March 16, 2009 (Obama Enlists Campaign Army In Budget Fight)
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY MARCH 16, 2009
A busy week for broadband kicks off this morning at 10 am (eastern) at the Dept of Commerce. Today's discussion: 1) Private Sector Eligibility, 2) NTIA Coordination with USDA Grant & Loan Program, and 3) Innovative Programs to Encourage Sustainable Adoption of Broadband Service and Expanding Public Computer Center Capacity. Find out more http://www.benton.org/node/23060 or watch on the Web at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/video.html
THE TRANSITION
Obama Enlists Campaign Army In Budget Fight
Major FCC Structural Reforms Unlikely
Senate Commerce Committee Schedules Hearing on Commerce Secretary Nominee
Tonsager Nominated for Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development
THE STIMULUS
NTIA, RUS Going 'On Tour' - Stimulus Meeting Times and Agenda Announced
Let's Get to Work on the Purposes of the NTIA Broadband Grant Program
Let's Get to Work on the Role of the States in the NTIA Broadband Grant Program
Where Will the 'Mini-Army' of Health IT Workers Come From?
TELEVISION
FCC Sets Broadcaster Rules for Remainder of Digital TV Transition
Rehr Says NAB Was Ready For DTV Rebrand
Nineteen Broadcast Groups On Moody's 'Bottom Rung' List
PRIVACY
Many See Privacy on Web as Big Issue, Survey Says
A Call to Legislate Internet Privacy
Tim Berners-Lee warns against website snooping
JOURNALISM
The State of the News Media
Stewart, Cramer TV battle royal draws big audience
As Markets Fell, Pundits Came Down On Obama
Google Chairman Pledges to Stand With Journalists, Increase Transparency
Knight Foundation Backs Plan to Hire 50 Laid-off Journalists to Teach 'News Literacy'
Capitalism Finds Voice in China TV
INTERNET/BROADBAND
TV goes overboard with Internet
Will The Social Media Revolution Be Twittered -- Or Squashed?
Widespread Telecommuting Could Save Consumers $228 Billion, Businesses $260 Billion
FCC's Rural Healthcare Program is Still Delayed
Maine expanding school laptop program with Apple
Bell Canada doesn't want to share next-gen fiber network
TELECOM
FCC Releases New telephone Subscribership Report
Proposed Second Quarter 2009 Universal Service Contribution Factor
COMPETITION
Computer Makers Prepare to Stake Bigger Claim in Phones
As Growth Slows, Ex-Allies Square Off in a Tech Turf War
NONPROFITS
The Perfect Storm
THE TRANSITION
OBAMA ENLISTS CAMPAIGN ARMY IN BUDGET FIGHT
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Chris Cillizza]
President Obama will kick off an all-out grass-roots effort today urging Congress to pass his $3.55 trillion budget, activating the extensive campaign apparatus he built during his successful 2008 candidacy for the first time since taking office. The campaign, which will be run under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, will rely heavily on the 13 million-strong e-mail list put together during the campaign and now under the control of Organizing for America (OFA), a group overseen by the DNC. Aides familiar with the plan said it is an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress. A new online tool, to be unveiled this week on the DNC/OFA Web site, will help constituents find their congressional representatives' contact information so they can call the lawmakers' offices to voice approval of the proposal. A midweek follow-up message to the mailing list will ask volunteers to call the Hill -- the first time the OFA e-mail database has been used to urge direct contact with Congress in support of legislation. [more at the URL below]
http://benton.org/node/23284
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MAJOR FCC STRUCTURAL REFORMS UNLIKELY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
An across-the-board restructuring of the Federal Communications Commission doesn't appear to be in the cards. While the digital age suggests an opportunity for a broad rethinking of media regulation, the economic crisis has narrowed policymakers' focus. And the FCC will have its hands full over the next year with seeing the DTV transition through to the end and crafting a National Broadband Strategy. But FCC Chairman Michael Copps has already moved to change the Commission's culture including: 1) Weekly bureau meetings have been established to go over hot-button issues and priorities. 2) Bureaus and offices are working together on joint recommendations, and lines of cross-communication have been opened. Or, as one staffer put it: "You don't get yelled at for doing that anymore." 3) Commissioners can ask bureaus for information directly rather than having to go through the chairman's office. 4) Instead of having to edit already-completed drafts from the chairman, commissioners can ask for and get "options memos" that allow input before an item is drafted. 5) Senior staffers from all commissioners' offices attend weekly bureau/office meetings and regular meetings with Chairman Copps' staff. 6) Staffers are encouraged to speak to the press and publicly on panels.
