1. Monthly archive
  2. July 2010

July 2010

Bill to keep cell phones out of prison passes both chambers

A bill to prevent inmates from using cell phones while in prison passed the Senate by unanimous consent on July 28 and is headed to the president for a signature. The bill will prevent inmates from using or possessing cell phones and wireless devices in federal prisons, classifying them as "contraband material." People who attempt to provide inmates with wireless devices could face a year of jail time. The bill arose out of concern that prisoners were using cell phones to direct criminal attacks and gang violence while incarcerated.

$9 Million BTOP Award for SmartChicago

The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced a nearly $9 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment to help bridge the technological divide and increase economic opportunities in Illinois.

The investment will expand and upgrade public computer centers in locations throughout Chicago and provide technology and job assistance training to residents, with a focus on at-risk youth, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and the unemployed. The investment will allow the City of Chicago to add or upgrade over 3,300 computer workstations at more than 150 locations, including city libraries, workforce centers, public housing sites, and all seven city colleges, as well as expand hours of operation. As a result, the centers will be able to accommodate an estimated 200,000 additional weekly users and train up to 20,000 residents over the two-year life of the project.

FCC Seeks Comment on World Radiocommunication Conference Recommendations

On July 28, 2010, the Advisory Committee for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12 Advisory Committee) approved and provided for Federal Communications Commission consideration its recommendations on a number of issues that will be considered by the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12).

Based upon an initial review of the recommendations forwarded to the FCC, the International Bureau, in coordination with other FCC Bureaus and Offices, tentatively concludes that the FCC can generally support the WRC-12 Advisory Committee recommendations. The FCC seeks comment on the recommendations provided by the WRC-12 Advisory Committee. The FCC also seeks comment on the draft proposals that have been provided to the FCC by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Finally, the FCC seeks comment on the International Bureau's initial conclusions with regard to the WRC-12 Advisory Committee recommendations.

The deadline for comments on the proposed preliminary views is August 13, 2010. It is necessary that all comments be received by August 13, 2010 in order to allow sufficient time to finalize the U.S. position before commencement of regional WRC-12 preparatory meetings.

Katz Tapped to be Genachowski's Legal Advisor

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Zac Katz as Legal Advisor, with particular responsibility for wireline communications, international, and Internet issues.

He will succeed Priya Aiyar, who has been appointed Deputy Chief Counsel to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Oil Drilling.

For the past year Katz has served as Deputy Chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis. He joined the FCC from the White House Counsel's Office and previously practiced law at Munger, Tolles & Olson in Los Angeles, focusing on transactional and litigation matters involving intellectual property. Katz served as a law clerk for the Honorable Kim M. Wardlaw of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after receiving his law degree from Yale, where he was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Law Journal and active in the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization. Before law school he worked with technology companies at a strategy consulting and investment firm in Silicon Valley.

Genachowski's tortuous way

The summer of 2010 is not shaping up as Julius Genachowski had hoped.

The Federal Communications Commission chairman was eager to promote the open, egalitarian Internet that President Obama had championed as a candidate. The FCC outlined a national broadband plan this spring that would expand high-speed Internet coverage to underserved markets, stimulate online learning and develop the infrastructure that would support the Googles of e-medicine. There were catch phrases like "100 squared," shorthand for connecting 100 million U.S. homes with Internet speeds of 100 megabits per second. Then came checks and balances.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in April overturned a decision made by the prior FCC, drawing into question the commission's authority over broadband. The court ruled that the agency overstepped its bounds in a 2008 dispute with Comcast Corp. when it enforced "net neutrality," or the principle that broadband providers would not discriminate against data flowing over the Internet. The court did not rule against the principle of net neutrality, but rather the FCC's approach to making and enforcing rules for the Internet. Now, instead of pushing ahead on its ambitious online agenda, the FCC is scrambling to re-establish its regulatory domain over broadband. Genachowski has devised a compromise that he dubs the third way, almost a Buddhist "middle path" of regulatory moderation, that would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, over which the FCC has clear authority. The FCC would forbear from all but a few key rules that are applied to traditional phone systems.

The third way, which Genachowski outlined in May, has not generated the level of protest like the big legislative overhauls of financial services and healthcare. But it is creating no shortage of angst among broadband providers and investors.

Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research dubbed the maneuver the nuclear option. An executive from AT&T, in a blog post, compared Gena­chowski's gambit to Pickett's Charge, the suicide frontal attack by the Confederate army at Gettysburg.

State-by-State Report on Health IT Projects

Because many health IT projects and health information exchanges are under way at various government levels -- many of them funded at least in part by the economic stimulus -- it can be overwhelming to encapsulate how these ventures are related and what people and organizations are in charge of them. The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) seeks to give clarity on this complex topic with a state-by-state look at health IT programs and leadership. The association said since the last version of the report released in 2009, there's been "a tremendous flurry of activity due to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology announcing the recipients of the State Health Information Exchange [HIE] Cooperative Agreement Program." Stimulus funding also is beginning to flow to state and regional projects, according to NASCIO.

HHS to give states $1M each for health insurance exchanges

States can now apply for $51 million in federal money to help build health insurance exchanges. The Department of Health and Human Services wants states to create the exchanges and begin operating them in 2014 as part of the health reform law.

The principle is that if consumers have better access to plans, and the plans can be compared more competitively, prices will come down. The exchanges will be operated primarily for individuals whose employers do not offer them health insurance. States may create their own exchanges, partner with other states or be part of an HHS-created exchange. The exchanges will also function as marketplaces to sell the plans. The exchanges are expected to operate online; however, standards for the exchanges have not been developed yet. HHS is asking the public for input to establish those standards. Under the new grant program, states and the District of Columbia are eligible for up to $1 million each to develop the exchanges.

The Power Grid Is So Dumb That ...

[Commentary] The power grid is so dumb that a decades-old networking technology, which has disappeared from pretty much all other industries and has a fraction of the bandwidth of current networks, is still one of the most common choices for digitally connecting parts of the power grid.

More specifically, according to Pike Research, utilities are commonly using leased telecom lines attached to 1200 baud modems to digitally connect electrical substations in their power grid network. It is so old and slow that Pike Research says a common utility complaint is that carriers are seeking to get rid of these links, as they're no longer profitable for the carriers. Decades ago it was fairly standard for a phone company to lease a dedicated phone line circuit (installed and configured by the phone company) to the utility in order to build wide area networks. But that's not the case anymore. Utility networks, like telecom networks before this, MUST switch away from these vertically integrated communications systems with their hidden system dependencies, and move toward layered protocol network implementations, where different layers can be switched out without unintentionally disturbing the rest of the system.

US understanding of cyberwar still immature, says former NSA director

The United States has accepted cyberspace as a domain for military activity, but lacks an effective military and political doctrine for conducting and defending itself against cyber war, retired Gen. Michael Hayden said at the Black Hat Briefings security conference. U.S. awareness of the importance of cyberspace dates back to the 1990s, but it is not analogous to the other domains in which the military operates, land, sea, air and space, said Hayden, who has directed the CIA and the National Security Agency. This has left the nation unprepared to depend itself, he said.

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