June 2011

Rural Broadband: Are We There Yet?

The Federal Communications Commission's 2011 Broadband Competition Report finds that wireline broadband deployment to rural America has stalled, while mobile broadband deployment is accelerating across the entire country. The conclusion that leaps from the report is that we've reached a saturation point for wireline broadband deployment, but that continued investment in mobile broadband makes this relatively unimportant. It appears that all of the markets that can sustain wireline broadband without subsidies have been served, and it will be up to other technologies – such as 4G mobile broadband and satellite – to provide broadband service to the rest of rural America. Mobile broadband is advancing at a rapid rate in terms of both performance and penetration.

FCC Adds Economists

Federal Communications Commission Julius Genachowski announced the appointment of Marius Schwartz to the position of Chief Economist in the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis (OSP). Schwartz is Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and will begin June 1, 2011. Schwartz's teaching and research specialties are in industrial organization, competition and regulation.

Before joining Georgetown University, Schwartz served as Economics Director of Enforcement at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and as Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics. He also served the President's Council of Economic Advisers as the Senior Economist for industrial organization matters. Schwartz holds a B.Sc. degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from UCLA, also in economics.
Outgoing Chief Economist Jonathan Baker and Gregory Rosston will both serve as Senior Economists for Transactions to work on the Commission's reviews of the AT&T-T-Mobile and AT&T-Qualcomm transactions.

Baker will return to American University's Washington College of Law where he is a Professor of Law. He previously served as the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. Previously, he worked as a Senior Economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers and as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice.

Rosston is Deputy Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Deputy Director of the Public Policy program at Stanford University. He is also the co-Chair of the Department of Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee. He previously served as Deputy Chief Economist at the Commission working on the implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and he helped to design and implement the first ever spectrum auctions in the United States.

Commerce Department Hosts First Innovation Advisory Board Meeting

The Innovation Advisory Board held its first meeting at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria (VA). Acting Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank led the meeting and Secretary Gary Locke welcomed and thanked the new board members for their service. The 15-member board will guide a study of U.S. economic competitiveness and innovation to help inform national policies at the heart of U.S. job creation and global competitiveness. The Innovation Advisory Board was established by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, signed by President Obama in January of this year.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Names Ombudsman

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has named Joel Kaplan as its ombudsman, effective June 1.

Kaplan is responsible for reinforcing objectivity, balance, fairness, and transparency within public media. CPB established the Office of the Ombudsman in April 2005 as an independent office to inform the board of directors and the president of CPB about concerns related to the public media system. Kaplan is currently associate dean at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. There, he is focused on implementing a new graduate curriculum centered on multi-media storytelling and new media platforms. He has taught classes in news writing, investigative reporting, national political reporting, communications law, ethics and public affairs reporting.

The Era of the sub-$100 Smartphone

[Commentary] In the tech industry, the $100 price point is something of a holy grail. For almost a decade now, philanthropists have been talking about developing a $100 laptop that will close the digital divide between the computer haves and have-nots. The cost of laptops and netbooks is falling steadily, but it will be the smartphone and, perhaps the tablet, that will really bring the world online.

We are nearing the point where sub-$100 smartphones, complete with mobile broadband connectivity and touchscreens, will be widely available, enabling many more people to access a vast array of online services, content and information. Eventually, it may even become feasible to sell sub-$100 tablets with embedded HSPA connectivity. Sceptics argue that HSPA networks don't have the capacity to serve large numbers of tablet computers simultaneously. Today, that is probably true. But mobile technology isn't standing still. Some 93 operators have deployed HSPA+, an upgrade to HSPA, which makes more efficient use of the available spectrum. These HSPA+ networks deliver peak throughput speeds of up to 42Mbps. LTE, which has already been deployed by 21 operators worldwide, also offers a step-change in performance and capacity over vanilla 3G networks. U.K. regulator Ofcom said in May that its research had found that LTE and similar technologies will deliver more than 200% of the capacity of existing 3G technologies, using the same amount of spectrum. However, Ofcom acknowledged that more spectrum is also needed to meet booming demand for mobile broadband. Other regulators are coming to the same conclusion and I expect far more spectrum to be allocated to mobile broadband services over the next decade.

Comcast: Bloomberg's Neighborhooding Allegations an Attempt to Manipulate FCC

Comcast says that while it continues to view Bloomberg TV as a "respected business partner," Bloomberg's allegations that Comcast is not honoring its neighborhooding condition in the NBCU deal is baseless and an attempt to manipulate the Federal Communications Commission for its own gain.

Comcast pointed out that its channel placements preceded the NBCU deal and was not based on any "discriminatory motive to advantage CNBC or MSNBC and disadvantage Bloomberg," and said that the FCC did not mean for Comcast to have to remake channel lineups in 39 state Comcast pointed out that it has launched Bloomberg TV to 18 million subs over the past five years and continued to add the channel after the transaction with NBCU. It also said that Bloomberg's definition of neighborhooding, which Comcast said is as few as four channels, is "inconsistent with its own advocacy before the FCC, leads to nonsensical and incoherent results, and would cause mass consumer confusion and disruption to other channels." Comcast asked Bloomberg to reconsider its plan to file a formal complaint at the FCC and instead, "resume good faith discussions."

