Broadband Speeds Dip In Major Cities Due To Covid-19

from the heavy-load dept

Generally speaking, experts believe the U.S. internet should hold up pretty well under the significant new strain created by COVID-19. Italy and China's networks have generally weathered the added load, and most major U.S. ISPs say congestion shouldn't be a problem. Streaming providers have been reducing their overall bandwidth consumption as a precautionary measure, though generally many providers say they've seen greater impact from events like the Superbowl.

That's not to say there won't be a few hiccups. A new report by broadband availability tracking firm BroadbandNow indicates that a number of cities are seeing slowdowns under the weight of millions of additional telecommuters and videoconferencing students. That said, most cities aren't seeing any sort of devastating slowdowns as of yet:

"Eighty eight (44%) of the 200 cities we analyzed have experienced some degree of network degradation over the past week compared to the 10 weeks prior. However, only 27 (13.5%) cities are experiencing dips of 20% below range or greater."

The real problem, of course, is that many U.S. consumers don't have particularly great broadband speeds to begin with, especially on the upstream side. In many areas the best users can get is crappy DSL from an apathetic, government-pampered telco that has neglected upgrades and repairs for years. It's not surprising that many of these connections, which often have upstream speeds as slow as 1-3 Mbps (and don't even meet the FCC's standard broadband definition of 25 Mbps) are struggling under the load:

"It is important to note that though speeds may be holding relatively steady across the nation, many areas do not have robust connections to begin with. For instance, though Anchorage, Alaska is holding within range, its median download speed of 17.77 Mbps is well below the FCC’s current definition of broadband, which is 25 Mbps. The state itself currently ranks 51st in our list of best and worst states for internet coverage, pricing, and speeds."

The other obvious problem highlighted by COVID-19 is a lack of access in general.

One recent study estimated that 42 million Americans lack access to broadband of any kind, nearly double FCC estimates. And with broadband now effectively an essential utility for those under lockdown, the fact that tens of millions more Americans often can't afford service is also likely to cause problems. This digital divide, which receives ample lip service from regulators and politicians but little in the way of substantive action, is more glaring than ever now that broadband has become an essential lifeline for home bound Americans trying to slow the spread of the pandemic.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, congestion, covid-19, fcc

Tone Deaf: Using COVID-19 As A Prop To Celebrate The Death Of Net Neutrality

from the ill-communication dept

So we've noted a few times now how the FCC's decision to kill net neutrality did a hell of a lot more than just kill "net neutrality." It obliterated much of the FCC's consumer protection authority, making it harder than ever to hold U.S. telecom monopolies accountable for bad behavior like rampant privacy violations, ripping you off with bullshit fees, or refusing to upgrade or repair long-neglected taxpayer subsidized networks. And this was a problem even before America began staring down the barrel of a brutal pandemic while stuck at home telecommuting.

Enter American Enterprise Institute's Roslyn Layton, who apparently thought that using COVID-19 as a prop to celebrate the death of U.S. telecom consumer protections was somehow a good idea. In a brutally tone-deaf blog post this week, Layton insisted that the FCC's decision to ignore a bipartisan majority of the public and kiss the ass of U.S. telecom giants was proving to be really helpful during a terrifying crisis:

"Traffic is up 75 percent or more on many US networks, but they are still performing. Hundreds of communications providers have signed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge, a commitment that broadband and telephone services run for the next 60 days without late fees or termination due to unpaid bills. We should thank our lucky stars that Title II net neutrality regulations were repealed by the FCC in 2017. In doing so, the US avoided the fate of much of Europe today, where broadband networks are strained and suffering from a lack of investment and innovation."

I've seen a lot of K Street policy nonsense in covering the telecom sector for close to two decades, but Layton's latest missive is one of the biggest piles of tone deaf horse shit I've ever seen shoveled into prose.

