Jan 5, 2010 (Obama Admin wants broadband competition)
"The scarcity of spectrum is a fundamental obstacle that the [FCC] should address."
-- Department of Justice on the National Broadband Plan
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2010
NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
NTIA to FCC: National Broadband Plan should include More Spectrum to Spur More Competition
Justice Department Calls for Airwaves for Wireless
Comparing the spectrum crisis to the energy crisis
New developments in the broadband industry
THE STIMULUS
NTIA three months behind on broadband grant distribution, GAO says
FierceTelecom 2010 Prediction: Middle mile march
Boston Public Library and Partners Win Broadband Stimulus
Internet effort aims to get more Detroiters connected
MORE ON BROADBAND
Search, but You May Not Find
Economic Recovery Through Municipal Wireless Networks
Google asks to build, oversee FCC's white spaces database
CONTENT
NCTA: Free Press Crying 'Collusion' In Crowded, Competitive Marketplace
Rules Set For BitTorrent Case
2010: The Year of the Successful Online News Paywall?
Google Is Becoming a Media Company
Ten for the Next Ten
Big Media Gambles That Content Will Rule
How the Internet Changed Writing in the 2000s
Google-itis: Beware of Class Action Settlements
Brief Web access in China as Great Firewall falls
TELECOM
Heed the Schumpeterian power of the mobile phone
The Triumph of VoIP Could Spell Doom for Voice
Google Moves to Keep Its Lead as Web Goes Mobile
Universal Service Comments Due January 28
FTC Approves Two Reports to Congress on the National Do Not Call Registry
Femtocells poised to make impact after challenging year
HEALTH IT
Health IT Provisions in Senate Health Care Bill
Innovation Inspired by Economics: 2010 Health IT Forecast
Remote Electronic Patient Monitoring Could Save $197 Billion Over 25 Years
Study finds gap between EMR vision, reality
MORE ONLINE
CES To Highlight Over-The-Air Innovation
Technology not as advanced by 2010 as some had hoped
Gov. Quinn makes pro-consumer choice in naming Flores new ICC chief
NBC to Increase Production of Pilots
House immigration bill would overhaul H-1B visa program
BBC creates $12.3 billion, claims report
Trade shows turn to virtuality
Levin apologizes for 'worst deal of century'
UK Advertisers Cool on Product Placement
The Near-Miss Plane Plot Leads Newspaper Headlines
NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
NTIA WEIGHS IN ON NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: National Telecommunications and Information Administration, AUTHOR: Lawrence Strickling]
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), speaking on behalf of the Administration, called on the Federal Communications Commission to use the National Broadband Plan to identify means to promote competition in the broadband Internet access marketplace. "Given the projections of explosive growth in wireless bandwidth requirements, a primary tool for promoting broadband competition should be to make more spectrum available for broadband wireless services," Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the NTIA, wrote the FCC. "The administration supports exploring both commercial and government spectrum available for reallocation, and favors a spectrum inventory to determine how radio frequencies are currently being used and by whom." NTIA noted that in most markets consumers have at best two choices for broadband service and possibly only one that offers the speed they need for such services as online video streaming. Noting the high cost of building a wireline broadband infrastructure, the NTIA said wireless broadband may be the most viable source of competition to the dominant broadband services offered by the cable and telephone companies. Still, the NTIA noted that "the two largest US wireless providers, Verizon and AT&T, also offer wireline services in major portions of the country, raising the question of whether these providers will market these services as replacements for wireline services, either within the region where they provide wireline services or at all." In addition, NTIA also said that while auctions "under most circumstances" have been the best way to allocate new spectrum frequencies, aid dominant broadband players "intent on forestalling new entry that will compete for the incumbents' existing customer base" may be the ones that provide the highest bids for new sources of spectrum. "Based on the Department of Justice's experience with other highly concentrated telecommunications markets, NTIA agrees with the Department that 'there are substantial advantages to deploying newly available spectrum in order to enable additional providers to mount stronger challenges to broadband incumbents.'"
