September 2013

AT&T and Fon agree to share Wi-Fi hotspots, charge significantly for the convenience

AT&T customers will soon have more options for Wi-Fi connectivity when traveling abroad. Just don't expect that convenience to come cheap. AT&T's subscribers can now access Fon's network of overseas hotspots. In turn, Fon's own customers will be able to hop on the web from 30,000-plus AT&T hotspots located across the United States. The deal covers smartphones and other connected devices, but you'll be paying dearly for the expanded Wi-Fi footprint. The Fon hotspots will only be open to AT&T subscribers who have added either a 300MB ($60) or 800MB ($120) international data package to their existing wireless plan.

Hume explains why conservative talkers can cause problems for some House Republicans

On “The O’Reilly Factor”, Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume explained how conservative radio talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin can cause serious problems for the Republican Party.

“I’m not sure you’d say they’re calling the shots, but make no mistake about it, Bill — some of these radio talk show hosts have real influence,” Hume said. “They have a huge following particularly in very conservative areas where they are most popular and where the many members of Congress who inhabit those areas are not worried about getting reelected if they can get nominated. But that are worried about a primary challenge that could deny them the nomination. So they’ll go a long way to avoid it and keeping radio talk show hosts off their back is one way of doing that.” Hume then linked the influence of radio talk show hosts to the rise of the “defund Obamacare” movement.

What if Verizon succeeds in killing the Internet?

[Commentary] Verizon is making a big push to begin actively blocking content and competition from its network. But what happens if Verizon wins? What happens if Verizon establishes a precedent for censorship?

Many in the free-market camp will say that customers unhappy with Verizon's service can simply take their computers and go to another provider. Ah, if it were only that simple. If there were any kind of actual competition in broadband service in the United States, we wouldn't be in this position to begin with. The market would take care of these kinds of transgressions naturally. However, this is not the case, and the vast number of markets that have no real competition will be faced with a choice between a neutered Internet and no Internet at all. "But you can go wireless!" they say. Sure, for vastly overcharged subscriptions and minuscule data plans. Oh, and Verizon is in that market, too. If Verizon wins, the citizens lose, no matter who they are bound to for Internet access. In any case, my hope is that we will begin to see clear and unconstrained Internet access as a public service, a constitutional right, a given -- that we will someday be able to enjoy the pricing, speed, and availability of Internet access enjoyed by Romania or South Korea. It's obvious that we cannot count on the big ISPs to bring us there without placing strong controls on their behavior.

China's smartphone shipments to exceed 450 million in 2014: IDC

The world's biggest smartphone market, China, will likely ship in more than 450 million devices in 2014, at least a quarter more than this year, research firm IDC said. IDC said the increase will be driven by the government's issuance of 4G licenses and expectations that China Mobile, the world's biggest wireless operator, would carry iPhones. China, a market dominated by Samsung Electronics and Lenovo Group, is expected to ship 120 million 4G-enabled smartphones to meet consumer demand for Internet connectivity.

Spectrum Auctions: Sens. Want 'Expeditious' Coordination With Mexico, Canada

Yet another group of legislators has asked the Federal Communications Commission to get moving on coordination with Mexico and Canada as it prepares its plan for reclaiming broadcast spectrum for auction and repacking stations to free up contiguous blocks for that auction. The latest is from a bipartisan group of senators including members of the Commerce Committee and the chair of the Judiciary committee.

In a letter to FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn, the senators praised her for her leadership in implementing the voluntary broadcaster incentive auction, but also said it is "essential" that international coordination be addressed expeditiously." Among those signing the letter, which was dated Sept 20, were Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Commerce Committee members Al Franken (D-MN) and Ron Johnson (R-WI). The senators pointed out that there were some border coordination problems during the digital television transition, which had a much longer time line than the auction, which is targeted for completion by the end of next year. "It is important that the FCC takes advantage of the insights gained during the DTV transition in carrying out this coordination process," they wrote.

UN agency’s annual broadband report reveals gender inequalities

The United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union has added something new to its annual report on worldwide broadband penetration: gender inequality.

