June 2015

T-Mobile Tries to Block AT&T Low-Band Spectrum Buy

T-Mobile has asked the Federal Communications Commission to deny the transfer of low-band spectrum to AT&T through a secondary market transaction. T-Mobile has been asking the FCC to set aside more low-band spectrum for competitive carriers -- like T-Mobile -- in the upcoming incentive auction, pointing out that AT&T and Verizon combined already have mode than two-thirds of that beachfront spectrum nationwide. T-Mobile is also trying to prevent AT&T from getting any more spectrum through a proposed purchase of spectrum from East Kentucky Network.

"AT&T has failed to meet the applicable heightened standards for demonstrating that the proposed transaction is in the public interest when balanced with the serious anticompetitive risks posed by the increased concentration of below-1-GHz spectrum," T-Mobile said in petitioning to deny the sale. Elsewhere T-Mobile and its CEO, John Legere, are hammering AT&T and Verizon for their low-band holdings in a new Web video pushing the FCC to expand its incentive auction low-band spectrum set-aside.

Hulu Will Sell Showtime on the Web, Too -- At a 20 Percent Discount

If you want a digital subscription to Showtime, you can buy one from Apple, Sony or Roku for $11 a month starting in July. But if you pay for a subscription to Hulu’s premium service, you can also pick up a Showtime subscription from the video service -- for $9 a month. The 20 percent difference in the two plans, announced today, says a lot about Hulu’s ambitions to build up its TV-on-the-Web service: Hulu says it will pay for the $2 discount out of its own pocket, in the hope of convincing more people to buy its base subscription service at $8 a month -- for a total of $17 a month.

“What we’re basically figuring is that by adding these two services together, we think that consumers are entitled to a discount. We really wanted to be aggressive coming out of the gate,” said Tim Connolly, who heads up distribution for Hulu. “We’re interested in selling Showtime, but we’re more interested in selling Showtime and Hulu together.” In that sense Hulu, jointly owned by Disney, 21st Century Fox and Comcast, is acting like a cable company, which will only sell you Showtime, HBO or other premium channels if you subscribe to a base package of other channels as well.

Twitter is Killing Twitter to Save Twitter

[Commentary] Twitter is about a single question, the one you see when you first load twitter.com: “What’s happening?” Yet Twitter, as it has existed until now, has done a terrible job of both asking and answering that most central question. And so the company is, effectively, trying again. Its newly-revealed Project Lightning, BuzzFeed reports, will be the core feature of Twitter going forward: a button in the living center of its mobile app’s menu bar, dedicated to providing useful information in real time. Twitter’s editorial team (made of real, live humans) will define the big stories of the day, and will package tweets, images, and video to explain what’s going on. Those packages will be the primary unit of Twitter, and will be embeddable all over the Internet. What Project Lightning represents, more than anything, is the long-overdue death of the Twitter timeline. (Or its demotion, at the very least, in the hope it’ll quietly resign.)

With this change, Twitter doesn’t have to look like an endlessly flowing, context-free stream of tweets; instead, you can see a hand-curated set of tweets, links, images, and videos related to what’s happening right now. You see one at a time, swiping through them until you get to the end. And there’s an end! In short, this effort puts a stake through the idea that Twitter is a social network. It’s not. It never should have tried to be. It’s not about people, jokes, and #brands. It’s about information, about news and pictures and stories. Twitter will show you, maybe for the first time ever, what’s happening.

Amazon wants to control ‘.amazon.’ But so does half of South America.

Before "Amazon" was a global e-commerce company, it was a rain forest in South America. That's something most of us have forgotten amid the explosion of free shipping, instant gratification and buy-anything-ness that Amazon now stands for. But not Peru, Brazil and a group of other South American countries that are locked in a battle with Amazon.com over who gets to control a new ".amazon" Web domain.

A couple of US lawmakers have now leapt into that debate, writing a letter siding with Jeffrey P. Bezos (who, in addition to running Amazon, also owns The Washington Post). "Neither Brazil nor Peru has any legally recognized rights — let alone intellectual property rights -- in the term 'Amazon,'" write Reps. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA), who co-chair a congressional caucus on trademarks. "There is no basis in international law for either country to assert rights in the term." What Amazon's southerly critics object to is the corporate appropriation of a historically and culturally significant name. And how the fight gets resolved could have implications for all kinds of similar conflicts. How does Apple the tech company deal with apple farmers? Or Patagonia the clothing company with people who represent the Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia?

Google launches free music streaming ahead of Apple Music debut

As Apple Music nears its June 30th launch, Google is getting more aggressive about trying to sell users on its own Google Play Music service. The company is launching a free, ad-supported tier that offers curated playlists (a la Songza) designed to accompany every moment of your day. The handpicked stations themselves aren't new; Google brought them to Play Music's paying subscribers in 2014 after its acquisition of Songza. But now everyone in the US can listen; the curated playlists are available June 23 on the web and Android, with an update for iOS also due very soon.

