The spectrum auction software developer KB Enterprises LLC and LS Telcom AG, a vendor of spectrum management systems, said Wednesday they are uniting to offer telecommunications regulators and network operators software solutions for finding and assigning spectrum to telecommunications companies.
The Federal Communications Commission's task force developing a National Broadband Plan presented the FCC's five commissioners with a range of policy options at the agencies monthly meeting Wednesday. A interim report delivered by the broadband team said the plan should build on the attributes of the American broadband ecosystem, with high aspirations but in a practical and sustainable way. Encouragement of competition will be a guiding principle of the plan, since competition drives innovation and provides consumer choice. Finding ways to better use existing assets, including Universal Service, rights-of-way, spectrum and others, will be essential to the success of the plan. The limited government funding that is available for broadband would be best used when leveraged with private sector investment. The plan may recommend changes in the law in some cases, but those changes should be limited in number, the task force said. The interim report focused on policy recommendations in ten key areas: Universal Service, infrastructure access, spectrum, Tribal lands, set-top boxes, consumer information, media, adoption of broadband, accessibility for people with disabilities, and public safety. Other areas that are to be addressed by the plan, including education, energy, health care, civic participation and others, will be addressed further in January. The plan is due to Congress by February 17, 2009.
In advance of the Federal Communications Commission discussion of its policy framework for a National Broadband Plan, Free Press released a public interest guide that lays out the central questions that must be answered by the Commission. Free Press points to the creation of better broadband competition as the driving issue behind the plan's success. The issue brief is a tool for measuring the broadband plan's ability to meet tough challenges. It lays out the core issues the plan must answer to serve the public interest and includes policy recommendations for spurring competition, expanding broadband to rural America, and guaranteeing openness and accountability. In recent years, the United States has been rapidly slipping down the ranks of the world's leading broadband nations. After the FCC discussion, however, Free Press said, "The overview of the plan failed to present policy ideas for spurring competition. In a 17 point framework for the plan, competition policy appeared only in the context of opening up the marketplace for cable set-top box policies." Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott said, "America's most basic broadband problem is that we are stuck with a duopoly of local cable and telephone companies that controls virtually every broadband market in America. The trend in both wireless and wireline broadband markets lead to more consolidation, not less. Where are the clear goals and benchmarks for bringing American consumers a world class network? The current marketplace will not magically leap forward to world class levels. There must be major policy intervention to get the country on track."
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday called on Internet service providers to come up with a low-cost basic broadband offering to help drive adoption by low-income households. He praised a new bill, introduced by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, that would create a pilot program for low-cost broadband access, but said it would be a "great" next step forward if the industry would come up with that low-cost service, calling it one of the ways that private industry "can step up to the plate on adoption."
The Federal Communications Commission has received a new round of comment on the impact of the E-rate program on reaching the national goal of universal, affordable broadband use.
The State E-rate Coordinators' Alliance says that changes to the E-rate program should "do no harm" to existing school and library broadband adoption and services. SECA believes changes should make the application process easier and calls for an increase in annual E-rate spending to $4.5-$5 billion. SECA also points out that the E-rate could be coordinated with other funding sources to facilitate broadband deployment. Specifically, the E-rate model, which allows customers to determine their bandwidth needs and competitively bid the broadband services that they need, has been successful in matching customer demand with broadband deployment. This customer-driven approach, SECA says, allows for the deployment of broadband to be targeted to where there is demand. A similar approach is being utilized in the Rural Health Care Support Mechanism. SECA believes that this customer driven approach allows for better targeting of support to the deployment of broadband where it is needed, rather than relying on the approach of the High Cost Fund where the support is disbursed to carriers and it is up to the carriers to decide when and where to upgrade their facilities to be broadband capable.
The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition believes that high-bandwidth facilities to schools and libraries, as anchor institutions, should be capable of being used as "jumping off" points from which broadband providers can serve the surrounding residential and business community. In other words, the high-capacity fiber cables or wireless networks deployed to serve the needs of schools and libraries should be publicly available to serve others as well.
The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors urges five steps to broaden the scope of the E-Rate program in a way that would promote the efficient use of resources to expand broadband deployment throughout local communities. Although NATOA's proposal goes further than the recommendations of other parties, NATOA notes support in the record for key components of the proposal. The steps are:
1. Give priority to funding broadband services.
2. Make local anchor institution networks that provide broadband services or facilities to schools and libraries eligible for E-Rate funding.
3. Provide support based on the actual cost of extending networks to serve eligible institutions.
4. Relieve local anchor institution networks oft he competitive bidding requirement.
5. Raise the $2.25 billion cap.
The American Association of Community Colleges and EDUCAUSE support expansion of the E-rate program to include community colleges without diminished support for existing beneficiaries. Congress considered, but ultimately rejected, including community colleges in the E-rate program when it was first created in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. But in the thirteen years since the E-rate was created, community colleges have become even more essential to the nation's economic and educational imperatives. Distance education is a key tool in reaching students at times and in places where they are able to access higher education, thus increasing the number of people who do so. As technology evolves, community colleges are able to offer increasingly sophisticated distance education applications, especially in technical fields. Adequate broadband connections are necessary to share video and other high-volume educational content among their disparate campuses and regional locations.
