July 2012

Verizon willfully driving DSL users into the arms of cable

[Commentary] Back in April, you may recall that Verizon stopped selling standalone DSL, taking us back to the stone age of broadband when users were forced to bundle a costly landline they might no longer want. That move was just one part of a broader tactical shift by Verizon aimed at completely re-configuring the American broadband landscape—potentially for the worse.

With FiOS expansion frozen and most of the company's focus on fixed and mobile LTE services with sky-high overages, Verizon has all but declared that the 35-45 percent of their entire customer footprint that will be left on DSL is essentially expendable. Those users are consciously being driven to LTE and cable competitors as part of one of the largest shifts in power and technology this industry has ever seen. Verizon has numerous reasons for wanting its DSL services to die off, including the fact that newer LTE technology is cheaper to deploy in rural areas and easier to keep upgraded. But one of the driving forces is that Verizon is eager to eliminate unions from the equation, given that Verizon Wireless is non-union. None of this is theory; in fact, it has been made very clear by Verizon executives. "Every place we have FiOS, we are going to kill the copper," Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam recently told attendees of an investor conference. "We are going to just take it out of service. Areas that are more rural and more sparsely populated, we have got LTE built that will handle all of those services and so we are going to cut the copper off there."

Big MSOs Commit To Make Encrypted Basic Tiers Available To IP Devices

The six largest U.S. cable operators are prepared to offer two ways to let third-party IP-based devices access encrypted basic-tier programming, as the industry looks to cut theft of service from broadband-only subscribers, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission. The largest cable operators, which serve 84% of U.S. cable subscribers, will provide either 1) an adapter with home-networking capability to decrypt TV signals and pass them through to IP devices or 2) an encryption solution that would be made commercially available to third-party manufacturers.

Ahead of Google Fiber launch, here’s what another gig city has already learned

Google plans to launch its fiber to the home network in Kansas City with the goal of seeing what people there can do with a gigabit connection. But as one city that already has a gigabit network can tell you, the answer so far may be, “Not much.” For the last two years, Chattanooga’s public utility (EPB) has offered customers a gigabit fiber-to-the-home connection costing roughly $300 a month, so I touched base with a group of investors and entrepreneurs who have built a program to try to see what people can do with that fast a connection. So far, the limits of equipment, the lack of other gigabit networks (much of the Internet is reciprocal so it’s no fun if you have the speeds to send a holographic image of yourself but no one on the other end can receive it) and the small number of experiments on the network have left the founders of the Lamp Post Group underwhelmed.

Going Mobile: Leading Patients And Providers To MHealth

[Commentary] Mobile health technology (mHealth) offers exciting opportunities to access and administer healthcare on the go. Patients and providers alike can benefit from the explosion of mobile devices and tools being developed to improve access, increase monitoring and lower costs. But are smartphones and tablets actually being used for healthcare? How can we encourage users to do so?

The adoption of mobile devices—smartphones and electronic tablets—is proceeding at an astounding pace. In 2011, more smartphones were purchased worldwide than computers, desktops and laptops combined (Canalysis 2012). According to a 2012 Pew Internet survey, roughly half of the adult population in the U.S. owns a smartphone. The healthcare sector has followed suit, developing innovative ways to use mobile health technology for patients and healthcare providers alike. According to a recent survey conducted by our recruitment unit, 91% of physicians own mobile devices, but only 44% use them just occasionally to communicate with patients. Furthermore, less than 15% of patients use their smartphone or tablet for healthcare purposes.

[Weisman is EVP and general manager of Blue Chip Healthcare Marketing, a division of Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide]

Rep Issa’s Call to the Internet’s Right Side

A Q&A with Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA).

He emerged during this winter's debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act as a politician willing to question Washington dogma about how you go about protecting copyright online. Issa and a suddenly swelling band of allies asked tough, tech-savvy question about what the legislation would do to the Internet's workings: the effect of website blackouts on the domain-name system, for example, and the liabilities the bill would place on sites like YouTube and everyday blogs to patrol for infringement. Darrell Issa sounded the alarm over SOPA. The Internet came running. Post-SOPA, Issa says he's eager to keep attention on how Internet policy gets made in Washington. He recently changed his Twitter avatar from a cartoon cop to a superhero in the shadow of a "cat signal," the digital alert of the brand-new Internet Defense League, a coalition of activists and web companies that sports the tagline, "Make sure the Internet never loses. Ever."

