Lauren Frayer

The results of an inspector general's investigation into problems at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board involving Chairman Ken Tomlinson will not be ready by the board's next meeting on Sept. 26. Although the full report was not expected to be released until the beginning of November, several Hill staffers had said last week they were told by Inspector General Kenneth Konz during a three-hour briefing that they would get a preliminary report by the end of this week. But the Hill got the word Tuesday not to expect anything before the end of October.

Federal Trade Commission Commissioner Jonathan Leibowitz will champion the ability of municipalities to offer high-speed Internet services in a speech later this week -- and will argue that the agency can and should oppose state legislation that would limit broadband competition on the part of cities. Speaking to the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors today, he plans to build upon a theme articulated by two Republican colleagues: FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras as well as former Chairman Timothy Muris.

The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world's trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually be free. Founder Niklas Zennstrom's vision for Skype is to become the world's biggest and best platform for all communications -- text, voice or video -- from any Internet-connected device, whether a computer or a mobile phone. Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate) without spending anything on new equipment (users “bring” their own computers and Internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other).

A new survey published by independent think tank Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that high-speed Internet adoption, after growing quickly in the past several years, has been losing steam and is poised to slow even further. During the first six months of 2005, 53 percent of home Internet users said they use a broadband connection, up from only 50 percent during the previous six months. This is a much slower growth rate than reported for the same periods a year earlier.

Aging populations in many developed countries mean disabilities -- especially impaired vision but also motor and cognitive dysfunctions -- are likely to rise. By 2010, Microsoft estimates that 70 million people in the U.S. will be using some form of assistive technology, like screen readers or screen magnifiers, up from 57 million people in 2003.

The FCC should require broadcasters to provide emergency announcements in multiple languages in markets that include large numbers of people whose main language isn't English, the Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC) told the Commission in a petition. MMTC asked the FCC, in its emergency alert system (EAS) rulemaking, to require vital information be made available to non-English people. After Hurricane Katrina and as Hurricane Rita nears Florida, this material should be available now, said MMTC Exec. Dir. David Honig. MMTC, along with the Spanish Bcstrs. Assn.

Internet telephone or VoIP technology is well-suited for disaster work but wasn't used to its full potential after Hurricane Katrina, VoIP pioneer Tom Evslin said in a speech at the VON Conference on Monday. “We weren't ready,” he said. “Many couldn't find a way to volunteer and donate, we couldn't get attention from the FCC, we haven't made the case” that VoIP is better suited than the public switched telephone network (PSTN) for disaster recovery, he said.

Hundreds of thousands of people looking for the latest news on Hurricane Katrina went to New Orleans' local media last month to get the latest on the storm's devastation, a web metrics firm said Monday. Nola.com, the web home of the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper owned by Advance Publications, saw its traffic soar 277 percent from July to 1.7 million visitors in August, ComScore Networks said. Meanwhile, the city's CBS affiliate WWL-TV, owned by Belo Corp., experienced a 258 percent spike in traffic to its site, WWLTV.com, to 878,000.

[Commentary] Do the media overhype minor concerns that pack a visceral punch and underplay important concerns that are more complicated and/or less immediate? The challenge for the media lies in figuring out which stories deserve coverage and which do not. In
[SOURCE: CBS News/Public Eye, AUTHOR: Brian Montopoli ]

Investigators looking into a massive, multimillion-dollar public relations campaign to support President Bush's top education priorities acknowledge that taxpayer dollars were used in ways that often were not disclosed to the public, in clear violation of federal rules -- but they stopped short of concluding that the government has engaged in any illegal propaganda. Their report has raised the ire of many Democrats in Congress, who say it doesn't go far enough in its rebuke.