Internet use during the COVID-19 is “at a scale that the world has never experienced,” said Akamai CEO Tom Leighton on a Q1 investor call Tuesday. Traffic on the Akamai platform increased by about 30% over a four-week period at the end of Q1, he said. It peaked at 167 terabits per second during the quarter, more than double the peak of Q1 2019, he said. Q1 revenue in Akamai’s media division jumped 8% to $358 million, said Chief Financial Officer Ed McGowan. The “outperformance” in media was mainly due to the “surge” in traffic from over-the-top video, gaming, social media and news and information sites, “as more and more people around the world began to shelter in place,” he said.
The FCC Consumer Advisory Committee approved recommendations to the agency by its Truth-in-Billing (TIB) Working Group. CAC was also warned that scam robocalls are evolving under COVID-19 and consumers need to be vigilant. Members met virtually Monday. WG leaders read from the recommendations, which the FCC didn't immediately release, following standard protocol. “Continue to examine consumer complaints, and if there is evidence of significant consumer complaints related to interconnected VoIP, the commission could consider a new truth-in-billing public notice regarding the applicability of adding interconnected VoIP to rules in the future,” said the statement approved by CAC. Consider revising the consumer intake form and online portal to gather more detail on consumer billing complaints, the resolution said. CAC also sought a new working group to look at TIB issues in more detail. Consumer Federation of America's Irene Leech said the commission needs to be aware that, for many, broadband service is terrible. Leech said she can barely work at home, even though she pays $177 monthly. The first month after lockdown, she went over her allotment and was billed an additional $100, she said. “The whole bill, for a system that wasn’t adequate, was $277 and I share that as an example of what consumers are dealing with and the frustrations that we feel.” Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Associate Chief Eduard Bartholme said robocall scams continue to evolve in the pandemic, and the FCC is trying to keep up. “Early on, the scams focused on testing, … bogus cures, health insurance plans,” he said. “By week two and three, the scams were pivoting to be more focused on financial fears, so it was student loan relief, government grants, misinformation about the relief checks that were being discussed in Congress at the time.”
Duplicates of customs broker records may be stored on servers outside the U.S. as long as the originals are stored on U.S. servers, Customs and Border Protection said. The March 10 ruling was disclosed by a stakeholder last week and confirmed to us by the recipient. The ruling requested by Craig Seelig at WiseTech Global examined WiseTech's use of a foreign server in Australia as a secondary site. The primary site would be in the U.S. CBP requires that for broker records stored on a server, the server must be located in the customs territory of the U.S., the agency replied. “This is where CBP has jurisdiction to issue a summons and inspect records.” There’s “no rule applicable to duplicate records,” the agency said. “It seems logical then that once the recordkeeping regulations are met, including 19 C.F.R. § 111.23(a), requiring that records be retained at any location within the customs territory of the United States, that duplicates of these records may be maintained outside the territory of the United States." Grunfeld Desiderio lawyer Alan Klestadt, who told a webinar of the ruling, said that, with a coming update to customs broker regulations, more cloud-based recordkeeping could come to be OK’d.
Amazon launched an internal investigation into allegations in a report in The Wall Street Journal Thursday saying employees used data about independent sellers on the company’s platform to develop competing products. Amazon doesn’t believe the claims are accurate, a spokesperson emailed, but takes the allegations “very seriously.” Like other retailers, “we look at sales and store data to provide our customers with the best possible experience,” she said. “We strictly prohibit our employees from using non-public, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch.”
Sonos, with more than 100 streaming audio services, added its own Tuesday, launching the Sonos Radio "free, ad-supported streaming radio service." Customers who download the latest software to get Sonos Radio saw in the terms of service that the free service may not always be so: “The use, content or functionality of Sonos Radio may require additional payment and/or a subscription." Customers will be notified when an additional payment is required and won’t be charged for Sonos Radio “unless charges are made known to customers in advance,” terms said. The company reserved the right to permanently stop the service “without paying compensation.” The company partnered with Super Hi-Fi, an artificial intelligence company, for volume leveling, song blending and voice commentary mixing. Sonos listed among risk factors in its annual report its competitive position with much larger competitors that are also its customers, including Amazon, Apple and Google. The company didn't comment Wednesday.
The American Antitrust Institute's June 17 annual conference, which was to be in Washington, instead will be done via four-part podcast due to the pandemic, it said Monday. AIA said the podcast episodes will be available later this spring.
Extend comments 60 more days on public safety and other items after a court net neutrality remand, cities asked the FCC in a filing posted Friday in docket 17-108. Los Angeles, California's Santa Clara County and New York cited the ongoing public health emergency. The FCC extended the original deadline 21 days to Monday (see 2003250041).
Verizon's Hans Vestberg said he was among CEOs and other executives who spoke with President Donald Trump Wednesday about how to restart the U.S. economy once the widespread shutdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic ends. Vestberg is among six executives Trump named to a telecom-specific industry group advising the White House on reopening the U.S. economy (see personals section, this issue). The others are Liberty Media’s John Malone, Comcast’s Brian Roberts, Charter’s Thomas Rutledge, T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert and Altec’s Lee Styslinger. A separate tech sector group of 15 executives includes Apple’s Tim Cook, Qualcomm’s Steven Mollenkopf, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google parent Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Broadcom’s Hock Tan and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. The call with Trump “was very useful,” Vestberg said in a statement. “Verizon and many other companies across the country are committed to finding ways of effectively doing business in the ‘new normal,’ and we're equally looking forward to doing our part to help bring back a strong and vibrant U.S. economy.”
More than 80 groups seek $2 billion-$3 billion monthly in “low-income broadband” funding during the pandemic as part of the next stimulus bill. That would pay for service to “all eligible low-income households and the newly unemployed -- approximately 60 million households,” the groups wrote Capitol Hill leaders Tuesday. AFL-CIO, Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, the NAACP and National Hispanic Media Coalition were among signers of the letter released by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Broadband use on Easter set a new Sunday high, with average consumption of 17.3 Gb per subscriber, topping the previous high of 15.97 GB on March 22, OpenVault said Tuesday. It said downstream consumption was 16.3 Gb per subscriber, up 37.9% over March 1, before pandemic social distancing measures started taking effect. It said upstream usage was 0.97 GB, up 51.7% over March. 1. OpenVault said the spike was likely due to videoconference-enabled virtual Sunday visits to friends and family. Average home monthly usage in the U.S. in March was around 400 Gb, up around 20% from the end of last year (see 2004060038).