benton.org/node/30939 | National Telecommunications and Information Administration | TechDailyDose | B&C
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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CALLS FOR SPECTRUM
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Todd Shields]
The US Department of Justice has filed comments in the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan proceeding and suggests the government should free "underutilized" spectrum for use by wireless companies to increase competition for high-speed Internet services. "The scarcity of spectrum is a fundamental obstacle that the commission should address," the comments read. Wireless services can provide an alternative to Internet providers that use wires, such as cable companies and telephone companies, the Justice Department said in its comments. It said a lack of airwaves, or spectrum, is a constraint on wireless companies "and new start-ups." The Justice Department said there are "unanswered questions" about whether wireless Internet services will be offered at prices to compete with wired Internet services. The Justice Department said that "reallocating spectrum that is being underutilized" would encourage development of wireless services and "could help" to make them more competitive with offerings sent over wires. Reallocation "should be considered when the total value of that spectrum is significantly greater in a new use than in its existing use," the Justice Department said.
benton.org/node/30921 | Bloomberg | Department of Justice | Reuters
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COMPARING THE SPECTRUM CRISIS TO THE ENERGY CRISIS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
The current debate over spectrum access and the looming "spectrum crisis" contains numerous parallels to the ongoing debate over the national energy crisis. Everyone agrees that, under current business models, current technology, and current assumptions, our national policies cannot meet the increasing needs of commercial users, federal users, and state and local governments. Also paralleling the energy crises, most of the solutions proposed focus on traditional solutions of finding "more" spectrum rather than what could be called "spectrum conservation," using technology and changing patterns of consumption to stretch existing resources further. Nowhere is this "drill, baby, drill" mentality more prevalent than in the proposed approaches to federal, state and local spectrum access. The predominant proposals with regard to federal use revolve around clearing federal users and auctioning the cleared bands. Commercial interests generally display the same shortsighted and unsustainable attitudes toward state and municipal government. Most comments from commercial operators regard state and local governments as obstacles requiring federal preemption rather than as potential partners in developing innovative solutions. Such proposals, while attractive in the short term, are unsustainable in the long term. PK recommends that the federal government: 1) Increase mixed use through opportunistic sharing and secondary markets in ways that do not interfere with existing federal use or prevent future auctions of spectrum. 2) Combine the allocations of all federal agencies into a single "federal pool" managed by NTIA in consultation with the Federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO). 3) Streamline the process of private applications for "mixed federal use" and approval of opportunistic sharing technologies within 1 year as provided for by law. 4) Increase the frequency and quality of FCC/NTIA coordination, and improve transparency in the management of federal spectrum.
benton.org/node/30938 | Public Knowledge | PK ex parte comments | Rose and Feld report
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NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BROADBAND INDUSTRY
[SOURCE: Broadband Forum, AUTHOR: Robin Mersh]
In meetings at the Federal Communications Commission, the Broadband Forum (BBF) -- a group made up of telephone companies and other Internet service providers -- discussed the capabilities of fiber and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technologies in regards to the relationship between capacity (rate) and line length (reach), and how this can be factored into calculations for coverage of a population and geography. BBF discussed Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) and bonding for DSL technologies and when the capabilities of these technologies will impact deployments. BBF discussed the background, experience, work and procedures of the BBF, and how the
Forum can potentially help the development of the National Broadband Plan. BBF concluded with the FCC Task Force identifying several issues in which they would like further information from the Broadband Forum, specifically: detailed tables and discussion of downstream and upstream capacity for VDSL2 (both with and without vectoring) and ADSL2plus, and how that impacts coverage. The Broadband Forum has submitted specific feedback to these points in: Broadband Forum response to FCC National Broadband Task Force request for information regarding broadband access technology capabilities
benton.org/node/30937 | Broadband Forum | BBF presentation | BBF response to FCC questions
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THE STIMULUS
NTIA THREE MONTHS BEHIND SCHEDULE
[SOURCE: FederalComputerWeek, AUTHOR: Alice Lipowicz]
The Commerce Department has had to push back by three months its scheduled date for awarding the first round of broadband grants under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, according to a November report from the Government Accountability Office. NTIA initially hoped to finish awarding the first round of grants by November 2009 but now expects those grants to be awarded by the end of February, due to delays brought on because of a compressed time frame to set up the program and insufficient staffing to handle the flood of applications, according to a GAO report. In order to award the broadband monies by Sept. 30, 2010, under the law, NTIA and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service must establish their respective grant programs, solicit and evaluate applications, and award the funds. In addition to a compressed time frame, the agencies are handling many more applications than they are accustomed to handling. For example, NTIA received 1,770 applications for the $4.7 billion in broadband grants, which is twice as many applications and three times as much funding as the agency has handled in other grant programs. One of the risks is to NTIA's required "maintenance-of-effort" rule under the stimulus law. Under that provision, agencies must show that stimulus grant recipients would not have proceeded with the projects "but for" or without the stimulus law funding. "Due to limited staff, NTIA may have an inability to thoroughly review applications and therefore the agency risks funding projects that might not meet the objectives of the Recovery Act's 'but-for' test," the GAO report said.
