The FCC is right to penalize companies like Marriott International for intentionally interfering with Wi-Fi networks (http://fcc.us/1rRzKH2), said Scott Bergmann, CTIA vice president-regulatory affairs, Monday. “CTIA supports the FCC’s efforts to stop the illegal use of jammers,” he said. “We encourage the FCC to keep imposing high fines against those who market or use these illegal devices since they may cause significant issues for consumers, as well as for public safety and first responders.”
NetCompetition Chairman Scott Cleland said a net neutrality proposal from House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is illegal. Waxman outlined his proposal -- calling for hybrid net neutrality authority using Communications Act Section 706 and Title II -- in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday, provoking immediate outcry from NCTA and USTelecom (WID Oct 6 p3), both of which belong to NetCompetition. The Waxman proposal is “a call for FCC double-regulation of the Internet using both Title I and Title II,” not a compromise, Cleland said in a Sunday blog post (http://bit.ly/1xhwOE7). He said the “fatally-flawed tent-pole assumption” revolves around the idea “that the FCC can somehow deem previously mutually-exclusive services under precedent and the law to now be inclusive” simultaneously. “Congress did not grant the FCC statutory authority to unilaterally combine heretofore mutually-exclusive, congressionally-defined, regulatory classifications, let alone for the purpose of imposing more restrictive regulation than Congress imposed in either Title I or Title II authority, or for the purposes of regulating competitive providers in the 21st century more restrictively than Congress and the FCC regulated the telephone monopoly in the 20th century,” Cleland said. Free State Foundation President Randolph May also criticized the proposal. “The notion of adopting new net neutrality rules is problematic enough if the Commission relies only on Section 706,” he told us. “But were it to cook up some ‘hybrid’ approach a la Waxman, the result would be even worse in light of the dubious assumptions incorporated into Waxman’s recipe. The only good thing about the proposal from my perspective is that, if it were adopted, it would most likely be rejected by the courts. Maybe three strikes would convince the Commission that it’s time to await further direction from Congress."
Cox Communications said it will begin offering its “G1GABLAST” gigabit Internet service to its residential customers later this year. Cox will first offer the G1GABLAST service to customers in portions of the Phoenix metropolitan area, followed by offerings in Las Vegas and Omaha. The company said it plans to deploy the service nationwide by the end of 2016. “Cox will deliver the choice of gigabit speeds to all of our customers nationwide,” said President Pat Esser in a Monday news release. G1GABLAST will cost $69.99 per month for customers in Phoenix as part of a service bundle. Cox said it’s also doubling speeds for its High Speed Internet Preferred and High Speed Internet Premier services (http://bit.ly/Za4GGO).
Discovery Communications and Suddenlink renewed a long-term distribution agreement to deliver Discovery’s 13 U.S. networks to Suddenlink TV customers. Suddenlink customers will have continued access to the networks and VOD content, including OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, TLC and Investigation Discovery, Discovery said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1vHGd6x). The companies expect Suddenlink customers to have authenticated access to Discovery content inside and outside the home in the near future, Discovery said.
Digital asset investment manager Binary Financial launched BTC-01, a “concierge” bitcoin liquidity service for “institutional clients and high net worth individuals,” said a company news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1uRA0s3). It said Binary Financial is using bitcoin security platform BitGo as its BTC-01 provider. “The current process -- and rationale -- for buying and owning Bitcoin is similar to acquiring large amounts of physical gold,” said Harry Yeh, Binary Financial managing partner. “BTC-01 was created to give clients peace of mind when adding Bitcoin to large and diverse portfolios."
Hewlett-Packard plans to break into two separate publicly traded companies, splitting its PC and printer businesses from the enterprise segment, it said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/Z915ZF). Under the plan, HP President Meg Whitman will be CEO of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which will comprise servers, storage, networking, converged systems, services and software, along with the OpenStack Helion cloud platform. Dion Weisler will be president and CEO of HP Inc., overseeing the personal systems and printing businesses, it said. The split is expected to be final by the end of fiscal 2015 -- Oct. 30 2015, and current HP shareholders will own shares of both companies, said the release. HP Inc. will invest in growth markets including 3D printing and “new computing experiences,” HP said. Weisler called the announcement “a defining moment in our industry as customers are looking for innovation to enable workforces that are more mobile, connected and productive while at the same time allowing a seamless experience across work and play."
Broadband speeds have increased from an average peak of 27.1 Mbps in 2012 to 45.3 Mbps, said NCTA in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1racpes). The 67 percent increase is based on an Akamai quarterly report on the Internet, NCTA said. “Every year broadband speeds increase in the U.S. and these increases will continue.” Charter Communications increased minimum broadband speeds from 15 Mbps to 60 Mbps this year, while Cox Communications has announced plans for gigabit service to many residential customers, NCTA said. The speed increases come from “huge, consistent, infrastructure investment,” NCTA said. Cable companies spent $14 billion on infrastructure improvements last year, while telecom companies as a whole spent $46 billion, “more than any other industry in America,” NCTA said.
A federal judge let bitcoin hardware manufacturer Butterfly Labs resume limited operations Thursday after a temporary shutdown following an FTC lawsuit against the company (case No. 4:14-cv-00815). The FTC is going after the company for delaying or failing to deliver bitcoin mining computers, rendering them useless (WID Sept 24 p1). Days later, the FTC also alleged the company had also used bitcoin mining equipment for its own profit before shipping and sought a more-permanent suspension of Butterfly’s business (WID Sept 30 p1). Thursday’s order in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri, lets Butterfly Labs fulfill some outstanding orders. In a statement, Butterfly Labs called the decision “a step in the right direction.” The FTC’s “rush to judgment” has “severely damaged our reputation,” the company said. The company also repeated that the FTC’s allegations were “unsubstantiated.” The commission did not comment.
Spectrum management should be among the priorities of federal government, wrapped into how it conducts acquisition, a former federal official told Congress in a report released Thursday. The Senate Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee released a long report containing views from many people on the best ways to overhaul defense acquisitions. The Joint Capabilities and Integration Development System “process needs to be streamlined and better integrated with acquisition,” Paul Kaminski, chairman of Technovation, said in the committee staff report (http://1.usa.gov/1sRwqxR). “A robust Development Planning process ... would produce a better outcome. We need a more robust process to better address the issues associated with integrating spectrum management, electronic warfare, cyber offense and defense, and C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] across our forces and across our various acquisition programs.” Technovation is a consulting firm focused on technology applications for aerospace and defense. Kaminski was undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology during the Clinton administration.
Facebook’s recently relaunched Internet-wide advertising platform Atlas “uses the advertising industry’s phony definition of ‘opt out,’ which has the unfortunate characteristic of meaning ‘pretend not to track’ and offers no privacy benefits whatsoever,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in a Thursday blog post (http://bit.ly/ZB5qWw). Opting out means only a user will no longer receive targeted ads, not that third-party companies will cease information collection, EFF said. “Opting users out of targeted ads while still collecting information about them is the worst of both worlds: it destroys all the potential usefulness of advertisements and simultaneously reduces the transparency of data collection practices to consumers.” EFF said Facebook should honor opt-out requests by not tracking those users at all across Web and mobile browsing. Facebook, in a message to EFF, said its practices were consistent with industrywide standards, EFF said. Facebook, which relaunched Atlas on Monday (WID Sept 30 p7), did not comment.