April 2014

Dear Chairman Wheeler: You Don’t Protect Net Neutrality by Allowing Online Discrimination

Tom Wheeler still doesn’t get it. People aren’t flooding his phone lines and filling his in-box because they’re confused about his proposal. They understand all too well that his plan would create a pay-to-prioritize Internet with fast lanes for the few.

There’s a better way to protect the public, and Chairman Wheeler’s excuses for not taking that path aren’t convincing anyone. If the chairman truly wants to do right by the Internet and avoid losing another costly court battle, he should follow the letter of the Communications Act, exercise the FCC’s clear authority and reclassify Internet service providers as common carriers. It’s not only the most sensible and courageous approach, it’s also the quickest way to bring a final resolution to this issue. And it’s the only approach that puts the needs of Internet users first.

The future of the open Internet can’t rest on the supposed good intentions of one chairman. Internet users and innovators need the certainty that comes with common carriage, not Wheeler’s ‘just trust me’ approach to stopping harmful behavior from providers. Chairman Wheeler needs to realize that the push for reclassification is about much more than Net Neutrality. Title II isn’t something that he holds in his back pocket to use at a later date. It’s the law Congress intended to apply to these vital services, so that users would be free to communicate without unjust online discrimination.

Tablet, Smartphone, App Use Rises Among Nurse Community

There was a jump from 2013 to 2014 concerning the use of tablets, e-readers, apps and smartphones among nursing professors and practitioners, according to a survey by Springer Publishing.

The survey, which polled about 1,000 nurses on their ownership and usage of mobile devices, their preferences for nursing and medical apps and e-books, and their favorite Websites for professional use, revealed a leap in smartphone, tablet and e-book reader ownership by survey respondents, the slight majority of which were nurse educators (56 percent), the remaining others being mostly nurse practitioners.

The survey also polled participants on the websites they use for professional purposes. LinkedIn scored highly (48 percent) but was, more surprisingly, closely followed by YouTube (40 percent). Nurse.com (29 percent) and Facebook (27 percent) were also very popular Websites for professional use, the survey found. The 2014 survey found that 83 percent of respondents own a smartphone (up from 71 percent in 2013), 43 percent own an e-book reader (up from 39 percent) and 63 percent own a tablet (a jump from 47 percent).

Microsoft teams with President Obama, gives $1 Billion to help set up public school kids with mobile devices

Microsoft and President Barack Obama are on the same page when it comes to virtual education. Microsoft will spend $1 billion to give kids in the country’s 14,000 public school districts access to affordable mobile devices provided by Microsoft partners like Dell, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, and Acer, who are also cooperating on the initiative.

The $1 billion was offered in conjunction with President Barack Obama’s ConnectEd Challenge. The agreement is purely a Microsoft initiative and has nothing to do with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Building Gigabit Networks Three Powerful New Financing Models in Utah Mississippi And Texas

As communities across the country consider ways to build Gigabit Networks, a range of public- and private-financing models are now being considered in geographies as diverse as the Wasatch Front in Utah, rural Mississippi; and College Station, Texas.

Three separate financial models were explored in early April at the Broadband Communities Summit in Austin, during a panel on “Public-Private Partnerships for Economic Development.”

The first model, in Utah, involves a private company -- Macquarie Capital -- entering into partnership with the public sector to complete a fiber build worth more than $300 million.

In Mississippi, network builder C Spire Fiber put out a “reverse Request for Proposals” in an effort to incent Mississippi communities to invest in fiber.

In the third example, in College Station, Texas, a technology entrepreneur and city council member discussed his efforts to bring Gigabit Networks to the hometown of Texas A&M University.

Cox eyes superfast home Internet

Cox Communications, third largest cable provider, may be entering the race to bring ultrafast Internet to homes and apartments, joining AT&T and Google Fiber in efforts to bulk up broadband speeds. Cox plans to begin offering 1 gigabit per second Internet speeds to residential customers in 2014.

