October 2009

ACA: FCC Needs To Restrict Closed Internet Models

The American Cable Association says that if the Federal Communications Commission wants to ensure "unfettered" access to Internet content, it will need to restrict what ACA calls closed Internet models. Specifically, ACA has been taking aim for months at the ESPN360 service. "ACA believes that content distributors such as ESPN360 should live under the same Net Neutrality rules as broadband service providers," ACA President Matthew Polka said. "The foremost principle of Net Neutrality is that consumers can access the legal content of their choice. ESPN360 fails that principle, and any regulation must address that."

Net Neutrality, Slippery Slopes & High-Tech Mutually Assured Destruction

[Commentary] Will the high-tech industry -- or consumers -- benefit from inviting government regulation of the Internet under the mantra of "neutrality"? The hatred directed at Microsoft in the 1990s has more recently been focused on the industry that has brought broadband to Americans' homes (Internet Service Providers) and the company that has done more than any other to make the web useful (Google). Both have been attacked for exercising supposed "gatekeeper" control over the Internet in one fashion or another. They are now turning their guns on each other—the first strikes in what threatens to become an all-out, thermonuclear war in the tech industry over increasingly broad neutrality mandates. Unless we find a way to achieve "Digital Détente," the consequences of this increasing regulatory brinkmanship will be "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) for industry and consumers.

Developing countries must boost broadband: UN

Developing countries risk missing out on the benefits of information technology because of their lack of broadband infrastructure, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report. Lack of broadband Internet access deprives countries of the possibility of building up offshoring industries. It also prevents people from tapping into all the advantages of mobile phones, whose use is exploding in poor countries. "The narrowing of the digital divide remains a key development challenge," UNCTAD Deputy Secretary-General Petko Draganov said. "What is known as the broadband gap for example is becoming a serious handicap for companies in many poor countries," he told a briefing to launch UNCTAD's Information Economy Report. Companies and consumers are 200 times more likely to have access to broadband in developed countries than in the poorest Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the report shows.

Rural Broadband: Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving the Vision

As part of the National Broadband Plan, the Federal Communications Commission must realize that in many rural areas of the country broadband infrastructure is so costly to build relative to the revenues that it will generate, that no rational business case can be made for private entities to make such investments. Thus, explicit government support will be necessary to deliver broadband to all Americans. Rural wire/fiber-line carriers are building networks employing a hybrid fiber/copper technology that, in addition to providing basic telephone service, are also enabling the delivery of high-speed Broadband service to millions of rural consumers. Building and operating these networks has been made possible by a combination of explicit support provided by the Universal Service Fund (USF), and implicit support provided through Intercarrier Compensation (ICC). On average, USF and ICC provide over half of network cost recovery for rural carriers, and even higher percentages in the most rural areas. The current USF and ICC regimes are based upon voice-service metrics that are not sustainable in an increasingly Broadband world. Fundamental reforms in both programs will be necessary to continue the delivery of Broadband services to current customers and expand Broadband delivery to unserved and underserved rural communities. Without fundamental reform of the USF and ICC systems, rural ILECs (RLECs) face the realistic possibility of a financial collapse that would be devastating to the rural consumers that they serve, and extremely harmful to the achievement of the Nation's Broadband goals.

Broadcasters Rise In Defense of Airwaves

Finally there's a champion for public interest use of a precious communications resource: US television broadcasters. Concerned that the government may reallocate some or all of their spectrum to wireless broadband, TV broadcasters — commercial and noncommercial — have begun mounting a defense of their airwaves. [Editors note: "their"?] In comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission as part of its inquiry into improving broadband access to the Internet, the broadcasters said their digital over-the-air signals are an integral part of the service they provide today and the basis for new digital services tomorrow like mobile TV. They also said that over the years they have vacated a third of the spectrum originally allocated to broadcasting so that it could be used for other purposes. The National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) say broadcaster's transition to digital, completed just this June, produced additional efficiencies in the use of the broadcast spectrum. They also challenge the assertion of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and others that there is a severe shortage of spectrum available for wireless broadband. [Editors note: "Spectrum crisis? What spectrum crisis?"] Instead of increasing wireless broadband spectrum by 300 percent as some have suggested, the broadcasters said, the goal should be to improve the efficiency of spectrum used by wireless broadband by 300 percent. The value of broadcasting's use of spectrum cannot be evaluated in strictly financial terms, the broadcasters added. "Over-the-air broadcasting reaches virtually every household in America, and is engineered to serve core public interest goals such as local journalism, universal service, diversity, competition, local economic activity, availability of educational programming, and timely provision of emergency information. "If these objectives were not a factor, the television broadcast service would have different technical and economic characteristics; among other points, it likely would not be free and available to all Americans, especially in more sparsely populated areas."

