April 2011

How iPhone and Android Are Changing the Network

“The iPhone is doing to the mobile world, what the browser did to the wireline world,” said Pradeep Sindhu, co-founder of Juniper Networks.

The iPhone and Android-based smartphones are changing everything, including how his company thinks about network infrastructure and how it will refine the network architecture in the future. Many who are developing apps and services for mobile devices don't pay much attention to the innards of the networks themselves, barring moments when our network behaves like me running up a hill. We should be paying attention to all the underlying networking technologies, mostly because it helps us think about what these front-end services can do. Sindhu explains that today the “networks” are the enabling technology, instead of super fast, energy hogging microprocessors. As the performance of the network increases, so does the performance of everything connected to that network, and by extension, the apps built on those device platform.

Digital Families: More Ethnic, More Media Diversity

Nielsen released a new report examining media consumption among U.S. households that are becoming smaller and more ethnically diverse than ever before.

The emerging digital American family is not defined by any single dominant cultural, social, demographic or political point of view. According to the research firm, "The white, two-parent, "Leave It to Beaver" family unit of the 1950s has evolved into a multilayered, multicultural construct dominated by older, childless households." However, Nielsen splits American families into two basic groups: One consists of more educated and affluent households with lower divorce rates, where parents spend significant time with their children. The other includes more ethnic and unwed families with fewer kids and higher divorce rates, where parents struggle to find time to spend with children.

Looking more closely at media usage and preferences by demographic factors including income, ethnicity and age, here are some of the study highlights:

High-income families view less TV but spend more time viewing with kids, using time-shifted media four times more often than low-income households.
For the Hispanic community, mobile serves as a key source of connectivity.
African-American media habits are TV- and mobile-centric.
Asian-Americans have the largest appetite for online media, logging 80 hours on the Internet and viewing 3,600 Web pages -- 3.5 times more than any other ethnic group.

Level 3 would move up the value chain with Global Crossing buy

Level 3’s plan to purchase Global Crossing seems to be aimed primarily at minimizing costs by combining operations. But it should also help Level 3 boost its average profit margins by making the carrier less reliant on low-margin wholesale business, instead adding a hefty share of higher-margin enterprise services to the mix.

Don't Ignore Urban Communities in the Broadband Infrastructure Mix

[Commentary] Conventional wisdom that appears to be driving broadband policymakers, media coverage and funding is that rural areas need infrastructure and urban areas just need to figure out how to get more people using (buying) the infrastructure that exists. Hmm, maybe not.

Plenty of urban areas, similar to their rural kith and kin, need new, better infrastructure. Incumbents like to tell us that low-income communities are well covered by broadband because there are retail stores all over town where people can buy a cell phone and service. Cable service is “available” everywhere because TV ads blanket metro areas. This argument only holds water if you don't look close enough to realize that bucket’s full of holes. If a business in the poorest parts of town want highspeed service, it’s going to cost more because the nearest available wireline is so far away. As cabling deteriorates or becomes obsolete, incumbents aren't making the ‘hood a priority for upgrades because they regard it as a poor investment opportunity. And they aren't giving residents price breaks either. As one person said, “you can put free computers in houses, but if Internet access is $90/month and I clear $20K/year, adoption won't happen.”

North Carolina misses the municipal broadband benefits Kansas City gets with Google

The excitement around Google's selection of Kansas City, Kansas as the first city in which the search engine giant will build out a 100 Gbps open access network has perhaps overshadowed the latest dust-up in North Carolina over legislation that would prevent cities in that state from doing anything similar to what Kansas City is about to do.

It's the endgame in a years-long series of legislative moves to disallow municipal-owned broadband networks from being established in North Carolina cities. Past bills did not make it through the state legislature, but HR. 129, aka the "Level Playing Field/Local Government Competition" bill introduced by Republican Rep. Marilyn Avila was approved 81-37 by the state's House of Representatives in late March and is currently being debated at the state Senate level.
Municipal broadband doesn't have to prove itself as a viable option for high-speed networking, any more than incumbent telcos and cablecos have to prove themselves. It's managed by, paid for by, and ultimately owned by the residents and taxpayers of the community it serves. And while failure in the face of competition from private providers or due to a shaky economic climate is a possibility, the advantages of a community-owned and managed high speed network--lower subscription rates, higher broadband speeds, and a resultant economic boost for local businesses-- outweigh the disadvantages.

Bing-powered share of searches reaches 30 percent in March 2011

Experian Hitwise, a part of Experian Marketing Services, found that Google accounted for 64.42 percent of all US searches conducted in the four weeks ending April 2, 2011. Bing-powered search comprised 30.01 percent of searcherpectively.

The remaining 69 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis report accounted for 5.58 percent of U.S. searches. Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in March 2011. This means that for both search engines, more than 80 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 66 percent. The share of unsuccessful searches highlights the opportunity for both the search engines and marketers to evaluate the search engine result pages to ensure that searchers are finding relevant information.

Only a carrier could trumpet $500 per gigabyte as a price cut

AT&T is cutting the price of data access for prepaid customers -- those who don't sign contracts but instead pay as they go -- to $5 for 10MB of data access on select smartphones, a major cut from the previous $5 for 1MB. But press reports haven't done their math: The costs are 50 times what so-called postpaid customers -- those who sign a contract and get a bill each month -- are charged.

An AT&T GoPhone customer pays $500 per gigabyte of data usage, whereas a postpaid Android or iPhone user pays $10 per gigabyte. Of course, there are other plans: One costs $150 per gigabyte if you buy 100MB increments (15 times what regular customers pay), and the other costs "only" $50 per gigabyte if you buy 500MB increments (5 times over the regular customer cost). Such a deal! Even pay-as-you-go iPad users pay $10 per gigabyte, so the shocking price difference can't be attributed to the prepaid business model's costs versus the postpaid model's costs. After all, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Sprint have 3G data pricing that's all over the map for the same amount of data, even with each carrier's suite of plans. The differences just aren't as scandalous as these GoPhone charges.

Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights

Sens John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a to establish a baseline code of conduct for how personally identifiable information and information that can uniquely identify an individual or networked device are used, stored, and distributed.

This legislation would increase consumer trust in the market and generating additional activity as a result as well as protecting people from unscrupulous actors in the market by creating a set of basic rights to which all Americans are entitled.

These privacy rights include:

The right to security and accountability: Collectors of information must implement security measures to protect the information they collect and maintain.
The right to notice, consent, access, and correction of information: Collectors of information must provide clear notice to individuals on the collection practices and the purpose for such collection. Additionally, the collector must provide the ability for an individual to opt-out of any information collection that is unauthorized by the Act and provide affirmative consent (opt-in) for the collection of sensitive personally identifiable information. Respecting companies existing relationships with customers and the ability to develop a relationship with a potential customers, the bill would require robust and clear notice to an individual of his or her ability to opt-out of the collection of information for the purpose of transferring it to third parties for behavioral advertising. It would also require collectors to provide individuals either the ability to access and correct their information, or to request cessation of its use and distribution.
The right to data minimization, constraints on distribution, and data integrity: Collectors of information would be required to collect only as much information as necessary to process or enforce a transaction or deliver a service, but allow for the collection and use of information for research and development to improve the transaction or service and retain it for only a reasonable period of time. Collectors must bind third parties by contract to ensure that any individual information transferred to the third party by the collector will only be used or maintained in accordance with the bill’s requirements. The bill requires the collector to attempt to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to ensure that information is accurate.

Other key elements of the Kerry-McCain include:

Enforcement: The bill would direct State Attorneys General and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce the bill’s provisions, but not allow simultaneous enforcement by both a State Attorney General and the FTC. Additionally, the bill would prevent private rights of action.
Voluntary Safe Harbor Programs: The bill allows the FTC to approve nongovernmental organizations to oversee safe harbor programs that would be voluntary for participants to join, but would have to achieve protections as rigorous or more so as those enumerated in the bill. The incentive for enrolling in a safe harbor program is that a participant could design or customize procedures for compliance and the ability to be exempt from some requirements of the bill.
Role of Department of Commerce: The Act directs the Department of Commerce to convene stakeholders for the development of applications for safe harbor programs to be submitted to the FTC. It would also have a research component for privacy enhancement as well as improved information sharing.

Information Technology: Continued Improvements in Investment Oversight and Management Can Yield Billions in Savings

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has improved the oversight and management of information technology (IT) investments through multiple initiatives.

By establishing the IT Dashboard, OMB has drawn additional attention to over 300 troubled IT investments at federal agencies, totaling $20 billion, which is an improvement from the previously used oversight mechanisms. The Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) recognized that the Dashboard has increased the accountability of agency CIOs and established much-needed visibility into investment performance.

However, GAO has found that the data on the Dashboard are not always accurate. Specifically, in reviews of selected investments from 10 agencies, GAO found that the Dashboard ratings were not always consistent with agency cost and schedule performance data. In these reports GAO made a number of recommendations to OMB and federal agencies to improve the accuracy of Dashboard ratings. Agencies agreed with these recommendations, while OMB agreed with all but one. Specifically, OMB disagreed with the recommendation to change how it reflects current investment performance in its ratings because Dashboard data are updated on a monthly basis.

However, GAO maintained that current investment performance may not always be as apparent as it should be; while data are updated monthly, ratings include historical data, which can mask more recent performance. In addition to the Dashboard, beginning in January 2010 the Federal CIO began leading reviews -- known as "TechStat" sessions -- of selected IT investments involving OMB and agency leadership to increase accountability and transparency and improve performance. OMB officials stated that, as of December 2010, 58 sessions had been held and resulted in improvements to or termination of IT investments with performance problems. For example, the June 2010 TechStat session for a National Archives and Records Administration investment resulted in the halting of development funding pending the completion of a strategic plan.

In addition, OMB identified 26 additional high-priority IT projects and plans to develop corrective action plans with agencies at future TechStat sessions. According to the Federal CIO, OMB's efforts to improve management and oversight of IT investments have already resulted in $3 billion in savings. Additionally, in December 2010, OMB issued an 18-month plan for reforming federal IT management that has five major goals, including strengthening program management, streamlining governance and improving accountability, and using shared solutions, among others. These goals and the plans in place to support them are consistent with GAO's work highlighting IT management and governance weaknesses, as well as work to identify duplicative activities in the government. As part of this plan, OMB has initiatives under way to strengthen agencies' investment review boards and to consolidate federal data centers. GAO has ongoing work to review the Dashboard and other OMB initiatives. Continued OMB oversight and the implementation of its 18-month plan along with outstanding GAO recommendations, could result in further significant savings and increased efficiency.

(GAO-11-511T)

Kundra Says His Office Has Saved Taxpayers $3 Billion

The federal chief information officer told a Senate panel that the Obama Administration's drive to make government IT projects more responsive to changes in technology and more reliant on private sector infrastructure had saved about $3 billion in its first five months.

Since introducing President Obama's 25-point implementation plan for reforming federal IT in December, CIO Vivek Kundra's office has reviewed 50 of the government's most troubled IT projects, canceling four and fundamentally reforming 11 others, Kundra told members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee's panel on federal financial management. "The government needs to operate much more like a nimble startup," Kundra said, "instead of investing billions of dollars in multi-year procurements," that are often outdated by the time they're implemented. The 25-point plan requires IT project managers to show significant gains for their agencies within six months. If not, they need to shut down or retool the projects.

Benton

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