December 2014

Blowing Off Class? We Know

[Commentary] Tools developed in-house and by a slew of companies now give administrators digital dashboards that can code students red or green to highlight who may be in academic trouble. Handsome “heat maps” -- some powered by apps that update four times a day -- can alert professors to students who may be cramming rather than keeping up. Big Brother-esque? Perhaps. But these “big data” developments have the potential to cut the cost of higher education for students and their families, as well as for taxpayers. Colleges face no shortage of challenges these days: a skeptical public, fragile business models, stratification of students by income, and uncertainty of government financial support, to name just a few. Data solutions can’t and won’t save higher education from all of that, but they could certainly put colleges on the right path.

[Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education.]

Google Makes move on Microsoft's Turf in Workplace

Google plans to boost the commissions it pays some outside firms to sell its workplace software, signaling a more serious challenge to Microsoft’s dominance at larger companies. The outside firms, known as resellers, now keep 20% of the revenue from Google’s Apps for Work software and services. The plan for bigger commissions met some resistance inside Google, because it could hurt the company’s profit margins, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. But this person said the benefits to Google’s revenue and its position in the growing market for cloud-based work software and services prevailed.

Senate Judiciary takes on Sports Blackouts

The Senate Judiciary Committee began what looks to be a lengthy conversation on whether to ban blackouts of sports broadcasts, either during retransmission impasses or through league contracts protecting stadium ticket sales. The committee held a hearing on the FANS Act, which would eliminate the antitrust exemptions the four major sports leagues enjoy when negotiating their billion-dollar broadcast rights contracts if they continue to enforce blackouts. Sen Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that the leagues were not being forced to eliminate the blackouts, but if they choose not to, they will no longer get that antitrust exemption -- established in the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) back in the 1960s, and would no longer be able to "fix" prices for league-wide contracts.

Small Telephone Company Offering Gigabit Service Gains Momentum with BTC Broadband Launch

BTC Broadband joined the ranks of communications service providers offering gigabit service. The small Northeast Oklahoma-based company said the service will be available in areas that already are served by fiber-to-the-home infrastructure, including more than 4,500 homes in 45 residential developments. In announcing the gigabit offering, BTC also said that it was increasing the bandwidth of existing speed tiers. The slowest speed the company offers is now 60 Mbps. BTC Broadband claims to be the first company in Oklahoma to offer gigabit service.

Broadband Customer Service Survey: Faster Access to Order Status Tops Wish List

Polling 500 US broadband subscribers regarding their wish list for customer service from communications service providers (CSPs), NEC subsidiary NetCracker Technology found that the greatest number of respondents – 35 percent – chose “faster access to order and repair status.”

Given a list of five attributes of customer service they would like to see enhanced:

29 percent chose "better personalized care and offers" as their primary expectation for broadband customer service.
22 percent chose "alerts about problems and/or ways to save"
22 percent chose "easier to buy or change services online"
21 percent chose "better security and features"

NYU Researchers Claim 5G wireless Breakthrough

Researchers at New York University’s Polytechnic School of Engineering are claiming an important discovery that could improve the prospects for 5G wireless communications in high frequency bands.

Fifth generation wireless communications is expected to require wide swaths of spectrum in order to support speeds of 1 Gbps or higher -- and the only portion of the spectrum band where wide swaths are available is at high frequencies. But according to popular thinking, radio transmissions cannot travel far at high frequencies known as the millimeter wave band, potentially requiring cellsites to be placed much closer together than they are in traditional cellular networks. But according to the researchers, the range of 5G millimeter wave cellsites could be as high as several hundred meters. That would be good news for wireless network operators, who might not have to deploy as many 5G cellsites as initially expected. The possibility of 5G wireless in the millimeter wave band already has caught the attention of the Federal Communications Commission, which recently adopted a notice of inquiry to learn more about the technology and issues that would be involved.

Barnes & Noble, Microsoft End Nook Pact

Microsoft’s flirtation with Barnes & Noble has ended, clearing the way for the nation’s largest bookstore chain to get on with its plans to split itself into two separate public companies. Barnes & Noble said that it is buying out Microsoft’s 16.8% stake in Nook Media for about $125 million in cash and stock.

Want to shop Jennifer Lawrence's film wardrobe? There's an app for that

If you’ve ever seen something in a movie you really wanted but didn’t know where to buy, such as Jennifer Lawrence’s outfits in "The Hunger Games," or Vin Diesel’s tank tops in "Fast and Furious 6", TheTake might be able to help.

Founded by a group of engineers and a business graduate, the platform catalogs every purchasable item in a film and links users to retailers that stock the products. When a movie is playing, users can open the mobile app, which listens to the film and identifies the scene. It then pulls up a still image of the scene with all the purchasable items tagged and linked to retailers.

Agencies Under the Gun to Meet Data Transparency Deadlines

The Obama Administration has six months to prove its implementation of a sweeping new data transparency law is on track. The Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department have until May 2015 to finish hammering out common standards for agencies to identify and track federal financial data as required by the Digital Accountability and Transparency -- or DATA -- Act. Lawmakers and congressional auditors say they’re closely tracking agencies’ progress. The end goal of the DATA Act is to provide nearly all federal spending data in a single, searchable online database.

Exabyte evidence delivers broadband verdict for US

[Commentary] Many of our technology policy debates turn on the question of US broadband coverage and quality. Well, I looked at the exabyte evidence -- actual traffic flowing over real networks to real consumers -- and contrary to the conventional narrative of the last decade, it tells us American broadband is flourishing. I found that the US generates far more traffic than most other advanced nations, in fact two to three times more traffic than places like Japan and Western Europe. Only South Korea, which is unique in several ways, generates more traffic. Our huge lead in traffic suggests US broadband is widely available, generally accessible, broadly affordable, and fast.

[Bret Swanson is president of Entropy Economics]

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