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telecom bill etc
``` [Margie's right -- let's take some time out from the Communications Decency Act to worry about the rest of the telecom bill. Many important matters remain to be decided by the FCC.]
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Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 16:09:26 -0800
From: Digital Media Perspective
This publication should be viewed with a monospaced typeface such as Courier or Monaco
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DIGITAL MEDIA PERSPECTIVE
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March 15, 1996
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Table of Contents
Bigger Pie, Fewer Forks: Where's the reform in the Telecommunications Act of 1996?
Netting from Anywhere: Travelers need secure ways to connect from afar
Digital Media on the Web
Inside the Current Issue of Digital Media
Who We Are, How to Reach Us
How to Subscribe to DMP and Get Back Issues
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Bigger Pie, Fewer Forks
Where's the reform in the Telecommunications Act of 1996?
by Margie Wylie
Hello? Is this thing on? The trillion-dollar communications industry has been all but deregulated; phone, cable and TV broadcasters are merging at the breakneck speed of Washington beltway drivers, and we can't stop talking about alt.sex.binaries. Does that worry anyone besides me? The so-called Communications Decency Act is NOT the biggest threat to fulfilling the democratic dream of electronic media: It's mergers, stupid.
When political correctness has come to be defined by its dogmatic rails against government and regulation, it's not surprising that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was subjected to the litmus test of friction-free capitalism: "let the market decide." The problem is that we already know the "free" market's choice. (Hey, I like capitalism; I just don't worship it.)
In a world where electronic communications are bursting boundaries every day, phone and cable regulations stood in desperate need of change. The Modified Final Judgement that broke apart AT&T in 1984, and continued to rule the workings of its offspring Bells in combination with the outdated 1934 Communications Act, forced phone and cable companies to labor under massive and seemingly onerous rules. Without some relief from the straightjacket of their highly restricted roles, these industries could never get into the flexible digital services that mix video and voice with broadcasting, narrowcasting and point-to-point communications. However, the bill that sailed through both the House and Senate and slid off the president's desk in record time reads more like a pronouncement of corporate totalitarianism than reform. In their mistaken zeal to let the market decide, legislators and the president have turned lose a pack of amoral 800-lb. gorillas on the American public. What's being called reform is more like carte blanche.
If the American economic base is shifting from manufacturing to information transmission, concentrating the power of this emerging economy into fewer hands may not be the best move to make. But that is exactly what the Telecommunications Act does. It lifts most cross-ownership rules allowing phone companies to own cable companies and vice versa; radio and TV networks can buy as many outlets they please nationally (up to eight in a single locality), so long as they don't reach more than 35 percent of the entire population of the US. TV station owners can buy up newspapers; broadcast networks now face almost no restraints in buying local TV stations.
By contrast, the regulations on the megacompanies of tomorrow constitute little more than nuisances. Wire owners can't produce content, but their affiliates can. (Communications companies that haven't already created a holding company will simply do so.) The consolidation is under way: US West's media subsidiary bought Continental Cablevision shortly after the Act passed, and nearly every communications company has been in merger or buyout negotiations since. In the end, The Wall Street Journal predicted on the Act's passage, there may be as few as a dozen companies left standing.
The rationale goes like this: Deregulate everything, let everyone compete and consumers will get lower prices, better quality and more choice. The reality looks more like this: Deregulate everything and consumers get all the monopolies of the past, with none of the benefits.
At least the monopolies of today labor, albeit grudgingly, under the obligation to serve a public interest in return for public resources, such as rights of way for their wires and radio spectrum for their signals. Telecom reform fixed that. The law reduces universal service to the status of "to be determined." Determined by whom? Not by the public, not even by the public's elected officials. Instead, universal access rules will be determined by an FCC committee with ONE consumer representative. Beyond that, the law is vague to the point of absurdity. While the law says the average person "should" get access to advanced telecommunications services at prices comparable to urban areas, it doesn't mandate those services. What are the minimum advanced services the average person should have a right to? (Email? Interactive video? At what data rates?) Likewise, schools and libraries "should" be wired and served at reduced rates; telecom providers will pay "equally" into a universal access fund. With the fierce competition the Act unleashes, can we expect lots of volunteers stepping up to pour cash into the universal access pot? Look for a lot of fingerpointing, complaining and argument over the definition of equal. Add to that the fact that the FCC has 15 months before they have to do anything at all about universal access. Nice carrots, no sticks.
For those who have been looking forward to hearing the variety of voices possible through digital technology, where Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone and their peers weren't the only lenses through which we view the world, the Telecom Act is a big disappointment. The Act virtually assures that the 500 channels of tomorrow will all be programmed by the same dozen media giants in power today, give or take up-and-coming megastars like Microsoft.
Sources and additional reading:
"The Telecom Act: A Corporate Triumph," The Liberty Tree: An
Independent TeleJournal of Comment on Media, 2/5/96,
by Jerry M. Landay
The Benton Foundation's analysis of the Act
Summary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
Full Text of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
ASCII
Margie Wylie writes about the Telecommunications Act's ghettoization
of the Internet in the March issue
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Netting from Anywhere
Travelers need secure ways to connect to their networks from afar
by Stephan Somogyi
Net access is not a trivial issue for those who travel the world. Aside from the battle with different local phone systems and their idiosyncratic connectivity ports, affordable and reliable global Internet access is difficult to find.
Service providers within the US have long realized that a nationwide network is a good thing to have, mainly to be able to serve the broadest range of stationary customers. The benefit to roamers within the US is merely a side effect.
But dialing back into the office from overseas can be expensive and seems somewhat silly: Why should connecting to geographically nearby Web servers involve, for example, at least one oceanic round-trip for the data packets?
