May 2010

The Congressional Budget Office has completed a cost estimate for the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act (HR 5026), a bill that would amend existing law regarding the regulation of electric power transmission facilities.

Under current law, most of the standards governing the reliability of the bulk-power system are issued by the Electric Reliability Organization (ERO), subject to approval and enforcement by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). This bill would set deadlines for FERC to issue standards regarding the security of computer networks used in electric power transmission (known as cybersecurity) and other risks to the electric power transmission grid, subject to certain conditions. In addition, both FERC and ERO would be directed to ensure that utilities maintain adequate supplies of large electrical transformers and implement measures to protect their systems against geomagnetic storms (incidents involving solar radiation). Other provisions would authorize a new technical assistance program related to grid security and establish terms and procedures for responding to emergencies, protecting information, and identifying strategically important electric facilities.

CBO estimates that implementing this bill would increase net direct spending by about $5 million over the 2011-2015 period and $40 million over the 2011-2020 period. Implementing the bill would increase discretionary spending by $219 million over the 2011-2015 period. CBO estimates that enacting this bill would not affect revenues.

[Commentary] President Obama's disdain for new media has become so consistent that it is hard to dismiss as mere posturing.

Now that he has to govern, President Obama would just as soon dispense with all those niggling critics carping about his policies. It was better in the days when three liberals -- say Cronkite, Reasoner, and Brinkley -- had a monopoly over deciding what the news was every day, and synthesized it every night on TV. Then they let the New York Times echo those views the next morning. Those were the days.

And it is beginning to dawn on this White House that the Internet is not its friend and, in fact, that the web stands for the opposite of what has emerged as the Obama administration's animating spirit. The Internet is centrifugal, dispersing power outward; the Obama administration is centripetal, concentrating power at the center.

The Federal Communications Commission recently announced that it will ignore its own previous determination -- and a court ruling -- and proceed to regulate broadband communications. President Obama may be no Charles II, but those who truly love freedom of expression should remain vigilant.

More than a "couple dozen" rural wireless carriers have expressed interest in Verizon Wireless' 700 MHz LTE spectrum licensing proposal. And the company is in the process or formulating different business models for the deals, according to a company spokesman.

The carrier's business development team is working on two different types of deals, Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said. In one scenario, Verizon will build the network, and in the other the rural carriers will build the network. However, both deals include LTE data roaming. Within the next week or two, Nelson said, Verizon will launch a website explaining the potential benefits of the two types of deals to rural carriers and allow them to explore which model works best. Nelson added that Verizon is not "interested in mandating to anybody how they build [the network]." Verizon has picked Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as its primary LTE infrastructure vendors but rural carriers will not be required to use those vendors. However, Nelson said there may be some benefits from economies of scale to selecting the same vendors. How the deals will be structured is something that is being debated.

The May 6 elections in the United Kingdom, which ended with a coalition government and a Conservative Party prime minister, received modest attention in the mainstream U.S. media. However, on social media, where geographic boundaries vanish, the blogosphere was consumed with the formation of the new British government.

For the week of May 10-14, fully 61% of the news links on blogs were about the British election according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. That was more than ten times the attention to the week's next largest subject and equaled the highest level of interest that any single topic has generated so far in 2010. (During the week of March 22-26-following the House's passage of health care reform-that subject also made up 61%.) That stands in stark contrast to the mainstream press, which devoted only 2% of its newshole to the British election the week of May 10-16, according to PEJ's News Coverage Index.