November 2015

The Federal Communications Commission said that it will not seek to impose a requirement on Google, Facebook and other Internet companies that would make it harder for them to track consumers’ online activities. The announcement is a blow to privacy advocates who had petitioned the agency for stronger Internet privacy rules. But it's a win for many Silicon Valley companies whose business models rely on monetizing Internet users’ personal data. It's also the latest move in an ongoing battle to defend the agency’s new network neutrality rules, which opponents warned would result in the regulation of popular Web sites and online services. By rejecting the petition, the FCC likely hopes to defuse that argument.

Consumer Watchdog, an activist group, petitioned the FCC in June to support a technology that would allow consumers to signal to Web sites that they did not want to be tracked. By clicking a button in their browser settings, users would have been able to send a “do not track” message to Web site operators when they surfed the Internet. Some Web sites have committed to honoring those requests voluntarily, but many do not. If it had succeeded, the petition could have made Do Not Track a US standard.

Lawyers for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and every major pay-TV company met with commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to block supporters of the AllVid technology for set-top boxes. The "burdens" imposed by AllVid "would handicap multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), particularly small MVPDs that lack the necessary resources to reconfigure their networks and deploy new adapters required by the new AllVid proposal, but would not apply to online video distributors (OVDs) or retail device manufacturers," said the National Cable Telecommunications Association, in a memo to FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch.

From Comcast to Charter Communications to AT&T/DirecTV to Bright House Networks, counsel for every major pay-TV operator, save for Verizon and Cablevision, was represented in the meeting. AllVid is one of two tech proposals rendered over the summer by the FCC's Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee (DSTAC), a committee set up to find a new technology that would enable retail set-top devices to work in the pay-TV ecosystem. Google, Amazon, TiVo and other technology/consumer electronics companies have thrown their support behind AllVid. This technology would employ a kind of bridge device that would securely decode pay-TV signals and render them usable on set-tops consumers purchase at retail rather than those they could lease from their cable, satellite or telecommunication provider. The pay-TV industry has been stridently opposed to AllVid since DSTAC proposed it as a possible solution to the retail set-top issue in late August.

For many of us, broadband and high speed wireless communication are now part of everyday life. Yet many still lack even basic access to the internet through broadband. And the impact on health and healthcare is what the Federal Communications Commission wanted to highlight by hosting roundtables in Cleveland (OH) and Detroit (MI) during the week of Oct 26.

The invited presentations meant FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn and her staff could learn more about what was happening in the revival of this industrial city and who was still left behind. The discussion began with a presentation on two parallel initiatives in Cleveland to expand the availability of broadband and add health technology job development. One Community is a non-profit broadband provider that connects major institutions throughout the community, including hospitals, universities, and also, the Health-Tech Corridor with office space for startup tech businesses. The roundtable concluded with presentations by some of the winners from the Cleveland Medical Hackathon. These apps show creative approaches to address health problems in underserved communities. Why should we expand broadband as a resource to all? One of the primary incentives in healthcare is population health. If provider organizations want to reach out to patients in the community using mobile devices, the patient homes need broadband access or these initiatives will fail.