November 2015

There's a story going around today that the Web is too slow, especially over mobile networks. It's a pretty good story -- and it's a perpetual story. The Web, while certainly improved from the days of 14.4k modems, has never been as fast as we want it to be, which is to say that the Web has never been instantaneous. Curiously, rather than a focus on possible cures, like increasing network speeds, finding ways to decrease network latency, or even speeding up Web browsers, the latest version of the "Web is too slow" story pins the blame on the Web itself. And, perhaps more pointedly, this blame falls directly on the people who make it.

Native mobile applications, on the other hand, are getting faster. Mobile devices get more powerful with every release cycle, and native apps take better advantage of that power. So as the story goes, apps get faster, the Web gets slower. This is allegedly why Facebook must invent Facebook Instant Articles, why Apple News must be built, and why Google must now create Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Google is late to the game, but AMP has the same goal as Facebook's and Apple's efforts -- making the Web feel like a native application on mobile devices. (It's worth noting that all three solutions focus exclusively on mobile content.)

Public Knowledge sent a letter to the leadership of the Senate and House Commerce Committees, urging them to continue work on opening more spectrum for commercial use. In particular, Public Knowledge urges Congress to address the critical need to expand “unlicensed” spectrum for faster, more powerful next generation Wi-Fi and to accommodate the growing “Internet of Things” (IoT) -- devices such as Fitbit and Nest that use unlicensed spectrum to connect to other devices and the Internet. The letter notes that unlicensed spectrum already contributes $220 billion a year to the economy, and “according to Cisco, by 2020, the IoT will connect 50 billion devices, with an economic impact estimated at $19 trillion.” The letter proposes two ways to make more unlicensed spectrum available, while leaving abundant spectrum for the federal government to use or auction to wireless companies.

1. Create new underlays. Open up all spectrum currently assigned to the federal government to unlicensed use on a non-interfering basis, a traditional mode of unlicensed access called an “underlay.” This would free up enormous amounts of spectrum for the American people at no cost to the federal government.
2. The Wi-Fi dividend. Take a portion of the revenue from future spectrum license auctions and use that to clear additional federal spectrum for unlicensed use. This would ensure that when we privatize the “public airwaves,” we also create a “spectrum commons” for innovation and affordable wireless access.

The world’s top tech companies are failing when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date of their user agreement policies. Tech firms including US giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft, Europe’s top mobile companies Vodafone and Orange, China’s Tencent, and South Korea’s Daum Kakao (which makes the 140 million-user-strong KakaoTalk) were among the public companies surveyed in an ongoing project called Ranking Digital Rights. All of the firms failed to offer their users basic disclosures about privacy and censorship, according to the survey, which was conducted by the New America Foundation thinktank. One didn’t even provide user agreements in the proper language. “There are no ‘winners’,” said the group in its executive summary. “Even companies in the lead are falling short.”