, praising his understanding of “the critical importance of technology and innovation to create jobs in California and across the country.”
From his home in Bakersfield (CA), Rep McCarthy has been a regular traveler to Silicon Valley to meet with company executives. Former aides and associates now work in the K Street shops of major tech firms like Facebook and Uber.
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