October 2009

States Receiving Long-Awaited Funds for Enhanced 911

The Federal Register estimates that of the 240 million 911 calls made each year, approximately one-third of them come from wireless phones. Obviously some people carry cell phones for a sense of security. With a cell phone, a person can call 911 from just about anywhere. But the irony is that sometimes calling from a landline phone yields faster 911 service. And in a life-or-death event, minutes and seconds count. The ability to address that problem is why public safety officials are excited about a $40 million grant recently announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. The funds will help 911 call centers route calls from wireless phones and IP-based phones more quickly and efficiently. The federal grants will help states implement improvements prescribed by the Ensuring Needed Help Arrives Near Callers Employing 911 (ENHANCE 911) Act of 2004.

Plain Talk Eases Police Radio Codes Off The Air

Police radio can sound like an algebra class, with all those 10-4s and 187s. But more and more departments are trying a radical approach: asking officers who need backup or want to report a robbery to do so in plain old English. Coded police talk came about during the 1920s and '30s, when radio channels were scarce. Officers needed to get on and off the air quickly. They created what are called 10 codes, and then later signal codes. Police also thought the codes would keep things less public. The real push to plain English came after Sept. 11, followed by Hurricane Katrina, when dozens of neighboring police responded to New York City, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans only to be met by utter confusion on the radio. Three years ago, the Department of Homeland Security asked police agencies to voluntarily make the switch.

Snowe may be risking Commerce Committee leadership on healthcare reform vote

Sen Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is risking a shot at becoming the top Republican on the influential Senate Commerce Committee by backing Democratic healthcare legislation, according to senators on the panel. Republicans on the panel are threatening to vote against Sen Snowe, who is in line for the senior GOP post that is about to come open. "A vote for healthcare would be something that would weigh on our minds when it came time to vote," said a Republican on Commerce, who said Snowe would otherwise be assured of the ranking member post if not for the healthcare debate. Every other GOP member of Finance is expected to vote against the healthcare bill. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), the senior Republican on Commerce, is preparing to leave the chamber to run for governor in the coming weeks.

Texting, Surfing, Studying?

[Commentary] Certain subjects make self-righteous parents of us all: our children thinking they are doing homework when in reality the text messages are flying, the Internet browsers are open, the video is streaming, the loud rock music is blaring on the turntable... but "The literature looking at media and its impact on attentional skills is just in its infancy," said Renee Hobbs, a professor of mass media and communications at Temple University and a specialist in media literacy. A recent and much-discussed study showed decreased productivity in adults who were multitasking — or as Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington , put it, "The truth is you don't really multitask, you just think you do; the brain can't process two high-level cognitive things." What you are actually doing, he went on, is "oscillating between the two." So are teenagers any better at oscillating?

Later Viewings of Shows on DVRs Brighten Ratings

Across network television, shows during premiere week got a substantial lift. For about half the shows in prime time, 51 in all, ratings for ages 18 to 49 grew by more than 20 percent when the seven-day DVR playback results were factored in. "This confirms what we've known: the DVR is our frenemy," said Alan Wurtzel, the president of research for NBC, meaning the recording devices are both friend and enemy to network television. That's because the devices clearly offer the opportunity to expand the reach of network shows but they also allow viewers the chance to skip through commercials, a serious concern for advertisers. But David F. Poltrack, the chief research officer for CBS, argued that, without reservation, "the DVR is a good thing for network television." He said, "One thing that has most limited viewing was shows being on against one another. The DVR has made it easy to watch any show you want."

GE Could Unwind Stake in NBC Universal

A proposed deal to acquire media giant NBC Universal would give current owner General Electric Co. the ability to unwind its stake over several years, and could see Comcast Corp. commit billions more to the joint venture. GE would be allowed to redeem some portion of its 49 percent stake for cash after 3.5 years and again after 7 years. The cash would be generated by NBC Universal's operations, although Comcast has agreed it could provide up to "mid-single billions" of dollars to backstop the purchase of GE's remaining stake. Buying GE's remaining stake would not be mandatory, however. Any money Comcast ends up putting toward buying out GE's stake would be on top of the estimated $6 billion in cash plus its cable network assets that it is already committing to the companies' venture. The total value of the proposed joint venture between Comcast and GE is estimated around $30 billion, and it would carry about $9 billion in debt.

Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit

The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: The nation's telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying. Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn't enough to squash a rights group's open records request for communications between the nation's telecoms and the feds. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to see what role telecom lobbying of the Justice Department played when the government began its year-long, and ultimately successful, push to win retroactive immunity for AT&T and others being sued for unlawfully spying on American citizens. The feds argued that the documents showing consultation over the controversial telecom immunity proposal weren't subject to the Freedom of Information Act since they were protected as "intra-agency" records: "The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest." US District Court Judge Jeffery White disagreed and ruled on September 24 that the feds had to release the names of the telecom employees that contacted the Justice Department and the White House to lobby for a get-out-of-court-free card.

Television's Spectral Gold Mine

One of the best places to find inefficiently used spectrum is undoubtedly television stations. The rise of cable TV has undercut the need for broadcast stations. As of July, nearly 90% of US households paid for television either from cable, satellite or phone companies rather than getting it free from broadcast stations, according to Nielsen. Competition for viewers and ad dollars has eroded TV stations' business so badly that a number are struggling financially. And things will get worse if, as has been suggested, broadcast networks cut ties to stations and convert to cable-channel status as a way of generating more revenue. Shutting off stations unilaterally probably isn't practical given the public-interest arguments in favor of free broadcasting. But some argue that reconfiguring how broadcast TV's spectrum is used and allocated would free up as much as half the bandwidth TV currently occupies while allowing outlets to continue broadcasting. Broadcasters are allocated channels of spectrum that ranges across roughly 300 megahertz of bandwidth. Each station needs only six MHz, and few markets have more than 10 or 20 stations. Much of the spectrum is left unused, because signals interfere if they are too close together. But technology has moved on. One possibility now would be to use cellular technology used by wireless carriers to overcome the interference problem. Broadcast channels' frequencies could be grouped closer together, freeing up 130 to 180 MHz of bandwidth, or two to three times the amount that was auctioned off last year for $19 billion.

Measuring broadband shouldn't be this hard

The Government Accountability Office has discovered what pretty much everyone in telecom already knew: Despite the best efforts of bureaucrats and broadband advocates, we don't really have solid data about broadband deployment and speeds that can be used to make national or international comparisons. How hard can it be to determine who can get broadband, and at what speed and price? Apparently, nearly impossible. As the GAO report issued last Friday states, the Federal Communications Commission's efforts are weak, since they don't require service providers to provide information on speeds, price, availability and service reliability. Similarly, the GAO said, the current broadband stimulus effort doesn't require applicants to report broadband speeds in a consistent manner. Can't the telecom industry get its act together on this one issue? Apparently not. In their comments to the GAO, the service providers and their trade organizations said the status quo is just fine, since a competitive market is delivering faster speeds at lower prices.

How turnkey can open community fiber become?

The open community fiber network is transforming from an experimental ad-hoc endeavor to a more commercialized market, thanks in part to the promise of broadband stimulus funds. Across the country, those in need of broadband have launched grassroots public/private partnerships for creating fast, open fiber networks that link municipalities, hospitals, schools and other key community members, leasing excess capacity to encourage private providers to deploy broadband where it wasn't cost-effective before. But whereas those efforts have previously been trials by fire, they are now imagined on a much more massive scale. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done some back-of-the-envelope math on applying community fiber across the entire underserved U.S., figuring a total cost between $5 billion and $10 billion to link key tenants such as hospitals, libraries, schools and colleges. The FCC, which is still formulating its national broadband strategy, has taken notice of those numbers, asking for public feedback on the Gates Foundation estimates. Meanwhile, the private sector is gaining speed in its pursuit of this market. Alcatel-Lucent is formalizing its approach, recently announcing a "turnkey Open Community Broadband" offering worldwide that combines its own fiber access networks with technologies from an ecosystem of partners.

Benton

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