January 2013

The tech industry has been urging Congress to take meaningful action on immigration reform for several years now, with many calling for the creation of a so-called startup visa — a dedicated category that would allow foreigners to launch their own business in the US under more flexible conditions than traditional work visas.

Proponents say this visa would make it easier for foreign talent to stay and create jobs in the US, but their calls for reform have thus far yielded scant results. That may soon change, however, now that immigration policy has come to the forefront of the national agenda. The 2012 presidential election seems to have finally mobilized politicians on both sides of the aisle to enact serious immigration reform, as evidenced by the comprehensive legislation proposed this week in the Senate. President Obama, meanwhile, has publicly reaffirmed his support for the startup visa, including it as a provision in the immigration framework he unveiled at a speech in Nevada. Yet it remains unclear whether the startup visa will be carried forward on the wings of bipartisan consensus, or lost amid the broader debate over big ticket issues like border security and paths to citizenship. And as its fate hangs in the balance, the tech industry runs the risk of seeing even more aspiring entrepreneurs take their talents elsewhere.

After the Republican Party and its biggest super PAC and dark money supporters suffered a painful string of defeats on Election Day, the media wasted little time in declaring outside money a dud. But their stories forgot to consider a crucial piece of the puzzle: the role of outside money in primaries.

Though understandable immediately after the general elections, this oversight has contributed to the oversimplified and often misleading “dud” narrative that has emerged about independent spending. This misconception becomes increasingly important as the press takes on the biggest question now facing Washington, DC: whether conservatives in Congress can reach agreement with President Obama on major tax and spending issues. Outside spending groups and their power to make game-changing contributions in primaries—particularly in the Republican Party—will likely prove key factors in shaping the budget and spending negotiations taking place in the coming months.

AT&T is constantly fighting to improve bandwidth on its overcrowded network, which has seen mobile data usage explode 30,000 percent between 2006 and 2012. The carrier has found a solution in small cells, which can bring nearly perfect usability to areas prone to dead zones and dropped calls.

AT&T tested small cells in Crystal Lake Park, Missouri and Waukesha, Wisconsin. In Crystal Lake Park, where the technology was used in a highly populated neighborhood, the small cell increased traffic by 17 percent and also boosted outdoor areas to nearly 100 percent usability. Waukesha was a test in an enterprise environment, specifically a large building dotted with dead zones. The addition of small cells gave the area almost 100 percent coverage and virtually eliminated dropped calls. AT&T did not, however, specify what happened to download speeds after small cells added all those users to the network.