The Federal Trade Commission sued Intel, the world's leading computer chip maker, charging that the company has illegally used its dominant market position for a decade to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly. In its complaint, the FTC alleges that Intel has waged a systematic campaign to shut out rivals' competing microchips by cutting off their access to the marketplace. In the process, Intel deprived consumers of choice and innovation in the microchips that comprise the computers' central processing unit, or CPU. These chips are critical components that often are referred to as the "brains" of a computer. According to the FTC complaint, Intel's anticompetitive tactics were designed to put the brakes on superior competitive products that threatened its monopoly in the CPU microchip market. Over the last decade, this strategy has succeeded in maintaining the Intel monopoly at the expense of consumers, who have been denied access to potentially superior, non-Intel CPU chips and lower prices, the complaint states. The FTC's administrative complaint charges that Intel carried out its anticompetitive campaign using threats and rewards aimed at the world's largest computer manufacturers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, to coerce them not to buy rival computer CPU chips. Intel also used this practice, known as exclusive or restrictive dealing, to prevent computer makers from marketing any machines with non-Intel computer chips. In addition, allegedly, Intel secretly redesigned key software, known as a compiler, in a way that deliberately stunted the performance of competitors' CPU chips. Intel told its customers and the public that software performed better on Intel CPUs than on competitors' CPUs, but the company deceived them by failing to disclose that these differences were due largely or entirely to Intel's compiler design. Having succeeded in slowing adoption of competing CPU chips over the past decade until it could catch up to competitors like Advanced Micro Devices, Intel allegedly once again finds itself falling behind the competition - this time in the critical market for graphics processing units, commonly known as GPUs, as well as some other related markets. These products have lessened the need for CPUs, and therefore pose a threat to Intel's monopoly power. Intel has responded to this competitive challenge by embarking on a similar anticompetitive strategy, which aims to preserve its CPU monopoly by smothering potential competition from GPU chips such as those made by Nvidia, the FTC complaint charges. As part of this latest campaign, Intel misled and deceived potential competitors in order to protect its monopoly. The complaint alleges that there also is a dangerous probability that Intel's unfair methods of competition could allow it to extend its monopoly into the GPU chip markets.
[Commentary] What's wrong with stimulus-funded broadband mapping? No, not the money -- the mission. People in DC and across the nation assume the mission is to create state maps showing who has or doesn't have broadband, and roll these into one national Web-based map. It's not. The mission is -- or should be -- to execute an effective broadband needs analysis so the Federal Communications Commission can create an effective national broadband strategy plan. We need to get states to
focus on doing comprehensive needs analysis. The map is simply medium through which you represent the market intelligence the needs analysis collects.
[Commentary] Network neutrality is the Internet's Achilles' heel. 1) If network operators were allowed to slow down or speed up traffic anticompetitively, it could destroy the very fabric of the Internet. 2) The open, unregulated nature of the Internet is also one of its greatest weaknesses. The fact that the Internet is totally neutral is a large part of what creates security vulnerabilities and leads to performance degradation as data goes skipping uncontrolled between networks. That's what so many net neutrality supporters either miss or refuse to acknowledge: the Internet as we know it today isn't all that great. Sure there's been a ton of innovation in this open marketplace, but there's also still a lot of issues with the Internet's performance. While many if not most of these issues stem from the inadequacies of last mile broadband infrastructure, even if we had infinite bandwidth in access networks that won't necessarily fix all of these problems.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced a government investment initiative designed to bring 100Mbps Internet to most French citizens in the next decade. President Sarkozy wants to pump nearly US$7 billion into development of national broadband networks, with the money to be raised from a bond issue called the grand emprunt ("big loan"). The emprunt is a stimulus plan designed to boost the French economy as it pulls out of the worldwide economic crisis. Most of the money will be raised through a bond issue, but the rest will come from large institutions (think: banks) that were bailed out by the French government over the last year and are now repaying their debts. Other countries like Spain and Finland are aiming for a national baseline of 1Mbps to all households over the next year or two; France wants faster speeds, but over a longer timeframe. And 100Mbps, while it sounds fast now, won't be particularly quick in a decade. The good news, though, is that the only way to reach such speeds in France is probably through fiber (Europe not generally having a real robust cable infrastructure), and fiber is easily capable of speed upgrades.
[Commentary] I am shocked and saddened by the seemingly insurmountable amount of visual carnage that is being pushed as news. With the advent of the Internet and 3G and 4G technology, images and streaming video of gruesome accidents, attacks and yesterday, on this very site, images of a stoning. I hope these gruesome images result in some social change and public outrage but I fear it will be just a spectator sport for so many. In the sequel to A Fish Called Wanda, Fierce Creatures, a New Zealand media tycoon talks of buying the TV rights to executions. That was a parody, a clever social statement and a fiction. Today, it is seems seconds away from becoming a grim reality.
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