March 2012

T-Mobile battles the subsidy beast (by raising prices)

T-Mobile plans to raise prices by $5 on two of its most popular mobile data bundles, but only on new customers who take a discount device from the carrier.

Its value bundles, which allow a customer to pay the unsubsidized price of a phone up front or in installments (also known as bring your own device), will remain the same price and are already substantially cheaper than “Classic” subsidized plans. The bottom line is that new customers who fall for the lure of a cheap smartphone could wind up paying as much as $20 more a month for a voice and data plan than a customer who opts to fork over the device’s true cost. Subsidized phones are truly never free. Operators just factor in the cost of the device into the contract. We wind up paying higher prices per megabyte and per voice minute because of it. The problem is once those contracts expire and operators have made back their customer acquisition costs, they don’t charge lower rates. T-Mobile is removing the shadowy accounting veil from those policies, showing – quite aggressively – that a good deal of the cost of our rate plans is really just a mortgage payment against our phones. Do the math yourself: $20 times 24 months equals $480 in savings over the life of a contract. Meanwhile you can buy T-Mobile’s newest smartphone, the Nokia Lumia 710, for an unsubsidized price of $350. Suddenly that ‘free’ subsidy doesn’t seem like such a great deal anymore.

Even Old Media Institutions Are Acting Like New Media

The loyalty of baby boomers to print publications tends to be deeply rooted, and it is this older generation that still watches or listens to broadcast programming when it is scheduled rather than viewing it on demand. But these days, even the stalwarts of traditional media make themselves available on call, on screens of all sizes, and in evolving ecosystems of free and paid versions. What were once simply great newspapers, magazines, television, and radio are now websites with all the trappings, and that's where the audiences seem to be headed in droves.

3 Ways That Google Is Searching To Secure Its Future

Google is apparently poised to launch its own third-party Internet commenting platform in direct response to Facebook, which is increasingly being used as a commenting gateway on many sites. Meanwhile it's also moved to better promote its new consolidated app store "Play" and tie it to its social network Google+. Taken together, those don't look like the actions of a company that's centered on searching the Net and selling ads against such searches.

Several upcoming new features for Google were discussed at G-Saudi Arabia recently. Perhaps chief among these was the new commenting platform. It's thought that the platform will link deeply into Google's complex offering of online services--probably tapping search somewhere--and be linked to its Google+ social network. Google's also placing more emphasis on the rest of its stable of products by placing Play, its new aggregated app store "anti-iTunes" affair, into its new black top-bar on its webpages. That means Play is exposed to users if they're using Android devices or any one of Google's many web products. Another thing Google's said to be about to do, according to the same rumor, is roll out vanity URLs for Google+. This makes sense, given the increasing use of social networks as primary points of contact for netizens, is a move on from Google's initial mistake over Google+ handles, and marries up with the moves made by other social networks.

Google working on advanced Web engineering

Google is working on a number of advanced programming technologies to ease complex Web application development, a Google engineer revealed at a conference for software developers.

"We're getting to the place where the Web is turning into a run time integration platform for real components," said Alex Russell, speaking at the EclipseCon, held in Reston, Virginia. At Google, Russell works on the Chrome browser. He is also the creator of the widely used Dojo JavaScript framework. Despite its popularity, the Web offers only relatively primitive programming capabilities, compared to other platforms for delivering applications, such as Java or Microsoft Windows. One major shortcoming is that Web technologies don't have a "common component model," which slows code testing and reuse, he said. Google is working on a number of different projects to bring some advanced software engineering concepts to the Web, Russell said. The idea is to introduce low-level control elements without making the Web stack more confusing for novices. "We're learning from platforms [that] started at a very low-level," he said. Much of the power of the Web, Russell admitted, comes from its ease of use. Developers can view and reuse source code. Browsers are forgiving of errors, and technologies such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) offer simple methods to execute complex tasks, such as formatting text.

News Organizations That Lobby Against Their Own Reporters’ Interests

[Commentary] The battle playing out over a new government transparency proposal has taken a turn that should concern journalists. Many of the nation’s major news organizations are now aggressively opposing a proposal to disclose more information about political advertising—acting directly against the interests of their own reporters and calling into question the companies’ commitment to journalistic values.

