April 2010

NATIONAL BROADBAND PLAN

HOUSE TO DRILL DOWN INTO BROADBAND PLAN
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
A Democratic staffer briefing memo for Wednesday's House Subcommittee on Communications National Broadband Plan oversight hearing notes that the hearing is one of "a series of hearings on specific proposals in the NBP," the subcommittee is teeing up. The hearing will look at universal service issues, pole attachments and rights of way, municipal nets, speed and price issues and competition policy as it vets the plan's adoption spurs for both underserved and unserved communities. On March 25, the subcommittee held its first hearing on the plan in its entirely, but now it also wants to drill down to particular proposals and sections, in this case chapters 4, 6 and 8 on availability.
benton.org/node/34480 | Broadcasting&Cable
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FREE PRESS: BROADBAND DEPLOYMENT PLAN DEMANDS BETTER DATA
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Free Press Research Director Derek Turner plans to tell Congress that the broadband deployment figures in the national broadband plan are "suspect," probably overstate deployment in rural America, and suggests the FCC's deployment strategy is based on a "house of cards." In prepared testimony for a House Communications Subcommittee hearing, Turner commends the commission for its goal of universal service, but counts the "flaws" it in its proposed execution, which include incorrect assumptions about what cable modem technology is being deployed and the capabilities of DSL, he says, and "ignorance of middle-mile data transport constraints" that translate into overstatement of the quality of last-mile (customer-facing) service. Turner says his group has concerns about "the assumptions that underlie the analytical foundation of this transition plan." In particular, he is concerned about the report's finding that "95% of U.S. housing units" have access to broadband at speeds of at least 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. "If true," he says, "this would mean that our broadband infrastructure challenges are far more manageable than previously thought." But it is not true, he charges. "Upon close examination, it is quite apparent that this determination of broadband deployment is built upon a house-of-cards of assumptions."
benton.org/node/34479 | Broadcasting&Cable
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OVERCOMING CONFIRMATION BIAS
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Blair Levin]
Speaking in new York April 19, the Federal Communications Commission's Blair Levin said, in the long term, the success of the National Broadband Plan will have more to do with how it changed how we think about broadband issues than any singular recommendation. He noted some facts that were not available to the FCC before the process of devising the plan:
The number of American homes that do not have access to networks capable of actually delivering what is today about the median broadband performance—turns out to be 7 million, or 5%;
The net present value investment gap for providing such access to those homes—turns out to be about $24 billion;
The publicly announced broadband deployment plans of communications companies (summarized for us in a study provided to us by one of our hosts, CITI); or
The breakdown in terms of demographics and attitudes of non-adopters.
These are pretty fundamental data points. Yet for years, there has been a lively public policy debate without the expert agency actually providing these and other fundamental facts. The plan forced -- and will continue to force -- the FCC to step up to the plate and be the data-driven, expert agency that it should always aspire to be. The Plan laid out a broad agenda for government action over the next ten years. A few weeks later, the FCC laid out a detailed agenda for over 60 proceedings for the next several years. It's unprecedented for the FCC to be public about its agenda this far in advance. It's great for everyone that these agendas be public. It's great for the public that wants to comment. It's great for businesses that need to know the direction of government policy. It's great for assuring a debate that is not compressed. In the same way that transparency about broadband performance for consumers creates better markets, transparency for government creates a better policy process. But an overlooked benefit of such planning is that it forces the institution to get on the right side of history, instead of the downstream of inertia. The broadband plan has helped us target actions that across the wide expanse of government activity enable a self-sustaining, yet ever improving market. If we can build on those, by bringing fresh eyes and clear minds to the new opportunities and challenges, if we can overcome our own pre-existing notions to see new patterns, then the American people will have an opportunity to benefit from constant innovation and investment, and from a broadband ecosystem that will lead the world.
