April 2015

Comcast's ‘Gigabit Pro’ Charges Into Chattanooga

Comcast confirmed that it will launch Gigabit Pro, its new fiber-based 2 Gbps residential broadband service, in Chattanooga (TN) where the company grapples with EPB Fiber Optics, which sells a 1-Gig service. Comcast intends to make Gigabit Pro available in Chattanooga starting in June. Comcast will offer the uncapped Gigabit Pro service to residential customers who are within “close proximity” (about one-third of a mile) of Comcast’s fiber network, which consists of more than 145,000 route miles. Using this approach, Comcast expects to make Gigabit Pro available to about 18 million homes by the end of 2015.

Millennials don’t trust anyone. That’s a big deal.

Millennials aren't, it seems, the trusting type. Of 10 major societal institutions, just two -- the military and scientists -- garnered majority support from millennials on the question of whom they trust to do the right thing most of the time. That's according to new polling by Harvard University's Institute of Politics of this most-written-and-talked-about generation, which encompasses those ranging in age from 18 to 29. The lack of trust in longtime pillars of society among millennials is striking both for its depth and its breadth. No one is spared their side-eyed looks.

The media gets its worst -- with 88 percent of millennials saying they only "sometimes" or "never" trust the press. Wall Street doesn't fare much better, with 86 percent of millennials expressing distrust. Congress is at 82 percent. Three in four millennials (74 percent) sometimes or never trust the federal government to do the right thing, and two in three (63 percent) feel the same way about the president. The Supreme Court, once a beacon of trust societywide, isn't seen that way by millennials, with 58 percent saying they only sometimes or never trust the nation's highest court to do the right thing. Even local police aren't spared; 50 percent say they trust the cops only sometimes or never to do the right thing, while 49 percent said they trust police "all" or "most" of the time. The fact that millennials are so distrustful of institutions doesn't make them unique then. It makes them part of a broader cultural trend with dangerous potential political consequences. If we all become nihilists, the ability of politics and politicians (or any other major institution) to effect any real change among the populace becomes virtually impossible.

Nielsen teams with Roku to measure Net video viewership

Nielsen has a deal with Internet video streaming product maker Roku to measure advertising viewed by those watching Net-delivered video. The agreement, the first to cover ads viewed on Net video broadcasts, would bring sales of those ads on par with those delivered via traditional TV. "Cross-platform audience measurement is critical for advertisers looking to leverage the trend of increasing over-the-top video consumption," said Megan Clarken, Nielsen's executive vice president of global watch product leadership.

Eventually, "all TV will be streamed, and with it all TV advertising," said Roku's vice president of advertising Scott Rosenberg. "We're excited to join forces with Nielsen to significantly advance the measurement and value of (over-the-top) advertising. With Nielsen, we're integrating these capabilities directly into the Roku OS, enabling Roku's channel publishers and advertisers to measure and transact on the industry's leading metrics."

White House stops short of veto threat on 'clean' Patriot Act renewal'

The White House stopped short of issuing a veto threat against a Republican bill that would extend controversial surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act. But President Barack Obama is seeking changes that would end Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the National Security Agency has used to carry out its bulk collection of Americans’ phone records. "The President has been quite definitive about the need to make those kinds of reforms a top priority,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. That could set up a high-stakes confrontation between the White House and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) over the nation’s spying capabilities with portions of the Patriot Act set to expire June 1. The White House will continue to review the bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, before offering its full support, but it is “gratified that some of those reforms are included” in it, Earnest said.

Expansive surveillance reform takes backseat to House politics

Congress is waving the white flag about moving forward with more expansive intelligence reform. As lawmakers stare down the barrel of a deadline to renew or reform the Patriot Act, they have all but assured that more expansive reforms to US intelligence powers won’t be included. It’s not because of the substance of the reforms -- which practically all members of the House Judiciary Committee said they support -- but because they would derail a carefully calibrated deal and are opposed by GOP leaders in the House and Senate.

The House Judiciary Committee killed an amendment to expand the scope of the USA Freedom Act -- which would reform the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and some other provisions -- by a vote of 9-24. “If there ever was a perfect being the enemy of the good amendment, then this is it,” said Rep Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a supporter of the idea behind the amendment who ultimately voted against it. “What adoption of this amendment will do is take away all leverage that his committee has relative to reforming the Patriot Act... If this amendment is adopted, you can kiss this bill goodbye,” he added. The amendment from Rep Ted Poe (R-Texas) would block the spy agency from using powers under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to collect Americans’ Internet communications without a warrant. The NSA has relied on the powers of Section 702 to conduct its “PRISM” and “Upstream” collection programs, which gather data from major Web companies such as Facebook and Google, as well as to tap into the networks that make up the backbone of the Internet. The amendment would also prevent the government from forcing tech companies to include “backdoors” into their products, so that the government could access people’s information. While every committee member who spoke up said they supported the amendment, it ultimately failed because of fear that it would kill the overall bill.