http://benton.org/node/23267
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SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE SCHEDULES HEARING ON COMMERCE SECRETARY NOMINEE
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: ]
The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on the nomination of former Washington state Governor Gary Locke to be US commerce secretary. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) supports the nomination and business lobbyists said they believed he would be confirmed. As commerce secretary, the former governor would lead a huge bureaucracy whose functions range from enforcing U.S. trade laws and boosting exports to overseeing the 2010 census and monitoring global climate change.
http://benton.org/node/23270
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TONSAGER NOMINATED FOR UNDER SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT
[SOURCE: The White House]
President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Dallas P. Tonsager, Under Secretary for Rural Development, United States Department of Agriculture.
Dallas Tonsager was appointed to the Board of the Farm Credit Administration on November 30, 2004, for a term that expires May 21, 2010. Tonsager also serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation, which is responsible for ensuring the timely payment of principal and interest on obligations issued on behalf of FCS banks. [more at the URL below]
http://benton.org/node/23260
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THE STIMULUS
NTIA, RUS GOING 'ON TOUR' -- STIMULUS MEETING TIMES AND AGENDA ANNOUNCED
[SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: Andrew Feinberg]
After filling multiple overflow rooms at Tuesday's broadband stimulus kickoff event, the Rural Utilities Services and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced Friday they would hold six additional public meetings on the broadband stimulus. Included in the announcement were firm dates, times and locations for the six meetings: two in Washington, plus the satellite meetings in Las Vegas, Nev., and Flagstaff, Ariz. The next series of meetings begins with an encore performance in Washington, D.C. on Monday, March 16, at the Commerce Department auditorium. The "tour" then heads west to Las Vegas, Nev., for a meeting Tuesday, March 17 at the Charleston Heights Center, 800 South Brush Street. The Wednesday, March 18 meeting will be in Flagstaff, Az., at the Northern Arizona University's High Country Conference Center, located at 201 West Butler Avenue. The hometown crowd in Washington will have three more chances to catch the show and make comments, with meetings planned for Thursday, March 19, and then on Monday, March 23, and Tuesday, March 24. The D.C. meetings on the 16th, 19th and 23rd will feature a speaker from a state-level utility commission. Tentative agenda items for each meeting were also announced.
http://benton.org/node/23276
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LET'S GET TO WORK ON THE PURPOSES OF THE BROADBAND GRANT PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Charles Benton]
[Commentary] Great news! The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) requires the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to establish the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (B-TOP) and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to make grants and loans for the deployment and construction of broadband systems. The Recovery Act also makes $7.2 billion available for these programs. But now comes the hard part: how do we get these grants, loans and loans guarantees flowing so they help the economy quickly while also directing them to the people and places that need broadband improvements most? Staring today, and continuing over the next couple of weeks, I'd like to discuss -- not preach, but discuss -- the questions before us one at a time. I am asking that you just not read these posts, but that you respond to them as well. Because what's at this stake is more than billions of dollars. What's at stake is our telecommunications future and that is something too important to leave to someone else. Let's get to work.
http://www.benton.org/node/23204
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LET'S GET TO WORK ON THE ROLE OF THE STATES IN THE NTIA BROADBAND GRANT PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Charles Benton]
[Commentary] From Congress, there is a recognition that States have resources and a familiarity with local economic, demographic, and market conditions that could contribute to the success of the broadband grant program. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration seeks comment on how best to consult the states while the NTIA retains the sole authority to approve the awards.
http://www.benton.org/node/23251
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WHERE WILL THE 'MIN-ARMY' OF HEALTH IT WORKERS COME FROM?
[SOURCE: iHealthBeat, AUTHOR: George Lauer]
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains a set of provisions known as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or HITECH Act, that advances the use of technology in health care. Among other things, the HITECH Act provides funding for the integration of health IT education in the training of health care professionals. Industry experts predict that not only must current health care providers be trained in health IT, but a whole new tier of health IT specialists will be needed to convert the country's health system to digital records. Many predict it will take a small army to achieve the goal of computerizing the nation's medical records within five years. Don Detmer, president of the American Medical Informatics Association, estimates it will take as many as 130,000 information technicians and 70,000 informatics specialists. Where will this "mini-army" of new workers come from? Does the stimulus package include enough money to train enough people? How long will this new learning curve take?
