October 2010

Pentagon seeks tight ties with cyber contractors

The Defense Department aims to tighten ties with its cyber security contractors to help thwart mounting threats to sensitive networks, said Robert Butler, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

Suppliers include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Raytheon. The department's use of top-level system integrators and entrepreneurs will continue to grow along with the need for so-called "active" defenses that scan incoming code to shield network perimeters, Butler said. "And as we thread those together, what we want to do is a very very tight partnership with industry," he said. One key goal, Butler said, was to cut the lag between development of new protective technology and its deployment. He said the department also wants to promote supplier diversity, partly to guard its information technology supply chain against compromise.

Broadband Initiatives Program: 7 Million People Connected; 25,800 Jobs

A new report on how the Department of Agriculture's distribution of loan and grant funds provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) has helped the Nation's rural residents.

The report estimates that millions of business owners and agricultural producers; Internet users, and thousands of homeowners will benefit and over 300,000 jobs are being created or saved. The job estimates contained in the report are derived from recipient reported data or program-based economic models. Of the $40.7 billion in Recovery Act funding obligated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development obligated more than half for projects ($21.2 billion in program-level funding) through seven programs. In all, 95,000 loans and 2,500 grants were provided to recipients in all 50 states, American territories, the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. This record level of Federal investment leveraged additional private investment in communities across the country, demonstrating the positive impact that public-private partnerships can have on rural communities and economies.

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) received $2.5 billion in funding to deploy high-speed broadband networks to the hardest-to-reach rural areas of the country. Working with partners at the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), RUS invested $3.5 billion in funding for 297 broadband infrastructure projects, four satellite awards, and 19 technical assistance grants to extend the benefits of broadband to rural communities, Native American and Alaska Native lands in 45 States and 1 territory. An estimated 7 million people, many of them located in extremely remote areas, will have access to improved broadband services. The projects will create or save 25,800 jobs.

In Reedsburg, Wis., (located in Sauk County), the Reedsburg Utilities Commission used $5,239,168 in Recovery Act funds to bring broadband service to an area of southwestern Wisconsin that is deficient in broadband services due to hilly terrain. In addition to the USDA funds, more than $2.3 million in private investment was provided. It is estimated that 310 businesses and more than 2,400 homes will be able to access the utility's services, and an estimated 42 new jobs will be generated.

Senate candidates Boxer, Fiorina on network neutrality

For a sense of how Silicon Valley could be represented on the most contested tech policy issue in Washington, watch these two videos of the two Senate candidates laying out their views on network neutrality.

Republican candidate Carly Fiorina is against, saying her background as an executive at AT&T and Lucent Alcatel before heading Hewlett Packard show that regulation of the telecom industry can be a disaster for business. She also said the Federal Communications Commission shouldn't re-assert its authority to regulate broadband.

Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer has co-signed legislation to create rules prohibiting Internet service providers from blocking sites and prioritizing traffic unfairly. The FCC, without clear authority over broadband services has looked to Congress to create legislation.

Public radio is enjoying boom times

[Commentary] More listeners continue to find public radio and, as evidenced by a couple of developments in recent days, the network and some of its executives want to make the footprint even larger.

Public radio executives join the growing push by new media to fill the local news void. AOL's Patch.com has websites in nearly 300 communities and is growing steadily. EveryBlock, owned by MSNBC.com, aggregates property, crime, education and other public records to help people better understand their neighborhoods. Don't count on any clarity in the local news space any time soon as newspapers tenaciously cling to their incumbent advantages -- including staffs still larger than most of the upstarts -- and upstarts continue to crowd the space. I'm doubtful of the few who have been suggesting that public radio stations and their websites will become the primary sources of local news. I expect we're looking at a more cacophonous future -- with the radio news sources just one of many voices in the room.

Hispanic Media's Role Grows in Election year

Spanish-language networks and publications are taking on a more prominent role this election season, nabbing debates with major candidates and increasingly seeing their political coverage spin out into mainstream English-language media.

The attention highlights not only the growing influence of Hispanics, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, but also the power of the companies that provide much of their news. Take recent comments by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) during a Sunday morning talk show with Spanish-language Univision Network anchor Jorge Ramos. Rep Sanchez told viewers her Republican opponent Van Tran, who fled Vietnam as a child, was anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic. In previous years, those words might have gone unnoticed outside the Spanish-speaking community. This year they were picked up by a blogger, replayed on YouTube and seized upon by Republican Party leaders, demonstrating not just the increased influence of Spanish-language media but also how ever-more-powerful social media has made the information it provides easier to disseminate.