benton.org/node/30936 | FederalComputerWeek | GAO
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MIDDLE MILE MARCH
[SOURCE: Fierce, AUTHOR: Sean Buckley]
In bridging the broadband divide, service providers in underserved areas will need competitively priced interconnection and backhaul facilities to major network interconnection points. Enter the middle mile. The middle mile really is a reinvention of a concept that has already existed -- with many telephone cooperatives (Iowa Network Services and Syringa Networks) who pooled resources to provide their members with everything from long-distance voice transport, optical and even video transmission. Now the middle mile has become the center of attention in the Obama administration's broadband stimulus funding grant award process. Thus far, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Rural Utilities Service have awarded four states (Georgia, Maine, New York and South Dakota) funding grants for their middle mile projects. Of course, these projects came with the usual protests from the large cable and telephone companies.
benton.org/node/30917 | Fierce
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BOSTON LIBRARY A BTOP GRANTEE
[SOURCE: Government Technology, AUTHOR: Andy Opsahl]
The Boston Public Library (BPL) partnered with the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) and Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF) to win $1.9 million in the first round of broadband stimulus awards. The BPL plans to add at least 281 public terminals for accessing the Internet. Among the winning application's promises was to organize a schedule of Internet usage classes to go with the new computers. The city's main library will offer one class per day, while the other 25 branches will run a minimum of a single class per week. At least one class in Spanish will happen at a single branch per month as well. The BPL's share of the stimulus winnings will be roughly $500,000, which will go mostly for purchasing hardware. The BPL needed to contribute $100,000 in matching funds. Half of it came from putting aside money within the BPL's existing budget for wiring the terminals. David Leonard, chief technology officer for the BPL, found the remaining $50,000 from other city sources. The library will do cross-promotion with the computer centers run by the BHA and BCYF. The three agencies crafted their stimulus application so that they wouldn't be in competition with one another. All three will offer classes, but in many cases, the BHA and BCYF won't offer courses already provided by the BPL. For example, the BHA and BCYF may leave Internet research classes to the BPL because librarians are especially well suited for teaching research.
benton.org/node/30919 | Government Technology
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GETTING MORE DETROITERS CONNECTED
[SOURCE: Detroit Free Press, AUTHOR: Gina Damron, Naomi Patton]
By the end of 2010, thousands of low-income Detroit residents could gain Internet access through an initiative to connect targeted areas with wireless broadband service. The Detroit Connected Community Initiative project -- mainly funded by an $800,000 grant awarded from the Knight Foundation in November -- is expected to develop a broadband infrastructure in three areas within Detroit's Midtown-Northend and Osborn-Northeast areas. Patrick Gossman, executive director of the Community Telecommunications Network and Wayne State University's deputy chief information officer, said the number of Detroiters with access to broadband or wireless Internet in most areas of the city is less than 40%. Some residents have computers, he said, but only slow dial-up Internet service. To help provide the Web access in neighborhoods, CTN is partnering with 4C's Family Place, Focus: HOPE and Matrix Human Services. The service will be free, at least initially. CTN is also adding $100,000 to the initiative and working to get federal grants to help get computers for residents.
benton.org/node/30918 | Detroit Free Press
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MORE ON BROADBAND
SEARCH NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Adam Raff]
[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission errs in directing Network Neutrality regulation at Internet service providers. Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's new Bing have become the Internet's gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The FCC needs to look beyond network neutrality and include "search neutrality": the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much market power lies in the hands of one company: Google. With 71 percent of the United States search market (and 90 percent in Britain), Google's dominance of both search and search advertising gives it overwhelming control. Google's revenues exceeded $21 billion last year, but this pales next to the hundreds of billions of dollars of other companies' revenues that Google controls indirectly through its search results and sponsored links. The FCC is now inviting public comment on its proposed network neutrality rules, so there is still time to persuade the commission to expand the scope of the regulations. In particular, it should ensure that the principles of transparency and nondiscrimination apply to search engines as well as to service providers. The alternative is an Internet in which innovation can be squashed at will by an all-powerful search engine. [Adam Raff is a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology firm.] (12/27)
benton.org/node/30920 | New York Times
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ECONOMIC RECOVERY THROUGH MUNICIPAL WIRELESS NETWORKS
[SOURCE: MuniWireless, AUTHOR: Larry Karisny]
The year 2009 started with municipal wireless left for dead by mainstream media, and it ended with billions in stimulus grant monies supporting the expansion of broadband throughout the world. From rural broadband expansion to making utilities smart, there is a brighter future for municipal wireless broadband networks and the applications support them. We have learned from failed municipal wireless models and can now move forward. There is a new direction: combined public-private wireless networks that offer sustainable financial models and create jobs, reduce energy use and health care costs, promote affordable education and improve national security. There are three reasons why these new models will be successful: 1) Financial sustainability, 2) Technical model, and 3) Societal implications.
