March 2012

FCC Establishes A Public Docket For Providing Input To The Technical Advisory Board For First Responder Interoperability

The Federal Communications Commission announces the formation of a public docket, PS Docket 12-74, established for the Technical Advisory Board for First Responder Interoperability. Parties desiring to contribute materials for the Interoperability Board to consider in developing its recommendations may submit their materials in this docket. Parties may seek confidential treatment of materials they submit. By creating this docket, we provide a vehicle for outside parties to contribute to the Board’s deliberations in an open and transparent manner. This docket is not intended, however, to serve as the exclusive mechanism by which members of the Interoperability Board will receive information from outside sources to inform their deliberations.

The FCC announced the election by the members of the Interoperability Board of Charles L.K. Robinson, Director, Business Support Services, City of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Kenneth C. Budka, Senior Director, Advanced Mission-Critical Communications, Bell Labs Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel-Lucent, as Chair and Vice Chair, respectively.

Finally, the FCC announced that it has been informed by State of Alaska representatives that James Kohler of the Alaska Department of Administration, who had previously been nominated to the Interoperability Board, is unable to serve. In his place the Chairman has appointed Bill Price, Director of Broadband Programs, Department of Management Services of the State of Florida.

Pro-Santorum super-PAC making $304,000 ad buy in Wisconsin

A pro-Rick Santorum super-PAC is spending $304,000 on television advertising in Wisconsin. The advertising -- by the Red, White and Blue Fund -- will start March 27, according to Stuart Roy, an adviser for the super-PAC. Roy said the ads will go up in Milwaukee and Green Bay on broadcast and cable. The television ads come ahead of Wisconsin's primary on April 3. Most of the super-PAC's advertising as of late has focused on the economy or healthcare, issues which Santorum has made primary lines of attack for his campaign. Santorum's ad buy, though, will be dwarfed by a pro-Mitt Romney super-PAC that is spending $1,000,000 on advertising in the state.

The good and bad of niche broadband networks

Niche broadband networks, built by communities, universities and others to cover areas big Internet service providers wouldn’t, are doing well in the U.K according to a study by PointTopic.

As the U.S. sees its broadband competition dwindle on the wireline side, this study provides some hope from across the pond that academic-and community-sponsored networks can revive broadband innovation. Huge differences in speeds can create chicken and egg problems for towns with superfast connections and no one to connect with, as Chattanooga is finding. Additionally the economics of rolling out superfast broadband mean that dense areas are less expensive to wire, while rural and spread-out areas cost a lot, especially in the U.S. A national plan helps average out the costs, while cherry picking dense areas means any provider trying to connect rural or suburban areas will have to pay more and possibly charge more to offset those costs.

Confirmed: The Internet Does Not Solve Global Inequality

If you live in a rich country, the Internet has probably changed the way you consume (and produce) information. But when you look at global-scale knowledge production, things are as they ever were: the Anglophone world dominates with the United States doing the lion's share of academic and user-generated publishing.

Those are the messages of the Oxford Internet Institute's new e-book, Geographies of the World's Knowledge, from which these two graphics were drawn. In the book's foreword, Corinne Flick of the Convoco Foundation reluctantly concludes that the Internet has not delivered on the hopes that it would make knowledge "more accessible." "Many commentators speculated that [the Internet] would allow people outside of industrialized nations to gain access to all networked and codified knowledge, thus mitigating the traditionally concentrated nature of information production and consumption," she writes. "These early expectations remain largely unrealized." We're not only talking about publishing in academic journals or Wikipedia. The book's authors, Mark Graham, Monica Stephens, Scott A. Hale, and Kunika Kono, sampled user-generated content on Google and found that rich countries, especially the United States, dominate the production of user content.

2012: The Year of Meaningful Use

Health IT plays a central role in building a 21st Century health care system -- where care is safer, better coordinated, and patient-centered, where we pay for the right care, not just more care. Increasing the adoption and use of health IT is crucial, so we’ve set an ambitious goal for 2012: get 100,000 health care providers paid under the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs by year’s end. For us to succeed, we need you -- the states and our many other health IT partners—to join us in this effort.

