June 2016

Combined Charter/TWC customer service will get worse, not better, analysts say

After Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable both endured middling scores on the American Customer Satisfaction Index's 2016 ranking of pay-TV companies, the ACSI Research Director Forrest Morgeson said not to expect improvement anytime soon now that the two companies are merged.

"We've generally seen that when two service-providing companies that are already low in customer satisfaction merge, things tend to get worse, at least for the first year or two after the merger or purchase," said Forrest Morgeson, director of research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index. "So the expectation is not good for consumers." "These are two companies that have been challenged to keep customer care at an acceptable level," added telecommunications industry analyst Jeff Kagan, speaking to the Columbus Dispatch. "The question is, will anything get worse or will it stay just the same. But it's not going to be better over the next year — or two or three." Charter and TWC ranked near the bottom among a dozen companies in an ASCI survey of 12,710 consumers released last week focused on the broader telecom industry. On the zero-to-100 scale, the third leg of the "New Charter" consolidation, Bright House Networks, actually ranked near the top.

Future of TV must not sacrifice minority media

[Commentary] National news coverage of the snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings in the American South were the catalysts to exposing the ugly truths of racism and bigotry in the 1960s. Local news outlets gave new meaning to what the struggle looked like for people on its front lines. That is why a new proposal at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate TV “set top boxes" has raised so much concern.

Essentially, the FCC is proposing that small and diverse television programmers such as Revolt and Vme TV hand over their television content to third party device manufacturers without any compensation. These companies could then pull networks apart, ignore copyright protections and dismantle the local and national advertising streams that have traditionally supported high quality, multicultural content. The result is a deep threat to the entire creative ecosystem, and especially smaller, independent and diverse networks and programmers that often lack the deep pocket resources to weather this type of transition. Before the federal government makes another mistake to set back the clock of media diversity, the FCC would be well advised to step back and listen to those who have fought this battle for equality over the decades and in other contexts. While the actors may have changed, the script is essentially the same.

[Rev Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., is the founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.]

How Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant Will Make Money Off You

Apple, Amazon, and Google say their virtual helpers—Siri, Alexa, and the less snappily named Google Assistant—can make our lives easier by acting on our commands to book cabs, order pizza, or check the weather. But like all the other free-to-use goodies that tech giants offer up, these new personal assistants must also earn their keep. The companies aren’t saying much about exactly how their automated personas can boost their bottom lines, but they have clear potential to open up new lines of revenue. Perhaps most important, they could significantly increase the data that companies have on our preferences and everyday lives.

“A deeper profile of the customer is possible,” says Sridhar Narayanan, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford. “Already Google and these others have a lot of information about us—this is one new source that is different.” Google's new virtual assistant will watch over chats inside the company's forthcoming Allo mobile messaging app and offer help with things like finding restaurants. The virtual assistant contest between the tech giants can be traced back to 2011, when Apple launched Siri, an app acquired as a startup the previous year. The app has been widely seen as less useful or revolutionary than Apple originally claimed it would be (see “Social Intelligence”). But speech-recognition and language-processing software have recently improved, and the companies have become more ambitious.

The Benefits, Challenges, and Potential Roles for the Government in Fostering the Advancement of the Internet of Things

The staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) and Office of Policy Planning (OPP) appreciate this opportunity to comment on the Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Request for Comment (RFC) on the Internet of Things. In part, the RFC seeks to: (1) define the Internet of Things; (2) understand the security and privacy issues related to IoT; (3) understand the technical issues surrounding standardization and interoperability; and (4) understand the impact that big data in an interconnected world can have on disadvantaged communities.

This comment highlights lessons learned from the FTC’s law enforcement, consumer and business education, and policy activities relating to these issues. It then addresses the benefits and risks of IoT, highlights some best practice recommendations for industry, discusses the role of government in fostering innovation in IoT products and services, and sets forth some considerations for NTIA in setting standards and promoting interoperability

Survey: More People Want to Access Government Services on Their Smartphones

The majority of citizens want to access some government services on smartphone apps, but it’s unclear whether government can keep up with that demand. About 55 percent of citizens would like to receive notifications about wait times for government services, like airport screening or passport processing, a new survey found. (The consulting firm Accenture asked about 500 people which services they’d like to access on their smartphones -- choices included paying taxes and applying for visas.) While 21 percent said they weren’t interested in any of those apps, 43 percent of respondents said they would vote via smartphone if it were possible. A little over one-third said they’d pay their taxes on their phones, and 30 percent said they’d like to receive automated Social Security and Medicaid payments via their phones.

Millennials appear to be more comfortable with the idea of accessing government services on their smartphones. Sixty-two percent of respondents born between 1979 and 1997 said they wanted wait-time notifications on their phones, as compared to 39 percent of adults born before 1946. Forty-three percent of millennials want to use their phones to apply for and to manage their health insurance -- just 6 percent of adults born before 1946 wanted to do that. A Pew Research Center Survey conducted last year found that about 40 percent of smartphone users have looked up government services on their phone, and the Obama Administration has attempted to promote mobile services. The White House’s 2012 Digital Government Strategy tasked agencies with choosing two or more services to be more smartphone accessible.