benton.org/node/30935 | MuniWireless
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GOOGLE ASKS TO BUILD, OVERSEE FCC'S WHITE SPACES DATABASE
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
Google proposed to the Federal Communications Commission Monday that it build and oversee a white spaces database for mobile broadband services. The company has backed the use of white spaces -- unlicensed spectrum -- for laptops, e-readers, smart phones and other devices to connect to wireless broadband. The unlicensed airwaves would provide an alternative to commercial licensed spectrum held by the nation's largest wireless network operators. Google's role as an administrator of a database would deepen the company's foothold in communications services. In a blog post Monday night, Google's telecom and media counsel, Rick Whitt, said it wants to be one of potentially several administrators of a geo-location database for devices to connect to so as to ensure they do not interfere with licensed television and wireless microphone signals.
benton.org/node/30946 | Washington Post
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CONTENT
NCTA: FREE PRESS CRYING 'COLLUSION' IN CROWDED MARKETPLACE
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Kyle McSlarrow issued an extensive statement Monday branding Free Press' suggesting that TV Everywhere is collusion "strange" at best, and vigorously defending what he called an effort to come up with a business model for compensating programmers for online content. Free Press and other advocacy groups said they were not opposed to pay models for content, just not ones that included companies getting together to create an anticompetitive model of exclusive delivery of Internet content. Free Press wants Congress and the Justice Department to investigate TV Everywhere for possible collusion among its cable, satellite and telecommunications participants. "The call for an 'investigation' of TV Everywhere has no factual or legal basis no matter how many times Free Press and its allies repeat the words 'collusion,' 'cartel' and 'illegal.' In the name of protecting competition, they would actually reduce the amount of online content available to consumers," McSlarrow said.
benton.org/node/30934 | Broadcasting&Cable | TechDailyDose | NCTA
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RULES SET FOR BITTORRENT CASE
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has slated Comcast's appeal of the Federal Communications Commission's BitTorrent decision as the third of three cases to be heard Jan. 8. According to Comcast, each side has been given 25 minutes — actually a lot of time, as these arguments go, and a possible indication that the court has a particular interest in the issue. Arguments could be extended even beyond that span, at the judges' discretion, as there is no case scheduled for after it. The FCC found back in summer 2008 that Comcast violated its Internet open-access guidelines by blocking BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic. Comcast took the FCC to court over the decision, challenging the legal underpinnings as well as the findings that Comcast was in violation, which it said "were not justified by the record."
benton.org/node/30933 | Multichannel News
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2010: THE YEAR OF THE PAYWALL?
[SOURCE: Fast Company, AUTHOR: Kit Eaton]
Sweeping aside the controversy and nonsense surrounding the issue of online news content paywalls, the Financial Times has stepped up to the mark to note 2010 will see income from paywalls surpassing ad revenues. The FT Group's chief exec John Ridding is responsible for the news, unequivocally stating "we reckon [2010] will be the first year that revenues from content overtake revenues from print advertising." Since the online content is protected by a partial paywall, and many corporate subscribers pay for physical editions of the paper to keep abreast of financial news, its these figures that represent what Ridding is referring to as "content revenues." And though the news seems small, it's pretty amazing stuff: Advertising revenues are, for many, the one and only way to make money in a world where physical newspapers readership figures are dipping, and where the online publishing market is dominated by a free-for-all philosophy for access. So, will 2010 be the year of the successful news site paywall? Not for everyone, perhaps, though it might work for some. The physical newspaper also isn't quite dead yet, so don't expect to see them disappearing this year. Unless, that is, some upstart newcomer with revolutionary digital content distribution on a paradigm-breaking piece of hardware comes along. Apple Tablet anyone?
