Local review and search website Yelp has hired Laurent Crenshaw, an aide to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), as its first public policy official based in Washington (DC). Crenshaw said he will likely register as a lobbyist soon after joining the company on Nov. 4. He is currently Issa's legislative director and has also worked for former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-OK) and current-Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO).
LightSquared will get court permission to have creditors vote on four competing plans to restructure the company.
US Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman in Manhattan said she would approve all four disclosure statements, which describe the reorganization plans, once final versions are submitted. The plans come from the company, an ad-hoc group of lenders, Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners, and US Bank NA and Mast Capital Management. Creditors will vote by Dec. 5, according to court papers. “All parties have consensually agreed to resolve their formal and informal objections to each other’s disclosure statements,” Matthew S. Barr, a lawyer for LightSquared, told Chapman. LightSquared’s plan proposes a sale of almost all of its assets at auction while the company seeks approval from the Federal Communications Commission to use its airwaves. The lender group, which holds $1.4 billion of the $1.7 billion in debt of LightSquared’s LP unit, has a similar plan calling for a sale. A unit of Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network (DISH) would make a lead, or stalking-horse, bid of $2.2 billion.
Public and private sector leaders agree on many of the broad goals being floated for reshaping the federal E-rate program, but there is little consensus on one, potentially critical issue: Whether telecommunications companies should be required to make more information public about the prices they charge schools for technology.
That question has created a division between education organizations, many of which favor bringing more transparency to pricing, versus industry groups who counter that putting prices in circulation would compel them to reveal proprietary information and would lead to skewed cost comparisons in districts with very different characteristics. The Federal Communications Commission has shown an interest in boosting the transparency of spending in the program, which provides about $2.4 billion a year in aid to schools and libraries for telecommunications services. Many school advocacy organizations favor this option, arguing that making more information about technology prices public will make it easier for schools to get services at a cheaper rate -- saving money not only for K-12 systems, but also ultimately for taxpayers.
Microsoft plans to replaces “cookies,” the long time method online firms use to gain data about users, in favor of new technology that will allow it to identify people as they move from device to device in an increasingly mobile world.
The decision, reported by AdWeek, comes weeks after news that Google is likewise planning to move away from third party cookies, which collect information by dropping bits of code onto people’s browsers. The companies have been tight-lipped about how exactly cross-device tracking works, but it appears to rely on a combination of user-granted permissions and external signals — such as Wi-Fi or web browsing patterns — that predict when the same user is on different devices. The decision to drop cookies is significant because it reflects a shift of power in which companies will have access to data about how users roam the Internet. Until now, a wide array of marketing and data companies have relied on third-party cookies to track and target customers but, in the future, that power will largely reside with a handful of major portals — including Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter — which will be the guardians of customer data.
How's this for a sign of our digitally addicted times: Users swipe their screens to unlock their phones an average of 110 times a day, according to data from the app company Locket.
"We don't think we are unlocking our phones that many times because we don't sit down and count," says Yunha Kim, CEO and co-founder of Locket. So Locket took count, since it's an Android app that pays users for placing ads on its lock screens. The company compiled data on its 150,000 users and found they are most active in checking or using their phones between 5 and 8 p.m. ET, and during those peak hours, the average user checks his or her phone nine times an hour. This takes account of all sorts of reasons the phone's getting unlocked, whether it's to use it for messaging, voice calls or to check the time. "Everything in your life is on mobile now," Kim says. "Being obsessed with anything is not a healthy thing, but mobile improves our performance, it makes things easier. ... It shortens the time I have to waste somewhere else, if you think about it."
Vocalocity, an Atlanta startup that provides communications services to small- to medium-sized businesses, has agreed to be acquired by Internet phone giant Vonage, the companies announced.
Vonage is largely focused on Internet-based phone service to consumers. The deal will give the company a stronger foothold into providing voice service to businesses. Vonage said the overall North American “voice” business for small- and medium-sized companies is worth $15 billion and comprises 32 million phone lines. Approximately 85 percent of smaller companies get their phone service from major carriers like AT&T, Vonage said, at higher prices than those charged by carriers like Vocalocity.
