1. Monthly archive
  2. January 2014

January 2014

Predicting Wheeler: Where will the new FCC chairman fall on net neutrality?

[Commentary] In the coming months, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals will issue an opinion on network neutrality -- the idea that Internet service providers can’t discriminate on packets traversing their networks. Already many analysts are anticipating a whole or partial setback for the Open Internet Order issued by the Federal Communications Commission that codifies the idea of net neutrality. So now, analysts have moved on to ask “What will Wheeler do?” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is the man of the hour. As a former lobbyist for both the cable and cellular industry he has had close ties to companies that would like to see the Open Internet Order overturned. His statements on the topic have been vague when it comes to the need for an open Internet, and so far he has given some truly worrisome answers about congestion or pricing models for the internet. Now, as the courts are presumably nearing an opinion the question is what will Chairman Wheeler do. Part of this will depend on what the court decides, but the options are pretty much appeal or ask lawmakers for some legislative as opposed to regulatory solution. While some legislators are angling to reopen legislation on the telecommunications industry, that’s a long process. As for an appeal, we’re back to that WWWD question.

[Dec 26]

Bringing Municipal High-Speed Internet Access to Leverett, Massachusetts

This report provides a detailed account of the development of LeverettNet, Leverett (MA)’s municipal fiber optic network. It includes information about the extensive planning and outreach activities carried out by Leverett from 2011 through 2013, as well as details of the technical and operational characteristics of LeverettNet. Leverett has been successful in mobilizing support for LeverettNet, and the network is being built on schedule with full deployment planned for 2014. Our hope is that this report will be helpful to other cities that are considering launching fiber optic networks.

Key Findings:

  • LeverettNet is a last-mile fiber to the home network that will be operated by a publicly controlled Municipal Light Plant entity. The MLP will operate independently of Leverett's political infrastructure, but will be required by state law to charge subscribers no more than the cost of providing service.
  • The network will connect every household in a sparsely populated small town in Western Massachusetts that is currently underserved by private Internet access providers. Although every residence and business will be linked to LeverettNet, individual homeowners will have the discretion to decide whether to subscribe.
  • LeverettNet was planned to take advantage of MassBroadband 123, a publicly funded fiber network recently built to connect towns (but not individual homes and businesses) in Massachusetts.
  • Long-term leadership, planning, and community engagement by Leverett's public officials prompted the citizens of Leverett to approve a modest property tax increase in return for the long-term benefits of a FTTH network.
  • Although LeverettNet has opted for a tiered set of access plans, had it decided to deliver 1Gbps to every home and business in Leverett the cost of service to subscribers -- including Internet access and phone service, state and local taxes, access fees, network operation fees, and maintenance fees -- would have been $61.30 per household per month.

[Dec 17]

Internet of Things May Strangle Enterprise Bandwidth

[Commentary] Most enterprise information technology departments are preoccupied with bring-your-own-device (BOYD) and the mobile devices accessing their networks, but a much more vexing monster is lurking in the shadows and waiting to spring. The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a collective of Internet-connected consumer devices, manufacturing systems, business tools, customer service appliances, medical equipment, agricultural sensors, and other things. IDC predicts that the IoT will grow to 30 billion things by 2020. Cisco expects the IoT's market value to grow to $14 trillion by 2022. Whatever you want to call it, an avalanche of communication is coming, and it's heading straight for your WAN. In a recent InformationWeek survey on next-generation WANs, 68% of respondents said demand for WAN bandwidth will increase over the next year, but only 15% said they were expanding capacity. The bandwidth gap -- the difference between required and available bandwidth -- is large and growing. The IoT not only will introduce new endpoints, but it also will introduce entirely new types of endpoints. Familiar IT challenges such as security, compliance, application integration, training, support, and budget restrictions will be magnified as if they were bulked up on steroids.

[Kumar is the Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Adaptiva]

[Dec 26]

AT&T sets TDM-to-IP transition trials to focus on challenges, service impact

AT&T brought proposals to the Federal Communications Commission to begin testing its TDM-to-IP transition and to set a timeline to make these changes throughout its 4,700 wire centers.

During a recent meeting with the FCC's Technology Transition Task Force, the telecommunications company said that it would focus on conducting service-based experiments in wiring centers that "represent the challenges it will face with the transition and conduct an extensive review of the services to be impacted as part of this experiment." AT&T added that the tests will represent a mix of both consumer and business services geographies. It will also incorporate reporting capabilities "as a means for keeping the FCC informed about any experiments in progress." AT&T has been the most vocal proponent of the TDM-to-IP transition, which it plans to complete by 2020.

