February 2012

ICANN Reveals a Few Details on New Domain Name Applications

The group that runs the Internet's address system is revealing a few details about the program it launched in January allowing for the introduction of an unlimited number of new Internet addresses. So far, 100 groups or companies have submitted applications to run their own domain names to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group said.

Each applicant is allowed to apply for up to 50 names. However, applicants must pay a $185,000 evaluation fee for each name they apply for, an ICANN spokesman said. ICANN has so far refused to say now many names each applicant has applied for or give any details about the applicants. In the unlikely event that every applicant applied for the maximum number of names, it means there could be as many as 5,000 possible new domain names to compete with the 22 existing top-level domain names. But it could take up to a year before any of the proposed names, whether it be .car or .anything, become available. ICANN has established a lengthy evaluation process to ensure applicants have the financial and technical means to run a new domain name.

The wireless industry swallows the Wi-Fi pill

At this year’s Mobile World Congress, you would expect LTE to hog the spotlight, but LTE might find itself overshadowed by a far less sexy technology: Wi-Fi. As telecom vendors prep their new portfolios for the big Barcelona showcase in two weeks, there are a preponderance of Wi-Fi products in the mix. That could mean the world’s largest cellular network event will be dominated by a distinctly noncellular technology.

Shepard Smith To AT&T: 'Your System Is No Good, You Fibbed To Me, And I Don't Appreciate It'

Shepard Smith is not happy with his cell phone provider.

During his Feb 13 Fox News show, Smith, who is an AT&T customer, lampooned the data company for attempting to limit his supposedly unlimited data plan. Smith said that AT&T was slowing down its data plan to encourage Smith and other unlimited data plan subscribers to pay for a tiered plan, in which customers would have to pay different rates for different amounts of data. Smith said that some customers' data plans are so slow, their phones are basically useless.

Fair Use Or Free Riding? The AP’s New Attack On News Scraping

The Associated Press is becoming more aggressive in trying to rein in the information the news service scatters around the world.

After helping to launch a copyright monitoring service, the AP is now suing a company that clips headlines and news items for its customers. In a complaint filed in New York federal court, the AP accused Norway-based Meltwater of wrongfully repackaging and sharing its content without a license. The lawsuit comes at a time when content owners continue to wrestle with how to stop what they perceive as free riding by news monitors and aggregators. The problem for news providers is that facts and headlines can’t be copyrighted. In response, the providers have been trying to resurrect a doctrine known as “hot news” that the AP itself helped to create nearly a century ago.

Twitter Leads List of the Most Innovative Media Companies

For linking users worldwide in real time and becoming as important in TV, news, and politics as the events themselves. It’s impossible to talk about media without Twitter.

The now-ubiquitous microblogging services has more than 200 million registered accounts and was recent valued at $8 billion. Twitter has come a long way since it started out as a combination blogging-social-networking platform; it’s now crucial for advertisers, marketers, and media. TV producers watch as Twitter comments about their shows come in and adjust content accordingly. Twitter partners with tons of media companies, working with the New York Times for elections and the Weather Channel, adding tweets to TV broadcast and local tweets to weather.com. Twitter has also been a powerful political tool, and not just for American politicians. Demonstrators in the Arab Spring movements used the site to stay in touch and pass along information. Twitter enabled that communication faster than any other medium could. The rapidity with which information is disseminated is one of Twitter’s key additions to today’s media.

Mobile DTV Brings Live Television To Cars, Buses

Smartphones with HDTV reception chips and in-car television sets are big business in Taiwan, China, and Brazil. Now the travel-friendly tech behind mobile DTV is making its way to the United States.

The biggest hurdle facing mobile DTV in the US is the simple fact that American companies love their media streaming and are hesitant to accept it. The only previous U.S. mobile digital TV product, Qualcomm's Flo.tv, was an expensive, subscription-only failure whose price tuned out any potential audience they could have had. However, domestic firms seem to be gaining interest on mobile digital TV. RCA, Dell, HTC (well, Taiwanese, but with a massive U.S. market share), and radar detector manufacturer ESCORT all have handheld or car-mounted mobile DTV sets on the way.

PTC targets MTV's 'Pants Back,' makes unique threat

Parents Television Council have built up a fresh froth of outrage, this time over MTV’s scripted series I Just Want My Pants Back. Pants Back is a relationship comedy with a cast in their 20s. PTC says its going after the show’s sponsors because MTV is targeting 12-year-old children with the show’s risqué content.

A Tale of Two Community Broadband Strategies in NC

New Hanover County, in the southeast corner of North Carolina, announced that it has become the first county in the U.S. to deploy a super Wi-Fi network. Hopes are as high as the newly installed Wi-Fi transmitters. The county is home to Wilmington, NC, and has been able to capitalize off of its previous transition from analog to all-digital television. Now, the county's 'super Wi-Fi' is the first to deploy in the U.S., and it operates over the so-called “white spaces” spectrum that the FCC opened up for use in 2008. Because the mobile data network utilizes this low frequency spectrum, hot spot signals can travel farther distances and penetrate structures better than traditional Wi-Fi networks.

A Tale of Two Community Broadband Strategies in NC - Part 2

Fibranet is a city-owned fiber network that went live one year ago in Salisbury, NC. To date, Salisbury's former City Manager David Treme says that Fibranet has more than 1,700 customers, with 13% market share—all after billing its first customer back in December of 2010. But with those numbers, the network is behind its projected revenue and subscriber forecasts. Initially, the project stalled with technical deployment issues: private companies were slow to move their lines to free up space on the utility poles, the customer service center had to be redesigned because of its designation as an “essential” structure by Rowan County (something that cost the city an extra $1m), and so on... all struggles that are all too often a part of any fiber deployment. All told, the city of more than 33k people will spend $70m on Fibranet. This year, the debt payment increases to approximately $3m annually (up from $1.7m the first year), and this level of repayment will continue from 2013-2029.

The Best Laid Plans... Go Awry for Minneapolis Broadband

We've all heard the saying, “If you build it, they will come.” But what happens when you build it, but don't use it?

Back in 2006, the city of Minneapolis announced it would spend approximately $1m per year through 2018, to become the largest customer of a new, city-wide Wi-Fi network built by USI Wireless. City Hall would become a hot spot, so that workers could wirelessly go online with their laptops and handheld devices, the city could monitor water meters, send police video wirelessly, and so on. But now, six years later, the Wi-Fi access is largely going unused. The city is still spending $1.25m a year for the Wi-Fi service, yet it's only using 11% of the bandwidth it's paying for—about $140k worth. Most of that usage comes from the 20k or so residents who are using the Wi-Fi hot spots, as well as the handful of city services that actually do employ the wireless network. According to Otto Doll, the chief information officer for Minneapolis, the city hopes to increase usage to 23% by the end of 2012, and to 40% in 2013. According to agreements with USI, the city does accumulate credit for bandwidth it doesn't use, but even that perk seems to be an ironic one—a benefit that Minneapolis will never be able to fully exploit.

Benton

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