January 2012

LightSquared asks FCC to exempt GPS receivers from protection

On Jan 27, one year and a day after the Federal Communications Commission told startup broadband wireless carrier LightSquared it could not begin operations until it demonstrated its network did not cause interference with Global Positioning System receivers, the agency kicked off a review process requested by the company to determine whether GPS receivers are entitled to such protection.

On Dec. 20, 2011, LightSquared filed a petition with FCC seeking a ruling that commercial GPS receivers fit the commission's description of unlicensed Earth stations or unlicensed wireless systems such as Wi-Fi networks and hence "are not entitled to interference protection from LightSquared operations." FCC initiated a public comment period on the petition, with replies due March 15. The agency said LightSquared "in essence" seeks a declaratory ruling that if its terrestrial network operates "in accordance with the commission's technical parameters, commercially available GPS devices are not protected against harmful interference" caused by those operations.

Google, Facebook, Twitter Execs Grilled By UK MPs On Privacy

Google executives got a rough ride from a House Of Commons committee, when they declined to systemically filter law-breaking web pages from search results. Associate general counsel Daphne Keller told the joint committee on privacy and injunctions that algorithmic filtering-out was technically feasible but not on the company’s policy agenda. The committee had called Keller along with public policy heads from Google (DJ Collins), Facebook (Lord Allan of Hallam) and Twitter (Colin Crowell).

Aneesh Chopra leaving the White House, likely to run for Virginia lieutenant governor

Aneesh Chopra, tapped to serve as the first White House chief technology officer, is stepping down and is widely expected to announce that he will run for lieutenant governor in Virginia, according to Democrats familiar with his plan, but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Chopra, who has kept his home in Richmond, has flirted with running for statewide office in Virginia for years, building up support among Democratic activists and serving on President Obama’s transition team in 2008. The timing of his resignation allows Chopra to campaign this year for his two former bosses — former governor Tim Kaine (D), who is running to replace retiring Sen. James Webb (D-VA) this year — and Obama, who will face a tough fight in the swing state of Virginia. He is expected to attend Virginia Democrats’ biggest fundraiser of the year, the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, Feb. 11 in Richmond, where those who are looking to run statewide host parties and mingle with more than 1,500 activists.

In a statement released by the White House shortly before the news of his planned campaign surfaced, President Obama said Chopra “did groundbreaking work to bring our government into the 21st century. Aneesh found countless ways to engage the American people using technology, from electronic health records for veterans, to expanding access to broadband for rural communities, to modernizing government records. His legacy of leadership and innovation will benefit Americans for years to come, and I thank him for his outstanding service.”

European Commission opens proceedings against Samsung

The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules.

The opening of proceedings means that the Commission will examine the case as a matter of priority. It does not prejudge the outcome of the investigation. In 2011, Samsung sought injunctive relief in various Member States' courts against competing mobile device makers based on alleged infringements of certain of its patent rights which it has declared essential to implement European mobile telephony standards. The Commission will investigate, in particular, whether in doing so Samsung has failed to honor its irrevocable commitment given in 1998 to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to license any standard essential patents relating to European mobile telephony standards on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The Commission will examine whether such behavior amounts to an abuse of a dominant position prohibited by Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU).

In line with the Commission's Guidelines on standardization agreements, standard setting organizations, including ETSI, require the owners of patents that are essential for the implementation of a standard to commit to license these patents on FRAND terms. This commitment serves to ensure effective access to the standardized technology. Such commitments were given to ETSI by many patent holders, including Samsung, when the third generation ("3G") mobile and wireless telecommunications system standards were adopted in Europe.

How Americans used their phones to assist with purchasing decisions this holiday season

More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions.

During a 30 day period before and after Christmas:

38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making
24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store
25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else
Taken together, just over half (52%) of all adult cell owners used their phone for at least one of these three reasons over the holiday shopping season and one third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store—either product reviews or pricing information.

Tribune's bankruptcy bill: $231 million and counting

Tribune Company has spent nearly $231 million so far on its three-year-old bankruptcy and related litigation.

