Tag Archive for FCC

| December 30, 2014
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Koch Money Fights Net Neutrality

Koch Money Fights Net NeutralityThe Sunlight Foundation reports that a “shadowy” group inundated the FCC with letters opposing net neutrality during the commission’s second-round commenting period in September. The deluge of manufactured opposition accounted for more than half of the total anti-net neutrality comments according to an article on FierceCable.

Koch Money Fights Net NeutralityThe article says that questions arose when 60 percent of the second-round comments opposed equity on the Internet after first-round commenting had been so overwhelmingly supportive of net neutrality. The Sunlight Foundation analyzed 1.6 million anti-net neutrality letters received by the Federal Communications Commission with natural language processing technology and identified the nonprofit behind the anti-net neutrality. Most of the missives were tied to a group called American Commitment. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation says multi-billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch back American Commitment.

The Koch brothers, who are the ultra-rich radical right-wing owners of many common household products including:

  • The Koch brothers are the ultra-rich radical right-wingAmerican Greetings
  • Angel Soft
  • Angel Soft Ultra
  • Brawny paper towels
  • Dixie products
  • Insulair cups
  • Mardis Gras napkins
  • Perfect Touch cups, paper products
  • Quilted Northern
  • Sparkle paper towels
  • Vanity Fair napkins & paper towels
  • Zee Napkins

According to the Sunlight Foundation, 99% of respondents in round one demanded that the FCC support net neutrality. In round two of the FCC comment period, comments opposing net neutrality rose to 60%. The Sunlight Foundation investigated this huge swing in citizen sentiment and wrote:

We attribute this shift almost entirely to the form-letter initiatives of a single organization, American Commitment, who are single-handedly responsible for 56.5 percent of the comments in this round

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Koch bros polluted areas of Detroit by creating mountains of pet coke along the banks of the Detroit River.If you don’t buy Angel Soft TP or Georgia Pacific drywall, the Koch’s are active in many ways in Michigan (and the rest of the country I’m sure). They polluted areas of Detroit by creating mountains of pet coke along the banks of the Detroit River. They pushed Snyder to withhold support for Detroit’s bankruptcy plans and backed the failed Senate campaign of Terry Lynn Land.

It is never good for normal people when the 1% get involved. The Koch brothers are definitely 1%, out to screw the rest of the world and make some money at the same time. Get involved, defend internet freedom in Michigan and the best of the world.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| December 4, 2014
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Privacy for Drivers

Privacy for DriversFord Motor Company (F) Global Marketing Director Jim Farley touched off a privacy storm when he told an audience at the Consumer Electronics Show that the automaker is tracking their travels thanks to their in-car navigation systems. He told the crowd in Las Vegas that the automaker tracks driver behavior, “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you’re doing it.”

automaker are tracking travelsThe auto manufacturers have installed “black boxes” on most modern cars. The black boxes are capable of tracking, gathering, and storing vehicle information. In fact, the Fed has proposed that such tracking technology become standard equipment on all cars.

Privacy firestorm

Even though Ford quickly backed down from Mr. Farley’s claims, the comments created a privacy firestorm. As a result, TheDetroitBureau.com reports that privacy advocates accelerated increased pressure on manufacturers to reveal what info that collects on “black box’s” they’re doing with the personal data they do collect – and put limits on how it can be used.

black-boxes are capable of tracking, gathering and storing vehicle information.

In response, a group of 19 automakers has gotten together to lay down some ground rules, which they hope will assuage fears about the accessibility and use of the material. According to the article, the makers say the information won’t be given to government officials or law enforcement agencies without a court order, sold to insurance companies or other companies without their permission.

The automakers agreeing to the “rules,” which they submitted to the Federal Trade Commission, include Aston Martin, BMW, Chrysler (STLA),  Ferrari, Ford, General Motors (GM), Honda (HMC) Hyundai, Kia, Maserati, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Volvo.

Self-imposed data collection “rules”

Future carThe author speculates that the automakers are willing to abide by the self-imposed “rules” because they believe actual laws could become onerous. Sen. Edward Markey, D-MA is skeptical of the impact of the “rules.” He called them “an important first step,” but said it remains unclear “how auto companies will make their data collection practices transparent beyond including the information in vehicle manuals.”

Senator Markey noted that the automakers did not offer consumers an opt-out option for whether sensitive information is collected in the first place. He plans to legislate an answer. He said in a statement, “I will call for clear rules — not voluntary commitments — to ensure the privacy and safety of American drivers is protected,” Markey said in a statement.

