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February 2016

Sec John Kerry sent 'secret' e-mail to Clinton from personal account

As a senator, Secretary of State John Kerry sent at least one e-mail to Hillary Clinton from his personal account that has now been classified as secret, the State Department confirmed. The largely redacted May 19, 2011, e-mail from Sec Kerry — then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — “was sent from a non-official account,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. That account, Kirby added “is no longer active.”

The message referenced India, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was classified for containing information about foreign governments and US foreign relations. “We all know this will be a troubled relationship because that is it’s [sic] nature,” he wrote in one unredacted section. “But there are real possibilities at this moment to put options to the test.” Sec Kerry’s e-mail was classified at the “secret” level, which is a higher level than “confidential” but lower than “top secret” A note at the bottom of the message indicates that it was sent from Sec Kerry’s iPad.

Google Fiber’s plan to give free Internet to the poor

Google Fiber says it's going to give away its high speed Internet service to thousands of low-income Americans across the country who can't afford gigabit broadband. Starting with its Kansas City market, Google Fiber eventually plans to wire "select" public housing buildings in all of the cities where it operates, the company said. Ultimately, as many as 1,300 households in Kansas City (MO) and Kansas City (KS) will get a free subscription to Google Fiber's 1,000 Mbps service, enabling those users to download the equivalent of an HD movie in about 7 seconds. Based on the current cost of a gigabit subscription, Google Fiber will be giving away more than $1 million a year worth of Internet service to Kansas City residents alone.

It's all part of a wider plan by the White House aimed at connecting the disconnected. In summer 2015, President Barack Obama launched a pilot project known as ConnectHome that vowed to link 275,000 low-income households to the Internet. As part of that move, Google Fiber said it would selectively provide free broadband to certain public housing units. Feb 3's announcement reflects the company's follow-through on that promise. It may also help parent company Alphabet, which owns Google. The more people are connected to the Web, the more likely those people will use Google's online services, which ultimately benefits Google's primary business, search and advertising.

The FCC's cynical set-top box play

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission recently announced that it intends to vote this month on a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" aimed at creating a competitive retail market for video set-top boxes, a move that gives clear meaning to the biblical proverb "as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." Accordingly to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the problem is one of price. However, if Chairman Wheeler's central argument for government intervention is price, then my question back to the chairman is this: If the government could set the price for a set-top box, what would that price be? With Chairman Wheeler's "high price" ruse thus exposed, we must ask: What is this new proposal really about?

Chairman Wheeler's new plan isn't about equipment at all; instead, his plan is nakedly designed to force Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs) to make available to third parties not only information about what programming is available to consumers (including channel listings and on-demand options), but access to the programming itself. At bottom, the plan allows edge providers to confiscate another company's product — and the viewers it works hard to acquire — by doing little more than repackaging it to create their own video service without having to negotiate and pay for content. Whether in the form of network neutrality, special access regulation, piracy, spectrum auctions or now set-top boxes, the agency is now in the near-exclusive business of shifting profits among corporate giants. Consumers are merely pawns in the game of special-interest squabbles that use the regulator to get a leg up. As a former FCC staffer, I have defended the relevance of the agency on numerous occasions. It is becoming an exhausting and increasingly difficult position to maintain.

[George S. Ford is the chief economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.]

AT&T Extends GigaPower’s Reach in Four Cities

AT&T said it has expanded service for AT&T GigaPower, its fiber-based broadband platform for residential and small business customers to parts of four markets – Atlanta (GA), Chicago (IL), Miami (FL) and Dallas/Ft. Worth (TX). Notably, Atlanta, Chicago, and Miami are among the initial handful of markets that Comcast has ticketed for DOCSIS 3.1 to deliver gigabit broadband on its widely deployed HFC network later in 2016.

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