September 2014

USTelecom hires Wynn as lobbyist

USTelecom, the lobbying organization for companies including AT&T and Verizon, hired former-Rep Albert Wynn (D-MD) to “monitor federal and legislative activity related to the telecommunications industry,” according to a lobbying disclosure form recently made public. Wynn is a former member of the House Commerce Committee's telecommunications subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over many of the issues affecting the broadband Internet companies that make up USTelecom. He will be lobbying on the trade group's behalf as part of his work at Greenberg Traurig, a Washington law firm.

Verizon To Pay $7.4 Million To Settle Consumer Privacy Investigation

The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau has reached a $7.4 million settlement with Verizon to resolve an investigation into the company’s use of personal consumer information for marketing purposes.

The Enforcement Bureau’s investigation uncovered that Verizon failed to notify approximately two million new customers, on their first invoices or in welcome letters, of their privacy rights, including how to opt out from having their personal information used in marketing campaigns, before the company accessed their personal information to market services to them. In addition to the $7.4 million payment, Verizon has agreed to notify customers of their opt-out rights on every bill for the next three years. FCC will put systems in place to monitor and test its billing systems and opt-out notice process to ensure that customers are receiving proper notices of their privacy rights. Any problems detected that are more than an anomaly must be reported to the FCC within five business days, and any noncompliance must be reported as well.

First US appeals court hears argument to shut down NSA database

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers made their case against mass surveillance before a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. It's the first time a US Appeals Court has considered whether the "bulk telephony" database is constitutional. ACLU lawyer Alex Abdo suggested that even getting the issues debated in the open was a step forward.

‘SpinCo’ To Be Called GreatLand Connections

“SpinCo” -- the independent, publicly traded cable operator that will be spun out of the pending transactions between Comcast and Time Warner Cable and between Comcast and Charter Communications -- will come out of it all with a with a new name: GreatLand Connections Inc.

GreatLand Connections, to be led by former Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner, will own and operate former Comcast systems serving about 2.5 million customers in the Midwest and Southeast US. With current cable operator merger and acquisition activity factored in, that will make GreatLand the fifth-largest US cable operator.

AT&T names St. Louis as latest 1 Gbps fiber broadband market

AT&T says St Louis (MO) is the next destination for its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband GigaPower service for local consumers and businesses, continuing a string of new cities where it plans to deliver the new product. Similar to earlier cities it announced in recent months, AT&T will deploy additional fiber and electronics to its existing wireline network in St. Louis to deliver the FTTH service. What helped make St. Louis a more desirable city for a new FTTH buildout was streamlining the permitting process to get access to the city's rights-of-way and other necessary infrastructure.

Jackson to get C Spire’s high-speed internet

Jackson (MS) municipal leaders and C Spire executives announced an agreement to help Jackson become one of nation’s most technologically advanced cities by offering residents ultra-high speed 1 Gbps (Gigabit per second) Fiber to the Home broadband Internet access. Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber said the agreement represents a historic opportunity for the city to become a hub for technology investment, generate new, high-paying jobs and provide a better quality of life for its 172,638 residents.

Broadband and the future of learning

[Commentary] High-speed broadband networks will not only accelerate learning, but they will also enable students to acquire the skills that they need to flourish in a post-industrial society.

If the US is to keep its place in a hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world, if schools are to remain relevant in preparing students for the world they will live in, the shift to this new approach to learning is urgent and mandatory, not optional. The technology to support connected learning is already here; now we need to ensure that all Americans have access to it and make sure that its potential for learning is realized.

[Adler is a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future]

Evidence Grows That Online Social Networks Have Insidious Negative Effects

Online social networks have permeated our lives with far-reaching consequences. Many people have used them to connect with friends and family in distant parts of the world, to make connections that have advanced their careers in leaps and bounds and to explore and visualize not only their own network of friends but the networks of their friends, family, and colleagues. But there is growing evidence that the impact of online social networks is not all good or even benign. A number of studies have begun to find evidence that online networks can have significant detrimental effects. This question is hotly debated, often with conflicting results and usually using limited varieties of subjects, such as undergraduate students.

A study of 50,000 people in Italy concludes that online social networks have a significant negative impact on individual welfare.

The Long Tail of the Arab Digital Spring

[Commentary] The digital aspect of the Arab Spring has long-tail implications. These are the rapid developments in the diffusion of digital communication technologies and services that virtually every country in the Arab Middle East is experiencing, regardless of how much political turmoil and instability is at play in any particular locale.

The data conveys the picture with just a few quick points of reference:

Forty percent of mobile phones in the region are smartphones.
Nearly three-fourths of all residents in the United Arab Emirates own a smartphone -- the highest penetration in the world (South Korea is second).
Saudi Arabia has the highest Twitter penetration of anywhere in the world (about a third of its population, compared to only 11 percent in the US).
There is continued growth of Arabic as a percent of tweets in the Middle East/North Africa region. Now nearly 75 percent of all tweets are in Arabic.
Across the Arab Middle East, two hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Saudi Arabia is the leading country in the world in terms of YouTube viewers -- 90 million daily views to YouTube; overall, the region is ahead of both Europe and Asia, and just behind North America, as the world’s leading region for YouTube viewers.

FCC Moves Quickly to Reject Political Ad Sponsorship ID Complaints

[Commentary] With television stations' political files now available online, the Campaign Legal Center, Sunlight Foundation, and Common Cause have been jointly filing complaints against TV stations alleging various errors and omissions in online public file paperwork relating to political ad buys by third-party advertisers.

These three organizations expanded their campaign (no pun intended) substantially in mid-July, when they filed complaints against a Washington (DC) and a Portland (OR) TV station. Rather than paperwork problems, however, these complaints claimed that the stations had failed to accurately disclose on-air the true identity of the sponsor behind certain "Super PAC" political ads. In both cases, the complainants asserted that their own research indicated the PACs were mostly or entirely funded by a single individual, and that the stations should have therefore identified that individual rather than the PAC as the sponsor of the political spot. While there is ample precedent for requiring broadcasters to be comfortable that the sponsorship information in a political spot is accurate, the most recent complaints concerned broadcasters for two reasons.

Benton

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