The automakers also committed to “implement reasonable measures” to protect personal information from unauthorized access. Privacy experts are concerned that in recent years many vehicles have had a variety of GPS and mobile communications technology built into them.

Cloud securityThe TheDetroitBureau explains these devices record and sends all types of information which privacy advocates are afraid the data could be used by the government against the owners of vehicles. Some worry that many three-letter agencies and law enforcement will use data from the device to track citizens. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that legislation is needed to ensure automakers don’t back off their self-imposed “rules” when they become inconvenient. He said,

You just don’t want your car spying on you. That’s the practical consequence of a lot of the new technologies that are being built into cars.

Pop-up ads on in-car touch screens

The black boxes now installed in new vehicles could also be a safety issue for drivers. The article speculates that the rising level of interactivity of cars could open the door for pop-up ads in cars. These automakers’ “rules” do not end the possibility that Pop-up ads could appear on the touch screens of cars, trucks, and SUVs as folks are motoring down the road.

One loophole in the guidelines identified in the blog, if customers agree at the time they buy the car, they could receive messages from advertisers who want to target motorists based on their location and other personal data according to the author. Some safety advocates are concerned about pop-up ads possibly popping up on in-car touch screens while drivers are behind the wheel. Henry Jasny of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety warned the Associated Press.

There is going to be a huge amount of metadata that companies would like to mine to send advertisements to you in your vehicle … We don’t want pop-up ads to become a distraction.

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Who is listeningThe road to hell is paved with good intentions and full of pot-holes. I covered Cisco’s try at monetizing driver data here. Industry officials say they want to assure their customers that the information that their cars stream from the vehicle’s computers to automakers (or Feds) via OnStar. Sync, Automatic, In-Drive, or Car-Net won’t be handed over to authorities without a court order, sold to insurance companies, or used to bombard them with ads for pizza, gas stations, or other businesses they drive past, without their permission.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| October 9, 2014
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Comcast to Unplug Motown

Comcast to Unplug MotownComcast (CMCSA) will abandon Detroit. The mega-cableco will abandon Detroit if the Federal Communications Commission approves its acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc. The cable giant filed a response (PDF) to parties objecting to the nation’s second-largest provider’s plan to acquire TWC arguing against claims that it would grow too big under the merger.

Comcast logoUnder its purchase plan, Comcast will withdraw from some markets. It will continue to operate, as it does now, in 16 of 20 top markets. Comcast will operate in a different set of 16 markets, mostly on both coasts. Comcast lawyers stated, “Comcast will no longer have a presence in the Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, or Cleveland DMAs (designated market areas).”

MLive explains that companies like Dish Network, Netflix, and various TV networks have complained that the Comcast-Time-Warner merger. They argue that the new cableco would create a massive cable company with an anti-competitive advantage. Religious television programmer My Christian TV complained that the deal. They claimed it would make Comcast, “the only significant cable outlet in about 98 percent of all African-American communities in the country.” Comcast’s response:

Comcast has never served several markets with significant African-American populations such as St. Louis, Cleveland, and New Orleans, among many others, and after the Transaction, will no longer serve Detroit… Comcast estimates that after the transaction, it will serve markets that include approximately 78 percent of the country’s Hispanic households (not counting Puerto Rico in the denominator), though of course many of those households will not be Comcast customers.

GreatLand Connections Inc.

Cutting the cableBloomberg says the castaways in Detroit, Minneapolis, and elsewhere would belong to a new company. The new company would be called GreatLand Connections Inc. It would be created in what the companies call a tax-efficient spinoff. The new company’s debt would exceed industry averages — something that has raised concerns about service in those communities.

“We don’t have the answers we need,” said Ron Styka, an elected trustee with responsibility for cable-service oversight in Meridian Township, Michigan, a town served by Comcast about 80 miles west of Detroit. Municipal officials told Bloomberg they have questions about service. The questions include whether subscribers can keep Comcast e-mail addresses or if the cable-channel lineups may change.

Charter Cable logoGreatLand will start with $7.8 billion in debt, according to a securities filing. Bloomberg says that debt is equal to five times EBITDA, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The debt ratio for Comcast is 1.99 times EBITDA and for New York-based Time Warner Cable it’s 3.07 times EBITDA, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. David Osberg, city administrator of Eagan, MN told Bloomberg.  “It’s not clear whether GreatLand will be financially qualified,” to provide services.

