February 2012

A California Civil War Over Internet Piracy

There's a civil war going on in California. It's the north vs. the south — Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley. And much like that other American Civil War, there are two different economic worldviews at stake.

One of the highest-profile battles was fought last month, when large Internet sites like Wikipedia staged an online blackout to protest anti-piracy bills in Congress. The north won that battle, and for now, the legislation is on hold. But the war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley over how to deal with intellectual property is far from over. In the south, Hollywood, there are the people making their livings off of music, movies and TV. Southerner Gavin Polone is an executive producer on such shows as Gilmore Girls and Curb Your Enthusiasm. "What is the key element is that a movie or a television show or a song or a book is actually someone's property," he says. And to Polone and other southerners, taking that property without permission is a criminal act. That's why Hollywood has used the law to try to shut down the revolving door of sites that traffic in music, movies, television and film, from Napster to Megaupload. But up north in Silicon Valley, in the hub of technological innovation and newly minted millionaires and billionaires, techies like Tim O'Reilly have a different view. "I'm a creature of a technology world where you accept a high level of competition and you don't have a lot of respect for business protecting their turf, except by innovating," O'Reilly says.

HHS selects challenge winners for Facebook app

Three Facebook applications designed to help people prepare for emergencies and get support from friends and family in an emergency – from personal medical emergencies or car accidents to natural or man-made disasters – are winners of a Facebook application challenge sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

ASPR’s Facebook Lifeline Application Challenge called on software application developers to design new Facebook applications that could enhance individual and community resilience by establishing social connections in advance of an emergency. Two recent Brown University graduates, Evan Donahue and Erik Stayton, partnered as Team ALP to win first place with their application, named Lifeline. The Las Vegas team JAMAJIC 360 with David Vinson, Erick Rodriguez, Gregg Orr, and Garth Winckler came in second with an app also named JAMAJIC 360. Third place was awarded to AreYouOk? developed by TrueTeamEffort, a team of 11 University of Illinois students led by Alex Kirlik. Although these top three applications differ in how users interface with the app, all three allow users to designate three lifelines -- Facebook friends the person can count on and who agree to check on them in an emergency, supply them with shelter, food, and other necessities, and provide the person’s social network with an update about their wellbeing. Facebook users could use the lifeline app to create disaster readiness plans and share the plans with their emergency contacts, and provide users with news. In addition, the first place app allows Facebook friends to collaborate on tracking the user’s status in a disaster-affected area so these friends can easily find the user’s lifelines and contact them to report that the user is safe or if the user appears to be missing. This networked approach increases the efficiency of finding missing users. The app allows users to print cards with a snapshot of their preparedness plan to carry in their wallets.

Companies expect Australia’s National Broadband Network to boost digital economy: survey

Australian companies are keen to participate in the digital economy and believe the national broadband network will help them to do so according to a new report from telecommunications group Alcatel-Lucent. In a survey of 275 medium to large businesses, 93 per cent confirmed a belief that their ongoing prosperity is tied to the digital economy, with 75 per cent believing that the NBN will help increase their digital participation. Around 80 per cent of business surveyed said that new proposals for technological advancement should be integrated into an executive and board all-of-business strategy, with the same amount saying they would be interested in a telco pitching a relevant model.

Barcelona, Spain
Feb 27 - March 1, 2012
http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/index.html

Read more about Mobile World Congress 2012

Will Verizon become the only wireless company in the country?

Verizon wants to buy a large portion of spectrum from Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable. T-Mobile has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission seeking to stop the deal, saying it would leave T-Mobile unable to compete.

“What they're saying is the benefits of this transaction are way outweighed by harms to the public that would be caused,” says Susan Crawford, visiting professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School. “Because from their perspective, what Verizon's trying to do with this spectrum deal is just foreclose competition, make it impossible for any maverick new entrant to show up. Verizon said as recently as a month ago it's got plenty of spectrum; in fact, it's sitting on spectrum it's not using and T-Mobile is saying don't let this go through." Crawford says T-Mobile’s goals in this protest and the AT&T deal are the same: “T-Mobile felt forced to do a deal with AT&T last year because it wasn't getting access to enough spectrum. Now T-Mobile is saying we're not getting access to enough spectrum. Basically a lot of spectrum has been taken off the table in the last couple of years, spectrum that T-Mobile feels it needed in order to compete effectively. This is its last ditch battle to make sure that there's something left for it to buy." Verizon and the cable companies seem to be marking out territory here by agreeing to market each other’s services and stay off each other’s turf. “Implicitly they're saying, ‘Comcast you cover wired connections, and Verizon, you cover wireless,’” says Crawford. Thing is, demand for spectrum will keep going up as people get more smartphones and tablets and go online. And you can't make more spectrum. That’s impossible due to the realities of physics.

The dirty secret inside Verizon’s cable spectrum buy

[Commentary] The debate over Verizon’s purchase of unused spectrum from cable companies is a fight that should involve everyone from consumers to the Internet companies whose businesses rest on access to the wireline and wireless pipes affected by this deal.

