December 2014

Will Dish's AutoHop Die by Inches After the CBS Deal?

[Commentary] Maybe the most interesting facet of CBS's deal with Dish Network is its exemption from AutoHop. And that leaves a very interesting question open: Is AutoHop now less attractive as an incentive to consumers than as a bargaining chip in carriage negotiations?

Dish, after all, is in the unenviable position of needing to show year-over-year profit increases in a mature market. And in a mature market, churn is also a very serious consideration. So if Dish can hold its suppliers over a barrel with tech that will damage their bottom lines -- and has been court-tested multiple times -- it can likely command even more cash with the promise of limiting that technology.

The World Cracks Down on the Internet

[Commentary] The notable part of the recent Freedom House annual report on Internet freedom is the suggestion that, when it comes to Internet freedom, the rest of the world is gradually becoming more like bottom-ranking China and less like higher scoring Iceland.

The researchers found that Internet freedom declined in thirty-six of the sixty-five countries they studied, continuing a trajectory they have noticed since they began publishing the reports in 2010. A research analyst at Freedom House said that authoritarian regimes might even be explicitly looking at China as a model in policing Internet communication. Governments are turning to their legal systems, enacting new laws that restrict how people can sue the Internet and other technologies.

A privacy policy for cars: What automakers know about you and what they’re doing with it

Two of the automotive industry's biggest trade groups, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers, settled on a series of privacy commitments designed to make Americans more comfortable with next-generation vehicles.

The agreement will take effect Jan. 2, 2016 -- in time for the 2017 model year. It outlines basic steps, such as updating owners' manuals, that each manufacturer will take to inform car buyers of the data their vehicles will be collecting. Think of it as a privacy policy for your Passat. With little more than a year until the self-imposed deadline, the auto industry is moving speedily to implement the agreement.

Sen Rockefeller withdraws opposition to FOIA update

Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) withdrew opposition to an update to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), just hours before the measure would have died for the year.

Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the author of the FOIA Improvement Act, won unanimous consent in favor of the bill in a surprise announcement on the chamber floor. A Rockefeller official said the senator held up the legislation "out of concerns that the bill would have a chilling effect on internal deliberations within government agencies when agency attorneys prepare for an enforcement action -- a move that could potentially undermine consumer protection." Sen Rockefeller lifted his hold after lawmakers agreed on report language claiming that Congress intends for courts to take agencies' concerns "into consideration" when information about enforcement efforts is kept secret.

Comcast sued for turning home Wi-Fi routers into public hotspots

Two East Bay (CA) residents are suing Comcast for plugging their home’s wireless router into what they call a power-wasting, Internet-clogging, privacy-threatening network of public Wi-Fi hotspots.

The class-action suit claims Comcast is “exploiting them for profit” by using their Pittsburgh home’s router as part of a nationwide network of public hotspots. The suit quotes a test conducted by Philadelphia networking technology company Speedify that concluded the secondary Internet channel will eventually push “tens of millions of dollars per month of the electricity bills needed to run their nationwide public Wi-Fi network onto consumers.” Tests showed that under heavy use, the secondary channel adds 30 to 40 percent more costs to a customer’s electricity bill than the modem itself, the suit said. The suit also said “the data and information on a Comcast customer’s network is at greater risk” because the hotspot network “allows strangers to connect to the Internet through the same wireless router used by Comcast customers.”

AT&T launches fiber network, claims again that President Obama will kill fiber

AT&T just launched a new fiber network in North Carolina. Despite boasting about the gigabit speeds its new fiber deployment will offer, AT&T's press release on the matter repeated the company's claim that President Barack Obama's network neutrality proposal will kill future fiber investments.

"President Obama's proposal in early November to regulate the entire Internet under rules from the 1930s designed for voice services injects significant uncertainty into the economics underlying AT&T's investment decisions," AT&T said. "As a result, the company has paused consideration of any fiber investments that would go beyond its DirecTV merger-related commitments, which includes previously announced fiber plans described above, until the rules are clarified."

FCC Rural Broadband Experiment Winners Include ILECs, WISPs, Others

The Federal Communications Commission has provisionally chosen nearly 40 entities to receive funding in the commission’s rural broadband experiment initiative. Among those chosen are 14 wireless Internet Service Providers, seven local telephone companies, four power companies and two cable companies. Other winners include competitive carriers that use landline or a mixture of wireless and landline technology, along with municipalities and organizations whose exact business type isn’t clear. Individual winners have tentatively been awarded as much as $4.45 million toward the cost of bringing broadband to rural areas where broadband is not available today. As planned, the total amount of money awarded was nearly $100 million.

No need to envy the French for their Internet

[Commentary] Taking an in-depth, rigorous look at France’s intrusive Internet regulations clearly shows why the US should not pursue utility regulation in the dynamic Internet ecosystem. The European Union’s 2014 Digital Scoreboard reports that just 10 percent of the France's households can access broadband technology of 30 Mbps or higher. Indeed 4G/LTE deployment in France only started in 2012, two years after it began in the US. A survey conducted in conjunction with French municipal elections last spring revealed that, for people in rural areas, Internet connectivity is the leading concern, second only to high taxes. Coverage of next generation networks in the US is significantly higher in both urban and rural areas than it is in France. US regulators and officials should recognize the US’s digital leadership as it considers any future policies.

[Baranes is Professor of Economics at the University of Montpellier in France]

International Telecommunications Union releases Global Development Initiatives reports

The Advisory Boards of the International Telecommunications Union m-Powering Development and Smart Sustainable Development Model Initiatives released their first reports. The m-Powering Development Initiative report finds that technological innovations and initiatives that use mobile phones can potentially bring exponential benefits to entire communities and make a valuable contribution to the global development agenda. It calls for the development of an enabling regulatory environment for m-Powering initiatives where no citizen is excluded by affordability, accessibility or availability issues. The Report also affirms that mobile initiatives need to be addressed in a holistic manner to avoid a vertical silo approach.

Op-ed

A Book for Now

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” philosopher George Santayana once said. It’s an old adage but apt as ever—particularly pertinent for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as it sets about deciding the fate of the Open Internet.

Benton

Search