benton.org/node/34478 | Federal Communications Commission
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BLAIR LEVIN INTERVIEW
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Cecilia Kang]
Blair Levin, the executive director of the Federal Communications Commission's national broadband plan is leaving the FCC to become a fellow at the Aspen Institute. He said he knew he wouldn't please everyone with the plan. Though praised by many lawmakers for its breadth, some lawmakers and consumer groups have begun to pick apart aspects of the plan. Expectations, were in some ways over the top, he said. "This was supposed to be a compass, not an end goal," he said. Public interest groups said the plan isn't bold enough on policies that would shift the competitive landscape of broadband service providers where most consumers have a choice between just one cable and one DSL provider. Big telecom and cable firms said the plan goes overboard with policies on line sharing and television set top box reforms put many demands on them and could dampen investment. "We knew going in that people would like about 80 percent of the ideas and really hate about 20 percent of them and that is where the focus would be," he said. He also defended much of the plan, which he doesn't believe critics are viewing in totality. "If you actually read it, everyone would find something in there that would counter their preconceived notions," he said. The biggest surprise from the outset was the dearth of good data on broadband connections. His team, which included dozens of consultants, assumed there would be basic data on how many homes did not have a cable or DSL passing through it. That information would give the team a number for people completely disconnected to the Web without any access to broadband. That information was unavailable so they had to pull together information from various sources to come up with their estimate of 7 million homes. "It was like we were starting a marathon seven miles behind," Levin said.
benton.org/node/34455 | Washington Post
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BROADBAND REGULATION

WHY AMERICA'S TELECOM SYSTEM STINKS
[SOURCE: PC World, AUTHOR: Paul Venezia]
[Commentary] Professor Lawrence Lessig gave a keynote address at Storage Networking World revolved around the reality of broadband access speeds, pricing, and openness around the world. Oft-used comparisons between the United States and South Korea or Japan are generally dismissed as non-comparable given the population density of those countries -- so Lessig chose to examine France. In France, Internet access generally costs $33 a month, provides 20Mbps fixed broadband to the home, and includes unlimited local and long-distance calling to 70 countries, plus HDTV and even wireless voice and data access through cooperative agreements. That's about what AT&T charges just for the 3G data plan on an iPhone in the United States. France also has open network legislation in place. Yeah, that's right: France. Lessig goes beyond the simple fact that the United States is getting screwed out of the future by the big ISPs: He conjures the specter of an Internet Patriot Act. Just as 9/11 provided the Bush administration with an opportunity to ram through the Patriot Act and gain vast new powers to spy on American citizens, a total crash of the Internet (caused by accident or design) could be a pretext for hurriedly passed legislation that grants the U.S. government sweeping Internet monitoring powers by a fearful and technologically irrelevant Congress. If that's not enough, he brings it all home by discussing the disturbing Beltway economy that underlies all of these decisions: the lobbyists who pour so much money into politics that it's no longer a matter of right or wrong, only how much.
benton.org/node/34477 | PC World | Lawrence Lessig
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AT&T APPLAUDS EU APPROACH TO NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
An AT&T executive said Monday that the Federal Communications Commission should follow the European Commission competition minister's lead on network neutrality and wait to impose restrictions until there is a need for intervention. In a blog post, Jim Cicconi, AT&T's senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, highlighted a speech made last week by European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes in which she embraced the FCC's four open Internet principles, while urging caution against imposing new restrictions aimed at preserving an open Internet. Kroes said the debate over net neutrality, the idea that broadband providers should treat all content the same, is not as mature in Europe as it is in the United States and as a result, "we must also avoid over-hasty regulatory intervention."
benton.org/node/34476 | CongressDaily | AT&T
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REALITY CHECK ON RECLASSIFICATION
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Larry Downes]
[Commentary] Regulating Internet access after leaving it largely alone all these years would be much more difficult than most people think. There are serious legal obstacles to overcome, some of them substantial. Along the way, lawmakers, courts, and consumers are likely to oppose the Federal Communications Commission's means, even if they support the goal of enacting the proposed Network Neutrality rules. That's in part because regulating Internet access under Title II opens it to a wide range of possible regulation and plenty of unintended consequences. Under Title II, for starters, the FCC would have the power to subject Internet access to the full set of common-carrier provisions. These include federal, state, and even municipal oversight on rates, forced sharing of equipment (with any competitor who asks) at fees refereed by the FCC, and new taxes collected on behalf of the Universal Service Fund.
benton.org/node/34475 | C-Net|News.com
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RECLASSIFICATION
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
Debates about Title II of the Communications Act don't often make it into the op-ed pages of the New York Times. The fact that they did so in the past several days shows just how invested in arcane regulatory issues the public has become when it comes to the Internet. A federal appeals court decision essentially removed the FCC's authority to be the "cop on the beat" when it comes to Internet access. So has the shot clock expired on projects like network neutrality? If you listen to some in Congress, it absolutely has. FCC Chair Julius Genachowski heard last week from Congressman Mike Johanns (R-NE), who told the FCC boss at a hearing, "You've been handed your hat in your hand in the Comcast case... [and] you can't go to Title II, it'd be like remaking the world."
