BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2015
The DOTCOM Act is on today’s agenda https://www.benton.org/node/221321
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Frontier Communications Accepts Over $283 Million Connect America Fund Offer to Expand and Support Broadband for 1.3 Million Rural Americans - FCC press release
Rural New York Broadband Project Hailed for Unique Collaboration [links to web]
Advocates press House appropriators not to 'gut' Internet rules [links to web]
Time Warner Cable Threatened With Net Neutrality Complaint
Level 3: No Net Neutrality Complaints... Yet
Online sales tax debate reignited in the House
Levin: Broadband Opportunities Council Mission Consistent with National Broadband Plan - Blair Levin analysis
Lessons in Government Action in a Changing Landscape - Blair Levin analysis [links to web]
Elon Musk's satellite Internet? - San Jose Mercury News editorial
AT&T Plugs ‘GigaPower’ Into MDUs [links to web]
FBI baffled over wave of nighttime fiber-optic cable vandalism [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC Proposes Reserving Channel for Unlicensed
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Examines Progress of Nationwide Public Safety Network
PRIVACY/SECURITY
Vast data warehouse raises HealthCare.gov privacy concerns [links to web]
Evil Cardinals Face FBI Inquiry in Hacking of Astros’ Network [links to web]
TELECOM
Senators jump on PayPal user agreement [links to web]
OWNERSHIP
Study: Media Cross-Sector Plays on Rise [links to web]
TELEVISION
ACA: Time For Broadcasters To Join Retransmission Revamp Effort [links to web]
Hulu Steps Up Its Fight Against Netflix [links to web]
ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
Facebook The Vote
Hillary Clinton is crushing Jeb Bush on Facebook - analysis [links to web]
JOURNALISM
Trust in American news media remains low [links to web]
Digital news consumers increasingly control how they view content - op-ed
GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
President Obama admits HealthCare.gov was a ‘well-documented disaster’ [links to web]
Inside President Obama's Stealth Startup
POLICYMAKERS
Tom Wheeler -- The Halftime Report - Andrew Jay Schwartzman analysis
COMPANY NEWS
Dropbox opening an office in Washington [links to web]
TWC ‘Well-Positioned’ to Bring 1-Gig Across LA [links to web]
Rupert Murdoch to Hand Over CEO Reins July 1 [links to web]
Google Is Its Own Secret Weapon in the Cloud [links to web]
AT&T: Nearly 22 Million IoT Connected Devices on Our Network [links to web]
Cablevision Systems CEO: Data Outperforms Video 7:1 [links to web]
Hulu Steps Up Its Fight Against Netflix [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
FRONTIER COMMUNICATIONS ACCEPTS OVER $238 MILLION CAF OFFER
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Frontier Communications has accepted $283.4 million from the Connect America Fund to expand and support broadband to over 1.3 million of its rural customers in 28 states. The Connect America Fund will provide ongoing support for rural broadband networks in Frontier's service area capable of delivering broadband at speeds of at least 10 Mbps for downloads and 1 Mbps uploads in over 650,000 homes and businesses nationwide.
benton.org/headlines/frontier-communications-accepts-over-283-million-connect-america-fund-offer-expand-and | Federal Communications Commission
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TIME WARNER CABLE THREATENED WITH NET NEUTRALITY COMPLAINT
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Web hosting company Commercial Network Services says it plans to file a peering complaint against Time Warner Cable under the Federal Communications Commission's new network neutrality rules unless the company strikes a free peering deal as soon as possible. TWC says its interconnection policy is just and reasonable and is confident the FCC would reject any complaint based on the idea that "every edge provider around the globe is entitled to enter into a settlement-free peering arrangement." In the complaint, according to CNS CEO Barry Bahrami, CNS plans to ask 1) that TWC be ordered to strike a settlement-free deal and 2) that other broadband Internet service providers using any public exchanges be required to adopt an "open peering" policy. In its new rules, which took effect June 12, the FCC created a case-by-case complaint process for interconnection issues alleged to impede an open Internet. It is the first time that peering/interconnection deals have fallen under the FCC's net neutrality rules since having been reclassified under Title II common carrier regulations. Some cable operators were looking for Cogent or Level 3 or Netflix to complain, but whoever it was, they were expecting complaints from those not eager to pay for interconnections. Since there is no bright-line rule on what is a reasonable interconnection agreement, cable operators won't know exactly what the FCC considers impeding an open Internet until the FCC has investigated and acted on such complaints, though TWC sounded confident this complaint was meritless.
