August 2009

Apple told the Federal Communications Commission on Friday that it did not reject an iPhone application submitted by Google and that it was still studying it, in part because of privacy concerns. Google Voice offers users free domestic telephone calls, deeply discounted international calls and SMS messages. Apple told the FCC that Google Voice duplicated the functions of the iPhone, which uses the AT&T network in the United States, and might confuse users. The application "appears to alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voice mail," the company wrote. Apple also raised concerns that Google Voice copied all of the information about a user's contacts onto Google's servers. Apple said that it had not discussed the Google Voice application with AT&T and that in most cases its contract with the wireless carrier gave it the sole authority to decide whether to accept applications. AT&T filed its own letter, asserting that it was not consulted by Apple on the Google voice application. It defended the restriction on voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, service as important to preserving the revenue it needed to offset the subsidized price of the iPhone. Apple and AT&T, it said, "required assurances that the revenues from the AT&T voice plans available to iPhone customers would not be reduced by enabling VoIP calling functionality on the iPhone." In Google's letter to the commission, it said it did not screen applications for its Android cellphone operating system, but that it did reject apps that contained pornography or other objectionable material.

[Commentary] Calix is the largest communications equipment supplier focused solely on access solutions for broadband service delivery. And nearly 100 of Calix's wireline Internet service provider customers have applied for broadband stimulus funding. These proposals have ranged in size from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than half a billion dollars. Average proposal size? Well over $10 million. From a technology perspective, the choice has been clear: Deploy fiber. Fiber to the premises (FTTP) architectures have dominated the proposals, showing up in more than 90 percent of them. Many of the proposals come from small, rural operators and, based on Calix's calculations, aim to address more than half a million homes.

[Geoff Burke is the senior director of corporate marketing at Calix.]

Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in US District Court for the District of Columbia in an attempt to compel the Federal Communications Commission to turn over documents related to the digital television transition. Judicial Watch filed its first FOIA request in February following a press report claiming a telecom adviser to President Obama's transition team stood to benefit from the delay of the transition. The delay, it was stated, would slow up Verizon's rollout of a new broadband network that would compete with existing service Clearwire. Clearwire is backed by strategic investors that include Intel Capital, Comcast, Sprint, Google, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. In its lawsuit, Judicial Watch says the FCC provided highly redacted documents related to the decision to delay the transition (essentially comprising a series of status reports), withheld other documents and provided no communications with the White House concerning the delay. While the FCC did not comment, a copy of the commission's May 8 response to Judicial Watch does indicate the FCC's justification for the timing and nature of the material it did release. The document also includes a promise to supplement the response after it had checked with the White House about what privileges, "if any," it would assert.

[Commentary] After seven months in office, the Obama Administration is starting to show the first hard evidence of how it will deal with scientific and technological policy. The good news: It looks like the new President will indeed follow his campaign rhetoric and regularly seek advice from scientists and engineers. But the evidence also gives a less certain picture of how the government will support innovative research. If anything, the record shows the Administration is thinking in fairly conventional terms about supporting laboratories and universities, without much consideration of the ways research has changed over the past decade.

[David Alan Grier is an associate professor of international science & technology policy and international affairs at George Washington University.]