The media company's bill for professional fees, mostly for attorneys who represent it in court, totals $212.9 million, and it has spent another $17.8 million on their expenses, according to the company's December monthly operating report filed with the court last week. Tribune, which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times newspapers and WGN-TV/Channel 9 among 23 television outlets, aims to exit bankruptcy late in the third quarter; it filed for protection from creditors in December 2008, a year after a leveraged buyout led by Sam Zell, its billionaire chairman. The company has been caught up in a tug-of-war with creditors over a reorganization plan since, although it made headway in court late last year with a third amended blueprint.

Siri is not a bandwidth hog and users are not the problem

[Commentary] If you think Siri is somehow responsible for the data overload, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Siri is the first generation of interfaces that will make is seamless and easy us to surf the Web from anywhere, and on any device or vehicle. Siri consumes very little data in sending your voice back to the servers to figure out what you want the phone to do, but what it does is make it that much easier to surf the web. Farhi seems to understand this, but his first characterization is blatantly false. Siri isn’t guzzling data, she’s making it easier for us to do so. We’re the guzzlers.

Stop listening to the carriers, who actually do have spectrum they can deploy if they want to work a little harder and spend a little more, and start thinking about how Wi-Fi or white spaces broadband (Super Wi-Fi) can play a role in taking congestion off over the air data networks. Passing a spectrum bill that allows for more unlicensed airwaves would be a start, as would leaving the Federal Communications Commission to deal with the highly technical issues surrounding spectrum auctions. Pushing the FCC to investigate special access fees would also help, as it might lower the rate of bringing a fiber pipe out to areas so ISPS can support large-scale Wi-Fi or White Spaces networks. But first we have to have the understanding of how the wireless and cellular networks work, so we can propose viable solutions, instead of blaming applications that make our lives better for congesting our network. And since many of those solutions will require action (or inaction) from Congress and the FCC, the Washington Post missed a golden opportunity to educate its readers about possible solutions and push the debate forward with mobile operators about using Wi-Fi more strategically, making it possible for rural areas to use unlicensed airwaves to create broad coverage areas without paying an arm and leg for a gigabyte and helping Congress understand how the industry actually works.

How Siri is ruining your cellphone service

[Commentary] Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

To make your wish her command, Siri floods your cell network with a stream of data; her responses require a similarly large flow in return. A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G. The new phone requires far more data than most other advanced smartphones, which are pretty data-intensive themselves. In all, Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S “appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent.” Under most circumstances, this would seem to be someone else’s problem. Cellphone contracts are “tiered” so that those who use a network more than others pay more for the privilege. You want to ask Siri silly questions? Go to town — but you will get the bill at the end of the month. By the same logic, a customer who wants better service on an airline can pay for it by buying a first-class ticket. The marketplace provides. Except on the data skyway, it’s not that simple. Cell and data networks are like any common resource; they have limits. And once they hit their limit, regardless of which group is using its share and then some, there’s no more to go around.

Twitter’s country-specific censorship tool prompts user protest

Some Twitter users say they will stop using the service on Jan 28 in protest of the company’s new rule that allows for content to be blocked in specific countries. Posting messages with the hashtags “#TwitterBlackout” and “#TwitterCensored,” users vowed to let the company know that they opposed the new policy. Several of the tweets were in Arabic.

The policy will enable the company to block specific tweets on a country-by-country basis when the content runs afoul of local laws. Several global companies, including Google and Facebook, already have similar policies to remove content to comply with individual countries’ laws regarding speech — one of the most commonly cited examples of a law like this is Germany’s prohibition against pro-Nazi content. Critics worry that Twitter’s policy will destroy its capability to work as a platform for impromptu social movements, a role it played so prominently during the Arab Spring.

EU Seeks Joint National Cloud-Computing Purchases for Growth

The European Commission aims to support the region’s cloud-computing industry by encouraging governments to jointly buy software and computing resources on the Web, Digital Affairs Commissioner Neelie Kroes said. The 27-member bloc’s executive arm set up a working group, dubbed the European Cloud Partnership, with initial funding of 10 million euros ($13 million), Kroes said today in a speech in Davos, Switzerland. The group of officials, cloud buyers and suppliers should work on developing common standards and security requirements across the region to enable concerted purchases, according to Kroes.

Benton

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