In an interview, Congressman Darrell Issa makes his case for why a conservative approach is the best hope for keeping the Internet full of win.

On Twitter, Verdict on Paterno Unchanged by Freeh Report, NCAA

On July 12, the results of an independent investigation led by former FBI director Louis Freeh found that the leadership at Penn State had known about and covered up acts of sexual assault by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. At the center of the decision to do nothing, the report found, was the legendary coach Joe Paterno. In the wake of the Freeh report, the university decided to remove Paterno's statue from outside the football stadium. The NCAA instituted harsh sanctions on the university and nullified 111 victories under Paterno's leadership.

A new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals that the events changed minds about the school and its football program, at least as measured by the conversation on the social platform Twitter. But it did nothing to alter the balance of views about Paterno. And as the dust settled, while his legacy was divided, Paterno was discussed more favorably on Twitter than the school or the football program. Before the Freeh report (from June 23 through July11) 42% of the conversation about Paterno was positive while 58% was negative. After the report (in the period from July 12-23), those talking about Paterno seemed hardly to budge in their views; 44% of the conversation was positive and 56% was negative. Many supporters argued that the statue of Paterno outside the football stadium should stay up and mourned when it was taken down on July 22.

Fate of U.S. may hang on winner of iPhone-Android war

The mobile operating system you choose may determine the fate of the U.S. presidency in the November election. Certainly, it's likely to dictate whether you're bombarded with pro-Barack Obama ads or pro-Mitt Romney ads as you browse the mobile Internet this year.

A new study from Localytics found that 70 percent of the states with the most active iPhone users vote Democratic, 70 percent of the states with the most active Android lean Republican, and critical swing states are clustered in the middle. The presidential candidates' respective campaigns may use those nuggets of information as we head toward Election Day, Localytics predicts: "With the Obama and Romney campaigns seeking every advantage, targeted smartphone advertising will be useful when trying to reach Democratic and Republican voters and volunteers in swing states, which cluster around the average iPhone and Android distribution."

Why Obama Likes Facebook

President Obama's campaign is expanding the power of the social media operation it built in 2008, using an app to extend its voter intelligence efforts to potentially millions of Facebook accounts of people who didn't directly get in touch.

The app, Obama 2012, gives the campaign access to the birth dates, locations, and likes—that is, Web pages a user has indicated he or she likes or identifies with by hitting the Facebook "like" button—of many of the Facebook friends of the 150,000 people who installed the app. That could feed the campaign valuable intelligence on a few million people: whether they are of voting age and live in swing states, what issues they care about, and who in their network might best influence them. Even though Facebook's policies forbid the campaign from using that friend data outside the context of the app, the information can still be used for the organizing and volunteering activities the app enables. In other words: don't be surprised, especially if you are an undecided voter in a swing state, if you hear from someone on Facebook with a highly personalized appeal based on things you've clicked online.

Error 451: A proposed Internet status code for censorship

If a website you're trying to reach is blocked for legal reasons, do you have a right to know about it? Developer advocate Tim Bray thinks so, and he's got a perfect error code for it: 451, a tribute to the late Ray Bradbury's landmark novel about censorship, Fahrenheit 451.

Bray, a self-described "general-purpose Web geek" who helped develop several key Internet standards, wrote a formal specification for his proposal and submitted it to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that develops and promotes Internet standards. The group is slated to take up Bray's proposal at next week's annual meeting, which begins July 29 in Vancouver, Canada.

Mobility push intensifies for e-government

The public has gone mobile, and experts say the government should redouble its efforts to become mobile-friendly.

“There is so much innovation happening in the private sector around mobile, and the federal government is playing catch up,” said Dave Lewan, vice president of public sector business at ForeSee, customer experience analytics company. Overall, the federal government is still getting good ratings from citizens, according to the American E-Government Consumer Satisfaction Index, which gathered input from nearly 300,000 surveys in the second quarter. However, most websites’ satisfaction ratings have remained flat for 11 of the last 12 quarters. E-government satisfaction has not varied more than a half point in that time. If agencies make themselves accessible on multiple platforms, the government’s e-government customer approval rates will only go up, Lewan said.

Benton

Search