For one thing, Pai's "keep American's connected pledge" is entirely voluntary, and only basically states that ISPs can't kick you offline for non-payment during the next 60 days. But because the FCC neutered its authority to tell telecom giants what to do, the agency couldn't actually hold ISPs accountable should they refuse to adhere to the request or engage in bad behavior during a crisis. It's pinky swears and regulatory policy theater disguised as meaningful action. It's designed entirely to cover up the fact that the FCC just got done neutering itself at lobbyist behest, and the authority it shed would come in useful now.

The second claim Layton makes -- that repealing net neutrality helped prevent U.S networks from collapsing under the load of quarantine traffic -- is just indisputably false.

U.S. telecom giants like Comcast and AT&T actually dropped their overall network investment for 2020 in the wake of the Title II repeal and the massive Trump tax cuts, contrary to FCC and industry claims. And European and Chinese networks, while certainly feeling a pinch, have generally held up well under the strain. U.S. networks are also holding up well so far, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the FCC ignoring the public and kissing Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast's ass. Even FCC advisors to Pai have indicated that the strain we're seeing so far pales in comparison to events like the Superbowl:

While the internet core is holding up well, the problems most Americans will see are largely on the "last mile": aka slow end-user broadband connections (particularly upstream). In many areas, that's mostly courtesy of U.S. phone companies that see so little competition or regulatory pressure they've simply stopped upgrading or repairing aging DSL lines. And that, again, is made worse by gutting the FCC's ability to hold the telecom industry accountable, not better. Claiming otherwise is denialist fantasy.

To "prove" her inaccurate point, Layton points to Netflix's decision to throttle its overall bandwidth usage by around 25% to help ease the overall strain on European networks:

"European policymakers are now eating crow and entreating video platforms to downgrade the quality of their streams, an about face from the regulatory dogma that “all data is equal” and that regulations are needed to keep internet service providers (ISPs) from harming their own networks."

But neither Netflix nor European regulators cited any evidence of actual network strain, and the move was entirely precautionary. It had absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality or the U.S. FCC's net neutrality repeal, and using a pandemic to applaud the death of U.S. consumer protections is both grotesque and bizarre.

So what is Layton actually up to here? Why push this tone-deaf missive now?

Giant U.S. telecom providers aren't keen on the fact that the pandemic is shining a very bright light on the fact that an estimated 42 million home bound Americans still lack access to any kind of broadband whatsoever in 2020. They're also eager to distract from the fact that millions of Americans can't afford broadband courtesy of monopoly domination, a lack of competition, corruption, and regulatory capture. And they're most certainly eager to distract you from the fact that we threw tens of billions in regulatory favors and tax cuts at giants like AT&T in exchange for layoffs and empty promises.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, covid-19, fcc, net neutrality

UK's National Health Service Plans To Use Big Data Analysis To Fight COVID-19 -- With The Help Of Palantir

from the history-has-its-eye-on-us dept

It's clear that digital technology will play a key role in helping to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, whether as a way of disseminating information, telecommuting, or of keeping people entertained during lockdowns. Less welcome is the use of advanced surveillance and tracking techniques to monitor the movements of people to see if they are obeying quarantine restrictions. Another obvious way to apply technology is to manage the key resources being used to tackle it. That's what the UK's National Health Service (NHS) is doing:

The NHS is preparing to unveil a "data platform" which tracks the movement of critical staff and materials, giving ministers the first ever comprehensive view of the entire health system, Sky News can reveal.

Items tracked include the capacity of emergency departments; the number of calls to the NHS helpline; and the number and location of beds, ventilators and NHS staff. It is clearly crucially important to have a clear, real-time picture of all of these in order to manage this fast-moving disease as effectively as possible. The problem with this major new database and its associated dashboard is that the digital side of things is being handled by Palantir, which has become synonymous with high-tech government surveillance in both the US and further afield. Its move into analyzing health data is potentially concerning given the highly-personal nature of the information it will be handling. It is also likely to be the first of many such moves, rather than just a one-off. NHSX, the NHS "innovation unit" managing the project, is well-aware of Palantir's reputation and the worries its participation will engender. It is taking steps to head those off:

Despite the speed at which it has been forced to work, NHSX says it has taken full account of both data protection legislation and privacy concerns. The system removes identifiers such as names and addresses in order to keep the data as anonymous as possible. NHSX has also committed to closing the data agreements and removing or destroying the data once the pandemic abates.

