July 2008

More Americans will see presidential campaign ads before Election Day because of Democrat Barack Obama's deep pockets and his quest to expand the number of competitive states in his race against Republican John McCain. Obama and McCain advertise in about a dozen battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama's stronger fundraising means he can afford also to run ads in states such as Alaska and Montana that rarely see general-election TV spots — as well as air his commercials nationally during NBC's broadcast of the Olympic Games next month. "The one thing Obama will do differently than previous candidates is do more national television buys," says John Geer, a political advertising expert at Vanderbilt University. "Because he has a plan to go after so many different states, in some cases, it's going to be more effective" than buying ad time in individual markets. Obama has spent about $27 million on general-election ads and McCain has spent $25 million, according to Evan Tracey of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads. Political campaigns almost always buy ad time in local markets, city by city, to target their ads more precisely. As a result, many Americans never see a presidential ad — while some see thousands. Both candidates are on the air in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Obama advertises in Virginia, and McCain reaches voters in the northern part of the state by running ads in Washington. Other traditionally Republican states where Obama advertises are Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina and North Dakota.

[Commentary] Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem. Americans today spend almost as much on bandwidth — the capacity to move information — as we do on energy. A family of four likely spends several hundred dollars a month on cellphones, cable television and Internet connections, which is about what we spend on gas and heating oil. Just as the industrial revolution depended on oil and other energy sources, the information revolution is fueled by bandwidth. In an information economy, the supply and price of bandwidth matters, in the way that oil prices matter: not just for gas stations, but for the whole economy. If we aren't careful, we're going to repeat the history of the oil industry by creating a bandwidth cartel. That's why, as with energy, we need to develop alternative sources of bandwidth. The solution is to relax the overregulation of the airwaves and allow use of the wasted spaces. (Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School and the co-author of "Who Controls the Internet?")

Google is asking the Federal Communications Commission for clear guidance on acceptable ways of managing Internet traffic.Such guidance would "help ensure that broadband networks remain open platforms to the Internet," Google said in a letter to the FCC. Google is asking for "useful clarity on the types of protocol-agnostic network management practices that are acceptable under the [FCC's] Internet policy statement."

Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo are teaming up on a research project to help turn Web services into reliable, everyday utilities. The companies are joining forces with academic researchers in Asia, Europe and the United States to create an experimental network that lets researchers test "cloud-computing" projects -- Web-wide services that can reach billions of users at once. Their goal is to promote open collaboration among industry, academic and government researchers by removing financial and logistical barriers to working on hugely computer-intensive, Internet-wide projects. Founding members of the consortium said they aim to create a level playing field for individual researchers and organizations of all sizes to conduct research on software, network management and the hardware needed to deliver Web-wide services as billions of computer and phone users come online.