Election Impact: Some New Faces, But No "Reset" for Tech Policy Debates

There will be some new faces next year.  But with the Administration and both houses of Congress remaining in the same hands, the election's main outcome for tech policy is that there won't be any immediate U-turns or game-changers in the ongoing debates over important issues like cybersecurity, privacy, and Internet neutrality.

A second-term for Obama means that the Administration's existing technology policy initiatives can continue.  The Administration can keep working on an executive order to address cybersecurity.  NTIA can proceed with its multistakeholder effort to flesh out some privacy principles for the world of mobile computing.  The FTC can continue to be aggressive on privacy issues.  The FCC will continue to back Internet neutrality safeguards, subject to the legal challenge currently underway in court.

Congress, meanwhile, remains divided.  That means partisan legislation isn't likely to pass.  Of course, many tech issues needn't be particularly partisan -- but where issues get dragged into the political realm, as happened in the case of Internet neutrality, legislative stalemate is the only likely result.  CDT will continue to push for legislation on matters like ECPA reform, where we believe there is a broad coalition that can command bipartisan support.

In terms of individual policymakers, the election will usher in some significant departures.  Senators Lieberman and Hutchison have been important players on cybersecurity.  Representative Howard Berman has been a major voice on online copyright issues, as a strong supporter of Hollywood and an original cosponsor of SOPA.   Representative Bono Mack, a key figure in online privacy debates as well as copyright, appears to be in jeopardy.  So does Rep. Lungren, an active voice on cybersecurity.  Come next year, as new committee assignments and chairmen are named, CDT looks forward to working with the new and returning Members of Congress who seek to be actively engaged on technology policy matters.

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Economic Impact of the ITRs

The ITU’s upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) could have dire implications for global economic growth and development.  Proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) could fundamentally change the way the Internet works, diminishing the positive impact of the Internet on economies around the globe. Certain treaty proposals would exacerbate the global digital divide by increasing the cost of sending traffic over the network and inhibiting nations from adopting network neutrality rules. Such extreme revisions to the treaty could change the economics of the Internet by shackling it to the rules and operating principles of twentieth-century telecommunications systems.

One proposal makes an audacious bid to replace the proven system for sending Internet traffic with a "sender pays" telecommunications model that pre-dates the World Wide Web.  Through increasing costs and constraining traffic flows, this proposal would rein in the Internet's ability to drive business, social change, and innovation. And it could limit its global reach by fracturing the network into the Internet equivalent of gated communities. CDT's new paper, Economic Impact of the ITRs, outlines how some of the proposed revisions to the regulations may have significant and far-reaching consequences on economic growth and development around the globe.

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Economic Impact of the ITRs

The ITU’s upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) could have dire implications for global economic growth and development.  Proposed revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) could fundamentally change the way the Internet works, diminishing the positive impact of the Internet on economies around the globe. Certain treaty proposals would exacerbate the global digital divide by increasing the cost of sending traffic over the network and inhibiting nations from adopting network neutrality rules. Such extreme revisions to the treaty could change the economics of the Internet by shackling it to the rules and operating principles of twentieth-century telecommunications systems.

One proposal makes an audacious bid to replace the proven system for sending Internet traffic with a "sender pays" telecommunications model that pre-dates the World Wide Web.  Through increasing costs and constraining traffic flows, this proposal would rein in the Internet's ability to drive business, social change, and innovation. And it could limit its global reach by fracturing the network into the Internet equivalent of gated communities. CDT's new paper, Economic Impact of the ITRs, outlines how some of the proposed revisions to the regulations may have significant and far-reaching consequences on economic growth and development around the globe.

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How the new Kindle Fires impact the tablet landscape

Amazon on Thursday unveiled not one, not two, not three, but four new tablets all called the Kindle Fire.

There’s the Kindle Fire, which is a slightly upgraded version of the previous tablet also named the Kindle Fire. Then there’s the Kindle Fire HD 7”, which ups the screen resolution, improves the audio, and boosts the Wi-Fi performance; the Kindle Fire HD 8.9”, which is obviously just about two inches larger diagonally; and then the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE Wireless, which is also 8.9 inches, but includes access to all ten bands of 4G service in the U.S. That last model requires a $50 per year data plan, which gets you 250MB per month of data and 20GB of cloud storage.

