January 2015

[Commentary] The Federal Communication Commission’s Advanced Wireless Services-3 (AWS-3) auction, which is in its final rounds, has harvested close to $45 billion for the US Treasury, more than twice the amount of any previous auction. It’s also shattered prevailing myths about the value of mid-band and high-band spectrum.

• First, the record sums that are being paid for relatively high-band spectrum at 1.7 and 2.1 GHz obliterate the notion that low-band spectrum below 1 GHz is the holy grail.
• Second, the mountain of dollars carriers are willing to spend to obtain more of the precious asset proves that more infrastructure or more efficient technology cannot be the sole solution for adding capacity to wireless networks.

[Peter Rysavy is the President of Rysavy Research]

The success of a newly announced US-UK cyberspy unit in many ways will depend on its yet-to-be named leaders, who, digital investigators say, will be hard to find.

Apparently, there's a small talent pool of cybersecurity technologists -- some say 1,000 -- and an even smaller pool of technologists who are privacy-conscious, good managers. Numerous cyber and Internet privacy analysts were hard-pressed to name potential contenders who understand code, people and the law. Several top US cyber officials who lack technical skills, such as White House cyber czar Michael Daniel and FBI Director James Comey, have lost standing in the eyes of among some Americans.

Social-media upstart Tsu announced that it had surpassed 2 million users. Tsu, which has a revenue-sharing deal with its users and calls itself a "payments platform," launched in October with $7 million in venture capital funding, and has quickly become a virtual gathering place for some of the coolest people in the world. Tsu's founder, Sebastian Sobczak, believes that digital advertising norms are ready for disruption. Once social media sites realize that they stand to lose users who don’t want tech companies alone to profit from their funny tweets, creative posts, or viral videos, the entire system will have to change.

Facebook injected $227 billion into the global economy and created 4.5 million jobs in 2014, not counting its own operations, according to consulting firm Deloitte.

In the US, the company had an estimated economic impact of $100 billion and created more than 1 million jobs. An estimated $148 billion were created through the added marketing that companies can do on Facebook. Developer tools that enable apps to work added another $29 billion, while consumers’ purchase of devices motivated by Facebook made up an additional $50 billion.