Vodafone has agreed to pay £1 billion to acquire Cable & Wireless Worldwide, winning the bidding race to take over the troubled UK telecoms group. Vodafone’s takeover overcame a rival approach from Tata Communications, the internet data services division of the Indian conglomerate. Vodafone targeted C&WW due to synergies in acquiring a UK fixed line network to support its mobile operation, as well as potential tax advantages.
Back in 2004, as Google prepared to go public, Larry Page and Sergey Brin celebrated the maxim that was supposed to define their company: “Don’t be evil.” But these days, a lot of people — at least the mere mortals outside the Googleplex — seem to be wondering about that uncorporate motto. How is it that Google, a company chockablock with brainiac engineers, savvy marketing types and flinty legal minds, keeps getting itself in hot water? Google, which stood up to the Death Star of Microsoft? Which changed the world as we know it?
The latest brouhaha, of course, involves the strange tale of Street View, Google’s project to photograph the entire world, one street at a time, for its maps feature. It turns out Google was collecting more than just images: federal authorities have dinged the company for lifting personal data off Wi-Fi systems, too, including e-mails and passwords. Evil? Hard to know. But certainly weird — and enough to prompt a small fine of $25,000 from the Federal Communications Commission and, far more damaging, howls from Congress and privacy advocates. A Google spokeswoman called the hack “a mistake” and disagreed with the F.C.C.’s contention that Google “deliberately impeded and delayed” the commission’s investigation. Many people might let this one go, were it not for all those other worrisome things at Google. The company has been accused of flouting copyrights, leveraging other people’s work for its benefit and violating European protections of personal privacy, among other things. “Don’t be evil” no longer has its old ring. And Google, an underdog turned overlord, is no humble giant. It tends to approach any controversy with an air that ranges somewhere between “trust us” and “what’s good for Google is good for the world.” But ascribing what’s going on here solely to the power or arrogance of a single company misses an important dimension of today’s high-technology business, where there are frequent assaults, real or perceived, on various business standards and practices.
[Commentary] Google and Facebook, young and successful companies that they are, risk being left behind as technology shifts from PCs and Web browsers to mobile devices. I have a theory on why they both have been slow to capitalize on the shift to mobile. It’s that employment at these companies is like going to work on an all-inclusive cruise ship. The analogy is apt in terms of the luxury — and the isolation.
The employee’s perks could be stultifying. Get hired by one of these businesses, and there is no reason to leave the office. There are on-campus gyms. Day care. Massages. Dry cleaning. Car rentals. Sadly, this isn’t how the rest of the world works. Most people actually have to leave their offices to get coffee. While wandering out into the real world, we unfortunates tend to do a lot with our mobile phones. We look for new restaurants, check in with location-based apps, share short pithy updates about things we’ve seen in this outside world, and take pictures of food and sunsets. I’m betting that the Googlers and Facebookers don’t see as much outside, since all these perks are meant to keep people working as long as possible.
Qualcomm said it was having problems finding enough capacity to manufacture chips designed for mobile phones, something that’s likely to become more common as the physics that govern how we make semiconductors buckles under the demands of our increasingly mobile lives. But this isn’t just about Moore’s Law; this is a story of how the demands for more performance, less power and smaller sizes are all combining to force changes in the chip industry.
The chip industry is well aware that it’s about to hit a wall and everyone from Intel to startups have been working on solutions. That’s why last year Intel made a big deal of its 3-D transistors. This is a new way of making transistors that helps address some of the problems that arise from smaller channel widths — a breakthrough that Intel has been working on for 10 years. The chip industry must adapt to deliver the performance we need in lower power envelopes, and the solutions to that problem range from “rip and replace” options like quantum computing to the efforts described above. All of these will help bridge the demand our mobile devices are placing on chips. In the meantime, the increasing complexity is helping chip manufacturing equipment makers like Applied and startups that are seeking a new way.
A full quarter of consumers intend to purchase (or have already purchased) a smartphone during the first half of this year, once again proving the popularity of the mobile device.
According to ABI research, the 25% of consumers who showed a purchase intent for a smartphone is equal to the number of people who intend to buy HDTVs, and far exceeds the number of people who intend to buy tablets (18%). (Indeed, more people intend to buy Blu-ray players (16%) and video game consoles (17%) than tablets, according to the firm.) The main factor in the continued popularity of HDTVs (as well as Blu-ray players and video game consoles) is the increasing presence of built-in Internet connectivity. The television is still the dominant entertainment center for the American family and Internet connectivity opens up the flexibility of the Internet to the television screen.
