February 2011

Uncovering the US LTE 'conspiracy'

[Commentary] The long-term evolution (LTE) club added a few members last week at Mobile World Congress with SK Telecom, Telstra, Telefonica and a handful of smaller operators announcing plans to roll out commercial LTE networks this year and next. At that pace, the “long-term” in LTE is quickly becoming a misnomer—or at least that’s what I've been foolishly led to believe. But according to a many of the European media I spoke with in Barcelona last week, LTE is just as long-term as its name implies and Verizon’s heralded early launch of a large-scale LTE network is a marketing myth. I'm not kidding here. I heard from several European colleagues—and even an American one—in the press and blogger corps that LTE is still at least a year or two away from ever seeing daylight in a live network and that what Verizon Wireless has deployed is not a “true” commercial LTE network but a limited trail at best. Further, and contrary to published launch dates, these doubters contend that the first LTE smartphones won't be available until 2012 or 2013.

Web Wiretaps Raise Security, Privacy Concerns

In the old days, wiretapping was easy: Law enforcement officials just tapped a wire. Even with cell phones, police merely had to take a warrant to the phone company and tell it to tap the number. But now, in this age of Skype and instant messaging, things are a lot trickier, and law enforcement says it needs help. Federal law already requires tech companies to cooperate with court-ordered surveillance. The problem, says FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni, is that the companies offering services like Web-based e-mail or social networking sometimes can't cooperate. "What we're finding — and it's not universally the case, across the board — but what we're seeing is they do not have intercept solutions available for all of the types of services that they're offering for people to use to communicate," she says. In 1994, Congress passed a law requiring the new cell phone networks to provide "intercept solutions," as Caproni puts it. Now, the Obama administration wants a similar requirement for communications systems on the Internet. The FBI, the Commerce Department and the various spy agencies have been meeting for months to discuss possible legislation, and last week there was a preliminary hearing on the subject in the House of Representatives. "It was a very weird hearing," says computer engineer Susan Landau, who testified. She says it was hard to offer analysis because the administration is being vague: "They just haven't detailed their problems."

Cell Phone Radio Waves Excite Brain Cells

Radio waves from a cell phone can affect the metabolism of a person's brain, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But the effect has nothing to do with cancer, and researchers say there's no evidence that the increase in metabolism is harmful.

The human brain relies on electrical signals to communicate, so it makes sense that the electromagnetic energy that a cell phone puts out might affect brain cells, researchers say. Nora Volkow, a brain researcher and director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, says she was intrigued by this possibility — for personal as well as professional reasons. Volkow says a 50-minute call clearly boosted brain metabolism. "There was an overall increase, approximately 6 to 8 percent," she says. "But only on the areas of the brain that were close to the antenna." Volkow says that level of increase in brain metabolism is not terribly dramatic — studies have shown that just opening your eyes can produce a much greater change in brain cells that process visual information. And scientists say it's hard to know what to make of the change. "Based on this finding I cannot say, 'Is this bad that you're increasing glucose metabolism?' Or 'could it be good?' " Volkow says. Other researchers agree there's no clear message from the result.

FTTH key to super-fast broadband plans

Fiber to the home (FTTH) could hold the key to the UK government's target of bringing the UK the best super-fast broadband in Europe by the end of the current parliament.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and co have just four years to achieve this goal, which is no mean feat if you consider that other leading nations across the continent are hardly likely to stand still or go backwards over the time period. The scale of the task at hand can be seen in the latest study conducted by cloud optimization services firm Akamai, which revealed the UK is lagging behind European countries such as Romania in terms of broadband speeds.

New Zealand: Google launches website to locate survivors

Google has set up a service to help people affected by the New Zealand earthquake locate missing loved ones. The Person Finder allows people in Christchurch to upload or request information about individuals. At time of writing the new website had records on around 4,600 people. Many communication lines in the South Island city were cut off by the earthquake - which struck at 2351GMT and measured 6.3 in the Richter scale - so those who manage to make contact with residents are being encouraged to upload information. At least 65 people have died, according to authorities.

Ofcom to release 2010MHz mobile broadband spectrum

UK regulator Ofcom has revealed plans to make 2010 MHz mobile broadband spectrum available for service providers through an auction. Last year, Ofcom launched the consultation process on the issue to find out whether this unused spectrum has potential to attract mobile operators.

During the German spectrum auction in May 2010, the 2010 MHz band was sold for 5.7m meaning there are mobile services that can use this spectrum, Ofcom said. “Some stakeholders confirmed demand for the band for wireless cameras and argued in favour of its allocation to PMSE but others produced evidence of demand for mobile broadband services, and argued implicitly or explicitly in favour of a competitive award.” the broadband watchdog said in a statement.