Candidates Often Decline Station Debates

Flush with cash from political advertising, many broadcasters have been staging debates among competing candidates -- or at least trying to.

Nobody keeps a running count of the broadcaster-sponsored debates, but C-SPAN says that it has aired around 100 debates this year and that most originated at TV stations. But whatever the number, it could have been considerably larger. Candidates, particularly incumbents, are not always eager to appear in uncontrolled forums where they feel they have far more to lose than gain. Often, they decline debate invitations from stations or opt for less risky alternatives. In some cases, candidates limit the number of debates, accepting some invitations and rejecting others for reasons that are not always clear.

National Association of Broadcasters Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton, who monitors the debate opportunities and other free time that stations offer candidates, says it's fairly common for stations to face rejection by candidates. "If you're an established incumbent with 99% name recognition, the last thing your high-priced consultant is going to advise you to do is take a debate offer that puts your unknown opponent on TV and opens an opportunity for you to have your own 'macacca' moment," says Wharton referring to an incident involving former Virginia Senator George Allen who was expected to win re-election in 2006 until he was captured on video using a racist epithet. Other followers of political campaigning agree.

Four Action Items for 4G

Speaking about National Broadband Plan Implementation at the Law Seminars International Conference on spectrum and broadband, Federal Communications Commission member Meredith Baker focused her remarks on encouraging more 4G deployments.

She offered four ideas for FCC action: 1) completing our proceedings on repurposing the MSS bands for terrestrial use; 2) enhancing our spectrum trading and leasing rules to get more spectrum into the hands of those who are ready to deploy 4G; 3) reviewing and revising our current technical requirements and service rules to ensure they can accommodate 4G deployments; and 4) developing a targeted strategy to promote 4G deployments in rural areas.

US ISPs may be slow, but at least they're honest

The cable industry is cheering new data suggesting that most Americans receive something close to the broadband speeds advertised by their Internet service providers.

The Ookla broadband testing service's report compares "promised" versus "actual" broadband speeds around the world and concludes that Americans get 92.91 percent of their advertised throughput rate. "That sounds like pretty good news," the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's Cable Tech Talk blog notes. "Networks are performing by and large as they should and, as a result, consumers are happy." The global advertised versus actual ratio is 87.01 percent, according to Ookla, with the United States coming in eleventh among nations. When it comes to actual broadband speeds, Ookla ranks the US pretty low. We come in at number 30 on the download speed index, with a "rolling mean" (average over the last 30 days) of 10.13 Mbps... just below Russia, Slovakia, and Lichtenstein.

FCC Backs More Conditions For Sirius-XM

The Federal Communications Commission approved an order this week requiring the satellite radio provider Sirius-XM to set aside at least 4 percent of its channels on the company's Sirius and XM services for independent programming.

The order is part of the ongoing conditions set by the FCC when it approved the merger of the nation's only satellite radio providers in 2008. The independent programming provision was added at the time to address concerns from critics of the merger that it would "harm viewpoint and program diversity." As part of the order, the commission reversed a previous decision and will now allow Sirius XM to choose the independent programming, which is defined as having no financial tie to Sirius XM, that will make up this 4 percent requirement but does not allow the satellite radio provider to have editorial control over the programming. In addition, the company must submit the independent channels it plans to add to its XM and Sirius lineups to the FCC's Media Bureau for review before signing agreements with those channels. The company also must establish a transparent selection process that involves the creation of a public website detailing the criteria for proposed channels.

The Media Access Project praised the order, saying it included some of the recommendations it made to the FCC aimed at addressing concerns with the merger. "The requirements set by the commission allow people to access more content addressing the needs of minority communities, independent artists, and other niche audiences," MAP Senior Vice President Andrew Jay Schwartzmann said.

Esther Dyson: Privacy Is a Marketing Problem

In light of the recent outcry about social networking privacy lapses and the potential misuse of users' personal information, long-time web thought leader Esther Dyson had this to say at the Pivot marketing conference: Online privacy is a marketing problem.

The disclosure of personal information is a complicated subject, one that young people are starting to understand pretty well, but adults are catching onto a little more slowly, said Dyson. While Facebook is often targeted for obfuscating and breaching user privacy, Dyson contended that the company is actually doing a reasonably good job of pushing forward its users' understanding of privacy, with a few exceptions. But the issue is more practical than all that, according to Dyson. "It's not about privacy; it's about transparency, disclosure and control," she said. "I don't know what privacy is, and you as marketers don't know what privacy means to each of the individuals you market to. What you can do is you can disclose your own practices, you can make them intelligible and you can give your users control."

Benton

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