On February 27, 2012, the Federal Communications Commission released a Public Notice about the seldom-discussed Universal Service Fund’s Rural Health Care (RHC) program. Comments were due on April 18. For consideration is whether the FCC should transition 50 projects from a pilot program to a more permanent funding mechanism. The FCC proposes to use existing funds that “were previously designated for projects that withdrew from the Program or otherwise failed to meet the June 30, 2011 deadline” (approximately $30 million) as the bridge fund.
The Montana Telecommunications Associations filed comments in this proceeding where it argued the FCC’s Public Notice “puts the cart before the horse:” “[The FCC] assumes that pilot projects that will run out of funds in 2012 should continue to be funded despite the temporary nature of the Pilot Program, questions raised about the Rural Health Care Program by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and still-unresolved questions about contour of the Rural Health Care support mechanism itself as discussed in the 2010 Rural Health Care Program Notice of Public Rulemaking.” MTA further states that there is no clear evidence that the FCC is required to provide ongoing funding to participants at the conclusion of the Pilot Program. Also, the FCC was supposed to release a report about the results of the program, which it has not yet done.
While the FCC is likely hard at work on Mobility Fund Phase I auction rules, mid-sized competitive wireless carriers are already looking ahead to Phase II. Representatives from the Rural Cellular Association (RCA), U.S. Cellular, and Cellular One held ex parte meetings with members of the Federal Communications Commission on April 12, 2012 to discuss various concerns about the Mobility Fund, namely that they believe “the existing support allocated for Phase II of the Mobility Fund will be inadequate to achieve vital universal service goals and that the Commission should use the further rulemaking to make additional funding available to competitive wireless providers.”
The competitive wireless carriers further argued that because Mobility Fund Phase I support is nonrecurring, some carriers might be discouraged from participating in the reverse auction without assurance that their ongoing operating expenses will be recoverable. RCA, U.S. Cellular, and Cellular One propose one solution to help ensure that future funding in the Mobility Fund is sufficient—or at least more sufficient than $500m per year: “Support foregone by price cap carriers that decline to exercise their statewide right of first refusal with respect to Connect America Fund support should be reallocated to the Mobility Fund.” Additionally, the FCC “should free up additional funds to support mobile wireless services by eliminating excessive support flowing to rural incumbent LECs, including by lowering the prescribed rate of return and limiting permissible recovery levels for capital and operating expenses.”
The House is set to vote on a host of cybersecurity bills next week, but the fate of the legislation rests in the Senate.
The House is expected to approve the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which would tear down legal barriers that discourage companies from sharing data about cyberattacks. The goal of the legislation is to help companies beef up their defenses against hackers who steal business secrets, rob customers’ financial information and wreak havoc on computer systems. But the White House and Senate Democrats argue CISPA is inadequate. They say any cybersecurity legislation should include tougher privacy protections and should require critical infrastructure systems to meet minimum security standards.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced that the House will vote on four bills next week to improve the nation's defenses against cyberattacks. But left off the list was the Homeland Security Committee's Precise Act, which the panel approved on April 18. Bill author Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) scaled back the legislation in a last-minute attempt to win the support of GOP House leaders, who had made it clear that they wouldn't support any bill that would create new regulations for cybersecurity.
Rep Pete King (R-NY), who chairs the Homeland Security Committee and supports the Precise Act, said the measure could still come up for a vote next week. Democrats on the committee voted against the Precise Act on April 18, accusing the panel's Republicans of gutting their own bill to appease their party's leaders. The revised version of the bill would still authorize the Homeland Security Department to help critical infrastructure companies, such as electrical grids, protect their networks, but the system would be entirely voluntary. The White House and many Senate Democrats argue protections for critical infrastructure companies should be a central piece of cybersecurity legislation.
The most prominent bill scheduled for a House vote next week is the Intelligence Committee's Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The bill would tear down legal barriers that discourage companies from sharing data about cyberattacks. Civil liberty groups are campaigning against the bill, warning that it would encourage companies to hand over private user data to the government spy agencies.
Also on deck is Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) Federal Information Security Amendments, which would provide for stronger oversight of the security of federal computer systems. The Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), aims to better coordinate federal research into cybersecurity.
Finally, the House will vote on a bill from Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) that will reauthorize research and development of new computing technology, called the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
The Communications Workers of America, the largest union for telecommunications workers, wants the Federal Communications Commission to delay a final decision on whether Verizon can buy $3.6 billion in spectrum from a consortium of cable companies.
CWA says Verizon Wireless, Comcast, Time Warner, Bright House Networks and Cox have not provided meaningful details of their transaction. “Verizon Wireless and Big Cable are trying to keep their deal wrapped in secrecy behind closed doors,” said Debbie Goldman, telecommunications policy director for the CWA. “The FCC should ‘stop the clock’ on its review and insist on a full public review of this proposed deal.”
The union says the companies are obstructing a meaningful review of the deal in a number of ways; the companies have:
© 1994-2025 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.
