Ownership

The Minnesota Department of Commerce filed an investigative report on Frontier Communications with the Minnesota Public Utilities Committee. The report says it found Frontier has failed to provide adequate, reliable phone and internet service to its Minnesota customers. The report, which the Connecticut-based company disputed, recommends Frontier be required to refund or credit customers for service outages and unauthorized charges, add staffing to improve customer service and increase investments in infrastructure and equipment.

Tech giants are facing a barrage of tough, negative coverage, with some of the same dynamics that drive saturation coverage of President Donald Trump. Many major news organizations — including The Washington Post, The Atlantic and CNN — are staffing up for greatly expanded tech coverage because: 1) Tech is the new politics. 2) This is partly in reaction to the techlash and partly in preparation for a post-Trump world, when websites can't count on politics to drive massive year-round traffic.

Big Tech is violating the Sherman Act of 1890. Why, then, isn't anything being done about Big Tech violating the Sherman Act? In recent decades, corporate defendants have persuaded judges to narrow the law, by requiring, for instance, evidence of price increases to prove a case. But consumers pay for tech platforms' services with data, not dollars. The Sherman Act makes no mention of prices, and low prices should not be the only goal. Competition should be the goal.

A new lawsuit filed against Comcast details an extensive list of lies the cable company allegedly told customers in order to hide the full cost of service. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson sued Comcast in Hennepin County District Court on Dec 21, seeking refunds for all customers who were harmed by Comcast's alleged violations of the state's Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act and Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Here are 10 questions about broadband we hope to find answers to in 2019:

The Federal Communications Commission has before it applications in the attached appendices that: (1) seek consent to the assignment of certain television broadcast licenses held by subsidiaries of Raycom Media, Inc. (Raycom) to a subsidiary of Gray Television, Inc.

Today, Americans can choose between four nationwide wireless carriers – but that choice is now threatened by the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile. If allowed to proceed as proposed, this merger will condense the market to just three national carriers, leading to higher prices, foreclosing the entrance of new competitors and eliminating jobs. And while the companies have promised that this deal would speed the roll out of 5G and improve rural service, the facts belie these claims. This deal offers no meaningful public benefit and threatens vast consumer harms.

Sprint and T-Mobile are urging Comcast to say publicly how it believes it will be affected by the proposed merger of the nation’s third and fourth largest wireless network operators.

This was the year when Big Tech companies were humbled, their reputations tarnished, and their share prices clobbered by a tidal wave of political outrage over misinformation, censorship, and data abuse. This public flogging may go too far.

Facebook's business model has always been simple: acquire as much personal information from users as possible, then find a way to make money off of it. For more than a decade, it proved to be a remarkably successful strategy, bringing to the social platform 2 billion monthly users to friend, feud and play Farmville. But as the year comes to a close, Facebook is facing a pair of major lawsuits in the US and reeling from a string of public relations disasters.