May 2011

Connected Nation unveiled its which assesses the broadband infrastructure for all 3,219 counties in the United States. The Index shows that counties containing 45.6% of the nation’s households still fall significantly short in meeting National Broadband Plan goals of fixed and mobile broadband access for both current and future needs.

The Index measures how close counties are to reaching each of these goals:

1. Universal Broadband for Today’s Needs: universal access to broadband at 3 Mbps download and 768 Kbps upload speeds, roughly commensurate with the Plan’s National Broadband Availability Target;
2. Mobility: 98% availability of mobile wireless service, proposed by the Wireless Innovation Initiative; and
3. Robust Broadband Markets: 85% availability of access to 50 Mbps fixed networks, which is comparable to the Plan’s goal that 100 million households have access to such networks by 2015.

Mark Lazarus, a former high-ranking executive at Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, will succeed Dick Ebersol as the top sports executive at NBCUniversal.

Lazarus was brought in by new NBCUniversal owner Comcast Corp. last December to oversee the media giant's cable sports channels and work on integrating that unit with NBC Sports. When he was first tapped by Comcast, the assumption in the industry was that he would ultimately succeed Ebersol. However, that it happened this soon, less than four months after Comcast closed on its deal to take control of NBCUniversal, was a surprise. Comcast had been working on a new employment agreement with Ebersol, however they could not come to terms on a pact or on Ebersol's future role at the network. In Lazarus, Comcast will have a much lower-profile individual in that role, although also one who has not had the same level of experience in producing major events such as the Olympics.
Ebersol’s departure raises immediate questions about whether Comcast will be less aggressive about acquiring the rights to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, which will be negotiated in Lausanne, Switzerland, in June. He said that he would not attend the auction, at which ESPN and Fox are expected to be bidders, and that he intended to stay at NBC until the end of June.

Comcast Interactive Capital, the venture capital arm of the nation's largest cable operator, said that it will provide seed funding for five minority businesses through a partnership with DreamIt Ventures.

The partnership, called the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program, is Comcast Interactive Capital's first investment initiative from the $20 million fund created by the cable giant as part of its NBC Universal joint venture and committed to expanding opportunities for minority entrepreneurs. Comcast Interactive Capital and DreamIt are now accepting applications and will select five minority-led startups to participate in DreamIt's three-month accelerator program taking place in Philadelphia this fall. The deadline for applications is July 8 and the program will commence on Sept. 9.

Google rejected allegations that it undermined plans by Samsung Electronics and the former Motorola to use a competing location-finding service on Android-based mobile phones.

Skyhook Wireless, a closely held software company, claimed in a September lawsuit that Motorola and Samsung were willing to pay for its service until Google threatened to cut off the phonemakers’ access to third-party applications in the Android Market. Motorola and Samsung rely on Google’s Android operating system for some of their devices. Google said it did nothing improper with regard to any contracts Skyhook had with the phonemakers, according to a May 13 filing in response to the lawsuit in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Superior Court in Boston. The service, a software system that uses Wi-Fi positions, GPS and cell-tower triangulation to pinpoint a phone’s location, is used by advertisers and businesses to target potential customers.