February 2016

US-based satellite company ViaSat is teaming up with Boeing to create and deliver three new satellites that will deliver high-speed Internet to remote areas around the world. The partnership was announced Feb 9, months before the company is scheduled to launch its previous generation satellite, ViaSat-2, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The new ViaSat-3 satellites will be capable of much more. Each satellite will carry with it a total network capacity of 1 Terabyte per second (Tbps), about triple what ViaSat-2 is capable of. That will allow ViaSat to deliver 100 Mbps service to remote residential properties in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

The company claims that work is already underway on the first two satellites, and that Boeing is already preparing them for launches by the end of 2019. Beyond residential connections, ViaSat says the new satellites will be capable of increasing in-flight connectivity on commercial airlines, business-class jets, and government aircraft. They will also be able to provide 1 Gbps connections to "maritime, oceanic and other corporate enterprise applications such as oil and gas platforms." All told, the company says the three new satellites could deliver twice (or more) the total network capacity of the 400 or so commercial communications satellites currently orbiting the Earth combined.

Google will start scrubbing search results across all its websites when accessed from a European country to soothe the objections of Europe's privacy regulators to its implementation of a landmark European Union ruling, apparently. Google has been at loggerheads with several EU data protection authorities since the European Court of Justice ruled in May 2014 that people could ask search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing to remove inadequate or irrelevant information that appears under searches for their name - dubbed the "right to be forgotten". The French data protection authority in September threatened to fine Google if it did not scrub search results globally across all versions of its website, such as Google.com. But the company has stuck to its position that it should clean up search results only on European domains such as Google.fr or Google.de because to do otherwise would have a chilling effect on the free flow of information.

Apparently, to address the concerns of European authorities, the search engine company will soon start polishing search results across all its websites when someone conducts a search from the country where the removal request originated. That means that if a German resident asks Google to de-list a link popping up under searches for his or her name, the link will not be visible on any version of Google's website, including Google.com, when the search engine is accessed from Germany. The company will filter search results according to a user's IP address, meaning people accessing Google from outside Europe will not be affected, apparently.

[Commentary] The way we handle technology in schools is widening the opportunity gap. This isn’t just my opinion; many educators echoed this sentiment at the annual EduCon conference in Philadelphia (PA) and Teach for America’s (TFA) 25th anniversary summit. In my mind, there are five big implementation issues in my mind that rise to the top—and I bill them as “we” problems, because I know I’ve been guilty of every single one of them in the past.
Issue #1: We punish kids for using technology that feels natural to them.
Issue #2: When we give teachers in low-income districts technology, we often fail to train them or give them the space to experiment.
Issue #3: When we give low-income students technology, we often fail to give them freedom or creative spaces in which to use them.
Issue #4: We are failing to involve families in the implementation of technology.
Issue #5: There aren’t enough public spaces to talk about this issue and potential solutions.

[Commentary] On tomorrow’s episode of Attempts to Undermine the Efficacy of the Federal Communications Commission, the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee will mark up HR 2666, the so called “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act”. Ostensibly, the one-paragraph bill seems straightforward, prohibiting the FCC from “rate regulation,” or regulating “the rates charged for broadband Internet access service,” as defined by the Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order. But in fact, the inclusion of the sweeping phrase “without regard to any other provision of law,” combined with copious remarks from last month’s hearing, suggest that the bill is simply another effort to gut the FCC’s ability to enforce network neutrality and protect broadband subscribers from overcharges and carrier abuse.

Flatly, there are a number of suspicious things about this bill. It’s moving aggressively quickly. It’s apparently a continuance of the strategy launched by FCC Commissioner Aji Pai and others at the outset of 2015. And frankly, many people trying to move the item forward don’t seem to be genuinely interested in negotiating a compromise. But if we’re realistic, it’s probably what it looks like: an attempt by certain people who opposed Title II reclassification of broadband Internet access to circumvent the Open Internet Order because this time, Comcast and other big Internet service providers, who seem to be so persuasive over there, just didn’t get what they want.