Whew. That’s a lot of Kindles.

And it’s likely that the new Kindles Fire will at least shake up the tablet market a bit. The other big competitors, of course, are Apple with its dominating iPad, and Google with its $199 Nexus 7. Microsoft’s Surface may well prove to be a competitor as well, but as it lacks both a ship date and a price, we’ll leave it out of this discussion.

It’s also worth nothing that—while Apple characteristically hasn’t uttered a peep about its future tablet plans just yet—rumors have the company unveiling a 7-inch tablet of its own, an iPad mini, later this year. But since we don’t know officially that such a device truly exists, and we haven’t a clue what Apple will charge for it, we can’t let that hypothetical device weigh in on our comparison, either.

So how does the tablet marketplace look right now? Click the chart below for a closer look at the tablet landscape.

Apple’s the only big dog in the game with a 10-inch tablet; its pricing starts at $399 for the iPad 2. If you want the beefier third-generation iPad with its Retina display, you’ll pay $499 for 16GB of storage, with a 32GB version at $599 and a 64GB version at $699. Add on support for LTE/4G connectivity, and you’ll need to pay another $130 up front, and you’ll need a data plan, too.

Only one of Amazon’s new tablets approaches that $499 mark—the 32GB Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE Wireless. But for $200 less, Amazon will sell you an 8.9-inch Fire that has 16GB of storage and lacks LTE connectivity, but is otherwise virtually identical to the pricier model. The 8.9-inch Fire boasts a 1920 x 1200 pixel display with 254 pixels per inch. By contrast, the third-generation iPad hits 264 pixels per inch on its 2048 x 1536 pixel display. In practice, screen quality—by the numbers—should be rather comparable, though obviously you sacrifice a diagonal inch of screen space with the Fire over the iPad.

Nexus 7

Again, at this time, Apple has no iPad to compete with Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire HD 7”, or its $159 Kindle Fire 7”—the latter being sans that “HD” label. Of course, those tablets more directly compete against the $199 Nexus 7. The 7-inch Fire HD’s screen offers, like the Nexus 7’s screen, 1280 x 800 pixels; the plain 7-inch Fire is 1024x600 pixels.

Each brand’s tablets’ plug into their own ecosystem. Google offers integrated access to Google Play, Apple to iTunes, and and Amazon to itself. Amazon seems better positioned than Google to compete with Apple on content; unlike Google, both those companys already sell many millions of books, TV shows, and movies that can be consumed on their respective devices. It’s worth noting, however, that Amazon customers can consume at least some of their purchases on an iPad—thanks to the Kindle app for books and the Amazon Instant Video app for, surprise, video. You can’t access iTunes-purchased videos or iBookstore-bought books on a Kindle Fire.

During its presentation Thursday, Amazon unveiled some clever software innovations for the Kindle Fire series: X-Ray for movies offers quick, IMDb-powered introspection into the cast and crew of the video you’re watching; FreeTime lets parents set time limits on how kids can use the tablet—unlimited book-reading, say, but limited movie watching. And Amazon also mentioned WhisperSync for games, which like Game Center for Apple, keeps track of your in-game progress across devices.

Apple’s iPad

The area Amazon—and Google, when it first showed off the Nexus 7—focused on least is the third-party app marketplace. Both Amazon and Google have app stores of their own, and each offers many thousands of apps. Neither can compete with the size of the iOS App Store, which will likely hit the 1 million app mark within the next several months. Longtime Apple users, of course, will remember the argument that just because there were many more software titles available for Windows than there were for Macs, that didn’t make the former a better platform. That said, at least today, we still live in a world where many developers choose to develop for iOS first, and for other touch-based operating systems later, if at all.

Amazon claims that it now offers the best tablet money can buy. Apple and Google—and many of those companies’ fans—will surely disagree. But it’s clear that we’ve moved beyond the era of also-ran tablets with silly names and siller feature sets: Remember the Xoom or the Playbook? We try not to, either. Whether Microsoft will make this a four-horse race, and indeed, whether any of the iPad’s competitors can push it out of its current, dominating spot—is an open question.

Daniel Ionescu contributed the comparative tablet chart to this article.

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