Ownership

As CenturyLink rolls out new ‘price for life’ services and invests in its network to improve internet speed to nearly 700,000 people in Colorado, it’s also trying a new approach to bringing broadband to areas that lack it — public-private partnerships with local communities. The company has been negotiating partnerships with some Western slope communities and at least one on the northern Front Range to expand its fiber-optic network into areas it previously considered uneconomical to do so.

The approach resembles one used in Centennial by Mississippi-based Ting Inc. in partnership with the south-metro area suburb's municipal government. The company has been polling Centennial neighborhoods to find where the strongest demand for services exists, with the aim of announcing this fall where it will build high-speed lines to homes. CenturyLink, the main local landline phone company in most of the state, receives Federal Communication Commission subsidies for providing internet service in qualified rural areas.

The Senate majority is charging forward with plans to vote to reconfirm Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for another five years. Rehiring Pai to head the agency that oversees US communications policies would be a boon for the phone and cable companies he eagerly serves. But it would hurt everyone else who needs this agency to put our communications rights before the profits of monopoly-minded media giants. In the coming days, senators have the opportunity to intervene on the public’s behalf and fire Pai. Here are five reasons they should do so:
1. Net Neutrality Lies
2. Widening the Digital Divide
3. Sinclair Quid Pro Quo
4. First Amendment Fail
5. Assault on Online Privacy

President Donald Trump took aim at Facebook, calling the social network “anti-Trump.” But the social network insists it is pro-democracy and pro-truth — and the German election shows it.

“Trump says Facebook is against him,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. “Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like.” Zuckerberg expressed regret for initially appearing dismissive of his company’s potential effects on the 2016 election, saying that the topic was “too important.” But he also repeated a point he has made many times — that Facebook’s broader impact, “from giving people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate directly to helping millions of people vote,” had a much greater effect on the election than that of misinformation on the platform.

The Senate voted to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division, a vote that comes as the department considers the AT&T-Time Warner merger worth $85.4 billion. Makan Delrahim, who previously worked in Trump’s White House counsel’s office, was cleared with a 73-21 vote.

Delrahim will be tasked with spearheading the administration’s antitrust agenda at a time when the issue is becoming increasingly prominent. Across the board, industries are facing increased consolidation amid rumors of mega-mergers. Sprint and T-Mobile are reportedly set to announce a merger in the coming weeks that would reduce the number of major national wireless carriers from four to three. And the AT&T-Time Warner deal has prompted criticism from Democrats who worry that it could stifle competitors and raise prices for consumers. Delrahim said in a media interview in 2016, prior to his nomination, that he doesn’t see that merger as a concern for regulators.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a request for Facebook to testify in an open hearing to examine how foreign actors may have used social media companies to influence the 2016 election. The hearing is set for Nov 1.

Committee leaders have also expressed interest in hearing from Twitter. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) said that it’s not important to him that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or other top executives necessarily show up. “I think it’s more important that we get the person who’s most capable of talking about the technical aspects of what they need to do to identify foreign money that may come in and what procedures if any need to be put in law that make sure elections are not intruded by foreign entities,” Sen Burr said.

The internet of things (IoT) is about more than just connecting widgets to networks and to each other, according to Dish Network CEO Charlie Ergen. It’s also about providing access for those who might not otherwise have it.

Dish spent $6.2 billion to buy licenses during the auction of 600 MHz that wrapped up in 2017, far exceeding the expectations of most analysts and adding low-band airwaves to its significant holdings of mid-band spectrum. The company outlined plans to build a narrow band IoT network to provide connectivity to a wide range of devices other than traditional tablets and smartphones. But people are also a key component of the IoT, Ergen observed. “Where we are focused as a company is really on the connectivity side,” Ergen said. “We have a lot of spectrum that we’ve acquired over the years that can be used in a wireless way to connect communities and people and things.” For that connectivity to be fully leveraged, though, it must be accessible to as many users as possible, Ergen continued. That not only includes consumers in urban areas—a key segment of the emerging IoT market—but also those in outlying areas who may not have reliable access to networks through wireless or fixed-line services. “For smart cities, that’s going to be an important thing so that you can connect more efficiently regarding street lights or garbage cans or parking tickets or air quality or whatever it’s going to be. I think we can play a role in that as a company and we get excited about that piece of it,” he said. “When you really get into connectivity, as long as everybody has access to that connectivity on an equal basis, then it’s what they do with it…. You don’t want red-line networks where certain people can’t get access to parts of the network when other people can. You’ve got to bring those people together, and then it’s their game and they make of it what you can.”

Google has started overhauling millions of search results in Europe—and neither the search giant nor its detractors are happy about it.

Google is allowing rival shopping-comparison services to bid for and resell advertising space at the very top of Google search results in Europe. The new ads appear alongside similar product ads from Google’s own shopping-ad unit, which Google said is bidding independently in the same auctions. The changes are part of Google’s effort to comply with a European Union antitrust decision that fined the company 2.42 billion euros ($2.71 billion) for using its dominant search engine to favor its own shopping ads at the expense of competitors’ -- and ordered it to start treating itself the same as its competitors. Google is appealing the decision, but is implementing its order to avoid noncompliance fines that can reach total 5% of its global daily revenue, or more than $12 million.

President Donald Trump charged that Facebook has “always” been opposed to him, suggesting it is part of a network of “collusion” along with national newspapers and cable news networks that have covered his White House critically. President Trump did not elaborate much on his comments, but his accusations — as always, communicated by tweet — come at a time when Facebook is the target of scrutiny by congressional and federal investigators, who are probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The President tweeted, "Facebook was always anti-Trump.The Networks were always anti-Trump hence,Fake News, @nytimes(apologized) & @WaPo were anti-Trump. Collusion?..But the people were Pro-Trump! Virtually no President has accomplished what we have accomplished in the first 9 months-and economy roaring."

Why is Amazon looking more and more like an old-fashioned retailer? The company’s do-it-all corporate strategy adheres to a familiar playbook—that of Sears, Roebuck & Company. Sears might seem like a zombie today, but it’s easy to forget how transformative the company was exactly 100 years ago, when it, too, was capitalizing on a mail-to-consumer business to establish a physical retail presence. To understand Amazon—its evolution, its strategy, and perhaps its future—look to Sears.

Technology products, services, and sites are now where we get our news, debate topics of the day, and encounter what seems like an increasingly scary world. And people do tend to shoot the messenger. While the benefits of AI, algorithmic content filtering, and consumer electronics are easily taken for granted, technopanic will be driven by fear-mongering reports, fiction, and grandstanding politicians looking for someone else to blame.

The truth is that Silicon Valley is a shiny engine of innovation–and a bit of a frat house. Technology can both save and threaten the world; above all, it’s having an ever-growing impact on everyone’s lives. To use an old Facebook phrase, the public’s relationship status has officially and permanently changed from “friends” to “it’s complicated.”