CompuServe provides PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) access via its POPs (points of presence), as does IBM Global Networks. EUNet Traveler is a newly launched service that allows for Net roaming within EUNet's zone of influence.
But using other networks to get access to your own net can be a dangerous affair. Do you know where those packets are going to go before they get back to your net, and is your company's firewall even going to let them in?
The most important application for the out-and-about crowd is email. But email typically travels between your server and your client software in the clear, unprotected from prying packet sniffers. In all likelihood, your email password is equally observable.
While most current email systems don't support encryption of traffic
between client and server, increased availability of standards to
encrypt Netborne data will almost certainly result in more secure
communication between email clients and servers. Despite its many
other shortcomings, IBM/Lotus's Notes already provides traffic
encryption between client and server, albeit in an especially weak
version for the non-US market (see Digital Media, Vol. 5, No. 9
One aspect of this problem is being addressed by networking server vendors. Digital has announced server software to allow the creation of secure network tunnels over unsecure networks such as the Internet. This is a cost-effective alternative to long-distance leased lines for connecting two sites. The recently announced Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), co-developed by 3Com, Ascend, ECI Telematics, Microsoft and US Robotics, is a similar solution.
However, both of these schemes' conceptual models implies that two "friendly" networks are connected over an insecure one by two servers, one on each end, sending encrypted data back and forth. In the case of a single traveler overseas, this is not applicable.
Standards for the secure connection of a single user, connecting to the "home" network from anywhere, are what's needed now. In light of the recent addition of the personal use exemption to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, the law that forbids export of cryptographic technology from the US, companies offering secure individual remote connectivity solutions have a great revenue opportunity.
The outsourcing of information services continues unabated, and it does indeed make sound financial sense for international travelers to use a global service provider. But information is a valuable commodity and the subtler implications of information security should not be overlooked in the name of convenience.
Further reading:
Text of the ITAR personal use exemption
PPTP specification, Microsoft Word format only
Digital's IP Tunnel
PPTP announcement
CompuServe
IBM Global Networks
EUNet Traveler
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Digital Media on the Web
We recently undertook a complete renovation of our Web site and opened
the new and improved version to the world late last week. Aside from
sporting a new look, Digital Media's web site,
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Synopses
We have synopsized Digital Media all he way back to our March 1994
issue, Volume 3, Number 12.
From here onward, the synopsis of the most recent issue of Digital Media will become available on our Web server when we send it to the printer. This means that our subscribers can get a synopsis of the issue roughly one week (for domestic subscribers) before you receive it in the mail, and in many cases significantly sooner for our overseas subscribers.
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Good Stuff
We have collected our Good Stuff items, characterized them by media,
and put them up on the server.
The Good Stuff items will be updated as every issue comes out; we will also weed out any obsolete Good Stuffs in the process. In addition, as the paper version of Good Stuff is under space constraint, we will be putting those items that didn't make it into the paper edition on the web. Consequently, the Web-based Good Stuff area is a worthwhile place to check even for our paper subscribers.
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Outtakes
We have expanded our Outtakes section and are continually adding
interviews and other material that is ancillary to our paper-based
articles.
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Perspective
As always, the archive of Digital Media Perspective is available from
our Web server as well.
We hope that you find our new Web site useful and encourage you not
only to look in frequently, but to let us know what you think at
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Inside the March 12th Issue of Digital Media
Turning the Page: It's time to put technology behind us and get on with discovering creativity.
RIP Indy ISPs? Have you hugged your Internet service provider today? You will.
AOL Points the Way: From the headlines, you'd think America Online was having a rotten year. Don't believe it.
A Closed World After All? The key supposed to unlock proramming monotony, uhm, monopoly, may backfire.
CD-R: Desktop DAT for 1996? Ahoy, mateys. Guard your titles. CD-R is here and it's getting cheaper.
Nets Without Frontiers: Despite its small showing in outside North America, from Albania to Zaire the Internet is booming outside the US, too. We do the numbers.
Barking up the Networked Tree: Apple Computer's CyberDog puts a very different face on the Net, one that may well be an indicator of what ubiquitous "networkedness" will look like.
E-Male or Female? The Internet isn't so anonymous. Researchers explore the role of gender in computer-mediated communications.
The Good Stuff: The digerati don't-miss-this list.
Digital Media, the monthly paper newsletter that sponsors Digital Media Perspective, brings its readers the most provocative analysis of the developing industry for interactive titles, smart networks and broadband applications. We turn an eclectic eye to the stories of the day to provide a more informed perspective with which readers can judge new technologies, new competitors and the assumptions driving the growth of the electronic economy. We question everything, and bring back the hard facts.
Digital Media is available monthly for $395 a year; individual issues
are $40. Call 800.325.3830/610.565.6864 (voice), 610.565.1858 (fax),
send email to info@digmedia.com, or see
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Who We Are, Where to Reach Us
Editorial Director Mitch Ratcliffe
Editorial Offices 444 De Haro Street, Suite 126
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.575.3775 vox
415.575.3780 fax
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How To Subscribe to Digital Media Perspective and Get Back Issues
If you'd like to receive this free electronic newsletter via email,
send a message
Back issues of Digital Media Perspective are available on the Web at
Alternately, you can get back issues of Digital Media Perspective by
sending email (subject and contents unimportant) to our mailbot at
Copyright (c) 1996 Digital Media. This electronic newsletter may be freely duplicated, reproduced or retransmitted, but only in its entirety. Excerpts used for the purposes of quotation must be attributed explicitly to Digital Media Perspective. ```
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