December 2014

The US Leads the World in Broadband

[Commentary] Has the US fallen behind the rest of the world in broadband? Do consumers have trouble accessing websites and find it difficult to shop and surf the Web? The success of Google, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Dropbox, Twitch and a thousand other American-born Web firms and apps suggests not. Yet reports of lagging US broadband and the specter of content blocking are the two central contentions of “net neutrality” fans, including President Barack Obama, who want the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet as a public utility.

If US broadband were slow, expensive and not widely deployed, one might expect other nations, who supposedly enjoy better broadband, to generate more Internet traffic. But as my new study for the American Enterprise Institute shows, the reverse is true. The US, with 4% of the world’s population, has 10% of its Internet users, 25% of its broadband investment and 32% of its consumer Internet traffic. The U.S. policy of Internet freedom has worked. Why does Washington want to intervene in a thriving market?

[Swanson is president of Entropy Economics]

No Deadline for the Open Internet

[Commentary] In a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, Commerce Department official Lawrence Strickling complains about the “many salvos” this column has launched against the plan to give up US protection of the Internet in September 2015. The administration’s own arguments show why the President should withdraw his plan.

“No one entity controls the Internet,” he writes. That’s true -- but the reason authoritarian governments don’t control the Internet is that the US has kept them at bay. Strickling’s letter also fails to address a fundamental question: why the executive branch thinks it can act on its own. The Constitution says only Congress can transfer federal property, such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) contract. The Administration has not provided any legal argument to the contrary. Congress has voted unanimously to keep US oversight and should block unilateral action by the White House. The US can renew the ICANN agreement for another four years beyond September 2015. That would give everyone the chance to see if there is any way to protect the open Internet without US stewardship. We know for sure that there will be no protection on the schedule set by the Obama Administration.

Telecoms bet on congressional rookies

AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have donated heavily to incoming members of Congress, cultivating early relationships with the next generation of lawmakers and surpassing the efforts of Internet companies like Google and Facebook, which are just beginning to up their game in Washington.

With the help of their well-stocked political action committees, the three wireless and cable giants last election cycle cast a wide net. They targeted many of the 65 newcomers to Capitol Hill along with scores of familiar incumbents as the industry prepares for new legislative battles in 2015 over net neutrality and other communications laws. It’s a sign that the telecoms, which are longtime players in DC with formidable lobbying operations, remain skilled practitioners in how to develop allies and do business in the capital. Tech companies, by contrast, played it safe and generally supported only congressional veterans during the midterms.

Why women are leaving the tech industry in droves

[Commentary] Women make up a tiny fraction, roughly 15%, of people working in technical roles in the tech industry. And amazingly, that percentage is dropping, not rising.

Multiple studies have found that the proportion of women in the tech workforce peaked in about 1989 and has been steadily dropping ever since. Surveys and focus groups find that women enter the tech world empowered by their credentials and filled with enthusiasm and ambition. In the early years of their careers, women self-report themselves to be ambitious and happy. But over time they get ground down. Most have very few female role models and colleagues. Surveys find 23% to 66% report experiencing sexual harassment or seeing it happen to others. Half the respondents to my survey said they've been treated in a way they find hostile, demeaning or condescending, and a third said their bosses are friendlier and more supportive with their male colleagues. Women report being encouraged to move out of pure tech into support functions, which offer less pay, are less prestigious and have limited upward mobility.

There's a war for talent in Silicon Valley, and engineers are tech's scarcest resource. If you're a tech executive, you want your available workforce to be as big and varied as possible. In that context a rational industry would shut down overt misogyny because in addition to being morally repugnant, it's terrible for business. It would aim to provide the same things for female workers that it does for male ones: an enjoyable culture, competitive pay and challenging work.

