1. Monthly archive
  2. November 2015

November 2015

Comcast brings data caps to more cities, says it’s all about “fairness”

Comcast has expanded the list of cities where it imposes data caps, with customers in parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia facing new data limits and overage charges. Newly capped areas include Little Rock (AR); Houma, LaPlace, and Shreveport (LA); Chattanooga, Greeneville, Johnson City, and Gray (TN); and Galax (VA). Cities and towns in Comcast's "Data Usage Plan Trials" already included Huntsville, Mobile, and Tuscaloosa (AL); Tucson (AZ); Fort Lauderdale, the Keys, and Miami (FL); Atlanta, Augusta, and Savannah (GA); Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson and Tupelo (MI); Knoxville, Memphis, and Nashville (TN); and Charleston (SC). A few zip codes in Texas near the Louisiana border are also affected, as are some in Illinois and Indiana near the states' borders with Kentucky.

Comcast has steadily introduced caps into new areas, testing customers' responses before a potential nationwide rollout. Comcast, which has poor customer satisfaction ratings, insists that data caps add some "fairness" into the system. "About 8 percent of all Comcast customers go over 300GB," according to an Associated Press story. (The figure was 2 percent in late 2013.) "Data caps really amount to a mechanism 'that would introduce some more fairness into this,' says Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas."

Cable One Guns for a Gigabit

Cable One is joining the gigabit club. The company announced that it will offer a 1-Gig (downstream) residential broadband service in more than 200 cities in 2016. That offering, branded as GigaONE, will initially be powered by DOCSIS 3.0, the platform that fellow mid-sized companies, Suddenlink Communications and Mediacom Communications, are using for their respective 1-Gig residential services.

On the horizon is DOCSIS 3.1, a platform that will bring multi-gigabit capabilities to HFC networks. The service will provide max downstream speeds of 1 Gbps paired with a 50 Mbps upstream path. To receive that service, customers will need an approved DOCSIS 3.0 modem that can bond 32 downstream channels. Pricing and the data plan for GigaONE will be announced in early January. Cable One’s current top residential broadband tier offers 200 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up, paired with a monthly consumption ceiling of 500 gigabytes. Cable One will offer GigaONE across its network, and has set up a web site that will keep track of deployments. Customers can also register to be alerted when GigaONE is available to them.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's Citizens United Disclosure Salve 'Not Working'

When Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy penned the 2010 Citizens United decision allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited sums of money on elections, he did so with a promise that instant disclosure of election spending over the Internet would be enough to prevent corruption. "With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters,” Justice Kennedy wrote in the decision.

The problem with Justice Kennedy’s belief in instant online disclosure is that, at the time of his opinion, plenty of loopholes in campaign finance disclosure law already made it possible to cover up unlimited spending. Many opponents of Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion noted this at the time. Now, Kennedy has admitted that his belief in disclosure hasn’t turned out the way he thought it would. Justice Kennedy defended his Citizens United ruling. “You live in this cyber age. A report can be done in 24 hours,” he said. But he also added that disclosure is “not working the way it should.”

School System Leaders: Affordability Is Chief Infrastructure Challenge

School system leaders identified affordability as the primary obstacle for robust connectivity, according to the Consortium for School Networking’s (CoSN's) 3rd Annual Infrastructure Survey. The report collected data from K-12 school leaders and technology directors nationwide. In addition to affordability, the nationwide survey reveals that districts continue to face significant challenges with improving network speed and capacity and increasing competition for broadband services. The results also detail the impact of changes to the E-rate program, as well as the growing issue of digital equity for technology access outside of the classroom. For the third consecutive year, nearly half of school systems identify the cost of ongoing recurring expenses as the biggest barrier to robust connectivity. More than one-third of districts said that capital or upfront expenses are also a challenge to increasing robust Internet connectivity.

Facebook Plans to Use Your Location to Lure New Advertisers

More than 45 million businesses have Facebook Pages, but only 2.5 million pay Facebook for advertising. That means a lot of businesses understand the importance of being on Facebook, but aren’t yet convinced the ad dollars are worth it. Facebook is trying to fix that. One idea: Give small businesses more targeted advertising and a better idea of who’s walking around their stores. Literally.

The company is rolling out two new ad products intended to attract small business advertisers. The first is a new tool that can tell business owners the demographic info for people in and around their physical store. Assuming you have location settings turned on within the app, Facebook already collects info on your location. Now it will share that info with advertisers -- in bulk, so no individual users are identified -- so they can learn about the foot traffic near their shops, like gender and age demographics. The second is a new localized ad that lets businesses with multiple locations create different ads for each site. So a coffee chain could easily show one ad to people in Brooklyn and a separate one to users in Long Island.

EU Data Protection Law: The First 25 Years

[Commentary] European Union data protection law began 25 years ago on Nov 5, 1990 with the publication of the EU Commission’s first Proposal for a Data Protection Directive. That proposal was built on concepts such as mainframe computers and desktop PCs, which were parts of centralised, structured and carefully managed information technology systems. Such concepts dated back to Europe’s original data protection law, the Strasbourg Convention of 1981. On 5 November 1990, those concepts still provided a valid basis for the EU proposal, though for only a few more days.

While the EU Commission was busying itself with its proposal, an English researcher, Tim Berners-Lee, was working on an obscure project at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. That project involved hyper-text and other technologies which would enable Berners-Lee to invent the first web-page. The record is sketchy as to when precisely that page was uploaded to CERN’s computers; the 13 November 1990 is the earliest known date, though it may have been uploaded slightly earlier. From that web page would come the World Wide Web, with widely dispersed technology, easy data access and a potential for anarchy instead of governance. As its name suggests the World Wide Web is global -- neither national nor European. Hence, once it was invented, the EU proposal was out of date.

[Denis Kelleher BCL, LLD, Barrister-at-Law, is a Senior Lawyer at the Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland]

Here's How Much the Pentagon Paid Sports Teams for Military Tributes

You know the scene -- a stadium full of 60,000 thankful fans gives a standing ovation as the Jumbotron shows members of the military, or an active-duty soldier shows up to surprise her family in a touching on-field reunion. But most fans may not be aware of one key detail: These are paid advertisements by the US Department of Defense, and taxpayers are footing the bill.

A joint oversight report released by Sens John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) found that roughly $6.8 million in taxpayer-funded marketing contracts with professional sports teams since 2012 have included "paid patriotism" events. "Unsuspecting audience members became the subjects of paid marketing campaigns rather than simply bearing witness to teams' authentic, voluntary shows of support for the brave men and women who wear our nation's uniform," the two stated in the introduction to the report. "It is hard to understand how a team accepting taxpayer funds to sponsor a military appreciation game, or to recognize wounded warriors or returning troops, can be construed as anything other than paid patriotism."

FBI official: It’s America’s choice whether we want to be spied on

FBI General Counsel James Baker spoke about how encryption is making it increasingly difficult for law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance. While the FBI has previously argued in favor of backdoors that let authorities defeat encryption, Baker said the issue must ultimately be decided by the American people.

“We are your servants,” Baker said. “The FBI are your servants, we will do what you want us to do.” But while FBI officials are America’s servants, Baker argued that encryption is making it harder for the bureau to protect the nation from terrorism and other criminal activity. Even when law enforcement agencies get a warrant, they aren’t always able to get the information they want, he said. “We go to judges, we do what the law requires, we show up with the order and we can’t get the fruits of surveillance for a variety of technical reasons, increasingly due to encryption,” he said.

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