Canadians continue to rage against metered billing

The dust has at least temporarily settled on Canada's controversial decision to let its biggest ISPs charge smaller, competitive ISPs on a metered, or Usage-Based Billing (UBB) schedule, a decision later suspended by The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Judging from a sample of the surly comments coming into the CRTC's new public proceeding on broadband billing issues, it's going to take a while before Canadians trust their telecommunications regulator again.

Egyptians Were Unplugged, and Uncowed

For a segment of the young people of Egypt, the date to remember is not when Egyptians first took to the streets to shake off the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak. Rather, it is three days later — Jan. 28, 2011 — the day the Internet died, or more precisely, was put to sleep by the Mubarak government.

That was when some of them discovered a couple of polar but compatible truths. One, the streets still had the power to act as Twitter was unplugged. And two, the Internet had become so integral to society that it wasn't unreasonable to consider a constitutional guarantee of free access to it. “It felt exactly like going back in time, but in today’s world,” Ahmed Gabr, a medical student and the editor of the Swalif.net technology blog, wrote in an e-mail. Mr. Gabr included his detailed timeline of interruptions in communications services during the protests: when service at Facebook and Twitter first became spotty, when text-messaging was interrupted. His description for Jan. 28: “Egypt is now officially offline.” In interviews by telephone and e-mail young Egyptians like Mr. Gabr — tech-savvy but not necessarily political — were hardly Internet utopians. They had, after all, seen firsthand how shutting down the Internet had failed to stop the momentum of the protests. But they did make a case that the Internet was an irreplaceable part of Egyptian life, especially for the young. Nothing more and nothing less. The removal of the Internet by their government, they said, was a reminder that they were not free; not truly part of the wider world that they know so well thanks to technologies like the Web.

Public broadcasting cuts would hurt rural areas

House Republicans are in for a surprise if they intend to dish some payback to liberal parts of the nation by eliminating federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which conservative politicians have long claimed is a liberal mouthpiece. Small television and radio stations serving rural, politically red areas in California and other states would likely feel the biggest impact of such a move because 70 percent of public broadcasting funds are channeled to local stations.

Well-endowed public broadcasting outlets in more liberal metropolitan areas - such as KQED in San Francisco - probably would be able to survive their share of a $430 million cut that is part of a GOP-sponsored bill trimming $61 billion in spending that passed the House on Feb 19. Only 7.8 percent of KQED's budget comes from the federal government, and the station has enough corporate and foundation donors - not to mention 200,000 members - to be able to absorb the blow better than most. Sixty percent of the station's revenue comes from individuals. That's not the case at KIXE-TV in Redding (CA), where 45 percent of the station's $1.7 million budget comes from federal taxpayers. The station is located in Shasta County, one of the few California counties that supported Republican Sen. John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Internet streams of over-the-air broadcasts illegal, says judge

"Barely restrained incredulity" is not often a feature of judicial decisions, but today's ruling against Internet rebroadcaster ivi features a judge who isn't buying anything the company's lawyers are selling. ivi's business model consists of grabbing over-the-air TV signals from stations broadcasting in New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago, then blasting those signals through the Internet to reach ivi's paying customers anywhere in the country. And did we mention that ivi had no permission from broadcasters for any of this?

It might sound blatantly illegal, but ivi relied on an old compulsory license that Congress had created decades ago to help the cable industry get started. It insisted it was acting legally. "To place defendants’ argument in a real world context," wrote Judge Naomi Buchwald, "they assert that for the payment of approximately $100 a year to the Copyright Office (the payment for a Section 111 compulsory license) and without compliance with the strictures of the Communications Act or plaintiffs’ consent, that they are entitled to use and profit from the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works." But the judge ruled that ivi was not a cable operator and that "absent defendants’ skewed interpretation of the statutory text and administrative record, there is absolutely no basis for holding otherwise." "ivi’s architecture bears no resemblance to the cable systems of the 1970s," she continued. "Its service retransmits broadcast signals nationwide, rather than to specific local areas. Finally, unlike cable systems of the 1970s, ivi refuses to comply with the rules and regulations of the FCC… An opposite finding in this case would surely 'threaten considerable mischief.'"

John Bergmayer, staff attorney for Public Knowledge said, “We are disappointed that Judge Buchwald chose to shut down ivi at all, much less so early in the legal process. Her decision showed clearly the ambiguities in current law and regulation which online video providers like ivi face. If competition to traditional cable service is to develop in the online distribution sector, then the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Copyright Office are going to have to move quickly to update their rules to conform to the realities of new technology and consumer choice.”

Benton

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