February 2010

Federal Communications Commission officials are committed to taking steps to ensure that a 700 MHz nationwide public-safety broadband network becomes a reality, but the proposal may not include the reallocation of the commercial D Block in the band to first responders, an FCC bureau chief said yesterday at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) Winter Summit. Earlier this month, representatives from APCO and eight other public-safety organizations presented a united front to federal lawmakers and policy-makers in requesting the reallocation of the 10 MHz D Block to public safety, which also has been granted 10 MHz of 700 MHz broadband spectrum that has been licensed to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST). Public-safety leaders would like to see the two swaths provide a 20 MHz spectral foundation for a nationwide public-safety network. Jamie Barnett, chief of the FCC's public-safety and homeland-security bureau, applauded the effort and described the requested D Block reallocation as "Plan A" for public safety. But current law requires the FCC to auction the D Block to commercial users, so the agency does not anticipate making a recommendation based on such an assumption in its national broadband plan — due to Congress on March 17 — he said. "It would be great to have 20 MHz," Barnett said. "The problem that we have right now as we pursue this is that the D Block is dedicated to commercial use — we're actually under a mandate to auction it. So we had to figure out a way to come up with a viable system even if you don't get the D Block." Instead, the FCC is pursuing a public/private proposal that calls for 700 MHz commercial carriers to build out the public-safety broadband wireless network — likely using LTE as public safety requested, although the FCC probably will not specify the technology in its broadband plan — while they deploy their commercial networks, which should greatly reduce the capital costs associated with the first-responder network, Barnett said.

In meetings at the Federal Communications Commission, the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council is raising concerns about proposed Network Neutrality rules aimed at ensuring an open Internet. MMTC is making these eight points:

1. Institutional neglect of minority issues at the FCC and, more recently at the Commerce Department, with the apparent failure to award minority companies any stimulus funds, explain why MMTC is cautious in its approach to network neutrality regulations and how these regulations could be applied to minorities.
2. In the National Organizations' Comments, they concede the first and sixth proposed regulations; they are still studying the second, third, and fourth proposed regulations, and they are troubled about aspects of the fifth proposed regulation.
3. Our overarching concern is closing the digital divide. Minority businesses cannot aggregate enough business without consumers adopting broadband. The FCC should undertake studies to determine the economic cost of not closing the digital divide, including the cost of second order effects.
4. The FCC should conduct an economic analysis and examine the proposed network neutrality regulations for their potential impact on deployment. With respect to carriers investing in deployment, if they have more money in their portfolios, the more likely they are to disburse deployment in a variety of investment risk levels to build out and improve broadband. If it is true that the regulations would make it more difficult for carriers to raise money and build out, then we need to examine the indirect effects such as increasing prices for consumers and decreasing adoption.
5. The FCC should bear in mind the natural business alignments for small and minority businesses. ISPs have incentives to maximize customers, whereas small businesses are in competition with the major content and application providers.
6. The Commission should design network management rules to allow carriers flexibility so that they can partner with and incentivize entry by SDBs and MBEs.
7. Ideally, full transparency combined with consumer literacy and competition could render most other network neutrality regulations unnecessary; however, consumer literacy is the weak link. MMTC has proposed to add digital literacy to the K-12 curriculum to help solve the digital literacy problem.
8. The Commission should brief the Commerce Department on the issues of access to capital for minority businesses and how the lack of stimulus funding for minority businesses impacts the FCC's ability to do its job in promoting diversity in telecommunications.

Life in cyberspace can be nasty, brutish, and short.

So says a new report on international cybersecurity, which argues that the Internet is a Hobbesian "state of nature" where anything goes, where even government attacks maintain "plausible deniability," and where 80 percent of industrial control software is hooked into an IP network. It's also a world where the US is both a model and a bully. When 600 senior IT security managers were asked which state actor was most likely to engage in cyberattacks, the top response was the US (36 percent), even among traditional US allies. On the other hand, US security practices were some of the world's most admired.

Despite all the buzz about Apple's iPad tablet and how it could be useful for reading electronic textbooks, a new software program on the way might hold even more promise for education.

Blio, a free eReader program that is expected to be available in February, reportedly will allow users to read more than a million electronic books on nearly any computer or portable device, with the ability to highlight and annotate text, hear the text read aloud, and more. Blio was announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and is the brainchild of education technology pioneer Ray Kurzweil, creator of Kurzweil Educational Systems and a range of assistive technology products. Perhaps the software's most impressive feature is that it can support the original layout, font, and graphics of any book in full color, its creators say. It also can support embedded multimedia such as video and audio, and readers have the ability to highlight, annotate, and share information. Blio isn't yet available, but already it's backed by Baker & Taylor, one of the world's largest publishers, as well as Elsevier, Hachette, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. Blio users will have access to more than 1 million books altogether, its makers say—including a large selection of current bestselling titles.