benton.org/node/30927 | Fast Company
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GOOGLE IS BECOMING A MEDIA COMPANY
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Simon Dumenco]
[Commentary] Google, despite its protestations to media companies that it is here to help them, not compete with them, is officially becoming a media company. Google has, of course, many win-win advertising rev-share partnerships with media companies. But you know what's totally awesome for Google? When it doesn't have to share revenue! Which it can do by buying media companies like Yelp. Yep, Yelp is a media company: It offers content to consumers. It's gussied up in social-media dress, but the bottom line is you go to Yelp or use its mobile app to access its content. Yelp, of course, gets its content basically for free, because it's all user-generated. So if Google buys Yelp, it gets 100% of the advertising revenue, because it doesn't have to rev-share with a pesky little media company, because Google itself becomes a media company -- one that doesn't have to pay media people to create media. What's hilarious about Google chasing local-listings site Yelp in 2009 is that, back in 1997 -- last century! -- Microsoft also was trying to get into the local-listings business. The lesson here: It's time to ignore Google's insistence that it doesn't want to be a media company. The fact that it is not, like Microsoft in 1997, hiring a ton of journalists is meaningless -- because, well, even media companies (except, weirdly, AOL) have stopped hiring journalists. Mark my words: By not hiring journalists, but instead dominating the user-generated content business by buying companies such as Yelp, Google will become a massive media company (that, among other things, will kill off the city-and-regional magazine market, and what's left of local alternative newspapers).
benton.org/node/30916 | AdAge
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TEN FOR THE NEXT TEN
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Bono]
[Commentary] The musician offers ten ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil. He cautions that the only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we're just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of "24" in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free. A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can't live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business. We're the post office, they tell us; who knows what's in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content. Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product. Note to self: Don't get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn't already left to write jingles. [Bono is the lead singer of the band U2 and a founder of the advocacy group ONE and (Product)RED] (1/2)
benton.org/node/30915 | New York Times
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BRIEF WEB ACCESS IN CHINA AS GREAT FIREWALL FALLS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: David Pierson]
Web users reported an outage of China's strict Internet controls, known as the Great Firewall, for several hours Monday morning, allowing them brief access to banned Web sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Cautious excitement spread on some social-networking platforms as hope flared that Internet freedoms suddenly were being expanded after months of intensifying scrutiny. By the time many woke up, however, strict restrictions had returned. Error messages once again flashed across computer screens for sites blocked by the nation's censorship filter. Rumors abounded that the outage was due to maintenance work administered by Internet provider China Unicom. Others believed it had something to do with the heavy snow that blanketed northern China over the weekend.
benton.org/node/30947 | Washington Post
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TELECOM
THE POWER OF THE MOBILE PHONE
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Robert Cyran, Rob Cox]
[Commentary] What will the mobile phone devour next? It permanently crushed the gadget that defined the beginning of the last decade the personal digital assistant and is eating through the landline telephone, digital camera, iPod and even the watch. The creative destruction has just begun. Investors should heed the mobile phone's Schumpeterian powers. When the century began, bankers 'beamed' each other information via the now-quaint infrared technology of the Palm Pilot, whose maker boasted a $92 billion market value. Palm shifted into mobile phones but lost 97 percent of its value along the way. This should provide a cautionary tale to other industries standing in the cell phone's path. The most obvious target is the traditional telephone. Almost a quarter of all American households, and counting, no longer have a fixed-line phone. That's a drag for operators like AT&T and Verizon who must continue to run their expensive copper-based infrastructure despite running the biggest wireless networks, but terrifying for providers without wireless operations, like Qwest and Frontier. Even the iPod faces obsolescence. Unit sales are in decline. Although that's not a problem for Apple as long as its customers listen to music on their pricier iPhones instead.