benton.org/node/34453 | Ars Technica
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MORE ON BROADBAND

SECOND ROUND RUS APPLICATIONS
[SOURCE: Connected Planet, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
Scan the summaries of the nearly 800 applications for broadband stimulus funding received by the Rural Utilities Service in the second funding round and you'll find applications from numerous companies seeking to deploy fiber and fourth-generation wireless technology. Among the requests for a total of $11.2 billion in funding, you'll also find additional information about previously announced filings from Qwest, TDS Telecom and Windstream. But you won't find any applications from AT&T, Verizon or any of the larger cable or cellular operators. Perhaps the biggest surprise was a series of applications from the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative. The organization, which claims 1500 rural utility members, is seeking approximately $60 million in grants and about $25 million in loans for 30 WiMax projects in numerous states, including California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and the Carolinas. Most recently the NRTC's involvement in broadband has been focused primarily on negotiating video content deals on behalf of members.
benton.org/node/34448 | Connected Planet
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INTERNET IS BIGGER, FASTER, AND MOBILE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Om Malik]
The Internet as we know it is not only getting bigger and faster, but it is also becoming more mobile with more and more people accessing Internet-based services from their smartphones. These are some of the key findings of Akamai's "The State of the Internet" report for the fourth quarter of 2009. The report uses data collected from Akamai's global content delivery network to draw conclusions that are a good representation of the Internet. During the last three months of 2009, nearly 4.7 percent more unique IP addresses were connecting to Akamai's network. At the end of 2009, there were about 465 million IP addresses from 234 countries vs. 401 million at the end of 2008 and 312 million at the end of 2007. The U.S. and China account for nearly 40 percent of the total 465 million unique IP addresses. What that tells us is that more people around the world are using the Internet.
benton.org/node/34450 | GigaOm
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$10,000 PRIZE FOR GIGABIT IDEA
[SOURCE: Fighting the Next Good Fight, AUTHOR: Craig Settles]
The Gigabit Genius Grant is a $10,000 cash prize for the world's best gigabit technology idea. It was created and funded by the grassroots technology and creative communities in Philadelphia in order to drive global conversation about the potential of gigabit to revolutionize communities. Communities anywhere can then share and adopt these ideas to make the case for local gigabit investment. Ideas must be submitted online. The ideas that receive the most votes will become finalists and a panel of experts will choose the winner. The deadline to submit ideas and votes is April 30. So far, just over 1000 people have voted on 104 ideas submitted.
benton.org/node/34445 | Fighting the Next Good Fight | Gigabit City
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FIBER TO VERMONT COMMUNITIES
[SOURCE: Burlington Free Press, AUTHOR: Joel Banner Baird]
Unlike Google's lottery-like "Fiber to the Communities" project, the e-Vermont initiative doesn't promise super-high-speed Internet to every home. But e-Vermont will deliver: This summer, 12 rural communities will receive financial and technical assistance to connect residents, businesses, schools and local government or strengthen the digital connections they already have. The tantalizing suite of tools awaiting the finalists includes free laptops for students, custom-designed neighborhood forums and hot-rodded business and municipal networks. The catch: Communities must submit applications by April 30 to the Montpelier nonprofit Vermont Council on Rural Development, which developed the project in concert with Front Porch Forum, the Vermont Department of Libraries, Digital Wish, Vermont State Colleges, the Vermont Small Business Development Center and the Snelling Center for Government.
benton.org/node/34469 | Burlington Free Press
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WIRELESS

TEENS, MOBILE PHONES AND TEXTING
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, AUTHOR: Amanda Lenhart, Rich Ling, Scott Campbell, Kristen Purcell]
Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18 months from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008, to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And its not just frequency - teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a day. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging 100 messages a day for the entire cohort. The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting - averaging 20 messages per day. Text messaging has become the primary way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face, email, instant messaging and voice calling as the go-to daily communication tool for this age group. However, voice calling is still the preferred mode for reach parents for most teens.