A Texas State of Mind: Connected Health in Houston and the Rio Grande Valley

[Commentary] "Texas is a state of mind,” said John Steinbeck referring to the unique combination of passion, cohesiveness and independence so common to the state. The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2HealthFCC Task Force experienced this first-hand during its recent “Beyond the Beltway” visit to Houston (TX) and the Rio Grande Valley. In celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month, the visit was anchored by a Broadband Prescriptions for Mental Health conference co-hosted by the renowned University of Houston Law Center’s Health Law and Policy Institute, with the Law Center’s esteemed Dean, Leonard M. Baynes. Three notable themes that could inform our policymaking emerged from the conference:

The need for a continuing and accelerated focus on broadband access and adoption in health, lest entire communities be left behind.
The critical role of telehealth and broadband connectivity in meeting acute mental health provider shortages in Texas and nationwide.
The use of connectivity as an integral part of personalizing mental and behavioral health therapy itself, an idea that is spawning innovations that go far beyond simply virtualizing exist.

[P. Michele Ellison is the Chair of the Connect2HealthFCC Task Force and Deputy General Counsel. Dr. Yahya Shaikh is Senior Advisor for Connected Health, C2HFCC]

Why smart homes are still so dumb

In the wake of the resignation of Tony Faddell, the founder of smart thermostat maker Nest, the future is looking cloudy not only for the smart thermostat maker, but the broader smart home business as well. Nest, after all, was supposed to be the trailblazer that led us to the smart home revolution. When Google put down $3.2 billion to buy it in 2014, it appeared to make sense -- Google was already running much of our online lives, and this would give the company a way to run our offline lives as well. (Or, I suppose more accurately, make our offline lives become part of our online lives.) The charismatic Fadell seemed to be the right pioneer, given his product experience at Apple, which he could apply to Google’s more open computing vision. But Nest proved to be a less-than-ideal poster child.

It sounds pretty great to have thermostats, light bulbs, ovens and security systems that anticipate our every move. The reality has been something less wonderful -- a fractured market of occasionally buggy appliances that work with some, but not all, of the systems out there.

‘Wifi Whisperer’ Siphons Your Data in the Creepiest Way Possible

If you're connected to a wireless network, odds are high that little bits of data are trickling out of your device like water from a leaky faucet. “Our phones leak data in a bunch of different ways,” says artist Kyle McDonald. “Sometimes it’s really insidious or unexpected.” Recently at Moogfest, a music and technology festival in Durham (NC) McDonald with the help of fellow artist Surya Mattu created an installation called WiFi Whisperer that called attention to all that data your phone is giving away for free. As festivalgoers walked past the installation, the artwork grabbed insecure data and display it on monitors, while a hidden speaker whispered the stream of data—what networks you’ve recently connected to and websites you’ve visited, for example—like a creepy, demon-voiced Big Brother.

“It’s sort of like looking over someone’s shoulder,” says McDonald, “except you’re doing it without actually looking over their shoulder.” The artists built sniffers made from eight Raspberry Pis and wireless antennas, tuned to the different frequencies of open wireless channels. “We know where the data is in the air,” McDonald explains. “Normally these packets are getting sent from one device to another, but there’s no reason you can’t just stand nearby and listen to that same data as though you were the device it was intended for.”

National Association of Broadcasters Takes Aim at Mega-Merged Pay-TV Providers

The National Association of Broadcasters says that given the size of multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) behemoths like the newly combined Charter/Time Warner Cable, the recently combined AT&T/DirecTV and the not-so-recently merged Comcast/NBCU, the Federal Communications Commission is obligated to either repeal or loosen local ownership regulations to allow them to better compete.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has promised to circulate an item resolving 2010 and 2014 media ownership rule reviews mandated by Congress this month, and a federal court has recently signaled it has to do so ASAP--sources signaled that item will likely not circulate until the end of the month. NAB, in a letter to the FCC, spent pages waving red flags about merging MVPDs and their market power while suggesting broadcasters were being prevented from competing with those behemoths due to unreasonable regs. "While the FCC in 2014 effectively prohibited one TV station from selling more than 15 percent of another same-market TV station’s advertising time, the Commission has approved numerous MVPD mergers despite the companies’ high shares of the entire MVPD marketplace in numerous local markets," said NAB. "As of last fall, according to Yahoo Finance," said NAB, "AT&T/DirecTV had a market capitalization of $201 billion and Verizon had a market cap of $182 billion, while TV station group owners such as Media General, Scripps and Nexstar had market caps of $1 billion each. Aside from the giant telcos, the largest cable operator (Comcast) had a market cap 142 times larger than these broadcasters, and the combined Charter/TWC/Bright House an estimated market cap 72 times larger."

T-Mobile says it will give customers stock

T-Mobile will give its customers shares of its stock, a move that is part of a continued effort by the carrier to differentiate itself from competitors Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. “Our business is succeeding very well because of you,” said John Legere, the company’s chief executive, during an announcement. “Why should Wall Street be the only one to benefit?”

The company will give its primary account holders a single share of the stock, and one more for recommending their friends to the service, but to a point. The stock currently trades at around $43 a share. “No publically traded company has done this before, ever,” Legere said. The company also announced several other perks for customers, including an hour of free in-flight Wi-Fi on GoGo-enabled planes and weekly prize giveaways. The announcement is likely to draw the attention of users but, unlike previous T-Mobile perks, less sure to bother regulators.

Benton

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