The new company will buy management services from Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR) according to Bloomberg. Charter, which had sought to buy Time Warner Cable, would own a 33 percent interest in GreatLand and become the second-largest U.S. cable company with more than 8 million customers counting GreatLand’s and subscribers it gets in purchases and swaps with Comcast after the merger is completed.

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I worked a couple of jobs last year with Comcast and it always took them 3 or 4 months to provide service to business customers so many Detroiters may not be sad to see the cable giant go. The Philadelphia company last week acknowledged major customer service woes after a series of viral videos documented the experiences of exasperated customers.

Comcast CEO Neil Smit announced the hiring of a new head of customer service, and wrote in a blog post:

It may take a few years before we can honestly say that a great customer experience is something we’re known for. But that is our goal and our number one priority.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| April 23, 2014
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No More POTS!

No More POTS!A.G. Bell‘s question to Watson over a century ago may be relevant again. Tom Nolle at No Jitter explains how that can happen if the FCC expedites the transition to VoIP. Mr. Nolle, the founder of CIMI Corporation does not think that the basic quality of voice service is at risk. He does believe but there are some truly profound consequences to a decision to abandon TDM voice. He believes it will happen, it’s smart to think about the end of POTS — as relates to both opportunities and risks.

70% of business voice is still TDMTelecommunications has long been more than analog voice and copper loops. The author points out that regulations have stayed in the “TDM” Dark Ages. Operators like AT&T (T) have demanded the FCC modernize things. To deal with these issues, the FCC bundled its transitions (TDM-to-VoIP, fixed to mobile, copper to fiber) into a single Technology Transition Policy Task Force. The recommendations from that activity will hopefully launch experiments in promoting change while controlling the risk of unfavorable impacts. The recommendations of the TTPTF (quite the acronym!) are posted online (PDF) and he says it’s a clarion call for change. So instead of talking about the process, let’s look at the impact.

Who still uses TDM

Mr. Nolle the CIMI principal consultant estimates, that 40% of US households still have TDM voice. Businesses have a higher TDM commitment. The article says that nearly 70% of business voice is still TDM. Suppose we saw TDM voice go away completely; what would happen?

Transition access lines and trunks to EthernetFirst, little besides voice that requires TDM services and trunks. Which he says means we would see all access lines and trunks transition to packet–almost certainly to Ethernet. The author says this could increase the number of Ethernet business connections by about 28%. it would also likely increase the access bandwidth commitments by branch offices and SMBs (using DSL, fiber, cable, etc.) by over 50%. Metro and access vendors would benefit from this almost immediately because it’s likely that operators would start to promote Ethernet access and IP voice more strongly as soon as the “experiments” showed signs of success.

Operators already like the notion of an “access-first” strategy where they supply a fat pipe to a customer and then build ad hoc services over it. Ethernet or packet access encourages that, so giving that to everyone would drive operators quickly to look for rapid service deployment tools so that they don’t lose all the new access-generated opportunities to the over-the-top players (OTTs). The author believes that operator interest in software defined networks (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are linked to this very thing. After all it’s silly to talk about “improved service velocity” if you have to restring an access connection to upgrade service.

Impact on Internet policy

Net neutrailityThe second impact Mr. Nolle sees is on Internet policy. This voice transition raises the question of the difference between “packet” or “IP” and “the Internet”. You can do VoIP over any IP, including private networking. That’s done with a lot of IP voice today in fact. Operators could in theory augment their services to customers by building IP services that bypass the Internet, but that would pose issues in linking the services to current devices in the home or in businesses. OTTs would surely want to get involved in any new service opportunity, and all that raises the triple-threat question of QoS, settlement, and Net Neutrality.

There’s no barrier to QoS in “private” IP networks, but on the Internet, the Net Neutrality order last year said that you could offer QoS only if the subscriber pays for it. Most practical Internet QoS opportunities arise because an OTT like Netflix (NFLX) could gain by offering QoS to customers. They’d pay the ISPs and either embed the cost or perhaps eat it to improve their differentiation. But the FCC said “No!” Now the new FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, says “Perhaps”–at least he did in a speech to a university audience. If that were to become policy, it would likely drive QoS for Internet services, and that would drive settlement among ISPs and content players.

