March 2010

Is the recession really over for telcos?

For the telecommunications industry, hard times are nearly over - or here to stay, depending on whom you ask.

With four-quarters wrapped up for the wireline and wireless operators, handset makers and equipment vendors, analyst firms are cranking out their 2010 projections. For the telecom industry as a whole, 2010 will be punctuated with continued cost cutting, but the prepaid and smartphone sectors should be best positioned to draw a sigh of relief. The telecom industry in general has shown resilience to the recession, but they have been focused on driving efficiencies and reducing costs - and they won't change course in 2010, according to Ovum. In a report released today, the UK-based research firm said that revenue growth is in decline for many mature market operators, even though the economic downturn hasn't resulted in as much downward pressure on their top lines as many expected. Ovum is warning operators that the tough times aren't over yet. That being said, North America is strengthening.

5 Ways to 'Fix' Retransmission Consent

Retransmission consent has re-entered the public consciousness in a big way in the past few months, with two high-profile battles in New York and more on the way. While most programmers believe the system is fair, distributors have their own solutions to end the stalemates.

Multichannel News talked to parties on both sides and listened to the various fixes. On the less-feasible side are calls to rein in sports salaries, which some argue is the real culprit in high programming costs. Most of the likely changes -- if any come at all -- would require Federal Communications Commission authority to make both sides negotiate in good faith.

1) Require Binding Arbitration. 2) Guarantee Interim Carriage. 3) Repeal or Reform the Cable Act. 4) Allow Importing of Distant Signals. 5) Mandatory Unbundling of Programming.

A Plea From Couch Potatoes Everywhere: TV Service Providers, Stop Screwing Up TV!

[Commentary] With Dell's Mini 5, Apple's iPad and HP's Slate, we're at the precipice of a drastic change in TV watching, streaming, and interactivity. Here's how: By moving the source of interaction from your set-top box or TV, to your lap via a tablet. The prospects can get really interesting!

Think about being able to use your tablet as a remote control. You'd scan TV listings and set DVR options much more quickly and intuitively, and hell, the tablet may even solve that pesky problem of turning off half of my peripherals when I'm trying to kill them all! A tablet makes interacting with social networks and games even easier (two things that are virtually impossible to do comfortably with a simple remote). So, if I'm so smart as to tell TV service providers what they should do with their remote, where do I think they should start? Hint: Check out Boxee or Plex.

A Key Step Toward Nationwide Health Information Exchange

On March 15, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the awarding of over $160 million in new grants to help states advance the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology.

This completes the final set of awards as part of the State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program, which was authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The first wave of 40 awards was released in mid-February. Through this final round of awards, every U.S. State and territory, or their State Designated Entity, has now been awarded funds under this program. As part of this round of awards, 16 states and qualified State Designated Entities (SDE) will obtain the resources and technical assistance to rapidly build capacity for exchanging health information among and between health care professionals and hospitals. Such exchange will allow any two providers in a state - and ultimately across the nation - send and receive relevant clinical and other data necessary for improved coordination of patient care. Recipients of these awards will establish and implement appropriate governance and policies and ensure the necessary technical infrastructure and business operations are in place to support secure exchange within and across states. An unprecedented level of coordination and collaboration is needed to achieve our vision of a secure, interoperable, nationwide health information infrastructure where health data can follow patients to their point of care. We must find innovative ways to break down the barriers that prevent the seamless exchange of information, and States have to be key players.

Google gives Buzz users more control over their inbox

Google announced that it has launched new Buzz features that will significantly cut down on all the messages users are receiving in their Gmail inbox.

The first addition gives users the option of deciding which e-mails from Google Buzz they will receive. When users go to their Buzz settings, they can choose to receive all friend comments on their posts, comments sent after they comment on a post, or only those messages added to a discussion thread after someone replies to something they added to the site. Google also said that e-mails users receive will now give an explanation for why they were delivered to the Inbox. For example, e-mails alerting users to a comment will read, "Delivered to Inbox because you commented on this." To make it a little easier to cut down on all the messages, Google has also added a "mute" button that allows users to tell the company not to send similar alerts in the future.

Bad News

They went looking for crap, and by golly they found plenty of it. Students in Howard Rheingold's journalism class at Stanford recently teamed up with NewsTrust, a nonprofit Web site that enables people to review and rate news articles for their level of quality, in a search for lousy journalism. The students, along with other NewsTrust users, spent the last week of February engaged in the "News Hunt for Bad Journalism." The idea was to highlight work that fell victim to poor sourcing, bias, inaccuracy, spin, or other journalistic lapses. Each day was dedicated to a different type of reporting, from straight news reports to opinion columns to the work by partisan media watchdogs like Media Research Center and fact-checkers such as PolitiFact. Some of the news organizations that fell into their crosshairs include The New York Times, the New York Post, the Washington Times, The Nation, Reuters, and the Associated Press.

Oversight Of The Federal Communications Commission: The National Broadband Plan

Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet
House Commerce Committee
Thursday, March 25, 2010
10am

The hearing will explore the details of the Federal Communications Commission's recently released National Broadband Plan.

Witnesses

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski
Commissioner Michael J. Copps
Commissioner Robert M. McDowell
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn
Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker

Read more about Oversight Of The Federal Communications Commission: The National Broadband Plan

Benton Editorial

Day 1 of the National Broadband Plan

Charles Benton

Charles Benton

March 16, 2010

To paraphrase poet Robert Burns,

"The best laid plans of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!"

National Broadband Plan Details Actions for Connecting Consumers, Economy with 21st Century Networks

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission will send "Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan" to Congress. About half of the Plan's recommendations are addressed to the FCC, while the remainder are for Congress, the Executive Branch, state and local government, working closely with the private and nonprofit sectors.

The Plan's call for action over the next decade includes the following goals and recommendations:

Connect 100 million households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second service, building the world's largest market of high-speed broadband users and ensuring that new jobs and businesses are created in America.
Affordable access in every American community to ultra-high-speed broadband of at least 1 gigabit per second at anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and military installations so that America is hosting the experiments that produce tomorrow's ideas and industries.
Ensure that the United States is leading the world in mobile innovation by making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available for licensed and unlicensed use.
Move our adoption rates from roughly 65 percent to more than 90 percent and make sure that every child in America is digitally literate by the time he or she leaves high school.
Bring affordable broadband to rural communities, schools, libraries, and vulnerable populations by transitioning existing Universal Service Fund support from yesterday's analog technologies to tomorrow's digital infrastructure.
Promote competition across the broadband ecosystem by ensuring greater transparency, removing barriers to entry, and conducting market-based analysis with quality data on price, speed, and availability.
Enhance the safety of the American people by providing every first responder with access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable public safety network.

US is falling behind in being digitally literate

[Commentary] Our nation is at a high-tech crossroads: Either we commit to creating world-leading broadband networks to make sure that the next waves of innovation and business growth occur here, or we stand pat and watch inventions and jobs migrate to those parts of the world with better, faster and cheaper communications infrastructures.

This, of course, is not a choice -- which is why, this week, at the behest of Congress and the president, the Federal Communications Commission is delivering the first National Broadband Plan: a comprehensive strategy for dramatically improving our broadband networks and extending their benefits to all Americans. The bad news is that we have a long way to go to meet this generation's great infrastructure challenge. History teaches us that nations that lead technological revolutions reap enormous rewards. We can lead the revolution in wired and wireless broadband. But the moment to act is now.

Benton

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