Although sensitive personal health data is used to inform the dashboard, it is stored by Public Health England, and only provided to Palantir in an aggregated form

Palantir, too, knows that people will be worried by its move into healthcare. It has issued its own "Best practices for using data during a crisis", which concludes: "history has its eye on us".

We must not blindly accept the mantra of "desperate times call for desperate measures," but instead forge solutions that can survive a return to normalcy and not fundamentally alter our societal values. Any exceptional measures must be clearly justified by the facts and conditions of the moment but, also, in enacting them, build in mechanisms for rolling them back after the crisis and soberly evaluating the extent to which they were necessary and how we can do better next time. This is an emergency -- perhaps the defining one of our age. In acting decisively to defeat this pandemic, we must do so in a way that we will recognize ourselves when it's done.

Those are noble sentiments. Let's hope the reality matches them.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: covid-19, privacy, tracking, uk
Companies: palantir

Voluntary Virus Tracking Apps Seek To Get A Grip On The Coronavirus Problem

from the disrupting-involuntary-mass-surveillance dept

Be the surveillance you don't necessarily want to see in the world. That's the plan detailed in this report by Thomas Brewster for Forbes. Dozens of countries are kicking around large-scale privacy violations to track the spread of the coronavirus. A handful of other countries are already doing this, including China, India, and Hong Kong.

But if you're willing to give up your own privacy to help government entities track the virus and monitor those who are infected, there's an app for that.

It was only last Friday when a team of 14 software engineers and data scientists at little-known health and nutrition startup ZOE started piecing together what would become the hottest coronavirus app on Apple’s App Store by Wednesday: the COVID Symptom Tracker.

Now claiming to have hit 1.2 million downloads in the U.K. alone, it asks people to upload their rough location and the details of any ailment they’re suffering, whether they’re related to coronavirus or not. Even if they don’t have any, users are being asked to share how they’re feeling. All the data is then anonymized by turning names into nonidentifiable codes, before being handed to a team of epidemiologists at King’s College London and the National Health Service.

A purely voluntary monitoring system is vastly preferable to some of the ideas being tossed around by government officials. Governments have a difficult relinquishing control once they've acquired it. There's also the very real possibility of mission creep which would turn harmless disease tracking into warrantless tracking of people's movements over a long period of time -- something law enforcement would love to have, and these agencies are well-versed in the art of parallel construction.

Promising anonymization of data is a non-starter. With a little effort, nearly anyone can be identified even if their identifying info has been stripped from their location data. Considering most of the efforts being made right now rely on voluntary compliance by citizens (handwashing, isolation, social distancing), the relinquishment of location data should also be opt-in, rather than mandated.

Over in Israel, the government is doing a bit of both. The country's prime minister has already authorized its national security agency to tap into a massive trove of location data to track the spread of the virus. Somewhat redundantly, the Ministry of Health is offering a voluntary virus-tracking app.

In Tel Aviv, Israeli Under 30 alum Omri Moyal has been overseeing the security and privacy of Ministry of Health app Hamagen (or “Protector”), which promises to let users know if they’ve been near infected citizens. He says he believes it’s now hit well over a million downloads—with at least 500,000 recorded on Google’s Play store alone—which would mean a ninth of the entire Israeli population has downloaded the tool since its release late last week.

The difference here is users don't share their location data with the government. There's no anonymization either. Users voluntarily hand over info about where they've been. In return, they're notified if someone who's been in the same locations they have has tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile, the approved surveillance by the Shin Bet intelligence agency continues to hum along in the background, with the agency notifying citizens if they've been exposed.