NSA reform bill moves to House floor

A House committee approved a major intelligence reform bill Thursday, setting the stage for a floor debate over US spying. The House Judiciary Committee's 25-2 vote to approve the USA Freedom Act is a major boost for efforts to rein in the National Security Agency (NSA), nearly two years after Edward Snowden’s first leaks about the agency and just a month before a key legislative deadline.

The legislation would effectively end the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, while also extending expiring parts of the Patriot Act until December 2019. “The bill ends bulk collection, it ends secret law,” said Rep Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), a co-author of the bill and the original author of the Patriot Act. “It increases the transparency of our intelligence community and it does all this without compromising national security.” Congress has until June 1 to reauthorize three expiring portions of the Patriot Act, including the provision that authorizes the NSA to collect bulk records about millions of people’s phone calls. The NSA program collects phone “metadata” -- such as the numbers involved in a phone call and when it occurred -- but not actual content. The bill’s speedy movement through committee after being introduced just on Tuesday signals the blessing of both House leadership and the heads of the Intelligence Committee. There is no sign of major obstacles arising on its path forward in the lower chamber.

ABC Blazing Trail To Brave New IP World

If all goes as planned, the ABC Television Network will be distributing its programming to ABC O&Os and affiliates fall 2015 via a hybrid IP-baseband master control and playout system in which traditional gear has been replaced with the virtualized equivalent running in the cloud, says Todd Donovan, senior vice president, ABC Broadcast Operations and Engineering. “The overall relevance of the cloud for us was when you need more capacity, you just turn it on,” he says. “You simply beget more capacity as opposed to the classic approach of every time you need to do one more thing having to add one more piece of equipment sitting in a rack.”

ABC is relying on Imagine for critical hardware and software components. They include the VersioCloud playout in the cloud software application, Magellan Orchestrator command-and-control system for hybrid control networks and UCIP (uncompressed over IP) gateway modules to bridge the baseband and IP worlds. The project grew out of the Disney's work with over-the-top services like Watch ABC and Watch Disney Channel, which give viewers the ability to view shows on their media tablets and smartphones, says Donovan. The platforms also give ABC and the Disney Channel sophisticated control over what users watch, including program and commercial replacement, and support dynamic ad insertion, he says. Rather than adding all of the baseband broadcast servers, encoders and other ancillary hardware needed to deliver multiple different versions of the same content in different formats for OTT viewers, Disney/ABC turned to the data center and cloud model. As a result, master control operators working in New York or Los Angeles will push a button to execute a switch that occurs in a data center hundreds of miles away in the same way they switch video executed in a rack of equipment a few feet away today.

A Guide to Digital Policy in the UK's 2015 General Election

As the passage of the United Kingdom's technologically illiterate Digital Economy Act in 2010 demonstrated, many UK politicians are completely at sea when it comes to modern technology. But even they recognize that the digital world forms a crucial part of modern life, and that any political party hoping to enter government needs to have policies for issues the Internet raises. That said, the different political parties have very different views and priorities when it comes to legislating for the digital world.

Ahead of the UK's General Election on May 7, Ars has put together a guide to what the manifestos say on a number of key topics: surveillance; privacy and data protection; copyright and patents; web blocking; freedom of speech; digital rights; and various forms of openness -- open data, open standards and open government. The policies come from the following manifestos (in alphabetical order): Conservatives, Green Party of England and Wales, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Pirate Party, Scottish National Party, and UKIP. The Open Rights Group has usefully collected statements on these and a few other areas in the form of a single web page, organized by party.

Senate Seeks FCC Documents on Dish AWS-3 Role

The Senate Commerce Committee has asked for documents from the Federal Communications Commission related to bidding in the AWS-3 spectrum auction by Dish-affiliated companies. The FCC said that it had accepted spectrum applications for winning bids submitted by those companies, Northstar and SNR, but said it is far from finished with vetting those bids and whether they should qualify for some $3 billion in bidding credits extended to designated entities. In a release issued under the headline "Commerce Probes $3 Billion Collusion Concern in FCC Spectrum Auction," Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) signaled that the he had significant questions and concerns about whether the bidding strategy by Dish and its affiliates squared with both the letter and the intent of the law.

For vast majority of seniors who own one, a smartphone equals ‘freedom’

When it comes to tech adoption, seniors generally lag behind their younger counterparts. But for Americans ages 65 and older who own a smartphone, having one in their pocket is a liberating experience. Asked if they feel that their phone represents “freedom” or “a leash,” 82 percent of smartphone-owning seniors described their phone as freeing, compared with 64 percent of those ages 18 to 29. By contrast, 36 percet of adult smartphone owners under the age of 30 described their phone as a leash, double the 18 percent of adults ages 65 and older who chose this term to describe their phone. Similarly, when asked to describe their smartphone as “connecting” or “distracting,” older users are significantly more likely to choose “connecting” as the best descriptor. On the other hand, younger smartphone users are twice as likely as older adults to view their phone as “distracting” (37 percent vs. 18 percent).

Benton

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