The golden age of telecoms growth and prosperity is waning, according to Ovum.
New research predicts that global connections will grow by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of less than 4 percent between 2012 and 2018, while global revenues will grow at less than half that rate. As growth slows and average revenue per user (ARPU) continues to decline, operators will need to find new ways to serve customers more profitably, not just focus on increasing subscriber numbers, says Ovum. According to Ovum’s figures global mobile connections will grow from 6.5 billion in 2012 to reach 8.1 billion by 2018, while annual mobile service revenues will rise from US$968bn to US$1.1tn. However, global service revenues will contract in 2018 for the first time in the history of the mobile industry, declining from 2017 levels by 1 percent or US$7.8bn. As such, over the next five years, innovation in services, tariffs, business models, network operations, and partnerships will be key revenue-generating strategies.
AT&T and GE have teamed up to connect what could be millions of future GE industrial lights, engines and other hardware with AT&T's global wireless network for remote tracking, monitoring and even operation of the machines.
GE will embed AT&T global wireless SIMs (Subscriber Identity Modules) in industrial products that will communicate over AT&T's cloud-based network. Using GE software called Predix, the two companies will collaborate to build software to maintain and remotely control industrial machines. The industrial machine-to-machine (M2M) agreement could have enormous implications. "This is a hugely significant win for AT&T," said Morgan Mullooly, an analyst at Analysys Mason. "We expect a tremendous number of M2M connections to be activated in the next two to three years, as millions of industrial components roll off GE productions lines fitted with embedded M2M modules and ... dispersed around the globe." GE calls such M2M connections the Industrial Internet which GE estimates will grow by 2025 to affect half of the global economy. In 2025, the global economy will be valued at an estimated $164 trillion.
President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise.
Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists. Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie-detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and e-mail records. An “Insider Threat Program” being implemented in every government department requires all federal employees to help prevent unauthorized disclosures of information by monitoring the behavior of their colleagues.
President Obama is faced with many challenges during his remaining years in office, the outcome of which will help shape his legacy. Among them is fulfilling his very first promise -- to make his administration the most transparent in American history amid national security concerns, economic uncertainty, political polarization, and rapid technological change. Whether he succeeds could have a lasting impact on US government accountability and on the standing of America as an international example of press freedom.
[Commentary] Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff’s recent indictment of the United States’ cyber-spying practices has profound global repercussions for the US vision of a borderless, open Internet.
What makes this backlash especially potent and lamentable is that it is being fueled, not by democracies that oppose American ideals, but rather, by allies that resent Washington’s betrayal of its own over-archingly positive vision. Rouseff’s offensive to change Internet governance follows reports that the National Security Agency’s watchful eye could see as far as her Palácio do Planalto in Brasília. According to leaked documents, the United States has been surveilling Rousseff’s email, intercepting internal government communications, and spying on the country’s national oil company. After canceling an official visit to meet with President Obama in Washington, Rousseff took to the podium at the UN’s General Assembly to call on other countries to disconnect from U.S. Internet hegemony and develop their own sovereign Internet and governance structures. Rousseff’s move could lead to a powerful chorus – one that would transform the Internet of the future from a global commons to a fractured patchwork severely limited by the political boundaries on a map.
Is the benefit of spying on Brazil’s oil company worth the cost of antagonizing the people of our hemisphere’s second-largest democracy and giving China and Russia the moral high ground in debates over how people around the world should access information? Do we really want a world where this behavior is normalized and where its acceptable for every country to surveille and hack indiscriminately?
The answer to that question seems pretty clear. Today we need bold reforms from Washington — we need to curtail our unhealthy addiction to surveillance and covert hacking. Only by being radically transparent about the scope of current activities and ceasing activities that transgress national norms will we regain global trust and shift the rather bleak trajectory we are currently on.
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