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[Commentary] A primary difference between the performance characteristics of the various flavors of broadband is how close they're bringing fiber to the end user.

This is even true for wireless as service improves the closer antennae are to users and the more robust the backhaul networks are. With this context we can now define fiber-to-the-home as bringing the full power of the Internet to your front door. It's my belief that we can take back control over the word "fiber" if we start framing things in this way. I want to see a day where everyone starts asking the question, "So how close does your broadband solution bring fiber to me and my neighbors?" And this is the question that matters most when it comes to insuring America has the broadband infrastructure necessary to support all that the 21st century economy makes possible. So instead of demonizing profit-motivated providers, let's unify our efforts to promote a multi-faceted pro-fiber agenda that supports the upgrading of all of our country's broadband infrastructure through the deeper deployment of fiber.

This week is “Sunshine Week.” Led by the American Society of News Editors and originally funded by the Knight Foundation, Sunshine Week is observed by media organizations around the country. It coincides with National Freedom of Information Day—March 16—selected to fall on James Madison’s birthday. Journalists, good-government groups, transparency advocates, educators, and many others interested in government transparency host events throughout the week to promote open government and freedom of information. They do so to assess the extent to which government is truly open, and to encourage citizens to seek information from their government and participate in public affairs.

Sunshine Week provides an ideal time to recount the Administration’s many open government successes since last March. And so each day this week, we will identify various ways in which agencies have made our government more open and, in turn, more democratic and more efficient. On Monday, the Department of Justice launched FOIA.gov, and we reviewed some of the substantial progress agencies across the government have made to disclose more and withhold less. We will recount, among other things, how greater transparency has saved government resources, and how technology and openness have been fused in ways that improve the everyday lives of our citizens. We will also feature the enormous work many agencies have done over the past year to make government more open and foster public participation. As the examples are too numerous to catalogue here, I encourage you to visit agencies’ own Open Government websites, which feature their recent successes.

Open government is a commitment, though, not a task. Thus the Administration’s efforts to promote open government are, as they should be, still ongoing. Nor is greater transparency desirable in every case and circumstance. Our government also owes its citizens, among other things, protection of their personal privacy and business confidentiality, effective law enforcement, and a strong national defense. That understood, the Administration’s commitment to open government, and the great progress it has made so far, are unmistakable.

Social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been embraced by Madison Avenue as effective new ways to reach consumers. But what happens when behavior on social media is deemed antisocial?

Two large marketers, Aflac and the Chrysler Group, are struggling to answer that uncomfortable question in the wake of incidents that took place within days of each other. The incidents, involving remarks on Twitter that were judged to be tasteless, inappropriate and insensitive, point out some inherent risks of social media. One challenge is the “amplified effect” of social media, said Ian Schafer, chief executive at Deep Focus, a digital agency in New York, citing how, on Twitter, “you put something out and it can be retweeted thousands of times.” “It’s an age when anybody can communicate to an audience,” he added. “It didn't used to be that way.” The relative newness of that phenomenon, said George E. Belch, a marketing professor at San Diego State University, means “there are people in your company who forget when they post on a blog, on Twitter, on a Facebook page, that it’s out there — and it’s out there at warp speed.” Another risk with social media is how many users vie to be first with what they consider clever comments on news stories and other subjects their friends and families care about.

Traffic on Wi-Fi networks has doubled since last year. “We used to have one device on Wi-Fi: our laptop,” says Sanjit Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Meraki. “Then we had two devices -- laptop and our phones using the Wi-Fi.” Soon, we will have multiple devices that are piggybacking off the Wi-Fi based network connections. Biswas predicts that by 2012 we will have between four and five devices around us with Wi-Fi built into them.

At my request to find out what devices were connecting to the networks, Meraki took a random selection of over 7 million devices (roughly a fifth of the total devices connecting to Meraki-based networks) and found the iPhone accounted for nearly a fourth of the total Wi-Fi connections. In aggregate, Android, iPhone and iPad accounted for about 16.53 percent of the total connections in middle of March 2010. As of March 14, 2011, these three devices now account for about 33 percent of the total connections to network.

Biswas, who has been involved with Wi-Fi for a long time, believes a future version of Wi-Fi is going to become an apt replacement for the gigabit Ethernet wired connections in a couple of years. Currently under development, we’re likely to see the earliest devices show up in late 2012. But one thing he knows for sure: Wi-Fi is going to be the default network connection in our homes. Today, we might sit on the couch and be amazed at the novelty of FaceTime on an iPad, but in a few years, it will be as normal as life with Facebook. With more devices connecting to this network, it’s only a matter of time before we see even faster wireless connections inside our homes.