September 2014

In late July 2014, Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to share the preliminary findings of a Government Accountability Office study on “usage-based” broadband pricing, referred to many as data caps. Rep Eshoo wrote that such pricing is threat to the free and open Internet and she asked Chairman Wheeler to consider GAO’s findings as the FCC considers new network neutrality rules.

On August 27, Chairman Wheeler wrote back to Rep Eshoo promising hat the GAO data would be made part of the record. He said, “I am concerned about usage-based practices that affect the speeds and service that customers receive. I am deeply troubled when I hear reports of providers slowing down speeds for selected customers under the guise of network management.”

Younger Americans -- those ages 16-29 -- especially fascinate researchers and organizations because of their advanced technology habits, their racial and ethnic diversity, their looser relationships to institutions such as political parties and organized religion, and the ways in which their social attitudes differ from their elders. This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds, as well as the tone of the broader culture.

Following are some of the noteworthy insights from this research.

• There are actually three different “generations” of younger Americans with distinct book reading habits, library usage patterns, and attitudes about libraries.
• Millennials’ lives are full of technology, but they are more likely than their elders to say that important information is not available on the Internet.
• Millennials are quite similar to their elders when it comes to the amount of book reading they do, but young adults are more likely to have read a book in the past 12 months.
• The community and general media-use activities of younger adults are different from older adults.
• As a group, Millennials are as likely as older adults to have used a library in the past 12 months, and more likely to have used a library website.
• As with the general population, most younger Americans know where their local library is, but many say they are unfamiliar with all the services it may offer.

Common Cause and more than 50 other advocacy groups called on Google to end its affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that has pushed state laws limiting the rights of cities and towns to create community-owned broadband networks.

ALEC also opposes network neutrality rules that Google used to be a staunch supporter of and urged the Federal Communications Commission to quickly approve Comcast’s purchase of Time Warner Cable without imposing any regulatory conditions on the merger. In a letter to Google’s top executives, Common Cause et al wrote that “Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of Americans have signed petitions asking Google to end its ALEC membership because of their concerns about the harmful role ALEC has played in our democratic process… The public knows that the ALEC operation -- which brings state legislators and corporate lobbyists behind closed doors to discuss proposed legislation and share lavish dinners -- threatens our democracy. The public is asking Google to stop participating in this scheme.”

[Sept 5]

Why do cable subscribers end up with so many channels they have no interest in watching? Blame ESPN, says a small Cedar Falls (IA) cable provider.

Recently, the municipally-owned Cedar Falls Utilities renewed a long-term contract to broadcast Disney’s ESPN channels to its town of 40,000 residents. But this time, it said it was also forced to take on two Disney-owned channels it didn’t want -- SEC Network and Fusion. It’s deals like this that result in bloated cable bundles of hundreds of channels few people ever watch, CFU said. For customers who routinely ask: Why can't I pick channels like a la carte items off a menu? "Now you know," wrote Betty Zeman, a marketing manager at Cedar Falls Utilities.