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  2. February 2017

February 2017

Why the FCC delayed new privacy regulations for AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast

By stepping back from Obama-era privacy rules, the Trump Administration’s Federal Communications Commission has made another decision that’s likely to benefit internet service providers, but not internet users. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who authored the privacy rules, made clear that he’s still concerned about Internet users’ privacy. "The fact of the matter is it's the consumer's information," he said. "It's not the network's information."

Bringing back real consumer protection to the FCC

There are literally millions of consumer complaints about robocalls, a doubling over the last 5 years, but just a few thousand about network neutrality. That the Federal Communications Commission has focused on net neutrality and allowed robocalls to grow worse seems patently anti-consumer. Fortunately the new Republican-led FCC is poised to address what consumers actually care about rather than a crony capitalist agenda of pseudo consumer protection.

[Roslyn Layton is a PhD Fellow at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is also a member of the Trump Administration’s FCC Transition team.]

Facebook plans to lay almost 500 miles of fiber cable in Africa for better wireless internet

Facebook has a new plan to get more of Africa online: Fiber optic cables.

The company announced plans to lay nearly 500 miles of fiber cable in Uganda by the end of the year, infrastructure that Facebook believes will provide internet access for more than 3 million people. Facebook is not, however, providing its own wireless network. The company is partnering with Airtel and BCS to provide the actual internet service, and says the fiber will offer more support for “mobile operators’ base stations.” The company also says that it’s “open” to working with other network providers down the line. All three organizations are making some kind of financial commitment to the project, though it’s unclear who is paying for what. The move to dig up ground and lay physical fiber cables is the latest in a string of efforts Facebook has made over the past two years to get more people online. Facebook’s mission is to connect everyone in the world with its social network, but that’s hard to do if significant portions of the world don’t have internet access.

In Global Expansion, Netflix Makes Friends With Carriers

Negotiations will Internet service providers have become increasingly commonplace for Netflix as its global ambitions have taken the content streaming service far from its California roots into markets across Europe, Latin America and Asia.

The company’s partnerships with cable and cellphone operators worldwide give it almost instantaneous access to potential new users without having to spend a fortune on advertising and distribution deals in markets where its brand and content are often still relatively unknown. This growing symbiotic relationship will take center stage when Reed Hastings, the company’s chief executive, gives the keynote address on the first day of the Mobile World Congress. The conference is an annual trade show in Barcelona, Spain, where executives from across the telecom, media and technology worlds gather to meet and, potentially, sign new deals.

Today's Quote 02.27.2017

If there were ever a moment for government leaders who believe that true information unearthed by independent news sources is vital to our nation to stand up and say so, this would be it.

-- Jim Rutenberg, New York Times

Will the Real Democracy Lovers Please Stand Up?

[Commentary] The Administration doubled down on its antipress aggression, this time declaring it was “going to get worse every day” for these “globalist” and “corporatist” journalists (and other such gobbledygook from the former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Bannon). And all the while, so many of the most important and credible leaders in the President’s own party more or less kept their traps shut or looked the other way. If there were ever a moment for government leaders who believe that true information unearthed by independent news sources is vital to our nation to stand up and say so, this would be it.

Sean Spicer targets own staff in leak crackdown

Press secretary Sean Spicer is cracking down on leaks coming out of the West Wing, with increased security measures that include random phone checks of White House staffers, overseen by White House attorneys.

After Spicer became aware that information had leaked out of a planning meeting with about a dozen of his communications staffers, he reconvened the group in his office to express his frustration over the number of private conversations and meetings that were showing up in unflattering news stories. Upon entering Spicer’s office for what was described as “an emergency meeting,” staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check," to prove they had nothing to hide. He explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide — an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent — and Signal, another encrypted messaging system, was a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Spicer also warned the group of more problems if news of the phone checks and the meeting about leaks was leaked to the media.

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