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The Telecom Digest for March 8, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 64 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 09:03:47 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Plans for 'TV Everywhere' Bog Down in Tangled Pacts
Message-ID: <p06240833cb7d1aac057a@[192.168.182.6]>
(The Wall Street Journal requires viewers to subscribe if they want to
read the whole story. - Moderator)
Plans for 'TV Everywhere' Bog Down in Tangled Pacts
By SAM SCHECHNER and SHALINI RAMACHANDRAN
March 5, 2012
It was dubbed "TV Everywhere." But for many TV viewers, it has had
trouble going anywhere.
Nearly three years after Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. kicked
off a drive to make cable programming available online for cable
subscribers, the idea of TV Everywhere remains mired in technical
holdups, slow deal-making and disputes over who will control TV
customers in the future.
Now some media executives say the effort, aimed at insulating cable
television against a rising tide of cheap online video alternatives,
risks getting left behind-a concern that found voice last week at two
different industry conferences.
While some cable programming is available online, much isn't, or is
available only to subscribers of certain pay-TV providers. That is
because TV Everywhere-which is a concept, not a specific
service-requires a lot of deal-making.
Each cable operator, phone company and satellite-TV provider must
negotiate separate agreements for online rights to every cable
channel. So far, just a few companies have reached wide-ranging deals.
...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203986604577253491897421420.html
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 07:19:16 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Message-ID: <p06240831cb7d0058d9a6@[192.168.182.6]>
How Companies Learn Your Secrets
By CHARLES DUHIGG
February 16, 2012
Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in
2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by
his desk to ask an odd question: "If we wanted to figure out if a
customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do
that? "
Pole has a master's degree in statistics and another in economics,
and has been obsessed with the intersection of data and human
behavior most of his life. His parents were teachers in North Dakota,
and while other kids were going to 4-H, Pole was doing algebra and
writing computer programs. "The stereotype of a math nerd is true,"
he told me when I spoke with him last year. "I kind of like going out
and evangelizing analytics."
As the marketers explained to Pole - and as Pole later explained to
me, back when we were still speaking and before Target told him to
stop - new parents are a retailer's holy grail. Most shoppers don't
buy everything they need at one store. Instead, they buy groceries at
the grocery store and toys at the toy store, and they visit Target
only when they need certain items they associate with Target -
cleaning supplies, say, or new socks or a six-month supply of toilet
paper. But Target sells everything from milk to stuffed animals to
lawn furniture to electronics, so one of the company's primary goals
is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. But
it's a tough message to get across, even with the most ingenious ad
campaigns, because once consumers' shopping habits are ingrained,
it's incredibly difficult to change them.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:11:42 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: How Companies Learn Your Secrets
Message-ID: <jj8fe2$rf1$1@dont-email.me>
On 3/7/2012 7:19 AM, Monty Solomon wrote:
>
> How Companies Learn Your Secrets
>
> By CHARLES DUHIGG
> February 16, 2012
>
> Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in
> 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by
> his desk to ask an odd question: "If we wanted to figure out if a
> customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do
> that? "
Finding out if a woman is pregnant may be the "Holy Grail" of marketing,
but the information is worth a lot more to others, and the ways that the
information is obtained cover the gamut from voluntary disclosure to
criminal invasion of privacy.
Nonetheless, such information is so valuable that it will be gathered
- even if those seeking it need to break the law in order to get
it. The "usual" buyers cover every area of modern life:
* Real Estate Brokers
* Health Care providers
* Car Salesmen
* Insurance Salesmen
* Retailers
* Delivery services
... and those are only the people who really have something they want
to sell and that a pregnant woman might want to buy. On top of that,
there are organizations that want to find out her condition for other
purposes(1):
* Potential employers, who might want to avoid paying for pregnancy
leave and/or increased insurance co-payments.
* Landlords, who might want to avoid leasing to someone who'll have a
child, or who might want to limit the choices of apartment she'll
have.
A pregnant woman is a target for marketing (or disincentive) campaigns
from every one of the links in this long chain, each of which has a
vested interest in passing the information on to others.
That's the "demand" side of the scale, so let's look at "supply":
While retailers such as Target might be willing to bear the cost of
gathering and interpreting statistical clues, most of the firms that
consume pregnancy reports insist on more definite, and therefore more
easily usable, evidence - and they don't care where it comes from. The
obvious sources are -
* Social-networking sites, which sell such information as their
primary business.
* Retailer "Loyalty Card" programs, which retain purchase records for
pregnancy test kits or pregnancy-related products.
* Telephone calling records, which reveal calls to Obstetricians, or
Diaper Services, or to insurance brokers.
* Web access records, which show an employee's access to sites like
"Planned Parenthood", or other self-help venues that pregnant women
frequent.
* Emails spool files, which show addresses that can be easily traced
to doctors, hospitals, insurance providers, etc.
* Clerks and other menial workers who have access to health-care records.
