December 2010

Executives with the American Cable Association (ACA) said they all expect the Comcast/NBCU deal to be approved by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, and by the beginning of next year.

ACA President Matt Polka said that they were not looking to delay the deal, which he said would likely be approved "sometime soon," only to make sure it had conditions that ameliorated the possible harms to its members and customers. Polka said he expected the FCC would implement those conditions, which include requiring smaller operators be charged no more than a "clear market-based rate" for the regional sports nets and NBC O&O's owned by Comcast, as well as allowing a bargaining agent to negotiate collectively for national programming networks and use baseball style arbitration. If the FCC does that, he said it would "significantly address" his members' concerns.

Forget how and if the Internet should be regulated. If the United States doesn't start reversing economic inequality and improving the nation's education system, Americans won't be able to take advantage of a cutting-edge Internet, experts say.

"I think this country has an education crisis," Michael Powell, former Federal Communications Commission chairman, said at a forum convened by the Internet Innovation Alliance. "You can't be a great knowledge economy empire with a high school dropout rate over 30 percent." Several industry telecom analysts agreed with Powell's sentiment, and added that income disparity is another principle challenge for expanding broadband adoption. "Broadband affordability is a bigger problem than broadband availability," said Craig Moffett, an industry analyst at Sanford Bernstein. "We appear to be hitting a wall of [broadband adoption] penetration at 60 percent that's directly related to affordability," he said. Rebecca Arbogast, telecom analyst at investment firm Stifel Nicolaus, argued that industry won't be able to make investments in broadband infrastructure with a "populous that doesn't have education, jobs, or discretionary income."

[Commentary] Verizon is one of several incumbents exploring partnerships with Ontario County's (NY) open access community broadband network to bring LTE services to market faster. Time Warner recently finished pursuing a frivolous court action against Wilson's (NC) community broadband network. You be the judge. Which action represents sound business decision-making inspired by enlightened self-interest, and which represents spiteful asininity taken to new lows that is counter to self-interest? Here's some background to help you decide.

For years, US companies have been shipping development work and other IT tasks offshore in pursuit of low labor costs. Now a growing number of organizations are taking advantage of lower costs closer to home, by hiring outsourcing providers with operations in rural areas of the US. Hard numbers on the growth of rural outsourcing are difficult to come by because none of the leading IT and sourcing research firms breaks out data specifically on rural outsourcing. But Mary Lacity, professor of information systems at the University of Missouri's College of Business, who has been conducting extensive research on the market, says that in the past year or two there has been huge demand for the services.