Revere Digital

Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son lambasted the Internet service currently available to US consumers as “horrible” -- way too slow and way too costly -- even the Internet service offered currently by his own company, the nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier.

But he said he could fix that, if the Obama Administration were to allow Sprint to merge with No. 4 carrier T-Mobile. He said that such a merger -- which he stressed hasn’t been agreed to -- would allow the combined company to gain enough scale to install new technology nationally that he claimed would offer speeds up to 10x current levels in homes.

[Commentary] Since their inception, there has been a flurry of debate around the legitimacy and efficacy of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Widely recognized as game-changing in education, they offer radical reach and democratize access to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

However, the rise of anything new and exciting is typically accompanied by criticism. In the case of MOOCs, it has been heavy. Skeptics point to uncertainty in scalability, assessment, engagement -- the list goes on.

The main argument being made against MOOCs attacks the perceived lack of success as measured by their low completion rates (Mass MOOC Dropouts). The interpretation of this metric varies greatly. Critics are obsessed with the infamous five percent rate, pointing out that “If 95 percent of students who enrolled in a residential college course dropped out or failed, that course would rightly be considered a disaster.”

Examined through conversion rates, one of the Web’s favorite metrics, five percent is very typical for early Web companies. Through this lens, our criticism of MOOCs instantly transforms into a relatively average complaint.

[Lewis is Founder and Executive Chairman of memory-management tool Cerego]

[March 10]

Given the vast amounts of data that will be collected by the cars of the future, strict protections are needed to prevent government intrusion, the chairman of Volkswagen Group said.

“The car must not become a data monster,” Martin Winterkorn said, at the start of the CeBit trade show in Germany. Car makers already protect drivers from hydroplaning, fatigue and traffic. They must also protect against government misuse of data, he said. “I clearly say yes to Big Data, yes to greater security and convenience, but no to paternalism and Big Brother,” Winterkorn said, according to an English translation of his prepared remarks. He called for a voluntary commitment from the car industry to protect customer data and said his company stands ready to join such an effort.

The data protection concerns voiced by Winterkorn were echoed by government and industry speakers including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Merkel called on international efforts to ensure data is protected.

“We are only at the beginning of that road,” she said. “National policies will not suffice.” Winterkorn reassured the car-loving German audience that drivers will retain control, but that autonomous vehicles can play a big role when driving is less than pleasurable, such as when stuck in traffic or looking for parking. Winterkorn stressed that computer giants and automakers need to work together on the technical, logistical and regulatory challenges ahead.

[March 10]

Looks like the law doesn’t care much about Pinterest. The social photo sharing network pinned its transparency report to its company blog, revealing for the first time the number of requests for data it receives from government agencies.

The most striking thing about the report: You can almost count the number of requests for information on two hands. Pinterest said it received a total of 12 inquiries from the government over the second half of 2013, 11 of which were from local law enforcement. The remaining request came from the Federal government. All of the requests came from United States government agencies.

Pinterest receives far fewer requests compared to other tech giants in the consumer Internet space. Microsoft, for instance, received more than 35,000 requests for user data over the second half of 2013. Facebook received somewhere in the range of 15,000.

[March 10]

Verizon Wireless said that it will continue to strategically add a second band of spectrum, known as AWS, as it looks to keep up with demand on its LTE network.

CTO Nicola Palmer said that the carrier equipped more than 10,000 cell sites with AWS capability in 2013 and turned on the feature in more than 5,000 of the sites. The number of AWS-capable sited is likely to triple, Palmer said. The company isn’t equipping all sites in a city, instead adding the capability in areas of peak demand in all of the cities where it holds AWS spectrum licenses. The company also plans to begin routing phone calls over its LTE network. As for a talked-about mobile video service, Palmer noted the company tested the capability of broadcast video over LTE during the Super Bowl.

“We are anxious to bring that to market,” Palmer said. “The technology works. We have some other things to work out in terms of the models.” Palmer said Verizon also plans to be at the forefront of other so-called LTE advanced features such as carrier aggregation and heterogeneous networks, which bundle multiple types of spectrum for faster speeds.

[Commentary] With Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, we have now established a price floor for what it costs not to have a mobile operating system in a world in which having a mobile operating system counts for an awful lot these days.

And that means, for all intents and purposes, Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS. And not, despite various and sundry efforts, Facebook, which also has tried to create a mutated shell version of its own OS called Home.

But a mobile presence is a must-do in the current digital environment, and this massive acquisition makes it clear that Facebook has decided that its core strategy will be to create or buy up must-have apps that consumers demand to have on their mobile devices. It’s a little like deciding to be Disney, said one source, owning all the good content brands. If Facebook is Disney (by the way, its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, is on the entertainment giant’s board), then Instagram is the Disney Channel (the kids love it!) and WhatsApp is ESPN (everyone loves it!).