[Gardner is the former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation]

Hollywood Tracks Social Media Chatter to Target Hit Films

United Talent Agency and Rentrak, an entertainment data company, are introducing a service called PreAct. It joins an array of Hollywood upstarts peddling “social listening,” a growing field that uses algorithms to slice and dice chatter on social media. PreAct begins unusually early. It closely monitors marketing efforts at least a year before opening weekend. At any moment, studios using the service can log in to a portal and receive various charts that detail how consumers are responding to promotional efforts.

Cellphones Can Spark Change in North Korea

[Commentary] An odd thing is happening in North Korea, and it may be happening faster than anyone anticipated. Access to mobile technology has exploded, at least among those who can afford it. In the capital and other major cities, there are now two million or so people who lie between the urban elites, who have monopolized the country’s resources, and its desperately poor villagers. The speed of this change isn’t often appreciated by outsiders. In a 14-month span between 2012 and 2013, the number of mobile-phone subscribers in North Korea doubled to two million from one million, and it now may exceed 2.5 million, according to Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding of Egypt, which provides cell service to North Korea in a joint venture with the government. Just a fraction of those devices are smartphones -- in 2013 the government said it would import 100,000 smartphones from China—and those owned by ordinary citizens can’t access the global Internet. But North Korea, a country in which cellphones were banned until it built its own network in 2008, has become a place where it is common for teens to text one another, just as they do elsewhere.

Weekly Digest

A Year in Review: The FCC and the U.S. Phone Transition

Introduction

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has been on the job for just over a year. And with 2014 coming to a close, we look back at the accomplishments of the FCC in his first year.

CBS, Dish Reach Carriage Deal

CBS and Dish Network reached a multiyear pact for carriage of CBS-owned stations across the US as well as CBS’s cable networks.

The deal covers 27 CBS-owned stations as well as CBS Sports Network, Smithsonian Channel, TVGN and Showtime Networks, which includes Showtime TV Everywhere and video-on-demand rights as well as future over-the-top distribution of the premium cabler. The companies’ announcement did not address whether Dish has “over-the-top” rights to CBS programming. According to a source familiar with the deal, CBS will negotiate with Dish in good faith for Internet TV rights if and when the satellite carrier launches an OTT service. Dish has said it plans to launch an OTT service before the end of 2014, having secured deals with Disney/ESPN, Scripps Networks Interactive and A+E Networks.

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. The sticking points in the talks were as much about digital content rights issues as about retransmission dollars and cents.

All pending litigation between the two companies will be dismissed. That includes the broadcaster’s lawsuit over Dish’s PrimeTime Anytime and AutoHop services, which allow subscribers with the Hopper DVR to automatically skip commercials in shows. As part of the pact, Dish’s AutoHop commercial-skipping functionality will not be available for CBS-owned stations and affiliates during Nielsen’s C7 window.

KTNV Settles FCC Fake News Report Investigation

Journal Broadcast Group's KTNV-TV Las Vegas will pay $115,000 to settle an Federal Communications Commission investigation into the broadcasting of paid commercials masquerading as special reports.

The FCC's Enforcement Bureau said that an ad agency had paid KTNV to produce and air so-called special reports about liquidation sales at local Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Nissan and Hyundai car dealerships. "KTNV formatted the commercials in the style of news reports, which featured a KTNV staff person on location at the dealerships posing as a journalist," the bureau said. Under the terms of the settlement, Journal admits to violating the commercial sponsorship identification rule, will pay the $115,000 and will create a three-year compliance plan and report periodically to the FCC.

How I Made -- Instead of Spent -- 26 Cents With a Mobile App

Internet companies have figured out ways to help people make money by sharing their cars, renting out their apartments and performing mundane tasks like standing in line. Now they want to give them a way monetize downtime, the brief interludes in most people’s day when they’re waiting for a latte at Starbucks, sitting in a waiting room or riding the bus home. It’s the next logical step in the sharing economy. It isn’t a substitute for a job. It’s a substitute for playing Candy Crush and liking pictures of your friends’ schnauzer on Facebook. Rather than spending a dollar to receive fake gold coins in a game, you can use the app to earn actual coins.

Benton

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