benton.org/node/34483 | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project | San Francisco Chronicle
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END OF ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT MOBILE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kevin O'Brien]
When TeliaSonera, the Nordic telecommunications operator, switched on the world's fastest wireless network last December, customers quickly ratcheted up their consumption of mobile data tenfold. Besides reaffirming the soundness of the operator's investment in the new technology, called Long Term Evolution, or L.T.E., the data smorgasbord confirmed another truism: the days of flat-rate mobile data rates are probably drawing to a close. All-you-can-eat plans — as they are known in the industry — were introduced when the mobile Web was in its infancy and demand was profitable and manageable. But with traffic booming, reflecting the growing popularity of smartphones, social networking and downloading music and video, network operators fear that flat-rate plans will eat into profits or even fail to cover costs. The result is likely to be higher prices for consumers. "Finding a way to make mobile profitable in the medium and long term is one of the industry's big priorities," said Mike Roberts, an analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "We are now at the early stages of figuring out a way forward."
benton.org/node/34457 | New York Times
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REPAVING THE INFO HIGHWAY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Daren Fonda]
The latest wireless gadgets are so powerful, they're like mini PCs in our pockets, allowing us to book a plane ticket online or upload video clips of our children's school play, all while walking down the street. But all those devices need behind-the-scenes networks, filled with switches, routers and other gear to act as traffic cops and transmit the data. As the multitude of dropped calls and slow (or stopped) Internet connections has shown, problems with the current networks can render wireless gadgets useless. So despite the sluggish economy, companies are opening their wallets, planning to spend more than $126 billion on information technology and wireless -infrastructure upgrades this year—up 10 percent from 2009—and hundreds of billions more over the next several years, according to Infonetics Research, an industry consulting firm. To some pros, that makes this a great time to buy tech- and telecom-equipment companies. "Every company I meet with tells me business is great," says David Eiswert, manager of the T. Rowe Price Global Technology fund and a longtime investor in the industry. Existing telecom networks are already strained. Wireless data traffic grew 160 percent in 2009, to 90 petabytes a month—enough data to fill 23 million DVDs, according to Cisco Systems. Mobile video is growing so fast that it's expected to account for two-thirds of wireless data traffic by 2014 (with YouTube alone already taking up 10 percent). And Cisco predicts that by 2014 there will be more than 5 billion personal devices connecting to mobile networks—at least one for every adult on the planet. "It's a data tsunami," says tech-stock analyst Scott Sutherland of Wedbush Morgan. The telecom companies that own the networks have to spend, analysts say, or the services they've put so many years into developing won't work. And large companies that use networking gear are ramping up spending to keep up with the data growth and run their businesses more efficiently.
benton.org/node/34456 | Wall Street Journal
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4G NOT JUST FOR PHONES
[SOURCE: Technology Review, AUTHOR: Erica Naone]
Verizon is gearing up to launch its next wireless network technology, called Long Term Evolution (LTE), by the end of this year. While Verizon will, of course, still sell phones for this fourth generation (4G) network, it is also pushing to have it built into many other types of devices. LTE will run on the spectrum formerly used to send television signals, which Verizon licensed from the U.S. government in 2008. The company expects to be able to support about 100 million users by the end of the year. But the saturation of the cell-phone market means that Verizon is also hoping to see the wireless technology used for many other kinds of devices. "We want to get to 500 to 600 percent penetration," says executive vice president and CTO Richard Lynch. Lynch envisions people using Verizon's 4G wireless network for cars, computers, TVs, and other home appliances, as well as regular cell phones. Among other devices, the company has tested wall sockets and power strips that include 4G wireless capabilities. This could enable new forms of home-monitoring and energy management.
benton.org/node/34447 | Technology Review
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IPHONE IS DEVELOPMENT KING
[SOURCE: NetworkWorld , AUTHOR: Brad Reed]
The iPhone operating system has come out on top of a new survey of application developers conducted by Ovum Research. Ovum asked 217 mobile application developers from around the world whether they planned to use various operating systems in the near future for application development. Apple's iPhone OS came out on top, as 81% of respondents said they had already developed applications or where planning to develop applications for the platform. Following behind the iPhone OS were Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS, which attracted 74% of developers, and Windows Phone OS, which attracted 66% of developers. Android and Symbian, the two largest open source mobile platforms in the world, trailed the big proprietary operating systems by attracting 64% and 56% of developers, respectively. This is especially interesting for Symbian, since it's not only free to develop for; it's also still the most widely adopted mobile operating system in the world. Ovum analyst Tony Cripps suggests that Symbian's struggles have a lot to do with the rise of high-profile systems such as the iPhone and Android, as well as a perception that Symbian-based devices are losing favor with the public.