Information Will Be Free: Media, Groups Get Around Supreme Court's Rules

Cameras aren't allowed. There are no broadcasts. No one's supposed to leave the courtroom and then come back in. As we've said, the U.S. Supreme Court isn't very interested in having its proceedings covered "live" in any way shape or form. But for this week's three days' worth of hearings about the constitutionality of health care overhaul legislation, several news organizations and at least one interest group (briefly) have found ways to get word out about what's happening inside the courtroom with almost live blogging and tweeting. Most bold, perhaps, was the Alliance Defense Fund, which opposes what it views as President Obama's "leftist agenda." It started posting updates about this morning's session on its Twitter page during the oral arguments.

Why PEG and Community Access Television is a Media Justice Fight

[Commentary] It’s important that local Community Access fights break out of their own isolation as being just “PEG or Community Access fights” but rather reframed as communication rights, media justice and social justice battles that can bring other influential key stakeholders to the table. Access centers are also embarking on new media projects and using online distribution platforms to maintain their relevancy in the digital world. The Internet can never replace the value of face-to-face community media building but Access TV Centers are also adapting to our changing media literacy culture.

Pando Networks Releases 2011 American Broadband Study

Pando Networks released their study of American broadband performance in 2011, revealing that Americans are delivered a wide range of speeds depending on their location and Internet Service Providers (ISP). By recording the speeds for millions of downloads delivered by their software, Pando built an accurate picture of the speeds experienced by the end user.

Amongst America’s largest cities(those with populations greater than 500k),the fastest speeds were recorded in areas generally considered hotspots for the technology industry, regardless of their regional location. Topping the average speed charts is Austin at 841KBps followed by San Francisco at 828KBps, Boston at 827KBps, Seattle at 805KBps and New York at 787KBps. El Paso, Texas recorded the slowest speed amongst big cities at 483KBps, delivering barely half the speed of its hi-tech Texan neighbor, Austin. Behind El Paso were Fort Worth at 517KBps, Oklahoma City at 518Kbps, Albuquerque at 537KBps and Denver at 550KBps. By state, the fastest download speeds were found in the population dense states of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic while the slowest speeds were concentrated in more rural areas. The state with the overall fastest average download speed was Rhode Island with a whopping 963KBps, definitively topping Delaware at 923KBps and New Jersey at 897KBps. Idaho recorded the slowest average speeds in the country, averaging a mere 387KBps, followed closely by Oklahoma at 443KBps and Montana at 452KBps. A surprising outlier was extremely rural South Dakota, outstripping more urban states such as Florida and Illinois with an average speed of 712KBps. The study also reported a wide range of average download speeds for the major American ISPs with Comcast coming out on top at 941KBps followed by Optimum Online at 874KBps and Charter Communications at 868KBps. Other notables include Cox at 800KBps, Verizon at 799KBps and Time Warner’s Road Runner at 737KBps.

Revolution @State: The Spread of Ediplomacy

The State Department has become the world’s leading user of ediplomacy. Ediplomacy now employs over 150 full-time personnel working in 25 different ediplomacy nodes at Headquarters.

More than 900 people use it at U.S. missions abroad. Ediplomacy is now used across eight different program areas at State: knowledge management, public diplomacy and internet freedom dominate in terms of staffing and resources. However, it is also being used for information management, consular, disaster response, harnessing external resources and policy planning. In some areas ediplomacy is changing the way the State Department does business. In public diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest U.S. dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms. In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries. The slow pace of adaptation to ediplomacy by many foreign ministries suggests there is a degree of uncertainty over what ediplomacy is all about, what it can do and how pervasive its influence is going to be. This report – the result of a four-month research project in Washington D.C. – should help provide those answers.

Public Input Shaped the Guiding Principles for Stage 2 Meaningful Use NPRM

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released two notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRMs) related to Stage 2 of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs that detail proposed Meaningful Use requirements for providers and the Standards & Certification Criteria (S&CC) that delineate proposed requirements for certified EHR products.

The vast majority of the proposed criteria derive from the two federal advisory committees that have been lauded as a model for public, open, and transparent policy making processes. The proposed rulemaking continues to reflect HHS’ desire to create ambitious, but achievable goals that enable eligible professionals and eligible hospitals to continue progress in adopting and implementing electronic health records (EHRs). The proposed rules focus on using EHRs to improve health and health care while reducing the burden on physicians and hospitals where possible. Many of these “north stars” came through loud and clear in both the Health Information Technology Policy Committee (HITPC) and the Health Information Technology Standards Committee (HITSC) recommendations, as well as public input through the committees. The proposed rulemaking sets ambitious requirements designed to improve health and health care. Every objective in meaningful use aligns with the National Quality Strategy, a framework the Department released in March 2011 that provides a clear roadmap for getting to better health, greater affordability, and better health care.

Benton

Search