The obvious point is that the twenty-somethings who grew up with the
wired world are now going on their first big "acquisition binge":
their first house, their first "family" car, their first
life-insurance policy, their first set of infant clothes, toys, cribs,
and medical care. As the original story pointed out, the buying and
brand habits they form during the first pregnancy are likely to follow
on to others, and to their circle of friends and cow-orkers.
The less-obvious point is that wired world is so ingrained in the
day-to-day habits of newly pregnant twenty-something women that they
are often unaware of its avaricious demand for information: the
electronic world is simply getting harder and harder to avoid. At the
same time a pregnant woman is juggling the tasks of finding a job that
has "good" health care, finding a "safe" car, finding a child-friendly
apartment or "nice" neighborhood, and debating other choices, she is
unlikely to spend the time to secure her status from prying eyes
(assuming she is even aware that her status is a sought-after
commercial commodity, or that she even can protect it). The last
bastion of privacy is eroding as quickly as all the others:
reproduction is now another data point on a corporate chart(2).
Bill
1. There, are, of course, second-tier consumers for pregnancy reports:
urban planners, Deans of college alumni, and those who forecast
demand for all manner of childhood services, from private schools
to dairies to vendors of "early childhood" education products. By
and large, they don't need "advance" information, and won't pay for
it. I'm only talking about the businessmen who crave advance
notice.
2. Of course, women who choose not to advertise a pregnancy have
some defenses available to them: paying for pregnancy-test kits
with cash, visiting "My-first-baby" sites from a library or school
computer, using assumed names on social-networking sites, and being
willing to read their HMO's disclosure policies. Such tactics are,
at best, a "rear guard" action, which will slow down, but not stop,
the data flow: after all, every businessman who pays for the
information is eager to resell it, as quickly as possible, to
anyone who doesn't compete with him.
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 15:14:13 -0500
From: Telecom Digest Moderator <redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Paging Gordon Burditt [nfp]
Message-ID: <20120307201413.GA26125@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Gordon, please email me offline. You may call me at the number shown below if you prefer.
TIA.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
Moderator
339-DOG-TITS
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:35:25 -0500
From: "T. Keating" <tkusenet@ktcnslt.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: DoD accused of subverting LightSquared plan in 2010
Message-ID: <8r2fl7lokrqfg8kv2sfjj4mgkmjnqqltbn@4ax.com>
On Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:38:39 -0500, Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
wrote:
>
>On LightSquared, Defense Department official urged synch up with GPS lobby
>
>By ELIZA KRIGMAN | 3/2/12 9:33 AM EST
>
>A Department of Defense official urged his colleagues in 2010 to
>"synch up" with the GPS industry in order to defeat LightSquared's
>plans to build the nation's first wholesale broadband network,
>according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
Ahem, It's the DOD's 31 satellite GPS system L^2 was putting at
risk.
I.E. Wide band modulated high power(1W or more) xmiters on
adjacent(overlapping) band interfering with the ability to receive
weak(50W) GPS signals transmitted from 12K to 20K miles distant. Thus
endangering the basic functionally of hundreds of millions of GPS
receivers in use currently.
Naturally, I would expect the DOD to definitely take a stand.
[Moderator snip]
***** Moderator's Note *****
I understand that the DoD has an interest in keeping the system
viable, but I feel it's important to present all sides on issues.
If nothing else, the accusation shows the tactics that lobbyists are
using to run their salvage operation over the wreck of the SS
LightSquared. ;-)
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 17:42:17 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Is the Philadelphia Cell Phone Jammer a Hero or Pest?
Message-ID: <MPG.29c1ae46c410d66d989d35@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <e1gdl7p9o5rqh21n6vbdnm3n0q6r21eprn@4ax.com>,
PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org says...
>
> Per David Clayton:
> >
> >https://mashable.com/2012/03/05/philadelphia-cell-phone-jammer/
> >
>
> Sounds like an idea for restaurants. Maybe a "Cell-Phone-Free"
> area and a regular area.
I have to wonder, does the Communications Act only cover active devices,
e.g. something that broadcasts a signal? What is to prevent a business
from putting a grounded copper mesh throughout a room. That would blot
out signal too.
At my last place of employment we had a quiet box. it was about the size
of a shoebox and had a three prong cord out the back. Inside was totall
covered in copper mesh, tied to the ground conductor on the power cord.
Theoretically it should work. It's how we found out that the outlets on
our desks were tied to the UPS and there was no real copper ground.
Wooops!
***** Moderator's Note *****
The FCC regulates "Incidental" radiators, such as the local
oscillators in receivers, computer timing chips, etc., as well as
licensed services.
IANALB, AFAIK, it's legal - although prohibitively expensive - to cut
off cell signals in a private building. Passive shielding, which forms
a Faraday cage, would be effective. It's also possible to use
electrostatic shielding, but that costs a lot too.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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