[Jan 2]

Survey finds mobile devices overwhelm many consumers

This holiday season, people bought or received an estimated 45 million smartphones. While the devices are well designed and provide great user experiences, they offer so much functionality they can be complex. A recent survey conducted by Harris and Lookout reveals that Americans don’t know how to keep up with the Joneses when it comes to mobile technology and often rely on tech-savvy friends and family members for help.

The survey found:

  • 63 percent find it difficult to keep up with the latest mobile technology.
  • 46 percent admit that getting comfortable with new technology takes hours.
  • Nearly one in three (31 percent) admit they regularly make mistakes with mobile technology.

[Dec 29]

Commotion comes out of beta, vying to create a broadband commons

For the last two years the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute has been working with communities from Detroit to Dharamsala to set up community broadband mesh networks that sidestep local Internet service providers and even government internet restrictions. Now OTI is ready to take its technology, called Commotion, out of beta.

It released Commotion 1.0 to the general public and invited communities worldwide to build and manage their own neighborhood networks. Commotion was originally designed as a means to circumscribe government censorship and surveillance on the internet, but the scope of the project quickly expanded to include extending access to areas where broadband was unavailable or unaffordable. Commotion combines technologies like the Serval Project’s mesh networking and Tor’s identity shielding software to create secure distributed networks made up of smartphones, routers, servers and other nodes.

[Jan 2]

What is entering the public domain in the United States? Not a single published work.

[Commentary] Once again, we will have nothing to celebrate this January 1st because no published works are entering the public domain in 2014. Or next year. In fact, in the United States, no publication will enter the public domain until 2019.

When the first copyright law was written in the United States, copyright lasted 14 years, renewable for another 14 years if the author wished. Jefferson or Madison could look at the books written by their contemporaries and confidently expect them to be in the public domain within a decade or two. Now? In the United States, as in much of the world, copyright lasts for the author’s lifetime, plus another 70 years. You might think, therefore, that works whose authors died in 1943 would be freely available on January 1, 2014. Sadly, no. When Congress changed the law, it applied the term extension retrospectively to existing works, and gave all in-copyright works published between 1923 and 1977 a term of 95 years. The result? None of those works will enter the public domain until 2019, and works from 1957, whose arrival we might otherwise be expecting January 1, 2014, will not enter the public domain until 2053. In addition to lengthening the term, Congress also changed the law so that every creative work is automatically copyrighted, even if the author does nothing. What do these laws mean to you? They impose great (and in many cases unnecessary) costs on creativity, on libraries and archives, on education and on scholarship. More broadly, they impose costs on our collective culture. We have little reason to celebrate on Public Domain Day because our public domain has been shrinking, not growing.

[Jan 1]

Preserving Wireless Competition

[Commentary] Most Americans have a choice of just four national cellphone companies -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile -- compared with six in 2003. The Federal Communications Commission recently described the industry as “highly concentrated” based on an index used by regulators to measure how competitive a market is. In 2011, the Department of Justice used a similar analysis to effectively block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile. The main issue is whether consumers would benefit from the acquisition, and the evidence suggests they would not. The most recent overture by Sprint, the third-biggest cellphone company in the country after Verizon and AT&T, to acquire T-Mobile would reduce competition in an important industry that already has too little of it. As you would expect in a competitive environment, companies like AT&T have been forced to respond to T-Mobile’s price cuts and streamlining policy changes with similar moves. It is hard to imagine that any cellphone company would have been as aggressive as T-Mobile if the administration had allowed AT&T to buy the company. The logic that the government used to step in still holds today, and antitrust regulators should look closely at any proposal that would reduce competition in the wireless business.

[Jan 1]

CBS to Live-Stream Its NFL Playoff Coverage

In a first for the network, CBS will live stream its entire coverage of the AFC half of the NFL playoffs. Live streams of CBS Sports’ AFC playoff games will be available via laptops, desktops and tablets at CBSSports.com

[Jan 2]

Supreme Court May Decide Jan. 10 Whether to Hear Aereo Case

The Supreme Court will get its first chance to decide whether to hear the networks’ case against Aereo on Jan 10. That’s when the court will meet to decide what cases to hear after the early part of 2014, according to the court’s docket. The judges’ decision could be announced soon, or the court could also delay a decision.

[Jan 2]

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