February 2014

[Commentary] From a lot of the talk around, you would think that broadcasters' future rests on their winning the Aereo case now pending before the Supreme Court. I'm not sure that it is.

Yes, there is a doomsday scenario in which broadcasting is hobbled and set on a path to quick obsolescence. But that scenario is based on some dubious assumptions and there is at least one alternative scenario in which broadcasters reinvent themselves as an online video distributor and beat Aereo at its own game.

Apple has signaled strong interest in health-monitoring technology, which could wind up in a widely anticipated smartwatch. A group of senior Apple executives met with directors at the United States Food and Drug Administration in December to discuss mobile medical applications, according to the FDA’s public calendars that list participants of meetings.

Among the participants from Apple were Jeff Williams, senior vice president of operations; Bud Tribble, vice president of software technology at Apple; Michael O’Reilly, the former chief medical officer of Masimo Corporation, who joined Apple in 2013; and an employee from Apple’s government affairs department. On the FDA side of the table were Jeff Shuren, the director of the agency’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, and Bakul Patel, who drafted the FDA’s mobile medical app guidance and is a staunch advocate for patient safety when it comes to apps and medical gadgets. It is widely expected that the watch will have a focus on health monitoring. Apple last year hired several people with expertise in medical sensors, including O’Reilly. His former company, Masimo makes medical monitoring devices. Bob Mansfield, Apple’s senior vice president for technologies, who previously ran hardware engineering, has been heavily involved in exploring devices and sensors and technologies within Apple that can monitor people’s health and connect to an iPhone, according to an Apple employee who is not authorized to speak publicly for the company. Mansfield is directly involved in the Apple smartwatch hardware, this person said.

Todd Marriott, the executive director charged with turning around the troubled high-speed Internet network known as UTOPIA, has stepped down.

UTOPIA board chairman, Wayne Pyle, said the board approached Marriott about the resignation, and the decision was mutual. "We just felt like it was time to move on and go in another direction. Having had a conversation with him, he was fine with that," Pyle said. "We’re in a transition time here.” “We’re going to want and need his support, and he’s going to give that to us going forward," Pyle added. UTOPIA is a high-speed gigabit Internet network operated by a consortium of 11 northern Utah cities from Brigham City to Payson. Since it started 11 years ago, UTOPIA -- which stands for the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency -- has struggled with problems over its construction, management, and failed deals with vendors. To pay for the network, the member cities issued two rounds of bonds totaling up to $500 million in debt over 40 years. So far, UTOPIA has only signed up about 11,200 subscribers, well below its original projections.