Darrell Issa demands Gmail hacking records

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked Google Chief Executive Larry Page to preserve all e-mails and electronic documents related to the federal officials’ email accounts that may have been compromised in the Gmail hacking attack that the company disclosed last week.

“In light of our concern over … Google’s direct ownership role over the attacked accounts,” Chairman Issa wrote in a four-page letter to Page, “the committee needs to learn more about what happened.” Chairman Issa has repeatedly criticized the Obama Administration for skirting rules that prevent White House employees from communicating about business matters on their personal e-mail accounts. Messages sent over personal e-mail do not need to be turned over to Congress or the public if requested under the Freedom of Information Act. Chairman Issa requested that Google preserve all records since Jan. 20, 2009, that are tied to the Gmail accounts of officials who may have been hit by the breach. Google said the attack originated from China, which government officials there deny. Chairman Issa also asked that Google submit all documents and messages from officials whose accounts were believed to be compromised since Jan. 1, 2010. Additionally, he requested any communications about Google’s response to cyberattacks — and the White House’s feedback to Google about such attacks — for the same time period.

Internet sales tax push gains currency

The days of the Internet as a tax-free shopping zone may be numbered.

Sen Dick Durbin (D-II) is expected to step into the escalating Internet sales tax battle as soon as this week with a bill that would allow the 44 states — plus Washington, (DC) — that collect sales taxes to require out-of-state online retailers to pay up. Durbin’s Main Street Fairness Act is similar to some previous congressional efforts to weigh in on whether states can force online businesses to collect sales taxes on items sold to state residents. But while those efforts failed, this year may be different. Faced with state budget shortfalls, some large states like Texas, California and Illinois are looking to online retailers for additional tax revenues. As a result, large e-tailers — such as Amazon.com — have threatened to cut off affiliates who sell in those states rather than start collecting taxes.

Apple Introduces iCloud

Apple introduced iCloud, a breakthrough set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on iPhones, iPads, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and automatically and wirelessly push it to all your devices. When anything changes on one of your devices, all of your devices are wirelessly updated almost instantly.

The free iCloud services include:

The former MobileMe services -- Contacts, Calendar and Mail -- all completely re-architected and rewritten to work seamlessly with iCloud. Users can share calendars with friends and family, and the ad-free push Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inbox and mailboxes are kept up-to-date across all your iOS devices and computers.
The App Store and iBookstore -- now download purchased iOS apps and books to all your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. In addition, the App Store and iBookstore now let you see your purchase history, and simply tapping the iCloud icon will download any apps and books to any iOS device (up to 10 devices) at no additional cost.
iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your iOS devices to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi when you charge your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. Backed up content includes purchased music, apps and books, Camera Roll (photos and videos), device settings and app data. If you replace your iOS device, just enter your Apple ID and password during setup and iCloud restores your new device.
iCloud Storage seamlessly stores all documents created using iCloud Storage APIs, and automatically pushes them to all your devices. When you change a document on any device, iCloud automatically pushes the changes to all your devices. Apple’s Pages, Numbers® and Keynote® apps already take advantage of iCloud Storage. Users get up to 5GB of free storage for their mail, documents and backup—which is more amazing since the storage for music, apps and books purchased from Apple, and the storage required by Photo Stream doesn't count towards this 5GB total. Users will be able to buy even more storage, with details announced when iCloud ships this fall.
iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service automatically uploads the photos you take or import on any of your devices and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices and computers. So you can use your iPhone to take a dozen photos of your friends during the afternoon baseball game, and they will be ready to share with the entire group on your iPad (or even Apple TV) when you return home. Photo Stream is built into the photo apps on all iOS devices, iPhoto® on Macs, and saved to the Pictures folder on a PC. To save space, the last 1,000 photos are stored on each device so they can be viewed or moved to an album to save forever. Macs and PCs will store all photos from the Photo Stream, since they have more storage. iCloud will store each photo in the cloud for 30 days, which is plenty of time to connect your devices to iCloud and automatically download the latest photos from Photo Stream via Wi-Fi.
iTunes in the Cloud lets you download your previously purchased iTunes music to all your iOS devices at no additional cost, and new music purchases can be downloaded automatically to all your devices. In addition, music not purchased from iTunes can gain the same benefits by using iTunes Match, a service that replaces your music with a 256 kbps AAC DRM-free version if we can match it to the over 18 million songs in the iTunes Store®, it makes the matched music available in minutes (instead of weeks to upload your entire music library), and uploads only the small percentage of unmatched music. iTunes Match will be available this fall for a $24.99 annual fee. Apple today is releasing a free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud, without iTunes Match, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users running iOS 4.3. iTunes in the Cloud will support all iPhones that iOS 5 supports this fall.

Which Apps Are Threatened by Apple’s Upgrades?

How do you know if you've created a really great, useful iPhone app? Apple tries to put you out of business. That may be overstating it, but a number of new features for Apple’s operating systems that it announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference have been available through existing apps and services for some time. Some of those apps are quite popular, and have been lucrative for the people who developed them. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the services and applications that will be living in a changed world thanks to Apple’s new operating systems for Macs and iPhones.

Benton

Search