Voluntary efforts like these have yet to take off in the United States, Brewster reports. An app developed by the MIT Media Lab and Harvard University has less than 50,000 downloads so far. Another app developed by Harvard asks for location information from users, but the site's stats make it clear very few people are visiting it, much less providing information.

Maybe US citizens value their privacy more than the benefits giving it up voluntarily could create. Maybe citizens believe this is still an abstraction, rather than the looming threat it actually is. Whatever the case is, it's going to be difficult to persuade millions of Americans to opt into a voluntary tracking system -- even when most Americans seem indifferent to the incredible amount of tracking being performed by wireless carriers and social media companies 24/7/365. Even so, I'd rather see under-utilized voluntary options than any mandated harvesting of location info by government agencies. There's no reason to give agencies a new power they'll be in no hurry to give up once the pandemic threat has passed.

Filed Under: covid-19, privacy, tracking, virus tracking, voluntary

Instead of COVID-19 Hazard Pay, Spectrum Is Giving Its Repair Techs $25 Gift Cards To Closed Restaurants

from the ill-communication dept

Despite its obvious reputational problems, Comcast has actually been stepping up for its workers during the COVID-19 crisis, paying its employees hazard pay, allowing unnecessary personnel to work at home, and closing at least some of its retail locations.

Charter Spectrum, the nation's second biggest cable provider, is another story entirely.

The company spent much of last week dealing with a backlash among employees who say the company is putting both its employees and local customers at risk. Charter initially refused to let employees who didn't need to be in the company's offices to work from home, despite having the capability. Even in instances where there were positive COVID-19 tests at Charter offices, the company still initially refused to let employees work from home. Only when the press got involved did Charter begin to bend, and even then it's still not letting all non-essential workers work remotely.

Charter employees say they're not getting hazard pay or adequate protective gear to do installs in customer homes. Instead, the company apparently thought it would be a good idea to give them a gift card. Not just any gift card, mind you, but a $25 gift card to a restaurant they probably can't visit anyway:

"Spectrum technicians connecting cable and internet for customers during the coronavirus outbreak will receive a $25 gift card for a local restaurant as a "token of our appreciation" from management, after staff called for hazard pay and protective equipment.

“These gift cards never expire, so if you choose a restaurant that is currently not open, the card will remain valid for future use," read the Monday night internal staff email from Tom Adams, the executive vice president of field operations. "Please take some time out of your busy day to enjoy a meal and recharge."

How generous. Needless to say, employees aren't particularly impressed:

"Would you do it for $25?” asked a field technician from Irwindale, California, who asked to remain anonymous, along with the other technicians quoted in this story, to protect his employment. He called Spectrum management "vultures."

While most experts believe the internet should largely hold up under the strain of widespread COVID-19 quarantines, it's going to be hard to keep many residential broadband connections operational with management displaying such an incredible knack for incompetence and penny pinching.

Filed Under: cable, cable techs, covid-19, protecting workers
Companies: charter, charter spectrum

During The Outbreak: All Sports Are eSports Now

from the vroom-vroom dept

The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, and in many cases shutting it down, has become so pervasive so as to even dominate the headlines here at Techdirt. To say the outbreak has altered our way of life would be a massive understatement. Social distancing, shutdown states, stuck in our homes, jobs reduced and gone; this whole thing has become a nightmare.

And it impacts even areas of our life that we enjoy, but are less important than others, such as sports. Professional and college sports have basically taken an unwanted holiday, shutting down in an effort to partake in killing this virus off. It's been strange for fans like me, who wake up on Saturdays and have to find legit ways to watch sporting events that took place years and years ago as a substitute for live broadcasts. And if you think there aren't a great many people who are starved for live sporting content, you need only look to what is going on in the autoracing world, where it's basically all become eSports now.

We'll start with Formula 1 Racing, which pivoted from its canceled live races into using video games as a substitute, using current and former drivers behind the virtual wheels.