http://benton.org/node/23259
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TELEVISION
FCC SETS BROADCASTER RULES FOR REMAINDER OF THE DIGITAL TV TRANSITION
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission]
The Federal Communications Commission set the rules of the road for the final stage of the digital television transition, adopting policies meant to protect and prepare consumers while ensuring broadcasters have the flexibility granted by Congress to switch to digital before the final June 12 deadline. The Commission's new rules provide an analog lifeline of vital news, public affairs and emergency broadcasts to consumers who need more time for the switch. The FCC also requires broadcasters who have yet to make the transition to educate consumers about a range of digital television reception problems that have arisen. These issues include: 1) Signal loss, 2) Antennas, and 3) Scanning. Generally, stations may not terminate analog service before April 16, 2009, and must air viewer notifications for at least 30 days before they cease analog service. However, noncommercial stations experiencing significant financial hardship may terminate analog service beginning on March 27. [much more at the URL below]
http://benton.org/node/23273
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REHR SAYS NAB WAS READY FOR DTV REBRAND
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
On C-SPAN's The Communicators, National Association of Broadcasters President David Rehr said Friday that NAB's DTV transition team anticipated the hard date change when Congress started talking about it and was ready to start reeducating viewers and rebranding the date once Congress moved it to June 12. "The bad news was 97% of America knew about the DTV transition, most of them knew the Feb. 17 date," he said."The good is I think we were able to transition quickly in those markets where it has now been moved to June 12. We're going to do the best we can to make sure they are aware of the message." He said the goal was to overcommunicate, rather than have someone not know their TV isn't working.
http://benton.org/node/23266
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NINETEEN BROADCAST GROUPS ON MOOD'S 'BOTTOM RUNG' LIST
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Claire Atkinson]
Moody's release its quarterly "Bottom Rung" which lists companies receiving a debt rating of Caa1 or below are expected to have trouble repaying debt within the next twelve months. Nineteen broadcast owners appear on the list of 283 companies that fall into that category. Among them are: Univision Communications, ION Media Networks, Newport Television Holdings, Spanish Broadcasting System and the Oakhill Capital Partners' which acquired a group of Fox owned stations under the subsidiary name, FoxCo Acquisition Sub. "We've had a negative outlook on the sector for some time. It's a very fixed cost business, so when revenue goes down you can only do so much on the cost side," said Berckmann who added that a number of station groups have told her they hope to gain from troubles in the newspaper sector where a number of big name titles have been drastically downscaling their operations or even threatening closure. Station groups in turn are targeting newspaper advertisers hard and even poaching ad sales staff from their print rivals.
http://benton.org/node/23268
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PRIVACY
MANY SEE PRIVACY ON WEB AS BIG ISSUE, SURVEY SAYS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stephanie Clifford]
As arguments swirl over online privacy, a new survey indicates the issue is a dominant concern for Americans. More than 90 percent of respondents called online privacy a "really" or "somewhat" important issue, according to the survey of more than 1,000 Americans conducted by TRUSTe, an organization that monitors the privacy practices of Web sites of companies like I.B.M., Yahoo and WebMD for a fee. When asked if they were comfortable with behavioral targeting — when advertisers use a person's browsing history or search history to decide which ad to show them — only 28 percent said they were. More than half said they were not. And more than 75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, "The Internet is not well regulated, and naïve users can easily be taken advantage of."
http://benton.org/node/23283
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A CALL TO LEGISLATE INTERNET PRIVACY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Saul Hansell]
High on the agenda for House Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) is passing a bill to regulate the privacy of Internet users. "Internet users should be able to know what information is collected about them and have the opportunity to opt out," he said. While he hasn't written the bill yet, Chairman Boucher said that he, working with Rep Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who is the ranking minority member on the subcommittee, wants to require Web sites to disclose how they collect and use data, and give users the option to opt out of any data collection. That's not a big change from what happens now, at least on most big sites. But in what could be a big change from current practice, Chairman Boucher wants sites to get explicit permission from users — an "opt in" — if they are going to share information with other companies.
http://benton.org/node/23272
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TIM-BERNERS-LEE WARNS AGAINST WEBSITE SNOOPING
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jonathan Lynn]
Tim Berners-Lee, whose proposal for an information management system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN 20 years ago led eventually to the World Wide Web, said Internet users governments and corporations tracking the sites they visit to build up a picture of their activities. "That form of snooping I think is really important to avoid," he said. Technology now being developed will make it easier to decide who can see material one posts on the Web, and in what circumstances. For instance people may not want prospective employers to see an album of holiday photos, he said. Lee is making sure the Semantic Web will respect the privacy of online communications and allow people to control who can use their data. The Semantic Web, an ongoing project overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), seeks to enable the Web to intelligently interpret what people are seeking when they search the Net.
