December 2011

Sprint, which owns almost half of Clearwire, has stepped up with a plan to spend $1.6 billion over the next four years that will help Clearwire stay solvent, and Clearwire said it would make its $237 million debt payment.

Sprint will pay Clearwire a total of $926 million, approximately two-thirds of which will be paid in 2012, for unlimited 4G WiMAX retail services during 2012 and 2013. That seems like a lot to pay for a dying 4G technology, but Sprint doesn’t have much choice, since it is harnessed to a CDMA network that can’t be upgraded easily to match the speeds currently offered by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. The agreements also establish long-term usage-based pricing for WiMAX services in 2014, and Sprint will have access to Clearwire’s WiMAX network through at least 2015. Sprint said it plans to continue selling WiMAX devices with two-year contracts through at least 2012 and will support those devices through the life of the contract.

This is their best chance to pull together an LTE network after their failed bet on WiMAX and still counteract the growing power of AT&T and Verizon. Sprint also plans to launch network devices for its proposed LTE-Advanced network in 2013, which would put Sprint and Clearwire back on even footing with rivals that are currently offering LTE services.

Photographs and footage of police pepper-spraying students in California were widely shared on the internet last week, elevating the Occupy Wall Street movement to top billing on both blogs and YouTube.

The Occupy protests have been a subject of internet chatter since they began in mid-September, some weeks ranking high on YouTube, some weeks on Twitter and others on blogs. Much of the discussion surrounding the protests has been in support of the protestors, oftentimes sharing and commenting on footage or photographs taken by people at the protests themselves; in other words, not as much direct, live tweeting or commentary from the protests themselves as support from others outside the events. The first Occupy story to make the Index came the week of September 26-30. The video of a protester in New York getting pepper-sprayed was a top story on both Twitter and YouTube. From there, the Occupy protests rose to the top in at least one new media sector almost every week, with users sometimes voicing disgust at how police were acting, talking about the goals of the movement, or complaining about how the press was covering the protests. Some have voiced disagreement with the Occupy movement, but they have continued to be just a small minority of the commentators overall. For the week of November 21-25, the online discussion of the Occupy protests focused on the same subject that ignited online conversation back in September: Pepper-spraying seemingly non-threatening protesters, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The Connect America Fund order adopted by the FCC in late October and released to the public just before Thanksgiving is poised to impose big changes on the voice-focused Universal Service program that has been in place for decades.

This week and next, Connected Planet will recap what communications service providers need to know about the order, which aims to transform the high-cost Universal Service program into a broadband-focused program dubbed Connect America while also phasing out the inter-carrier compensation system, which also has helped fund communications networks nationwide. Some information about the Connect America Fund has been known since the reform order was adopted, including how the FCC plans to divvy up the money that currently goes toward the high-cost program, with funding shifting somewhat toward price cap areas, where the majority of homes that cannot get broadband today are located. The FCC also made clear at the time the order was adopted that it would not provide support to areas where an unsubsidized competitor offers broadband service. The final text of the 750-page order fills in some additional details, while leaving others for future resolution. More than 100 pages of the order are devoted to a notice of proposed rulemaking which, among other things, aims to resolve details about how Connect America funding for rate of return carriers should be awarded.

The FCC was considerably more forthcoming about what’s on tap for price cap territories, however.

Plans there include:

• Initially targeting support to areas where broadband service at speeds of at least 4 Mb/s downstream and 1 Mb/s upstream is not available.
• Any supported broadband service must have sufficiently low latency to enable the use of real-time applications such as VoIP.
• Funding recipients must allow usage at levels comparable to residential terrestrial fixed broadband service in urban areas. This is important because some price cap carriers had been hoping to use 4G wireless service to meet their Connect America Fund deployment requirement. It appears that would be an option under the program parameters—but the capacity requirement suggests the network operators might have to rethink their usage caps.
• FCC to be responsible for the creation of a cost model to determine where support is needed along with the target level of support per line.
• Incumbent price cap carriers can agree to bring service to unserved areas at the target level of support within five years or opt out on a state-by-state basis. The requirement to serve all or none of the high-cost areas in a state is aimed at preventing cherry picking, the FCC said.
• If the incumbent opts out, funding will be awarded through a reverse auction open to competitive carriers. The idea of using a reverse auction in all areas where the price cap carrier has not deployed service to a certain percentage of households appears to have been abandoned.
• In Year 5 of the program, the minimum target speed will be increased to 6/1.5 Mb/s for a “number of supported locations” to be determined as part of the process of developing the cost model.

In late September 2011, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Dr. Farzad Mostashari announced the launch of the ‘One in a Million Hearts’ Investing in Innovation challenge in a post on this blog. The challenge supports the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Million Hearts initiative, which aims to prevent one million heart attacks and strokes–two of the top causes of death in the United States–over the next five years.

The challenge asks developers to create an application engaging consumers in improving their own cardiovascular health. With the One in a Million Hearts Innovation challenge, we’re focusing on saving just one heart at a time by challenging developers and innovators to design applications that empower and help users improve their heart health. So what could your app do? Provide education and resources to help reduce fat and salt intake, increase exercise, lose weight, stop smoking, or increase medication adherence? Use GPS technology to recommend nearby walks or places to eat healthier? Link users to online communities dedicated to improving heart health?