Google’s YouTube will gross $5.6 billion in global ad revenue in 2013, netting $1.96 billion, estimated digital marketing researcher eMarketer Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1f6YSB4). YouTube will have a 1.7 percent share of all global ad revenue, which includes non-video related ads, and a 21 percent share of the U.S. video ad market, worth $4.15 billion overall, it said. YouTube’s net revenue will be up 66 percent from 2012, it said. YouTube’s global ad revenue share will be larger than that of Twitter, AOL, Amazon, Pandora and LinkedIn, it said.
Global Eagle Entertainment and Southwest Airlines began a messaging service designed to work in all stages of flight. It allows passengers with Apple devices operating on iOS 5 or later “to iMessage gate-to-gate for the introductory price of $2 per day,” said Global Eagle in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1f7DnQk). On-board, customers can access the service while their device is in airplane mode, it said. For customers that prefer to do more than text, Wi-Fi is still available for $8 all day per device, “and texting is included in that price automatically,” said Global Eagle, owner of inflight broadband connectivity and entertainment company Row 44. “Android-friendly messaging apps will be added early in 2014,” the release said.
Comments on a petition for rulemaking from the Alabama Educational Television Commission to change the channel of WBIQ Birmingham are due Jan. 10. Replies are due Jan. 27, the FCC Media Bureau said in a Federal Register notice Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/18V8BvJ). AETC seeks a waiver of the FCC’s freeze on filing petitions by TV stations seeking a channel substitution (CD Nov 7 p16). AETC, licensed to Channel 39, wants to return to its previously allotted Channel 10.
A free public Wi-Fi network will be available to Harlem residents in May, said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Tuesday (http://on.nyc.gov/1iX2uen). The Harlem Wi-Fi network will extend 95 city blocks and will be rolled out in three phases to increase digital access for about 80,000 Harlem residents, including 13,000 in public housing, he said. The first phase from 110th to 120th streets between Madison Avenue and Frederick Douglas Boulevard is under way, he said. The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and the Technology Development Corp. are overseeing the implementation of the network, and they are working closely with technology provider Sky-Packets, said Bloomberg. The network will be available 24/7 in outdoor locations with unlimited access, he said.
Several public interest groups asked the FCC to clarify that Section 222 of the Communications Act forbids selling “anonymized” but “non-aggregate” call records, as those constitute customer proprietary network information (CPNI). “Phone carriers regularly share -- or reserve the right to share -- customers’ records in an ‘anonymized’ form with third parties,” wrote Public Knowledge, the Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause and others (http://bit.ly/1gZTGQw). All four major wireless carriers say they may share the information with third parties, the petition said, citing New York Times reports that AT&T has been selling call records to the CIA. “Even when carriers have ‘anonymized’ or ‘de-identified’ call records by removing personal identifiers from them they still constitute individually identifiable CPNI,” the petition said. That’s because under Section 222, all CPNI that’s not aggregate is individually identifiable, “as such records can be linked to a single person,” it said. It said what carriers refer to as “anonymized” records might still be vulnerable to “re-identification.” Carriers will say they're not violating the law, but they are, said Public Knowledge staff attorney Laura Moy in a blog post explaining the petition (http://bit.ly/1gZYIN6). “Even if anonymizing records before sharing them were enough under Section 222, masking a few digits of some phone numbers is just not enough to truly render records anonymous.” An AT&T spokesman told us that “in all cases, whenever any governmental entity in any country seeks customer information from us, we ensure that the request and our response are completely lawful and proper in that country.” AT&T has rejected government requests for customer information many times, the spokesman said. “Wherever we serve our customers, we maintain those customers’ data and information in compliance with the laws that apply in the country where that service is provided. It has been our experience that, no matter the country, laws related to government requests for customer information apply equally to all privately owned telecom providers. Like all telecom providers, we routinely charge governments for producing the information provided.” The spokesman declined to comment more specifically: “We do not comment on questions concerning the national security of any country.” A T-Mobile spokesman said the carrier “appreciates the concerns expressed by Public Knowledge in its petition.” T-Mobile “follows all laws” governing CPNI, “and provides annual reports to the FCC regarding regulatory compliance in this area,” the spokesman said. “We do not sell personally identifiable CPNI data to third parties except in three cases: 1) we obtain the user’s consent; 2) we provide it in aggregate form; or 3) we anonymize the data.” Sprint, Verizon and CTIA had no comment.