http://benton.org/node/23271
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JOURNALISM
THE STATE OF THE NEWS MEDIA
[SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has released the sixth edition of its annual report on the health and status of American journalism. Even before the recession, the fundamental question facing journalism was whether the news industry could win a race against the clock for survival: could it find new ways to underwrite the gathering of news online, while using the declining revenue of the old platforms to finance the transition? In the last year, two important things happened that have effectively shortened the time left on that clock. First, the hastening audience migration to the Web means the news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought—even if most of those people are going to traditional news destinations. At least in the short run, a bigger online audience has worsened things for legacy news sites, not helped them. Then came the collapsing economy. The numbers are only guesses, but executives estimate that the recession at least doubled the revenue losses in the news industry in 2008, perhaps more in network television. Even more important, it swamped most of the efforts at finding new sources of revenue. In trying to reinvent the business, 2008 may have been a lost year, and 2009 threatens to be the same.
http://benton.org/node/23285
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STEWART, CRAMER TV BATTLE ROYAL DRAWS BIG AUDIENCE
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: ]
The war of words between comedian Jon Stewart and CNBC financial news commentator Jim Cramer drew a audience of 2.3 million to mock news program "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" Thursday night. The recent showdown between Stewart and Cramer, host of the financial news network's "Mad Money," has been widely followed by the media because Stewart harshly criticized CNBC's reporting of the financial market meltdown, saying it was too cozy with corporate chiefs and key government officials. In the end, the two seemed to agree that the financial news media should refocus on asking hard questions of key corporate and government officials, and they shook hands.
http://benton.org/node/23269
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AS MARKETS FELL, PUNDITS CAME DOWN ON OBAMA
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
The cable news channels, not content to wait for the traditional 100-day benchmark -- itself an artificial media construct -- have been grading President Barack Obama last week on his 50-day performance. "Any president is going to be held responsible for the economy, but it's patently unfair to do it in such a short time frame," said Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer. Still, he says, "in the 24-hour news cycle, you've got to have something to talk about."
http://benton.org/node/23280
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GOOGLE CHAIRMAN PLEDGES TO STAND WITH JOURNALISTS, INCREASE TRANSPARENCY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told Washington journalists Thursday night that free speech was messy, disorganized, and fundamental to a democracy that keeps the powerful honest. He pledged that his company stood with those journalists. "I'm here to tell you we stand with you," he said, but also said there "will never be a perfect way to combat censorship or privacy violations at home or abroad, but we're going to do our part." Schmidt said transparency was the key to protecting the First Amendment, and asked why every government meeting should not be streamed in real time to the world. "We've got the cameras, we've got the bandwidth, we've got the Internet and, believe me, we've got the viewers," he said. Schmidt was accepting, on behalf of Google, the Radio-Television News Directors Association First Amendment Leadership award for a business that has "upheld the highest standards of journalism and made a significant contribution to First Amendment Freedoms."
http://benton.org/node/23265
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KNIGHT FOUNDATION BACKS PLAN TO HIRE 50 LAID-OFF JOURNALISTS TO TEACH 'NEWS LITERACY'
[SOURCE: Editor&Publisher, AUTHOR: ]
New York's Stony Brook University unveiled a proposal to hire 50 laid-off journalists to undergo training this summer with the goal of joining dozens of US university campuses this fall to teach what they term "news literacy" to non-journalism majors. Nearly 100 university presidents, administrators, journalists and education activists gathered at Stony Brook on Thursday and Friday with the shared aim of proposing a national effort to teach high school and college students to think more critically and adopt a skeptical approach to the news. The 50 journalists' salaries would be paid for by a planning grant from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
http://benton.org/node/23263
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CAPITALISM FINDS VOICE IN CHINA TV
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Barboza]
At just 31 years old, Rui Chenggang has emerged as the media face of Chinese capitalism: young, smart and, to the dismay of some, deeply nationalistic. His nightly financial news program attracts 13 million viewers on China Central Television, the nation's biggest state-run network, where Mr. Rui puts tough questions to Wall Street chiefs and Chinese economists while also delivering a dose of optimism about China's outlook. He also writes a popular blog (blog.sina.com.cn/ruichenggang) infused with patriotic rhetoric. And he recently published a book, "Life Begins at 30," in which he reflects on China's economic miracle and what he sees as the difficult path ahead. In a foreword to the book, the president of Yale, Richard C. Levin, calls Mr. Rui "an energetic young standard bearer of the New China." Some critics are less generous, calling him a tireless self-promoter and a propaganda tool of the Communist Party.