benton.org/headlines/time-warner-cable-threatened-net-neutrality-complaint | Broadcasting&Cable
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LEVEL 3: NO NET NEUTRALITY COMPLAINTS...YET
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Internet backbone service provider Level 3 is echoing Cogent in its approach to the Federal Communications Commission's new network neutrality enforcement regime, which for the first time includes interconnection issues. That approach is to leave open the option of filing a complaint as it continues to negotiate with companies it has yet to strike deals with. "We are pleased the Open Internet rules are now the law," said Mike Mooney, senior vice president and general counsel of regulatory policy for the company. "We are likewise pleased that we have been able to recently reach and announce mutually beneficial interconnection agreements with industry partners like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast that focus on a growing, secure and resilient interconnection architecture." "Agreements like these are good for the Internet and American consumers," he added. But that was not the end of the story. "Unfortunately, we have not yet reached agreements with everyone," he added, though he suggested those were outliers that needed to get with the program. "If an ISP refuses to add the necessary interconnection capacity required to prevent consumers from suffering bad online experiences," he said, "we will have little choice but to make the FCC aware of it, particularly since such conduct would be inconsistent with the behavior of the rest of the industry."
benton.org/headlines/level-3-no-net-neutrality-complaints-yet | Broadcasting&Cable
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ONLINE SALES TAX DEBATE REIGNITED IN THE HOUSE
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Bernie Becker]
Republican lawmakers reignited the online sales tax debate, rolling out a new bill that they said could assuage previous Republican concerns about the issue. The bill, from House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and a group of 15 other House members, would give states greater latitude to charge sales taxes on online purchases from out-of-state customers. But supporters say it also improves upon previous online sales tax legislation, called the Marketplace Fairness Act, that made it through the Senate last Congress before getting stonewalled by House GOP leaders. “We think this is a viable solution. What we’re trying to do is empower states to make these types of decisions,” Chairman Chaffetz said, alongside Rep Steve Womack (R-AR), an original co-sponsor of the measure. Reps Chaffetz and Womack both stressed that their bill would finally bring parity to the issue of taxing online sales. The Supreme Court has said that states can only collect sales taxes from companies that have a physical location within their borders.
benton.org/headlines/online-sales-tax-debate-reignited-house | Hill, The
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LEVIN: BROADBAND OPPORTUNITIES COUNCIL MISSION CONSISTENT WITH NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: Brookings, AUTHOR: Blair Levin]
[Commentary] The mission of the Broadband Opportunities Council (BOC) is critical for the economic and social progress of this country. I believe it is consistent with the fundamental vision of the National Broadband Plan, which I would summarize as ubiquitous, affordable, abundant bandwidth, with all Americans online, and using that platform to better deliver public goods and services. The Plan set forth four strategies to pursue that vision:
1) Drive Fiber deeper into the network
2) Use Spectrum more efficiently
3) Create the right incentives for adoption by all
4) Encourage the development of applications to improve the country's ability to make progress in certain national purposes, including health care, education, public safety, and energy, among others.