A former House Commerce Committee chairman slammed the idea of restricting incentive auction bids. “Avoid restricting the number of potential bidders,” which would hurt the revenue the auction yields, said House Commerce member Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., at a Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday hosted by Third Way. Some have argued the FCC should limit AT&T and Verizon Wireless participation in the auction. Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter and Compass Lexecon Senior Managing Director Jonathan Orszag also backed an open auction. “Keep it simple, keep the restrictions off,” Spalter said. Severe restrictions would cause up to $27 billion in lost revenue and “mild” restrictions $7 billion to $13 billion, said Orszag, who has co-written a paper on behalf of AT&T arguing against bidding restrictions. He said “fewer stronger networks” may be better for consumers than a multitude of lower quality networks. “They're saying we should have lower quality and more networks -- that’s the argument,” Orszag said of proponents for limits. Spalter said if an open auction fails in some fashion and does cause “market harms” or problems with competition, the FCC has “a deep basket of tools” to resolve the problems.
AT&T is now offering its U-verse with GigaPower service to all Austin, Texas, residents, said the company in a news release Wednesday (http://soc.att.com/18Uw7Jf). The all-fiber Internet network has initial speeds of up to 300 Mbps and is available starting at $70 a month. AT&T said it plans to increase speeds to one gigabit in 2014. Customers will also have access to the company’s TV services including a 1 TB of storage DVR and the ability to schedule DVR recordings and watch both live and on-demand TV shows on more than 30 smartphones and tablets, said the company. Customers who sign up for the 300 Mbps service will be upgraded to one gigabit speeds in 2014 at no extra cost, said AT&T. Google Fiber also plans to offer gigabit service to Austin residents starting in 2014 (CD April 10 p10).
Liberty Global will limit TiVo’s DVR service to the U.K., leaving other European markets for the cable operator’s Horizon IP-capable video platform, said Rick Westerman, Liberty Global senior vice president-investor relations, in an interview at a UBS investor conference in New York. Liberty inherited the TiVo agreement when it bought Virgin Media earlier this year and will continue to expand it in the U.K., where there are 1.8 million TiVo subscribers, he said. Liberty will expand Horizon to new European markets in 2014, following up on the launch in Ireland and Germany this year, said Westerman. “For legacy reasons, we will stick with TiVo in the U.K.,” Westerman said: “There is no way you can make the kind of capital investment required to swap that out” for Horizon. “U.K. customers like TiVo, so we will stay the course there, but everywhere else we will push forward with Horizon.” Liberty’s Horizon service runs on a Samsung-produced DVR/gateway based on Cisco’s NDS middleware and Snowflake interface. The four-tuner gateway also has Wi-Fi, ThinkAnalytics recommendation engine and IP apps like YouTube. In Germany, the DVR/gateway sells for $525 and carries a $10.50 monthly fee. Liberty has about 365,000 subscribers to the Horizon-based service. In buying Virgin, the “biggest negative” has been the “underperformance” of its commercial business, Westerman said. Liberty recently hired former Vodafone executive Peter Kelly to head Virgin’s commercial operations and is shifting the unit’s focus to small office/home office (SOHO) businesses from medium- and large-size companies, Westerman said. “There are thousands” of SOHO locations that our “network passes that we think should be relatively easy to bring on board,” he said. Liberty, which slashed 600 jobs from Virgin after buying the company, increased its forecast for savings from the acquisition to $350 million from $180 million, with the majority coming in operating expenses, Westerman said. Liberty won’t fully recognize the savings until 2016, and should start getting some “tailwinds” from it starting in mid-2014, Westerman said.
The federal government’s decision to redact information in its response to a petition from technology companies seeking to disclose more information about U.S. surveillance requests “is within the discretion of the executive branch, and in any event does not interfere with the legal arguments the companies can offer,” it responded to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (http://1.usa.gov/J2WikO). The response to FISC released Monday and dated Friday is the most recent move in the months-long attempt by five tech and social media giants -- led by Google and Microsoft -- to argue the First Amendment gives them the right to disclose the specific number and type of government surveillance requests they receive as long as they don’t disclose the content or surveillance target (CD Oct 3 p5). The federal government released a response in October urging FISC to deny the tech companies’ request. The companies responded in November, asking for more transparency in the government’s response, saying the redacted portions obfuscated the government’s legal rationale behind its stance and violated the First Amendment (CD Nov 14 p19). “None of the legal arguments in the government’s public brief have been redacted,” said the government’s most recent response. “The classified information is irrelevant to the companies’ argument about the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s nondisclosure provisions.” The tech companies have until Dec. 20 to respond.
Several House Republicans objected to FCC activities they say are an attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine. Every Republican member of the House Communications Subcommittee, including Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and full Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., signed onto a Tuesday letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (http://1.usa.gov/18AC5fK). The letter cited a Nov. 1 agency public notice (http://fcc.us/1bB7C2n) announcing a field test for the research design of what it called a multi-market study of critical information needs. But the members argued the letter amounts to “Fairness Doctrine 2.0” and “a startling disregard for not only the bedrock constitutional principles that prevent government intrusion into the press and other news media” but also lessons from past Fairness Doctrine endeavors. The FCC has no business “probing the news media’s editorial judgment and expertise,” the letter said. It asks about the purpose of the study as well as the statutory justification for launching it. The FCC declined comment.