This deal reduces the amount of both wireless and wireline competition: the loss of the cable companies’ spectrum marks the loss of the last real likelihood for another entrant into the wireless market dominated by AT&T and Verizon. It will also prevent smaller, spectrum-hungry operators from buying the airwaves (which is T-Mobile’s biggest argument against the deal). Additionally, the exclusivity agreements on the wireline side could preclude the cable companies from signing up to use wireless from a smaller, hungrier player offering a new channel and maybe some cash that T-Mobile, Clearwire or another provider could have sorely used. On the wireline side, it signals that the speeds of FiOS aren’t going to increase further, and takes out Verizon as a potential competitor with an over-the-top video service that changes the way ISPs have to sell their triple play. Now everything fast, and even pay-TV related, will continue to rest in the hands of cable companies. And there’s another big issue we’re not talking about yet. But we should.

The marketing agreements create a shadow joint-operating entity (JOE) between Verizon and the cable companies. This JOE is worrisome to those of us who realize that getting Verizon in a room once a month with the executives at the nation’s largest cable companies could lead to agreements about technology, deployment strategies and R&D that will be controlled by the large ISPs. The fear is that this organization will be able to slowly stifle new innovations for Internet services or even devices attached to wireline networks by creating technologies and standards that are only available to the JOE participants. Perhaps others might be able to license those technologies, but there’s no guarantee of that, or that the JOE would do so for a fair and reasonable amount.

Debate on How to Free Up More Spectrum is Far From Over

The ink is barely dry on spectrum legislation and experts already are saying more work is needed to ensure a steady stream of spectrum is available in the future.

Legislation included in the payroll tax cut package would free up more spectrum for wireless broadband by enticing broadcasters to give up some of their airwaves. The legislation authorizes the Federal Communications Commission to conduct reverse auctions to see how much it would take to get broadcasters to give up some of their spectrum. Then it allows auctions of the airwaves broadcasters give up. The FCC has said it hopes to free up 120 megahertz from this process, an amount some say is overly optimistic.

Former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) praised the passage of the legislation as an important step in providing more spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies such as smart phones and tablets. But he added that policymakers need to move quickly to free up spectrum now being used by federal agencies. Wireless carriers failed to persuade Congress to include language in the spectrum legislation to re-purpose a chunk of spectrum now being used by the Defense Department.

Why your cell phone bill is going up

Demand for wireless data services is soaring, forcing carriers to invest massively to keep up.

They have two main options: Upgrade their network technology or acquire more wireless spectrum to give them more bandwidth. Both approaches cost billions. AT&T led its rivals by spending $95 billion over the past five years upgrading its network. Verizon just agreed to pay $3.6 billion for a small but tactically significant bundle of spectrum from a group of cable companies. Those expenses are getting transferred to you, the consumer.

"The insatiable thirst for mobile broadband is going to force all of us to pay more," says Dan Hays, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers' consultancy. "Phone bills are going up." The price creep is already happening. AT&T instituted a $5 across-the-board price hike in January for new contracts, and Sprint raised its monthly smartphone rates by $10 a year ago.

How Will T-Mobile USA Fight the iPhone? Network Upgrades

T-Mobile USA blames the iPhone for pulling away a large number of subscribers last year, and in response the carrier is building out faster, so-called fourth-generation LTE networks in hopes of bringing customers back.

Philipp Humm, T-Mobile USA’s chief executive, and Neville Ray, chief technology officer of the company, outlined T-Mobile USA’s “challenger strategy,” which involves making major upgrades over the next two years. The company is investing $4 billion on upgrading its current network technologies and adding 4G LTE, a faster cellular technology that AT&T and Verizon are aggressively rolling out this year, too. T-Mobile USA’s 4G LTE network will become available in 2013, the company said. The upgrade plan shows that T-Mobile is in fighting spirits. Mr. Humm said during the call that the company was “convinced we will get T-Mobile back to subscriber growth.” But its strategy does not directly address the primary reason people are leaving T-Mobile. They want the iPhone, which is not compatible with 4G LTE networks and is a bestseller nonetheless.

T-Mobile pounds the first nail in 2G’s coffin

T-Mobile isn’t just launching a sizable LTE network in 2013, it’s becoming the Grim Reaper for 2G technology as we know it.

T-Mobile unveiled a plan to radically reshape its networks, shutting down the majority of its 2G GSM capacity so it can focus almost entirely on 4G. As a result T-Mobile will get a bigger, badder mobile broadband network and, to boot, will almost certainly land the iPhone. With this new network configuration, T-Mobile is pulling a technological coup. Though it is the spectrum-poorest operator of the Big 4, it will wind up with a higher-capacity LTE network than Sprint and one with comparable capacity to AT&T, while still being able to milk a massive HSPA+ network for years to come. In the process, T-Mobile is calling into question the so-called spectrum crisis. While other operators are desperately searching for new airwaves, T-Mobile found its future growth spectrum sitting right under its nose. Consumer groups and regulators are almost certainly going to ask why AT&T and Verizon Wireless don’t do the same.

Benton

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