benton.org/node/30932 | Reuters
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THE TRIUMPH OF VOIP COULD SPELL DOOM FOR VOICE
[SOURCE: Internet Evolution, AUTHOR: Tom Nolle]
[Commentary] Voice calling has been the engine of profit for the telcos for a century, and most of it has been old-fashioned switched voice -- what's called "plain old telephone service" (POTS). When VoIP was first introduced, everybody predicted that voice on the Internet would destroy the old POTS model. Now, with even service providers buying VoIP companies, it looks like that's about to happen. And the changes on the Internet could be profound. Imagine for a moment that your voice services were all replaced by Skype or a similar service. If you open your calling to everyone, you can expect zillions of telemarketing calls with no hope of relief, because regulators can't trace or even authenticate the user names. Same with harassing calls. And if you call 911, maybe somebody will come -- maybe even to the location where you made the call -- but you probably can't be certain. Forget wiretaps on criminals and potential terrorists, because there's no guarantee lawful intercept will work. Nobody is going to tolerate this sort of thing, but that's what the future would look like if we simply transferred our voice calls to current IP-based services without additional steps and safeguards. To get some protection, we'd have to regulate these new voice services.
benton.org/node/30929 | Internet Evolution
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GOOGLE MOVES TO KEEP ITS LEAD AS WEB GOES MOBILE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Miguel Helft]
Google's expected unveiling on Tuesday of a rival to the iPhone is part of its careful plan to try to do what few other technology companies have done before: retain its leadership as computing shifts from one generation to the next. The rapid emergence of the smartphone as a versatile computing device may be as much a challenge as an opportunity for Google, which built its multibillion-dollar empire largely on the sale of small text ads linked to search queries typed on PCs. As people increasingly rely on powerful mobile phones instead of PCs to access the Web, their surfing habits are bound to change. What's more, online advertising could lose its role as the Web's primary economic engine, putting Google's leadership role into question.
benton.org/node/30945 | New York Times
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UNIVERSAL SERVICE COMMENTS DUE JANUARY 28
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
On December 15, 2009, the Federal Communications Commission released a further notice of proposed rulemaking regarding high-cost universal service support for non-rural carriers, in response to the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Qwest Communications International, Inc. v. FCC. The Commission set the comment and reply comment deadlines as 30 and 45 days, respectively, after publication of the summary of the further notice in the Federal Register. On December 29, 2009, a summary of the further notice appeared in the Federal Register. Accordingly, comments will be due on January 28, 2010, and reply comments will be due on February 12, 2010.
benton.org/node/30930 | Federal Communications Commission
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WILL 2010 BE THE YEAR OF THE FEMTOCELL?
[SOURCE: Dow Jones, AUTHOR: Timothy Hay]
In 2009, consumers flocked to the new smartphones hitting the market, and the world's wireless operators felt the pressure to upgrade their networks in response. 2010 will be the year that the carriers - and maybe even consumers - start placing orders for network-boosting products, investors and entrepreneurs say. And among the gizmos that will be in high demand are femtocells, the small base stations that boost coverage. Long a subject of debate in the telecom world, femtos are poised to become a household word, as some of the barriers to widespread deployment will fall away with the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. The price of consumer and enterprise femtocells has been just one of the factors delaying a widespread rollout, industry watchers say. The world's major carriers have taken longer than many anticipated to test out various network boosting products, like Wi-Fi, distributed-antenna systems and femtocells. "Operators were stalled testing the technology within their network," said Serge Pequeaux, chief executive of Dallas-based femto company AirWalk Communications Inc. Femtocells "did not take off in 2009 the way manufacturers ... expected it to. There were a lot of trials in 2009. But next year, we're going to see the numbers increase dramatically." Femtocells - a cousin technology to picocells and macrocells - are small boxes that function like miniature cell towers. The devices, also called access-point base stations, plug directly into the broadband connection in a home or business, ironing out glitches in coverage. Inside a femtocell is a system of chips and antennas that can rout voice and data traffic over the Internet rather than a carrier's main cell network. This capability makes femtos a good business proposition for the operators, who want to handle increasing amounts of traffic without building new towers.
benton.org/node/30911 | Dow Jones
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HEALTH IT
HEALTH IT PROVISIONS IN SENATE HEALTH CARE BILL
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Greg Hitt, Janet Adamy]
The Senate's version of the health insurance reform bill passed 60-39 on December 24. Among its health information technology provisions, the legislation includes: 1) the establishment of standards to allow the electronic exchange of health information among long-term health care facilities; 2) directs the Health and Human Services secretary to develop a program to award grants or contracts to establish community-based health teams aimed at supporting primary care practices on a variety of health care services, such as the application of health IT to support medical homes; 3) requires HHS to create a Web site to let Medicare beneficiaries compare physicians based on quality measures and patients' perceptions of care; and 4) authorizes the release and use of standardized extracts of Medicare claims data. (12/28)
benton.org/node/30922 | Wall Street Journal | iHealthBeat
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