Busy U.S. cell networks a bonanza for gear makers

Dropped calls may be annoying to a mobile phone user but network equipment makers and operators are eyeing a big payday from congested cellphone networks. Flashy smartphones like Apple Inc's iPhone, which allow downloads of everything from games to stock prices, are straining mobile networks and pushing carriers to upgrade wired broadband connections to cell towers, known as backhaul. The market for backhaul equipment will double to $10.9 billion in 2013 from $4.6 billion in 2008, according to research firm Infonetics. This will provide new areas of growth for network equipment makers such as Alcatel Lucent, Ciena, and Nokia Siemens.

Kids TV Viewing At 8-Year High

The Nielsen Company says children's viewing of TV is at an eight-year high. Young kids 2-5 spend 32 hours in front of their TVs, while kids 6-11 watch a little less, at over 28 hours. Nielsen says the lower numbers for older kids are the result of more time spent at school. The biggest use of TV time -- 78% -- comes with live TV viewing, which among kids 2-5 is 24 hours, or 51 minutes per week. This comes after time playing DVDs at 4 hours, 33 minutes; then DVR playback, 1:29; game console, 1:12; and videotape playback at 45 minutes. But older kids are different than young kids, with DVD and game console use about equal: 2:28 for DVD and 2:23 for game console. DVR playback is less than half the time for these two activities at just 59 minutes. Videotape playback is at 18 minutes per week among this segment. Nielsen says this trend mirrors overall media consumption in the two years.

The "Korean" Cyber Attacks and Their Implications for Cyber Conflict

It has been several months since the basic "denial of service" attacks against networks in the United States and South Korea in early July. No one has yet taken credit, nor have others been able to determine the attackers' identity. As with many other cyber incidents, there is no conclusive evidence as to who was responsible. Cyberspace enables anonymous attacks. Identities are easily concealed or fabricated in cyberspace, and an astute opponent will of course make it look as if another was responsible for an attack. The use of botnets complicates attribution - the source of an attack, at the first iteration, will be innocent and unknowing third parties. Forensic work may eventually reveal the source of an attack, but a sophisticated opponent will be able to operate clandestinely and with a high degree of deniability. The "Confickr" worm is a good example of this difficulty. Confickr was a global malware that infected millions of computers. Many companies and governments made a coordinated effort to fend it off, but we still have no idea who launched Confickr, what their intent was, or even whether it has been removed from all infected systems. This failure of attribution leads to several conclusions on state of cyber conflict. Cyber conflict is a new and complicated strategic problem. There is neither an adequate policy framework to manage conflict in cyberspace nor a satisfactory lexicon to describe it. Uncertainty is the most prominent aspect of cyber conflict - in attribution of the attackers identity, the scope of collateral damage, and the potential effect on the intended target from cyber attack. Many concepts - deterrence, preemption, proportional response - must be adjusted or replaced for the uncertain cyber environment.

Observed Average Internet Speeds for U.S. Network Connections

In a report filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Akamai presents data on aggregate average Internet speeds for U.S. network connections. The report offers average download speeds by state over time and average download speeds by top cities.

Health 2.0: Beneath the Hype, There's Cause for Real Hope

[Commentary] Health 2.0 is a trend accompanied by both buzz and buzzwords. That worries some advocates for the poor, underserved and just plain old and sick. Will those groups be left behind in the latest information revolution? The potential positives of the Web-as-health-care platform for interactive health care services could be seen in two full days of presentations and discussions at a recent meeting in San Francisco, called the Health 2.0 Conference. Still, a certain Silicon Valley sensibility remained: widgets for weight control were much more likely to target the calorie count of cappuccinos than corn dogs. Yet the real question is not whether Health 2.0 arrives clothed in hype; of course it does. The most important thing to understand is that Health 2.0 is genuine change happening right now, not just another idea of how health care might be different tomorrow.

Benton

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