AM signals: city-run Internet, cable-box competition, Google car pulled over
T-Mobile has exempted some streaming video from its subscribers’ monthly data limits, but not YouTube’s. The Wall Street Journal reports that the problem is technical. Some YouTube traffic uses the UDP protocol (vs. HTTPS), which T-Mobile can have trouble detecting.
The FCC will move forward with a spectrum auction scheduled to begin March 29, according to The Hill. The commission announced some revisions to opening bid prices yesterday. The auction is set to encourage broadcasters to sell spectrum to help meet increasing demand for mobile phones and connected devices.
The Internet Association—representing companies ranging from Airbnb to Zynga and including Amazon, Facebook, FanDuel, Google, Intuit, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Salesforce.com, SurveyMonkey, TripAdvisor, Twitter, Uber, and Yelp—has filed an amicus curiae brief in support of an FCC decision in favor of municipal deployment of broadband networks. Tennessee and North Carolina have petitioned in opposition to the FCC and wish to block the expansion of city-run Internet services.
siliconbeat comments on Anne Wojcicki, cofounder and CEO of personal genetics company 23andMe. The company has recently raised a new round of funding, relaunched a personal gene-testing product, and is moving into drug discovery.
The Verge reports that a Google self-driving car may have been pulled over for driving too slowly. Writes Google, “Driving too slowly? Bet humans don’t get pulled over for that too often.”
Consumers have suffered a loss to the cable industry as a federal judge overturned a $6.31 million verdict against Cox Communications, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The original lawsuit had contended that Cox had limited competition in the cable-box market.