Cox president and chief executive Pat Esser did not reveal specifics about the company’s plans, including how widespread the 1 gigabit service would be offered or which cities would get it first.

Cox is San Diego County’s largest cable company, with roughly 500,000 subscribers across its local footprint. The company also serves Orange County, Phoenix and several other regions nationwide.

Sprint unveils HD voice for cell phones

For all the amazing things smartphones can do, they're still not great at actual phone calls. Sprint's hoping to change that. The wireless carrier is rolling out new "HD Voice" technology to improve the quality of grainy cell-phone calls.

It's already available in a handful of cities, and should go nationwide by "mid-year," Sprint said.

Most people can hear within a range of ten octaves, but current cell phone calls span only four. That's why taking a call from an iPhone owner can sound like listening to someone through a set of tin cans.

High definition Voice expands a cell phone call's range to seven octaves. It also includes technology to eliminate background noise, giving voice calls a fuller, more natural sound. For the technology to work, both callers need to be Sprint customers using HD Voice-enabled phones.

Survey: Execs clueless, security pros unsure in fighting cyber attacks

IT security pros lack confidence in preventing cyber attackers from stealing high-value data and say upper-management lacks an understanding of the potential losses, a global study shows.

The findings of the survey, sponsored by Websense and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, point less to a need for technology and more to a lack of shared intelligence on cyber threats and poor communications between security pros, CEOs and board-level executives, Jeff Debrosse, director of security research for Websense, said.

The survey of nearly 5,000 IT security pros in 15 countries, including the US, found roughly six in 10 convinced the organizations they worked for were not adequately protected against advanced cyberattacks. About the same percentage felt the same when it came to stopping the theft of confidential data. The lack of confidence is expected, given that no security products are capable of building an impenetrable wall against attacks, Debrosse said.

To bolster confidence, security pros should share attack intelligence to get a better understanding of their foes and how to defend against them. However, progress towards more information sharing between organizations has been slow, due to fears that rivals would use the data for competitive advantage, experts say. Government information is also hard to get due to fears of compromising national security. Instead, most private data shared today is between large organizations within single industries.

Time Warner Cable CEO: Web TV only makes cable more vital

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Rob Marcus said the emergence of Internet-based television may compete with cable companies' video product but it goes to show how important cable companies have been to broadband connectivity.

"Over-the-top video is one of the things that highlights the value of high-speed connection," Marcus said, speaking at the Cable Show conference in Los Angeles. It creates the potential for competition on the video side, but "there's a whole lot out there that makes our offering more valuable."

Cable companies have long been on a trend of bleeding video subscribers, attributed to ever-rising bill prices and to a lesser extent the emergence of online television alternatives like Netflix, even as broadband subscription business has grown.

Time Warner Cable's proposed $45.2 billion merger with Comcast, which would combine the No. 1 and No. 2 cable operators in the country, has raised competitive worries among consumer advocates less so for the concentration of video distribution it would create than for the consolidation of so much high-speed broadband delivery in one corporation.

How the NSA Undermined One of Obama’s Top Priorities

Bolstering the nation’s defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama Administration’s top goals.

Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated cyberattack could cripple critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make off with the financial information of millions of Americans.

President Barack Obama pushed Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didn’t, he issued his own executive order in 2013. But critics argue that the National Security Agency has actually undermined cybersecurity and made the United States more vulnerable to hackers.

At its core, the problem is the NSA’s dual mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with securing US networks and information. On the other hand, the agency must gather intelligence on foreign threats to national security.

Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted communications. So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the NSA’s job harder. “This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance,” said Christopher Soghoian, the head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Surveillance at the scale they want requires insecurity.”

Survey says: we all love to binge on our favorite TV shows

Still think American TV audiences don’t like to binge? Think again: Seven out of ten US TV viewers consider themselves binge viewers, according to a study released by Miner & Co.

63 percent of those binge viewers burn through TV show episodes in one sitting at least once a week, while 17 percent even do so every day.

Benton

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