QoS stops where the ISP hands off the trafficSettlement has been a big issue for the Internet since the 1990s. Customers pay their own ISP, so if there’s no money flow from that ISP to others, QoS stops where the ISP hands off the traffic. That’s inhibited the value of the Internet for applications that need QoS, but it perhaps encouraged smaller players and startups who couldn’t pay like Google (GOOG) or Netflix could. Whether this small-player benefit is more for VCs who then have to raise less funding to get an OTT off the ground is an interesting question–but in any event, adding settlement and QoS to the Internet would almost certainly increase operator interest in providing service quality for a fee, which in turn would increase network investment, helping equipment vendors and carriers alike… In short, it would change the industry.

Mr. Nolle concludes that VoIP could be a back door to making the Internet a real network and not a service on top of carrier IP infrastructure. That could remake our experiences online, and the vendors’ fortunes in the marketplace. So watch the progress of this initiative; it could have huge impacts.

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ATT has already made its move to get rid of POTS lines in Michigan. ATT has bribed gotten politicians in Lansing to introduce Senate Bill 636. Michigan SB 636 would amend the Michigan Telecommunications Act (PDF) to let ATT and their fellow travelers eliminate POTS lines in Michigan.

Melissa Seifert, associate state director for government affairs for AARP Michigan says eliminating POTS lines in the Great Lakes State would impact many people. It would affect small-business owners who use fax machines and credit card verification systems, she said, as well as emergency services in parts of the state where cell phone access is unreliable. According to the Michigan Public Service Commission, roughly 3 million Michiganders subscribe to landline service. About 90 percent of households of folks ages 65 and older still use landlines for “lifelines.”

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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| February 12, 2013
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UN Tries to Control the Internet Again

UN Tries to Control the Internet AgainInfoSecurity reports that even after much of the free world refused to sign the controversial new ITU WCIT-12 treaty in December 2012, U.S. Many argued this would give the UN control of the Internet. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Robert M. McDowell warned, ‘the worst is yet to come.’

ITU logo“The United States,” he said, “should immediately prepare for an even more treacherous ITU treaty negotiation that will take place in 2014 in Korea. Those talks could expand the ITU’s reach even further.” McDowell seems convinced that the ITU’s desire to control the internet is not a passing fancy, but a long-term intent. He may be right, and it may come before 2014.

Last week the ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré released his draft report for the Fifth World Telecommunication/Information and Communication Technology Policy Forum 2013. “This draft report of the Secretary-General to the WTPF-2013,” it states, “aims to provide a basis for discussion at the Policy Forum, incorporating the contributions of ITU Member States and Sector Members, and serving as the sole working document of the Forum focusing on key issues on which it would be desirable to reach conclusions.”

ITU’s takeover attemptSuggested themes for discussion include, “Global Principles for the governance and use of the Internet,” and “On the basis of reciprocity, to explore ways for greater collaboration and coördination between ITU and relevant organizations – including, but not limited to, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society (ISOC) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – involved in the development of IP-based networks and the future internet, through cooperation agreements, as appropriate, to increase the role of ITU in Internet governance to ensure the largest benefits to the global community.”

This is exactly what caused disarray in December’s WCIT in Dubai the commissioner states.

Meanwhile, a ‘de-fund the ITU petition has appeared on the White House ‘We the People’ website. A supporting website gives full details. “Fighting on behalf of the Internet,” it states, The United States government and fifty-four other countries rejected the ITU’s takeover attempt, but this is a single battle in a war that the ITU will continue to fight. The ITU is spending more than $180M/year to oppose the Internet and is drawing from its reserves more heavily each year ($9M in 2010, up from $5.5M in 2009), as progressive countries withdraw their payments from the ITU’s war-chest.

The ten most oppressive countries in the Open Net Initiative’s ranking of online freedom all sided against the internet, and none of them are giving the ITU as much as the U.S. is. If all the countries that stood with the Internet against the ITU’s attack withdraw their funding, it claims, “the ITU’s membership revenue will be reduced by 74%.”

The petition also calls for future U.S. delegations to be reduced “to no more than one USG representative, tasked primarily with communicating a U.S. position that the ITU’s only legitimate area of authority is radio communications.” The long-term danger from such entrenched views on both sides is that the worldwide nature of the internet might fracture into one internet under multi-stakeholder governance in the ‘free’ world, and a series of heavily government-regulated Internets elsewhere.

“Freedom and prosperity are at stake,” warned Commissioner McDowell.

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I have warned about the United Nations’ attempt to take over the Internet since November.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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