February 2010

Fibre-optic network backbone begins in Australia

The Australian government is a week away from seeing the first sod of soil turned in the construction of fiber-optic backbone links for its ambitious $43 billion national broadband network.

Mount Isa in northwest Queensland will be the first site in mainland Australia to have fiber-optic lines laid as part of the government's $250 million regional backbone blackspots program. The program seeks to alleviate the strangled state of broadband competition in rural regions ahead of the construction of the NBN in metropolitan areas. Leighton Holdings' Nextgen Networks was awarded the lucrative contract to dig the trenches and lay fiber for the links in December last year. Mount Isa falls on one of six fiber-optic backbone links that will be built to connect 100 regional towns around the nation to the high-speed broadband network.

El Salvador's government seeks to lower basic fixed line fee

El Salvador's congress is looking to amend Article 8 of the Law on Telecommunications to allow basic charges for fixed telephony lines to be based on costs rather than be inflation indexed, BNamericas reports. The state hopes the move will lower the basic monthly fixed line fee; according to a government statement, El Salvador has the highest rate in Central America at USD9.43 per month, followed by Guatemala (USD5.43), while Honduras has the lowest fee at USD2.10.

Open-source repository hits 2,000 apps

An European Union platform for exchanging free and open-source code now offers more than 2,000 applications for use by public bodies in the region. The EU Open Source Observatory and Repository (Osor.eu) announced the milestone on Wednesday. "The federation of the 2,000th open-source project is an important milestone for Osor and a proof of its value," said Francisco García Morán, European Commission director of informatics, in a statement. "Furthermore, I am very happy to see the use of open-source progressing in public administrations."

Obama, Congress should take dim view of Comcast/NBC Universal merger

[Commentary] Since President Obama took office last year, Democrats in Washington, DC, have made noise about taking on special interests, lobbyists and big corporations. So far, it has been mostly talk.

Democrats have a chance to act on their tough talk. By squashing Comcast's bid to buy a controlling interest in NBC Universal from General Electric Co., the Obama administration and Democrats have an opportunity to show Americans that big corporations don't always get what they want from Washington. If the deal is blessed by regulators it is likely that Comcast's and NBC Universal's competitors will try and find ways to grow, which means more media consolidation. A worrisome proposition considering that a handful of corporations already control most of what Americans read, watch and listen to.

AWOL on Comcast/NBC Merger: Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz, Matthews

[Commentary] When it came to Citizens United--the recent decision by the Supreme Court that found the original intent of the Founders was to grant Constitutional personhood to corporations, creatures of the State--Olbermann, Maddow, Schultz and Matthews were intensely concerned about its implications. They covered the case, the aftermath, and periodically follow-up with reports of Congressional efforts to blunt its effects or overturn it by Constitutional Amendment.

Enter, Comcast/NBC Universal. Comcast is the nation's largest cable operator, and NBC Universal one of the major content creators. Comcast wants to purchase NBC Universal from General Electric. MSNBC and CNBC are part of NBC Universal and would become owned by Comcast. Where is the coverage Rachel? Ed? Olbermann? Matthews? Where is the outrage over increased media concentration and corporate control? Where is the exposé of Comcast's past egregious actions?

The deafening silence from this quartet is all the testimony needed to show why this merger is...very bad news, indeed.

Reed Asks, His State Receives

Just two weeks ago, Sen Jack Reed (D-RI) questioned National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Lawrence Strickling about whether states with high unemployment such as Reed's home state of Rhode Island would get priority when the agency doles out broadband grants funded by the economic stimulus package enacted last year. During the Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the broadband funding, Strickling indicated that one of the seven criteria the agency will use in the second round will be whether a proposed project is in an "economically depressed area." Rhode Island's unemployment rate hovered at 12.9 percent in December, the third worst in the country, according to the Providence Business Journal. The NTIA must be listening because it announced Friday that Rhode Island has been awarded a $1.2 million grant to expand broadband Internet access to 71 public libraries in the state. At the same hearing, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the subcommittee that he expects every state will receive at least one broadband grant, as stipulated by the economic stimulus package legislation.

FCC Wrestles With Depth, Breadth of Network Neutrality Comments

The Federal Communications Commission has received thousands of comments both lauding and criticizing its proposed plan to address the controversial issue of network neutrality. The media and communications communities spent hundreds if not thousands of hours carefully crafting their arguments as their members view net neutrality as a linchpin to the future of Internet innovation and economic growth. Content distributors, consumers and parties concerned about limitations on free speech largely favor net neutrality in their filed comments. Some content makers also support the concept, but the largest content makers appear to oppose it. Net neutrality supporters argued that a free and open Internet is necessary for innovation and that a lack of competition among service providers removes market protection from infringement.

Station Revenues Down $5.5 Billion From 2006-09

According to SNL Kagan, between 2006 and 2009, TV station revenues were down over five and a half billion dollars -- from $24.6 billion to under $19 billion. By 2013, Kagan predicts TV station revenues will only have recovered about half of that drop, to $21.7 billion. Kagan predicts increases in retransmission fees and online revenues, while still only a relatively small fraction of the total pie, will lead to a healthier future. According to its predictions, retrans revenues are expected to increase from just one percent of the total in 2006 to 9% in 2013, with online increasing from 2% to 7%.

Google's Display-Ad Sales Should Top $1 Billion

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company's businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he'll deliver on that prediction.

Display ads are likely to contribute a little more than $1 billion, or about 4% of Google's total sales this year—an increase of as much 40% over last year—say analysts, including Doug Anmuth at Barclays Capital. That marks an important threshold for Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which makes most of its sales from ads placed alongside search results and which has been criticized for not getting more revenue from other businesses. Demand for display ads, which include marketing messages in videos and banner ads adorning Web pages, may rise faster this year than for search-related ads, according to eMarketer. "You have to go somewhere else to get the next legs of growth," says Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co. In display advertising, Google lags behind Yahoo!, which had revenue of $6.5 billion in 2009 that was generated largely from its display ads. Google has tried to catch up in part through acquisitions. Two of the biggest were aimed at the display ad market: The company paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2005 and $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2007.

Four things every student should learn ... but not every school is teaching

Education technology consultant Alan November says these are the lessons that every student should be learning in today's schools -- but not every middle or high school is teaching these lessons: 1) An awareness of the views of those in other countries, 2) Social and ethical responsibility on the web, 3) The permanence of information posted online, and 4) Critical thinking about the information found online.

Benton

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