1. Monthly archive
  2. December 2015

December 2015

Free Basics protects net neutrality

[Commentary] In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people’s wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely. We have collections of free basic books. They’re called libraries. They don’t contain every book, but they still provide a world of good. We have free basic healthcare. Public hospitals don’t offer every treatment, but they still save lives. We have free basic education. Every child deserves to go to school. And in the 21st century, everyone also deserves access to the tools and information that can help them to achieve all those other public services, and all their fundamental social and economic rights. That’s why everyone also deserves access to free basic Internet services.

If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services. That’s why more than 30 countries have recognized Free Basics as a program consistent with network neutrality and good for consumers. Everyone deserves access to the Internet. Free basic Internet services can help achieve this. Free Basics should stay to help achieve digital equality for India.

[Mark Zuckerberg is founder and chairman of Facebook]

Dish Slings Accusation at Charter Regarding Over-the-Top Video Unfriendliness

Dish continues to "Sling" accusations at Charter about its online video friendliness, more specifically the lack of it. In a pre-holiday filing at the Federal Communications Commission on the company's proposed merger with Time Warner Cable, the satellite company said that rather than viewing over-the-top video providers (OVDs) as "often a complement" to multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs, or pay-TV) video and unlikely to be "foreclosed," Charter clearly treats Dish's Sling TV OVD services as a competitive threat.

Dish cites Charter's "laser-like focus" on Sling TV and what it claims are Charter's "thinly veiled complaints to programmers about making their programming available to Sling TV" and others. Dish cites highly redacted internal documents it got access to via the FCC's merger review. A spokesperson said the company has filed an unredacted copy with the FCC. "There is no more friendly broadband provider to OVDs including Sling than Charter," the company said. "Charter’s slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based billing, no contracts and no modem fees.” The FCC has made clear in other deal reviews that access to over-the-top programming is a key competition issue.

Cable Bills Are Rising Again (Those of You Who Still Have Cable)

While facing a growing number of consumers who drop pay-TV for cheaper online alternatives, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Dish Network and AT&T are all planning to increase their prices early 2016 -- at the risk of turning off more subscribers fed up with the rising cost of television. It’s part of the vicious circle at the heart of the US media industry’s current troubles. To attract viewers who are migrating to Netflix and Amazon, programmers are spending billions of dollars on developing scripted shows and on the rights to air sporting events -- one of the last things that people still watch live. They are passing on those costs to cable- and satellite-TV providers by charging higher fees to carry their channels. Those providers, in turn, are passing on some of those costs to consumers.

New York is finally installing its promised public gigabit Wi-Fi

Workers began installing the first LinkNYC access points in New York. First announced in November 2014, the hubs are designed as an update to the standard phone booth, using upgraded infrastructure to provide gigabit Wi-Fi access points. 500 hubs are set to be installed throughout the city by mid-July. LinkNYC anticipates one or two weeks of testing before New Yorkers will be able to use the hubs to get online. The full network will install more than 7,500 public hubs throughout the city, each replacing a pre-existing phone booth. Once completed, the hubs will also include USB device charging ports, touchscreen web browsing, and two 55-inch advertising displays. The city estimates that ads served by the new hubs will generate more than $500 million in revenue over the next 12 years.

More than 190 million US voters might have had their personal data exposed

Yet again in 2015, US voter data is at risk of being compromised. Cybersecurity researcher Chris Vickery uncovered a publicly available database of 191 million voter records online earlier in Dec, CSO reports. The database is not protected by any security measures and reportedly remains live. Listed in the database is each voter’s full name, home address, mailing address, unique voter ID, state voter ID, gender, date of birth, phone number, date of registration, political affiliation, and voter history since 2000. Vickery didn’t specify where he found the vulnerable database and isn’t sure what company compiled it. CSO, Vickery, and an admin at DataBreaches.net reached out to multiple political data firms to see if any could claim ownership of the database. None did. The FBI and Internet Crime Complaint Center were also contacted, although the agencies didn’t follow up to confirm an investigation.

It isn’t clear how many states are impacted. If Vickery's numbers are accurate, the database would contain the majority of voter IDs in the United States -- even more than the total number of currently active registered voters. The US Census recorded 142.2 million registered voters in 2014, significantly less than the 191 million voter IDs Vickery claims to have uncovered, although deaths, state-to-state moves and duplicates may account for much of the discrepancy.

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