For Google, sticking with playlists was an easier approach to free music than the on-demand, ad-sponsored tier that Spotify offers. The free half of Spotify's service has been the subject of harsh criticism from musicians who feel the company underpays artists. Google seems confident it can avoid this by going the "music radio" route, and its existing licensing agreements guarantee a big selection at launch. If you can already stream a band's music with Google's subscription music service, all of those same tracks will be part of the now-free radio side. (Yes, that includes Taylor Swift's back catalog.)

IDC: Mobile Workers Will Make Up Nearly 75 Percent of US Workforce

The number of mobile workers in the US will rise from 96.2 million to 105.4 million over the next five years. By 2020 mobile workers will account for nearly three-quarters (72.3 percent) of the US workforce, according to a new report from IDC. Falling prices for smartphones and tablets will help fuel the trend, as will growth in company employees making use of personal devices at work – the “Bring Your Own Device,” or BYOD, trend, IDC highlights.

Innovations in mobile broadband and computing technology will also contribute to growth in the number of mobile workers in the U.S. The introduction and/or greater use of biometric readers, connected wearable devices, voice control technology, near-field communications (NFC) and augmented reality will transform the nature of work in the US, IDC says. Productivity will rise as communication is enhanced and workflows become more streamlined and efficient. Just under 7 in 10 (69.1 percent) of those with a stake in enterprise mobility surveyed by IDC for a recent research report said operating or capital expenditure costs were reduced as a result of implementing BYOD programs.

Snapchat Joins Daily Mail and WPP Agency in Marketing Venture

Snapchat is teaming up with the advertising conglomerate WPP and the Daily Mail website to form a new company, called Truffle Pig, that will create social content for brands. The venture, announced June 23 on the Daily Mail yacht during the Cannes Lions advertising festival, is the latest attempt to capitalize on a desire among marketers for campaigns that reach young consumers and look less like traditional ads. Truffle Pig aspires to appeal to brands by offering a combination of WPP’s advertising expertise, Snapchat’s social reach and The Daily Mail’s news coverage.

“It is creating the content, understanding mass audience, which Daily Mail brings, and what it’s like to be fluent in millennials, which is what Snapchat is,” said Alexander Jutkowitz, the chief executive of Truffle Pig. “This is the only place where we’ve been able to bring all of this together in one place.” Jutkowitz is also the managing partner of Group SJR, a digital consulting firm that WPP acquired two years ago, which works with companies to create social content for brands. Truffle Pig will introduce its branded content on DailyMail.com; Elite Daily, which is owned by Daily Mail; and Snapchat, but will push it onto other digital properties based on the client’s strategy.

Public, Not-For-Profit Media Is More Important Than Ever

[Commentary] We need to acknowledge that public, not-for-profit media is more important than ever. And independent documentary voices on that media are all that is left on the airwaves that are driven by authentic individuals who measure their success not in dollars and cents but in the robustness of the discourse they trigger.

Public, independent documentaries are the last bulwark of integrity in the battle against conformity, against the monotone emanating from our televisions. They give us the chance to immerse ourselves in the perspectives divergent from our own. Public media can and should continue to support the magnificent arts programming that we all know and love. But without the alternative and overtly politically challenging voices that come to us by way of independent documentaries, it runs the risk of taming itself into irrelevancy. Without a serious commitment to independent and diverse voices from PBS and WNET, what will that media landscape look like going forward? More like the Sahara, I suspect, than ever before.

[Abigail Disney is a filmmaker and philanthropist]

Beyond Propaganda

[Commentary] Neo-authoritarian, “hybrid,” and illiberal democratic regimes in countries such as Venezuela, Turkey, China, Syria, and Russia have not given up on propaganda. They have found completely new ways of pursuing it, many of them employing technologies invented in the democratic world. Why fight the information age and globalization when you can use it?

Today’s autocrats, “illiberal democrats,” and their propagandists have learned how to use phenomena previously associated with democracy -- elections, the Internet, the press, the market -- to undermine freedoms. They have learned how to disrupt the soft power of liberal democracy with a liquid treatment of ideology. And they do so by using Western technology and Western money. While the EU and the U.S. government decry the disinformation, aggression, and war-mongering on Kremlin TV channels, it is worth keeping in mind that these networks are kept afloat by revenue made from Western advertising.

[Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute's Transitions Forum]

European privacy probes could cost Facebook, report finds

Probes into Facebook’s data practices in Europe may cost the social network financially, a research firm said. Regulators around Europe are investigating the firm’s advertising business, which touts its access to the reams of data Facebook gathers on its users. Much of the effort, led by the Netherlands, is looking at how Facebook uses data from services it owns -- like WhatsApp and Instagram -- to bolster its ability to target advertising. Agencies from Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Belgium have all signed on to the inquiry.

“This situation will play out over the coming months and years, and its impact on Facebook’s ad business could be substantial if the company is forced to limit or curtail some of its targeted advertising activities,” research firm eMarketer wrote in a note. That looming question, as well as the patchwork nature of the region, makes it difficult to imagine Facebook increasing its revenue from Western Europe significantly."

Benton

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