The BOC Request for Comment focuses on deployment and adoption, but it is important that the relationship between those goals and all four strategies is understood. Simply put, improvements in each can drive improvements in the others; bottlenecks in any can stifle progress in all. That is, for robust, encouraging adoption by increasing the value of being on-line, making applications that create public goods more valuable, and with those increasingly valuable applications driving greater value and adoption, the economics to improve the fixed and mobile network increase.
benton.org/headlines/levin-broadband-opportunities-council-mission-consistent-national-broadband-plan | Brookings
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SPACEX
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] Elon Musk -- the man who gave us the high-end, high-performance electric car and commercialized space travel -- has filed plans with the government to essentially rebuild the Internet in space. Google and Fidelity recently invested $1 billion in Musk's SpaceX, in part to support the satellite project. SpaceX is the first private company to deliver goods to the International Space Station. It will begin delivering people there in two years. Musk's Internet plan is to launch about 4,000 small, cheap (by space standards) satellites into low orbit and test if they can bounce signals around the globe, including areas the Internet now can't reach. If he succeeds, SpaceX or, more likely, its Internet spin-off, could compete with the likes of Comcast, AT&T, DirecTV and Dish. Wouldn't that be nice.
benton.org/headlines/elon-musks-satellite-internet | San Jose Mercury News
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
FCC PROPOSES RESERVING CHANNEL FOR UNLICENSED
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
A divided Federal Communications Commission has proposed that one UHF channel be set aside in each market after the incentive auction for use by so-called unlicensed white space devices, and to be shared by wireless microphones. That use would have priority over various broadcast uses, which troubled the National Association of Broadcasters. Broadcasters had pushed for a channel for wireless mics they would not have to share. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, Commissioner Rosenworcel, and Commissioner Clyburn voted to approve, while Commissioner Pai dissented and Commissioner O'Rielly dissented in part. Low-power TV stations, translators and broadcast auxiliary services, and even full-powers in some cases, will have to demonstrate that their repacked or modified facilities after the auction would not use up the last available vacant channel. It is a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, not an order, so the public and industry get to comment on the proposal.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-proposes-reserving-channel-unlicensed | Broadcasting&Cable | FCC NPRM | Commissioner Pai Statement | Commissioner O'Rielly Statement
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE EXAMINES PROGRESS OF NATIONWIDE PUBLIC SAFETY NETWORK
[SOURCE: House of Representatives Commerce Committee, AUTHOR: Press release]
The House Communications and Technology Subcommittee continued its oversight of FirstNet’s efforts to create an interoperable nationwide public safety network. FirstNet was established in 2012 as an independent authority within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. June16th’s hearing provided members the opportunity to check in on FirstNet’s progress and reiterate their commitment to bringing this valuable tool online. “FirstNet has before it an undertaking which rivals the network deployments of our largest national carriers. In fact, given its mandate to build an interoperable wireless broadband service for all of our Nation’s First Responders, its task will take it to all corners of the United States,” said Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR). “We all share the goal of ensuring that our Nation’s First Responders realize the promise of truly interoperable, state-of-the-art emergency communications network envisioned by the law. With those early missteps behind us, today we look not only at the progress FirstNet has made but also what new challenges lie ahead.” Members today heard from FirstNet Acting Executive Director T.J. Kennedy, who provided insight as to the internal workings of FirstNet, and Ohio’s Chief Information Officer Stu Davis, who offered perspective of how FirstNet is coordinating and working with its partners at the state level.
benton.org/headlines/house-communications-and-technology-subcommittee-examines-progress-nationwide-public | House of Representatives Commerce Committee | Broadcasting & Cable
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA
FACEBOOK THE VOTE
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Shane Goldmacher]
Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have marked the route to the White House for more than a generation. But in 2016, the path to the presidency will run through new territory -- your Facebook news feed. As the race begins in earnest, the world's largest social network is emerging as the single most important tool of the digital campaign, with contenders as different and disparate as Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, and Sens Rand Paul (R-KY) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), all investing in the platform already. Thanks to powerful new features unveiled since the 2012 campaign, Facebook now offers a far more customized and sophisticated splicing of the American electorate. And, for the first time in presidential politics, it can serve up video to those thinly targeted sets of people. That unprecedented combination is inching campaigns closer to the Holy Grail of political advertising: the emotional impact of television delivered at an almost atomized, individual level. It makes the old talk of micro-targeting soccer moms and NASCAR dads sound quaint. "I can literally bring my voter file into Facebook and start to buy advertising off of that," says Zac Moffatt, who was Mitt Romney's digital director and whose firm now works for Rick Perry's campaign and Scott Walker's super PAC.