http://benton.org/node/23279
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
TV GOES OVERBOARD WITH INTERNET
[SOURCE: Variety, AUTHOR: Ben Fritz]
Viewers, particularly tech-savvy younger viewers, are flocking to the 24/7 access offered by Web streaming, but, like newspapers and magazines struggling to survive, the broadcast networks have yet to make much money from this change in habits. In fact, networks may actually be undercutting themselves in their quest to avoid the fate of the music business. While more and more viewers are watching TV programming online, the networks aren't getting anywhere near the amount that they would earn from commercials that run the old-fashioned way. The problem is exacerbated by the recession, as big-ticket advertisers go for the safety of the tried and true. As a means of siphoning away traditional TV viewers, the Internet could soon make cable's threat to the Big Four nets seem like a cakewalk. In fact, the competition posed by online distribution is equally menacing to broadcast and ad-supporting cable channels, which could make the Internet the common enemy that finally unifies the smallscreen's rival factions. The TV-Internet balance is vexing folks worldwide, in varying ways.
http://benton.org/node/23257
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WILL THE SOCIAL MEDIA REVOLUTION BE TWITTERED -- OR SQUASHED?
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Art Brodsky]
[Commentary] The news that more time is spent on social networks than on email should be just the kind of news that telephone companies and cable companies would like to hear. For much different reasons, Google should also. After all, social networking is at the beginning of its development and is growing more sophisticated each day. Every day, the news gets more intriguing, making the old cliché about developments occurring in "Internet time" simply quaint. Now, the social networking is developing in "Twitter time," the time it takes to type out your 140 characters of experience, knowledge, wisdom or nonsense. Perhaps social networking takes up so much time because there are so many outlets to use. Instead of simply checking one email address or two, someone might check those, plus a Facebook or MySpace mail, or keep up with the Twitter feeds. Rather than look at a potential land of plenty, telecom carriers see only a land of scarcity, and they want to capitalize on it by restricting access to bandwidth by customers.
http://benton.org/node/23256
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WIDESPREAD TELECOMMUTING COULD SAVE CONSUMERS $228 BILLION, BUSINESSES $260 BILLION
[SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
Working from home could save United States consumers $228 billion, add $260 billion to companies' bottom line, and save the government another $14 billion, according to a study released Tuesday by Undress4success.com. "Using the recently-released U.S. Census American Community Survey figures, and data from over a dozen authoritative studies, the calculator quantifies what every city, county, region, Congressional District, and State in the nation could save through telecommuting / work-from-home initiatives," according to a press release from the California-based group.
http://benton.org/node/23264
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FCC'S RURAL HEALTHCARE PROGRAM IS STILL DELAYED
[SOURCE: New Hampshire Public Radio, AUTHOR: Chris Jensen]
In 2006 the Federal Communications Commission announced it would spend four hundred seventeen million dollars to create the Rural Healthcare Pilot Project. The Project would set up a communication system to link healthcare providers. But, apparently, the bureaucracy of the process has proven to be quite daunting and projects are not getting off the ground. Not one of the 69 groups nationwide that have applied has an operating system. Only two in Wisconsin and Montana have finally been guaranteed money.
http://benton.org/node/23255
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MAINE EXPANDING SCHOOL LAPTOP PROGRAM WITH APPLE
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: David Sharp]
Despite the economic turmoil, Maine is expanding its program to provide laptop computers to students. Maine started its first-in-the-nation program by distributing more than 30,000 computers to each seventh- and eighth-grader in all of the state's public schools in 2002 and 2003. Now the goal is to provide a laptop to every public school student in grades 7-12 by the fall. About 30 high schools already have laptops that they obtained outside the scope of the original program. But now all 120 of Maine's high schools, along with 241 middle schools, will have new laptops under the same program, at a cost of about $242 per computer per year, said Education Commissioner Susan Gendron. Education Department officials announced this week that they're negotiating a four-year lease with Apple Inc. for 100,000 Apple MacBook laptops. Gov. John Baldacci said in his State of the State address Tuesday night that revamping the laptop computer program would turn it "into a powerful tool for the entire family."
