July 2009

US Court Upholds FCC Ruling To Lift Large Phone Co Price Caps

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to lift some regulations on prices that large phone companies charge other businesses for connections to the Internet. The ruling puts the debate about fairness of the "special access" market squarely in the lap of the FCC. It is a loss for large companies that are members of an ad hoc telecom-users coalition that pay for those access lines when they wire up their buildings. The decision also comes as competitor phone companies like Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and U.S. Cellular are clamoring for more regulation in the business-to-business access market.

Political ads are key to broadcasters' recovery

Mudslinging political campaigns generally aren't looked upon well by the viewing public. But those in the TV and broadcasting industry may be jumping for joy when the gloves come off next year. Indeed, with TV station operators feeling the crunch of lost ad revenue and increasingly turning to Chapter 11 to free themselves of their debt problems, Kevin Shea, managing director at Loughlin Meghji & Co., thinks that the dollars to be had will come from pending political battles in 2010. Shea advises lending groups in the bankruptcies of NV Broadcasting LLC and Young Broadcasting Inc., and his firm has also worked on the Chapter 11 case of Pappas Telecasting Inc. and the out-of-court restructurings of several others. The sector may also soon see Sinclair Broadcast Group succumb to bankruptcy after the company recently warned of such a fate because of debt problems. "The whole TV and broadcasting industry is due for some form of restructuring in the next 12 months," he predicts.

China Set for DSL, FTTH Boom

Broadband penetration in China is to double in the next five years, according to a report from Pyramid Research. The report predicts that broadband penetration levels will reach 14.5 percent in 2014, up from 7.6 percent at the end of 2008, on the back of aggressive xDSL and FTTx (fiber-to-the-something/anything) rollouts by the country's three giant carriers. DSL is currently the technology of choice, accounting for 80 percent of all fixed broadband subscribers at the end of 2008. Pyramid's analysts predict that DSL connections will rise from 67 million at the end of 2008, to more than 126 million by the end of 2014. However, during the same period, the number of FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) subscribers will grow from about 500,000 at the end of 2008 to more than 50 million in 2014.

Broadband Infrastructure Application Guide for BTOP

(7/16) This guide has been prepared by the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative as a reference guide for applications for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). In addition to general information about the application process and eligibility requirements outlined in the July 1, 2009 Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA), this guide breaks down the application into categories of responsibility and a sample timeline. While not intended as a replacement for the NOFA itself, this guide is a roadmap for applying for funds under the BTOP's Broadband Infrastructure category of the NOFA and an overview of what will be required for the application.

Short Broadband Stimulus Deadline Worries CIOs

CIOs of municipal governments are worried they won't have enough time to meet the Aug. 14 application deadline for the first round of grants set aside for broadband projects in the U.S. economic stimulus package. Local governments had expected 60 to 90 days for preparation, based on what they heard in meetings with the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) -- the two agencies that are doling out the total $7.2 billion of stimulus money for broadband. Instead, the agencies released a notice of funds availability (NOFA) that gave governments little more than 30 days. "There is extreme concern that there is not enough time to do a good job because there are a lot of pieces that still haven't been figured out," said Alan Shark, executive director of the Public Technology Institute (PTI), a peer industry organization that serves government IT departments. One concern is how local governments will get the application's required signatures of endorsement from key players, like state officials, in time for the deadline.

Broadband stimulus details separating likely winners, losers

The so-called 'broadband stimulus chill' is thawing as the federal government's recently released guidelines shed more light on how broadband stimulus funds will be applied. In its second-quarter earnings report today, broadband equipment vendor Adtran said small rural telcos were continuing to free up spending that had been frozen in the first quarter as they puzzled over which plans could coincide with stimulus bids. (The company made similar comments in April, though a rival, Occam Networks, cited the stimulus chill as it cut 10% of its staff in May.) One group of broadband stimulus hopefuls that has been in large part swept out of the running by the specifics of the plan is individual municipalities of any size. Though the stimulus plan stoked broad interest from municipalities earlier this year, many of them have been frustrated by the program's preference for "underserved areas," which the government has defined as areas where at least half of all households lack broadband, where fewer than 40% of households subscribe to broadband, or where no service provider advertises broadband transmission speeds of at least 3 Mb/s.

