By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 3-5-20 Marking the halfway point in its Airband rural broadband initiative, Microsoft said it is now in 25 states and one territory and is on track to meet its goal of 3 million more rural Americans with broadband access. Airband is Microsoft's promotion of unlicensed wireless in the [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-5-20 The Federal Trade Commission has launched a lookback at some of the smaller past acquisitions by some of the largest tech companies. The FTC said Tuesday it has issued "special orders" to Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, which require them to provide info on [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-5-20 A district court judge's decision upholding the Justice Department and FCC approval of the Sprint-T-Mobile merger drew immediate reaction from Washington. Both the FCC and Justice had argued the deal would help speed the 5G rollout, with conditions that would ultimately create a new, facilities-based, competitor, helping [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-31-20 State broadcast associations this week added their weight to the National Association of Broadcasters petition for changes to the FCC's guidance on political ad disclosures. NAB joined with Hearst Television, Graham Media Group, Nexstar, Fox, Tegna, and Scripps to ask the FCC to narrow its definition of [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-30-20 Microsoft president Brad Smith is calling for more regulation of tech companies. He said those businesses need to step up and provide more self regulation, but "we do think we need more regulation of technology." Smith, who has co-written a new book, Tools and Weapons, was appearing [...]
By Tony Romm, washingtonpost.com, 1-17-20 Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google took a public lashing at a congressional hearing in Boulder, Colo., on Friday, where some of their smaller rivals, including Sonos and Tile, pleaded with federal lawmakers to take swift action against Big Tech. Democrats and Republicans at times appeared stunned as they heard tales [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) used an informational hearing on deep fakes and other online manipulation to hammer Big Tech in general and Facebook in particular, while Republicans found more to like on the edge. The hearing, "Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age," in [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 Given the almost daily news about a new security breach, it is impossible to conclude that the tech industry is doing enough to protect privacy. That was the message from Democratic Federal Trade Commission member Rebecca Slaughter at a Chief Privacy Officer roundtable at CES 2020 in [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-8-20 TEGNA, which owns 62 TV stations in 51 markets across the country, is teaming up with global nonprofit First Draft to train all its journalists in identifying disinformation online and helping viewers do the same. TEGNA is also expanding its Verify fact-checking initiative, adding regional fact-checkers to [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 1-3-20 Microsoft is telling the FCC that wireless Internet providers have been able to boost their throughput tenfold using the TV white spaces Microsoft wants more of, and said the FCC should act on its proposal seeking tweaks to the current white spaces regime. That came in a [...]