March 2011

The campaign to create a nationwide wireless network for police officers and firefighters hasn't just been about what works best for public safety almost a decade after Sept. 11. In Washington, it’s been about what works for top telecom companies, too.

At the heart of the unfolding debate on Capitol Hill has been a heavily moneyed battle between Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and other top telecom providers and equipment makers. Those industry players agree public safety needs a new network to share information during national emergencies, especially following the logistical perils some faced during Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina. Debate over the network is in full swing, but it’s become a political football between telecom giants trying to secure access to wireless spectrum — a resource critical to their future — and neither Congress nor the White House has managed, so far, to referee a successful outcome.

House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) convened a meeting of top communications companies, where he, House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) questioned why they are not doing more to help Republicans in the fight against network neutrality rules. Participants included Peter Davidson of Verizon, Tim McKone of AT&T, Steve Largent of CTIA, Walter McCormick of U.S. Telecom, Kyle McSlarrow of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, according to industry sources.

An industry group with a record of shaping federal information technology policy has established a cloud computing commission to advise the White House on outsourcing more than $20 billion worth of IT services to the Web.

TechAmerica Foundation announced that the board will be co-chaired by the heads of two major Web services firms -- Salesforce.com Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff and CEO Michael Capellas of VCE. Last month, the Obama Administration directed federal agencies to follow a "cloud-first" approach when budgeting computing resources. Instead of investing in new hardware and software licenses, agencies are expected to first consider paying for short-term subscriptions to computer programs, storage space and IT equipment hosted remotely on the servers of companies like Salesforce. The idea is that by consuming IT services on an as-needed basis, rather than maintaining in-house data centers, the government will boost the efficiency of its annual $80 billion IT budget. The commission will provide recommendations for how agencies should roll out cloud technologies and suggest changes to policies that might obstruct the government's goals, according to TechAmerica officials. Recently, the Software and Information Industry Association, which represents cloud providers, successfully urged the government to consider relaxing requirements under the so-called FedRAMP cloud security program that it said would slow installations.

Any individual or organization in Chicago can learn how to produce their own program at Chicago Access Corporation (CAN TV) and show it on one of its five channels. That’s because of the city’s strong cable-TV franchise agreement, which allows CAN TV to receive its funding directly from cable providers.

Refranchising takes place every 15 years, and will start up again in June when RCN is due for renewal. RCN, WOW, and Comcast are franchised by the city, but have the option of refranchising at the state level — which is what AT&T has chosen to do. CAN TV executive director Barbara Popovic says that if these other companies opt for a state franchise, a 2009 Chicago ordinance will give the city — not CAN TV — control of the one-percent fee for public, government, and educational (PEG) channels (this would be in addition to the five-percent franchise fee the city already receives from cable companies). “Whatever the regulatory vehicle, we feel it’s very important that the public be firmly in the mix,” she says. CAN TV recently commissioned an independent survey, which found that 85 percent of Chicago cable subscribers say it’s important that community issues are covered on local TV channels, and that customers would like more money set aside in their cable bill for the production of local programming than for commercial channels. Nearly 80 percent said it’s important that Chicago residents have access to a local facility where they can get assistance in producing programs. “If anything in Chicago, we see an increase in local interest and an increase in people using it,” says Popovic, noting that public-access centers have closed down in San Francisco and Seattle in addition to scores of PEG center closures in California, Michigan, and Indiana.