Laptops, netbooks to drive exponential mobile broadband growth

The impact of netbooks and laptops on the growth of mobile data traffic has been significant, but a new study from Coda Research Consultancy claims that by 2017, some 418 million users worldwide will be using these devices and generating 1.8 exabytes of traffic per month, representing a 40-fold increase over 2009. The consultancy forecasts that mobile broadband revenues of more than $50 billion will come from netbook/laptop users by 2017, with the Asia-Pacific region leading with 162 million users. Europe will see 94 million users while North America is expected to reach 58 million. Coda Research said half of all mobile broadband users via laptops and netbooks worldwide will be using LTE connections. LTE users will hit 38 million in 2013 after a ramp up in LTE production in 2012, and will rise to 209 million by 2017, a 1,100 percent increase over 2012, the firm further forecasts.

Anticipated Web 3.0 jibes with open-government goals

Transparency and accountability have become the watchwords of the Obama administration, and part of that promise is making all sorts of government data available to citizens and public interest groups via the Web. But go past the slick home pages of public access Web sites such as Data.gov and Recovery.gov, and one finds frustrating inconsistencies in the volume and presentation of available information. Critics look at these shortcomings and gripe about the oxymoron of "government accountability." But it's also certainly true that the Web tools the Obama team is using are not cut out for the job. Almost every morsel of government data exists in electronic form somewhere, and with the exception of classified data, it is perfectly acceptable for public consumption. However, making it easy for people to find, analyze, share and ultimately understand the information is another story. Many tech experts say the solution lies in the Semantic Web, a slowly emerging set of technologies that aim to improve access to and the usability of information and software services on the Internet, ushering in a new era of Internet applications that some are already calling Web 3.0. Whereas Web 2.0 is about connecting people through social-networking applications such as Facebook, wikis and Twitter, the next generation will be about connecting information in new ways that people will find more useful, relevant and enjoyable.

Americans using the Internet to cope with the recession and understand it

Some 69% of all American adults -- fully 88% of Internet users -- have gone online to get help with personal economic issues that have arisen in the recession and to gather information about the origins and solutions to national economic problems. The Internet ranks high among sources of information and advice that people are seeking during hard times, especially when it comes to their personal finances and jobs. Among broadband users, the Internet is the top source for material on personal coping strategies during the recession. At the same time, broadcast media outpace the Internet as sources of news about national economic affairs. Those hard hit by the recession are among the most avid and wide-ranging Internet users for advice and understanding. Some 52% of American adults have either lost their jobs, seen their investments fall by more than half their value, suffered a pay cut, watched their house lose half its value, or lost their job outright during the downturn in the past year. Much of the report deals with a subpopulation the Project calls "online economic users." They are the 88% of online Americans who have used the Internet for financial or recession-related purposes. Overall, 34% of online economic users have created content and commentary about the recession in places like blogs, social network sites and Twitter.

Five technologies Iran is using to censor the Web

One month after a disputed presidential election sparked widespread unrest in Iran, the country's government has initiated a cyber-crackdown that is challenging hackers across the globe to find new ways to help keep Iranian dissidents connected to the Web. While the government's initial efforts to censor the Internet were blunt and often ineffective, it has started employing more sophisticated tools to thwart dissidents' attempts to communicate with each other and the outside world. Iranian dissidents are not alone in their struggle, however, as several sympathetic hacker groups have been working to keep them online. One such group is NedaNet, whose mission is to "help the Iranian people by setting up networks of proxy severs, anonymizers, and any other appropriate technologies that can enable them to communicate and organize." NedaNet project coordinator Morgan Sennhauser, who has just written a paper detailing the Iranian government's latest efforts to thwart hackers, says that the government's actions have been surprisingly robust and have challenged hackers in ways that the Chinese government's efforts at censorship have not.

Benton

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