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  2. February 2016

February 2016

Facebook Seeks to Ease Tensions With Telecoms With Cellular-Network Project

Facebook is trying to ease tensions with phone carriers that fear that giant technology firms will overtake their business. Facebook said that it has joined with Intel and Nokia and carriers including Deutsche Telekom AG to share information about designing cellular networks, and to make these blueprints available for anyone to use and improve upon. The stated goal of the Facebook-led initiative, called the Telecom Infra Project, or TIP, is to make it easier and less expensive for telecommunications companies to connect people in places that don’t have cellular service, from urban basements to rural villages.

By launching the initiative, Facebook is also trying to send the message that it wants to work with telecommunications firms rather than replace them. Facebook’s move to spearhead progress in mobile networks comes amid ongoing tensions between Silicon Valley and telecom firms. Some of the world’s biggest tech and telecom firms are gathering in Barcelona for the mobile industry’s biggest annual conference.

When Comcast’s Business As Usual Turns Out to Limit Minority Access

[Commentary] Late in Jan, CTC Technology & Energy, an independent consulting firm that had been retained by the state of Connecticut, released a report that included some shocking stories about business connectivity in Hartford (CT), the capital of the state. Connecticut has the highest per capita income of all fifty states. Hartford is largely black (38%) and Hispanic (43%). Connecticut as a whole is mostly white (69%). CTC found that high-quality fiber and cable high-speed Internet access services did exist close to the business locations in Hartford that the firm visited. But close doesn’t mean connected. And the businesses CTC talked to said that they’d have to pay sky-high amounts to Comcast to get hooked up — and after that it would cost them enormous monthly fees to have a persistent connection.

For all my own inveighing in the past few years against the unconstrained power of Comcast in America, I’ve always said the company is acting rationally — it’s not, itself, evil. Plutocrats are not necessarily prejudiced. But Comcast is a dividend-generating machine, an ATM with lawyers on top, whose reasonable, presumably benevolent actions over time are resulting in grave problems for areas that just “happen” to be non-white. Does motivation excuse consequences? What will America do about the reality that a basic utility — world-class access to the Internet — may be prohibitively expensive for businesses in low-income-area buildings Comcast has chosen not to serve? The answer is cheap, open wholesale fiber networks in every neighborhood and city — facilities that, just like street grids, enable retail competition to thrive.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School]

Kentucky Stumbles in Finding Revenue for Broadband Debt

Six months after Kentucky borrowed millions to build a 3,400-mile broadband network, the state is having to rethink one of the revenue sources it had expected to be available to pay off the bonds. The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority sold $232 million of municipal debt in August to build the fiber-optic network for state agencies, schools and far-flung residents. Yet a challenge by AT&T to Kentucky’s effort to shift a contract that provides Internet to schools is jeopardizing $11 million a year it was counting on for the bonds, according to the state.

Gov Matt Bevin’s (R-KY) administration, which took office in December, said that even with the challenge, the state will find the revenue to fund payments on the bonds, which were sold subject to legislative appropriation. State agencies will use the system, and other users are expected to generate revenue. “The Commonwealth recognizes its contractual obligations under the project agreement and is evaluating all options to ensure the necessary revenue streams are in place to support the program,” said Jessica Ditto, Gov Bevin’s spokeswoman. Kentucky sold its bonds as part of a trend among US state and local governments to build their own broadband systems. About $4.2 billion of debt for broadband and other telecommunication services it outstanding, according to Bloomberg data.

The First Campaign Websites

One of the strange delights of the ephemeral web is that some sites, against all reason, seem never to die. Take, for instance, the Dole/Kemp campaign website from 1996. It’s still there, in all of its dot-com-era glory. There are the links to speeches, interactive games, and information about Dole’s policy positions. (Plus, some light trash-talk about the opponent: “Bill Clinton Wants to Put ‘Big Brother’ in Your Computer,” it says on Dole’s page about Technology and the Internet.) Bob Dole never became president. But 20 years after his campaign website appeared online, the people who designed it shared their story.

Bill would make it easier to get online threat convictions

A group of Democratic Senators is pushing legislation that would make it easier to convict people who make violent threats online. The bill, led by Sen Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), is a response to a Supreme Court decision in 2015 that reversed the conviction of Anthony Elonis, who had been sentenced for making violent threats against his estranged wife, a kindergarten class and an FBI agent on Facebook. It is already a federal crime to post threats to kidnap or injure a person. But the new bill clarifies the level of intent required for a conviction. “This bill will establish an explicit intent requirement for the federal threats statute, eliminating ambiguities that make it harder for prosecutors, victims, and defendants alike to know what conduct is criminal,” said Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) who also sponsored the bill.

APTS Pledges Spectrum to FirstNet

America's Public Television Stations (APTS) have committed "in principle" to allocate 1 Mbps of their spectrum to the FirstNet public safety network (HDTV, for example, takes about 13 Mbps of the 19 Mbps available per station in the ATSC 1 standard). APTS changed its name from "The Association of Public Television Stations" Feb 22 as part of a rebranding to focus on the local mission, including public safety, of its TV station members. The commitment was approved by its members at a public TV summit in Washington.

"We look forward to working with those who will help the government build out and operate the FirstNet system, and the commitment our stations have made today can help FirstNet reach its public safety objectives more quickly and efficiently than it can do without our help," said APTS president Patrick Butler. FirstNet is looking for partners to create its nationwide network. One of those could be using broadcasters to downlink public safety video, voice and data to first responders in their broadcast footprints.

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