benton.org/node/34446 | NetworkWorld
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PRIVACY

GOOGLE CENSORSHIP FIGHT GOES FAR PAST CHINA
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Jessica Guynn]
Google's fight with China over Internet censorship made headlines around the world, but it has been engaged in similar battles around the globe. At least 25 countries, many of them with repressive regimes but even those with democracies, have at times blocked the public's access to Google over the last several years. All told, more than 40 countries actively censor the Internet, compared with a handful in 2004, which is when the OpenNet Initiative, a group of academics, began tracking global censorship. This shrinking of the World Wide Web is alarming consumer groups, academics and companies such as Google and Yahoo Inc. They argue that such state-imposed restrictions go too far, fettering access to politically or socially sensitive information on a wide range of subjects including abortion and euthanasia. They warn that if not carefully monitored, such restrictions could ultimately be used to sway public opinion and suppress voices outside the mainstream. Equally vexed are government agencies and political leaders elsewhere who are trying to figure out just how big a role they should — or technologically can — play in protecting their citizens from online abuses, privacy incursions and other dangers. Approximately 32% of the world's population has access to the Internet filtered by local governments, according to the OpenNet Initiative.
benton.org/node/34488 | Los Angeles Times
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GOOGLE HIT IN CYBERATTACK
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
Ever since Google disclosed in January that Internet intruders had stolen information from its computers, the exact nature and extent of the theft has been a closely guarded company secret. But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google's crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company's Web services, including e-mail and business applications. The program, code named Gaia for the Greek goddess of the earth, was attacked in a lightning raid taking less than two days last December, the person said. Described publicly only once at a technical conference four years ago, the software is intended to enable users and employees to sign in with their password just once to operate a range of services. The intruders do not appear to have stolen passwords of Gmail users, and the company quickly started making significant changes to the security of its networks after the intrusions. But the theft leaves open the possibility, however faint, that the intruders may find weaknesses that Google might not even be aware of, independent computer experts said. The new details seem likely to increase the debate about the security and privacy of vast computing systems such as Google's that now centralize the personal information of millions of individuals and businesses.
benton.org/node/34487 | New York Times | Wall Street Journal
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TEN COUNTRIES ASK GOOGLE TO PROTECT PRIVACY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jessica Vascellaro]
Privacy officials from 10 countries Monday sent Google a letter demanding that the Internet giant build more privacy protections into its services, the latest sign of increasingly international anxiety over Google's power. The letter was signed by officials in Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom. The signatories could not be reached for comment. The missive scolds Google for what it describes as a range of privacy abuses, ranging from inadequate protections in its social-networking service Buzz to its procedures for retaining images it gathers for its Street View mapping services. It calls on Google to create "privacy-protective" default settings and make it easy for people to delete their accounts, among other measures.
benton.org/node/34486 | Wall Street Journal
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GOOGLE AND PRIVACY
[SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
Google Monday released comments it filed with the Federal Trade Commission last week on ways to enhance consumer privacy online as it finds its advertising practices and those of other online firms under increased scrutiny by privacy advocates. In its comments, Google outlined its support for self-regulatory standards that provide transparency, user control and security. It also said it supports federal privacy legislation that would establish "baseline privacy protections" and also backs an overhaul of the law outlining government access to online records. In addition, Google said it would like to see the FTC take the lead in developing global privacy standards that are "comprehensive, flexible, and effective." "The current patchwork of rules and enforcement across multiple jurisdictions does not provide adequate protection for consumers or sufficient certainty for companies offering services on the global Internet," Google Policy Counsel Will DeVries said in a blog post Monday.