benton.org/headlines/facebook-vote | National Journal
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JOURNALISM
DIGITAL NEWS CONSUMERS INCREASINGLY CONTROL HOW THEY VIEW CONTENT
[SOURCE: Columbia Journalism Review, AUTHOR: Michael Rosenwald]
[Commentary] The takeaway from Reuters’ vast new study of the world’s digital news consumers is that the disruptive trends publishers have been grappling with the last few years have crystallized into something more lasting, not just in the United States but around the world. Readers deplore online ads, particularly the personalized ones that follow them from site to site. They still don’t want to pay for news. They don’t find tablets all that exciting for reading news. And the homepage is diminishing fast, usurped by Facebook (not so much Twitter). The biggest surprise: Using apps to block ads has gone mainstream. In some respects, the reader hasn’t changed. Most have never really liked ads but have put up with them, by flipping past them in the old days of newspapers. But paper didn’t offer a button to erase ads. The ads didn’t blink annoyingly. The car ads didn’t follow them from the local news section to the baseball box scores. Now readers, not publishers, control what they want to see. Consumers are in charge of news -- how they see it, when they’ll consume it, what they’ll pay for it -- and if publishers want to survive, they better figure out a way to get more economically in sync with them.
[Michael Rosenwald is a staff writer at the Washington Post]
benton.org/headlines/digital-news-consumers-increasingly-control-how-they-view-content | Columbia Journalism Review
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GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE
INSIDE PRESIDENT OBAMA'S STEALTH STARTUP
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Jon Gertner]
The new hub of Washington’s tech insurgency is something known as the US Digital Service, which is headquartered in a stately brick townhouse half a block from the White House. USDS -employees tend to congregate with their laptops at a long table at the back half of the parlor floor. If there’s no room, they retreat downstairs to a low-ceilinged basement, sprawling on cushioned chairs. Apart from an air-hockey table, there aren’t many physical reminders of West Coast startup culture -- a lot of the new techies are issued BlackBerrys, which seems to cause them near-physical pain. The point for President Barack Obama is not to sell these candidates on a career in government, but rather to enlist them in a stint of a year or two at USDS, or even a few months. For decades, accomplished lawyers and economists have worked in the capital between private-sector jobs, so why not technologists? "What I think this does," says Megan Smith, the current US chief technology officer, who spent much of her career at Google, "is really provide a third option. In addition to joining a friend’s startup or a big company, there’s now Washington."
benton.org/headlines/inside-president-obamas-stealth-startup | Fast Company
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POLICYMAKERS
TOM WHEELER -- THE HALFTIME REPORT
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Andrew Jay Schwartzman]
[Commentary] Tom Wheeler’s tenure as Federal Communications Commission Chairman is at the halfway point. This is a good time to assess what he has accomplished and what is to come. Chairman Wheeler is acutely aware of the ticking clock, as reflected by this recent speech given by one of his top aides. He started out quickly; within a few weeks after his arrival, he had jawboned the wireless industry into changing its policy refusing to unlock customers’ cellphones. This not only showed a desire to get things done, but was also a response to critics who had opposed his confirmation because of his history as a cable and wireless industry lobbyist. He also began a review of the agency’s operating procedures, which demonstrated that he intended to manage the agency aggressively. More importantly, Chairman Wheeler began to work on his major legacy issues: reform and expansion of universal service, promoting broadband deployment, and making more spectrum available for wireless broadband.
benton.org/headlines/tom-wheeler-halftime-report | Benton Foundation
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