http://benton.org/node/23278
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BELL CANADA DOESN'T WANT TO SHARE NEXT-GEN FIBER NETWORK
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
Bell Canada threatens to yank its billions from the Canadian fiber market if the government insists on making it share those circuits with competing ISPs at regulated rates. In the UK, however, next-generation line-sharing is always the law of the land. Ars takes a look at line-sharing's "Will it destroy investment?" debate.
http://benton.org/node/23254
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TELECOM
FCC RELEASES NEW TELEPHONE SUBSCRIBERSHIP REPORT
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission]
The Federal Communications Commission released its latest report on telephone subscribership levels in the United States. The report presents subscribership statistics based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted by the Census Bureau in July 2008. The report also shows subscribership levels by state, income level, race, age, household size, and employment status. Findings, as of July 2008: the telephone subscribership penetration rate in the U.S. was 95.4%, an increase of 0.4% over the rate from July 2007. The telephone penetration rate for households in income categories below $20,000 was at or below 93.9%, while the rate for households in income categories over $50,000 was at least 98.2%. Penetration rates ranged from 91.7% for households headed by a person under 25 to at least 96.3% for households headed by a person over 55. Households with one person had a penetration rate of 93.0%, compared to a rate of 96.8% for households with four or five persons. The penetration rate for unemployed adults was 94.3%, while the rate for employed adults was 96.4%.
http://benton.org/node/23262
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PROPOSED SECOND QUARTER 2009 UNIVERSAL SERVICE CONTRIBUTION FACTOR
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission]
The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Managing Director announced that the proposed universal service contribution factor for the second quarter of 2009 will increase to 0.113 or 11.3 percent. Total Projected Collected Interstate and International End-User Telecommunications Revenues for Second Quarter 2009: $18.714716 billion. About 58% of the projected program support with go to the High-Cost fund aimed at making telephone service more affordable in rural areas; 28% will go to making telecommunications services more affordable for schools and libraries.
http://benton.org/node/23261
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COMPETITION
COMPUTER MAKERS PREPARE TO STAKE BIGGER CLAIM IN PHONES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Ashlee Vance]
The computer industry has hit upon its Next Big Thing. It is called a phone. The companies are shifting gears because their technological feats of the last two decades — smaller laptops with faster chips to deliver snazzier graphics — no longer impress consumers, who increasingly find their three-year-old computers adequate for everyday tasks. The new smartphones promised by PC companies will, among other things, handle the full glory of the Internet, power two-way video conferences, and stream high-definition movies to your TV. It is a development that spells serious competition for established cellphone makers and phone companies.
http://benton.org/node/23282
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AS GROWTH SLOWS, EX-ALLIES SQUARE OFF IN A TECH TURF WAR
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ben Worthen, Justin Scheck]
The maturing tech industry has set giant companies on a collision course, as once-disparate technologies take on new capabilities in a "convergence" of computers, software and networking. With the recession expected to shrink sales across the industry, tech companies are turning on each other in their search for growth. Cisco plans to announce it will start building its own servers, the powerful machines that run corporate computer centers across the globe. Its "blade" server, which it designed and developed for two years under unusual secrecy, places it in direct competition with long-time partner Hewlett-Packard Co.
http://benton.org/node/23281
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NONPROFITS
The Perfect Storm
THE PERFECT STORM
[SOURCE: The Nation, AUTHOR: Eyal Press]
At a forum in New York City in November, Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, predicted that "at a minimum" more than 100,000 nonprofit organizations would be wiped out in the next two years. Light asked the audience members whether any of them had tuned in to the recent hearing in Washington on the impending nonprofit upheaval. The room fell silent. Light then admitted he'd missed the deliberations as well, because, alas, there hadn't been any. "We should demand a hearing immediately on the state of the nonprofit sector--immediately," he declared. Not everyone believes the fallout will be quite so cataclysmic--historically, the nonprofit sector has proved surprisingly resilient, even growing during some recent recessions--but the scale and scope of the current downturn is clearly different. And its reverberations will likely extend far beyond the world of high-profile advocacy organizations. From the arts to education, soup kitchens to housing organizations, nonprofits perform an array of functions that shape the texture of daily life in communities across the country, often by helping people whose situations were precarious even before the economy crashed. Now, with foundations watching their endowments shrivel, many individual donors maxed out and states across the country staring at massive budget deficits, nonprofits are scaling back their services at the very moment when the need for them is escalating.
http://benton.org/node/23258
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