Interestingly, because some drivers are pretty good behind a virtual wheel and others aren’t, the competition will “be configured in such a way to encourage competitive and entertaining racing,” which is a gentle way of leading into the fact rubbish drivers will be given advantages like “reduced vehicle damage, and optional anti-lock brakes and traction control for those less familiar with the game.”

The races are going to be held on the same days as actual races were supposed to go down, which means the first one should be running any minute now (at time of posting), since the Bahrain Grand Prix was meant to be held today.

These races are being broadcast over the internet and a whole bunch of people are watching them. It's somewhat gratifying to see that real drivers driving virtual cars in a game realistic enough to get people to suspend the notion that they're watching video games somewhat has become a thing. All the more cool is how this is helping fans of the sport limp along through this epidemic while still being able to watch a version of the races and racers they love.

But that pales in comparison to what NASCAR is about to pull off. Having created its own ad-hoc race using NASCAR video games and, again, real drivers, the whole thing was watched by enough people that the broadcast channels are going to pick it up and televise the next races.

The first eNASCAR iRacing Pro invitational Series event, held on Sunday, was—like Formula 1's move to video game competition—a chance for both drivers and fans to get some kind of racing fix in these weird and challenging times. In first place was three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, and nearly one million people watched it on Fox, so now a whole season of it, called FOX NASCAR iRACING, is going to take place.

And just to drive the point home that this is all about giving people a sense or simulacrum of their normal Sunday experience, Fox is bringing in the normal television commentators into the virtual "booth", including Jeff Gordon.

To say that this whole episode the past several weeks has been surreal seems like it lacks punch. Still, it's been interesting to watch eSports fill the void for us, helping us try to pantomime normalcy in a world gone mad.

Filed Under: covid-19, esports, pandemic, sports

67 Years Ago Today: Jonas Salk Announced The Polio Vaccine... And Did NOT Patent It

from the this-day-in-history dept

It seems worth noting a historical milestone today. 67 years ago today, March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the vaccine for polio, and saved millions of lives. And this is notable given the current COVID-19 pandemic we're all living with. However, at a time when we're having to be vigilant for giant pharmaceutical companies sneakily trying to game the system to get extra exclusivity, and patent maximalists pushing for extended patent terms as an "incentive" to come up with a vaccine, it's worth noting the simple fact that he did not patent the vaccine. Indeed, in a TV interview with Edward Murrow, Salk famously said "could you patent the sun?"

Right at the beginning of that video you can see the famous exchange:

Murrow: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?

Salk (shocked face): Well... the people I would say. There is no patent... Could you patent the sun?

A few years back, there was an effort by a bunch of patent maximalists to try to recontextualize and minimize that statement. They made up things, claiming that it wasn't patentable in the first place (wrong), that there was too much prior art (nope), that because so many people had donated money to the research there was a general sense that "the public had already paid for the polio vaccine" and Salk patenting it "would have represented double charging." Of course, this is all ludicrous, when you recognize that most drugs today, including basically every current effort to deal with COVID-19, are also mainly paid for by taxpayer funds in the form of NIH grants and the like.

The key point, however, is that there are many different incentives -- and believing that locking up exclusivity in order to jack up the price of a drug or vaccine to obtain monopoly rents, is a silly idea that has no basis in real economics. Jonas Salk proved that in the 1950s and saved millions and eradicated polio. Anyone focusing on patents or other exclusivities in the middle of a pandemic like this is displaying wanton greed and a real misunderstanding of how incentive structures actually work. Today, Jonas Salk is correctly remembered as a hero. Any company looking to block out competition and charge monopoly rents for a treatment of vaccine to today's pandemic is rightly seen as a greedy profiteer.

The incentive structure for saving the world need not be that individuals need to pay tons of money to get it. Patents on drugs rarely make sense in even normal times. At this moment, they make no sense.

Filed Under: covid-19, drug discovery, incentives, jonas salk, patents, polio, vaccines