benton.org/node/34473 | CongressDaily | Google blog | Google filing
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GOOGLE AND PRIVACY OPT-IN
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
Imagine an Internet in which every website that uses behavioral advertising has to get your up-front permission to do so—make that double for login-account-informed ads, and triple if the site sells your data to third-party applications. You might think that something like this would be a pretty cool set up, privacy-wise. So does House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA), who has been talking about legislation in this area for almost a year now. "Consumers should be able to opt out of first party use of the information and for its use by third parties or subsidiaries who are part of the company's normal first party marketing operations," Chairman Boucher said last June. "Consumers should be able to opt in to use of the information by third parties for those parties' own marketing purposes." Great idea? Perhaps not for Google, two of whose top policy people just released a position paper warning of "opt-in dystopias"—environments in which cumbersome opt-in requirements could discourage users from engaging socially on useful sites, push service providers to over-collect user data at the point of consent, and turn the 'Net into landscapes of "walled gardens" in which consumers are reluctant and even afraid to explore new services. Such regulations could even help percolate the next extremist social moment. "Opt-in is a rhetorical straw-man," these Googlists warn, "that cannot really be implemented by regulatory policies without creating a number of unintended side effects, many of which are suboptimal for individual privacy."
benton.org/node/34452 | Ars Technica
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JUSTICES CONSIDER PRIVACY CASE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Adam Liptak]
The question in a case argued Monday in the Supreme Court sounded both irresistible and important: Did a California police department violate the Constitution by reading sexually explicit text messages sent by an officer on a department-issued pager? But the tangled factual record, uncertainty about where technology is heading and occasionally muddled advocacy pointed toward a limited ruling that might provide little guidance to government employers and perhaps none to private ones. "I just don't know how you tell what is reasonable," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. "I suspect it might change with how old people are and how comfortable they are with the technology." The Supreme Court has said the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable government searches, figures in the analysis when public employers search their employees' offices and files. The chief justice appeared sympathetic to the police officer in the case, Sgt. Jeff Quon of the Ontario Police Department's SWAT team, who had received mixed guidance from his superiors about the status of messages sent on his pager. The messages included communications to and from his wife and his mistress.
benton.org/node/34485 | New York Times | USAToday | Christian Science Monitor
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OWNERSHIP

OUT OF THE LOOP IN SILICON VALLEY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
Tech communities in Silicon Valley and in other hubs -- like New York, Austin (TX), and Boston -- pride themselves on operating as raw meritocracies ready to embrace anyone with a good idea, regardless of education, age or station in life. For women, though, that narrative often unfolds differently. Women own 40 percent of the private businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women's Business Research. But they create only 8 percent of the venture-backed tech start-ups, according to Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs. That disparity reaches beyond entrepreneurs. Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies, and 22 percent of the software engineers at tech companies over all, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And among venture capitalists, the population of financiers who control the purse strings for a majority of tech start-ups, just 14 percent are women, the National Venture Capital Association says. That reality is even more complex when race is factored into the mix. Small percentages of workers in information technology are African-American, Asian or Hispanic, and that number is even smaller for women.
benton.org/node/34458 | New York Times
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CISCO CLOSES ON TANDBERG DEAL
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Lance Whitney]
Cisco Systems has finally managed to acquire video-conferencing vendor Tandberg. The networking giant announced Monday that it has completed a so-called voluntary offer for Tandberg, with 91.1 percent control of the Oslo, Norway-based company. Cisco said it will now launch a compulsory acquisition to pick up the rest of the outstanding shares. Following that move, Cisco will have paid $3.3 billion (19 billion Norwegian kroner) to own the company it has sought since its initial bid in October. Former Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen will join Cisco as the senior vice president and head of Cisco's new TelePresence Technology Group.
benton.org/node/34451 | C-Net|News.com
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CONTENT

SENATORS WANT REPORTS ON IP INFRINGEMENT
[SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
The leaders of the Senate Finance Committee Monday asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate the effects of infringement originating from China of U.S. intellectual property and Chinese policies that they say harm the US firms. In a letter to ITC Chairwoman Shara Aranoff, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Montana) and ranking member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the commission to craft two reports on Chinese policies that they say harm the U.S. economy and jobs. Among the issues they would like the reports to examine include concerns over "indigenous" innovation policies they say favor Chinese products over foreign products. Several U.S. industry groups including the Business Software Alliance, the Information Technology Industry Council and TechAmerica have voiced concern about a Chinese policy unveiled late last year that would require companies that want to sell certain products to Chinese government agencies to ensure the intellectual property used in those products is developed and owned in China. In the first report requested by the Finance Committee leaders, which is due Nov. 19, the commission is asked to detail China's indigenous innovation polices and their effects on the U.S. economy and jobs. The second report they asked the ITIC to conduct should detail the size and scope of IP infringement in China and its effects on U.S. firms. The second report is due May 2, 2011.