According to the study, about 41 percent of men (1.5 billion total) will have access to the Internet by the end of 2013, compared to just 37 percent of women (1.3 billion total). That gap could grow to 350 million by the end of 2016 — a sign that women are coming online at a much slower pace than men. This disparity is most pronounced in developing nations, where women trail in Internet usage by 16 percent. For the first time, the State of Broadband report also tracks a new target mandating ‘gender equality in broadband access by the year 2020’, which was set by the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, at its March meeting in Mexico City. ITU figures confirm that, worldwide, women are less likely to have access to technology than their male counterparts. While the gap is relatively small in the developed world, it widens enormously as average income levels fall.

Al Jazeera English unblocks its YouTube videos for US-based viewers

US-based news junkies can once again access reports produced by Quatar-based Al Jazeera English online after the network stopped blocking access to its YouTube videos within the US. Al Jazeera started to lock out US viewers from its online videos when it launched its new cable channel Al Jazeera America in August 2013 due to contractual obligations. Its contracts with cable operators also forced the network to block its live stream in the US.

Former US CTO Says APIs Are Key to Unlocking Government Data

Aneesh Chopra, the former federal Chief Technology Officer, says the evolution of application programming interfaces (APIs) will continue to open up government data in accessible, machine-readable formats. The launch of government data portals has done wonders for transparency efforts, but according to Chopra, APIs have an important role to play in making government information more useful to citizens.

Chopra, together with then-Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, focused efforts on making government more transparent with the Open Government Initiative. Chopra, a longtime advocate of open data in the public sector, said that API development is a key digital strategy in unlocking government data, and will be instrumental in the development of new products and services that both advance the mission of the agency whose data is being released, but also grow the economy and create new jobs. So far, API integration with government portals has already proved successful, for example, with HealthCare.gov, Chopra said. The portal, launched in 2010, is considered a first-of-its-kind guide, using government data, to help customers choose health insurance information.

AT&T will build an LTE-Broadcast network tailor-made for video

AT&T hopes to breathe new life into some old airwaves by building a broadcast network, ideal for pushing out live video to many multiple devices without jamming up its pipes with traffic. The technology is called long-term evolution (LTE) Broadcast, and as it name implies it turns what is normally a two-way mobile broadband network into a one-way multicast network similar to those used by TV broadcasters.

Announcing the new project at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said AT&T’s mobile focus is “all about architecting networks to deliver video,” FierceWireless reported. The new network will also give AT&T a use for the old MediaFLO airwaves it bought off Qualcomm in 2011 after it shut down its FLO TV experiment. LTE-Broadcast’s best use case is for big live events like the Super Bowl, which could be watched by millions of people simultaneously. But the distributed nature of the LTE network could also let carriers tailor individual broadcast content for very specific locations. Cell sites at a stadium could send out a constant play-by-play feed as well as transmit highlights and replays to thousands of phone and tablets simultaneously. Stephenson didn’t say exactly when the new network would go live, though he hinted at a three-year horizon.

What’s Behind AT&T’s Plans for Alltel Assets?

Now that AT&T’s purchase of wireless assets that formerly belonged to Alltel has closed, AT&T plans to convert that network – which currently uses Code division multiplex access (CDMA) – to Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) and long-term evolution (LTE). The assets, which include rural areas of six states, were in the hands of Atlantic Tele-Network.

According to the Federal Communications Commission’s conditional order approving AT&T’s purchase, AT&T estimates that 100% of the population covered in the former Alltel markets will have access to AT&T HSPA+ services within 15 months and that 75% will have access to LTE services within 18 months. An additional 10% will have access to LTE within 36 months, according to the order. These plans would appear to fit quite nicely into AT&T’s plans for modernizing rural markets where the company is the incumbent local telephone service provider, calling for the expansion of LTE so that it covers 300 million people by year-end 2014, including unserved areas that cannot get broadband service and where the carrier is not planning to deploy high-speed DSL. Five of the six states included in AT&T’s purchase from ATNI/Alltel are states in which AT&T operates as an incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) including Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and South Carolina, as well as one non-ILEC state, Idaho. AT&T made the commitment to upgrade its rural areas after determining it would not be feasible to sell those territories. The upgrade could be critical to the carrier retaining business in its rural areas as the FCC moves along with its Connect America Fund program. AT&T apparently is hoping that if it can bring LTE to its ILEC markets that lack landline broadband, the FCC will consider those markets to have broadband. AT&T this year accepted some Connect America funding in exchange for committing to bring broadband to some of its landline customers that cannot currently get broadband.

Benton

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