benton.org/node/34472 | CongressDaily
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WHY LOC WANTS TWEETS
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
The US government is paying good money to archive tweets for posterity, but why? Martha Anderson, the director of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress, said, ""We don't think the whole thing is the most precious treasure" on earth when you drill down to individual tweets, she says, but looked at in the aggregate -- yes, it will be a terrific resource. The Library sees Twitter as a "technology change" in the way we communicate. Those don't happen often, and the Library has an interest in documenting each major new communications platform. A federal appeals court decision essentially removed the FCC's authority to be the "cop on the beat" when it comes to Internet access. So has the shot clock expired on projects like network neutrality? If you listen to some in Congress, it absolutely has. FCC Chair Julius Genachowski heard last week from Congressman Mike Johanns (R-NE), who told the FCC boss at a hearing, "You've been handed your hat in your hand in the Comcast case... [and] you can't go to Title II, it'd be like remaking the world."
benton.org/node/34454 | Ars Technica
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TELEVISION/RADIO

ABC STATIONS OUTSOURCE KIDS PROGRAMMING
[SOURCE: TVNewsCheck, AUTHOR: ]
ABC-owned, local affiliate television stations as well as stations owned by Cox, McGraw-Hill, Newport and Post Newsweek are turning to Litton Entertainment's Litton Studios to fulfill their obligations to provide three hours of educational/informational programming for children. The programming will include Jack Hanna's Animal Adventures, Jack Hanna's Into the Wild and Animal Exploration with Jarod Miller. Shot in high definition digital, the programming focuses on subjects like ocean and land animals, health and wellness, and the digital connections between global cultures. Litton Entertainment offers station support, including an Federal Communications Commission booklet for the public file that aids station attorneys during license renewals, synopses of every episode, reviews from an independent panel of nationally recognized experts/educators who have vetted each series, psychologists findings on each show's E/I impact, and a letter from the creator/executive producer stating the program's intentional demographic target of each series.
benton.org/node/34465 | TVNewsCheck
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FATAL CONTEST SHOULD BE END ON KDND
[SOURCE: Sacramento Bee, AUTHOR: Sue Wilson]
[Commentary] Entercom Communications' KDND 107.9 in Sacramento (CA) was found liable for the 2007 water drinking contest death of a 28-year-old married mother of three, Jennifer Strange. Last October, a diverse jury awarded Strange's family $16 million to compensate them for her loss. Industry analyst Radio Online reported that the full award was paid by the company's insurance carrier. Just after the radio contest death, Strange family attorney Roger Dreyer wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, asking it to strip KDND's license to broadcast. The FCC replied that it would look into the matter, but never acted, and in fact rewarded parent company Entercom Communications with 14 additional broadcast licenses nationwide. But according to Entercom Communications 2008 annual report, all six Entercom Sacramento radio stations now face petitions in front of the FCC to deny their broadcast licenses. In practice, the FCC does not take licenses away; the FCC does not even know when it last did so. Entercom apparently relies on this, writing in its 2008 report, "Subject to the resolution of open FCC inquiries, we have no reason to believe that our licenses will not continue to be renewed in the ordinary course." What the FCC does instead is to fine broadcasters when they misbehave. Again, from the Entercom report, "The maximum fine for a single violation of the FCC's rules (other than indecency rules) is currently $37,500. The maximum fine for a violation of the FCC's indecency rules is $325,000 for each violation or each day of a continuing violation, with a maximum fine of up to $3.0 million for a continuing violation." This is a case in which DJs Maney, Lukas, Trish and Fester sponsored a water-drinking contest in which they knew, or should have known, that people could be endangered. In a wantonly reckless case like this, which clearly does not serve the public interest, the FCC should send a message to all broadcasters, remove KDND's license, and give a more responsible operator the opportunity to serve the Sacramento community. If the FCC follows precedent, however, it will fine Entercom, a billion-dollar corporation, a whopping $37,500. (If KDND's DJs had cussed on the air, the station could be fined millions.) KDND's license will expire Dec. 1, 2013; it will take until at least then for the FCC to rule on the current Entercom license challenges.
benton.org/node/34444 | Sacramento Bee
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