Several states have already set ambitious targets:

Ohio has set a goal of having 10,000 providers receive EHR incentive payments in 2012, representing nearly 40 percent of all eligible professional and eligible hospitals in the state.
Washington State aims to have more than 7,000 providers receive EHR incentive payments this year, representing about 40 percent of the state’s eligible professionals and eligible hospitals.
California has set goals of 10,000 eligible providers receiving Medicaid payments and $500 million in incentive payments coming to the state by June.
New York State has set an initial target of more than 6,000 eligible providers receiving incentive payments in calendar year 2012.

Broadband infrastructure: Time for real policy

[Commentary] It's all about getting online at a reasonable speed for a reasonable price. The growth in the online economy is still very healthy and, as a platform for business and social innovation, there's nothing that compares. But the consumer's problem is the lack of a national policy and a very weak competitive environment which makes for a patchy, poorly serviced, and inefficient national wired and wireless broadband infrastructure.

This, in turn, limits the value that many consumers can get from Internet access. I don't think that anyone could argue that consumer broadband adoption is a bad thing -- indeed, as the National Broadband Plan asserted, broadband service is a "foundation for a better way of life" -- but I fear that we're not moving fast enough to make the NBP work as it could. The problem is that the big ISPs control the game and if they continue to get their way, both mobile and wireline broadband service will remain effectively non-competitive markets.

Dems Try to Restore Deal Condition Flexibility In FCC Reforms

A variety of amendments have been proposed to Federal Communications Commission reform legislation that passed out of the House Commerce Committee earlier this month.

The cable, phone and broadcast industries all supported the House Republican FCC reform efforts, while House Democrats have said HR 3309 will needlessly tie the FCC's hands and lead to endless litigation. The amendments were due at 10 a.m. March 26 in advance of a rules committee hearing later that day on how the bill will be brought up on the floor for a vote, including limiting amendments once it gets there. Among the amendments filed -- there were 10, eight from Democrats, two from Republicans -- were ones that had either withdrawn or defeated in committee, including one (Democratic) that would "require entities sponsoring political programming to disclose the identity of any donor that has contributed $10,000 or more to such entity in an election reporting cycle" and another (Republican) that would allow each commissioner to hire an engineer or computer scientist to advise them. Another (Democratic) would remove the limits on FCC deal conditions that the underlying Republican bill imposes.

A Letter To Congressman Waxman

[Commentary] You have asked me to share my views on the Federal Communications Process Reform Act of 2012, H.R. 3309, in light of my experience as chairman of the FCC from 1993-97, and my observation of the Commission in the years since my tenure. I am gravely concerned by both the general direction and the specific details of this proposed legislation.

My recommendation to the House is that it should ask each Commissioner of the current FCC for detailed comments on the language, and also should invite all previous Chairs as well as the current Chair to offer their views. With all due respect to the honorable members of the House, few know better how the FCC can produce salutary results for America than those who served as commissioners. Of course the current and former members of the Commission might well disagree, but even their differences may be illuminating. My further recommendation is that Congress should consider in more depth what problems it is trying to solve by the legislation. Everyone recognizes that the American people have lost much faith in the fairness and efficacy of the legislative process. It is sometimes said that we now have in large part a parliamentary system embedded within a Presidential form of government. There is little doubt that the current interplay among the three branches of federal government has frustrated the members of every branch, at least as much if not more than it has exasperated the American people.

Ohio Joins the Ranks of States Looking to Cut the Cord

Ohio has joined a growing list of states that includes Indiana, Mississippi, Colorado, Georgia and Kentucky, where recent legislative initiatives have attempted to deregulate or drastically alter the states' regulation of basic phone service.

According to the Dayton Daily News, “Senate Bill 271 would allow companies to discontinue basic landline service beginning in 2013 if the area is deemed ‘competitive’ by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO).” SB 271 is sponsored by Senator Frank LaRose (R), and like Kentucky SB 135, AT&T loves it. AT&T director of public affairs for Ohio Sarah Briggs commented to the Dayton Daily News, “This bill is about unlocking investment and allowing us to invest in growing areas of our business, which is primarily the wireless side.” Just like in Kentucky, AT&T gives no logical explanation of why it cannot invest in wireless infrastructure and abide by COLR landline obligations.

Murdoch firm used hacker site to target pay-TV rival

A News Corporation company recruited a pay-TV "pirate" to post hacked details of a rival's secret codes online, BBC Panorama has found. Lee Gibling set up a website in the late 1990s known as The House of Ill-Compute or Thoic.

He said NDS, a pay-TV smartcard maker, then funded expansion of the Thoic site and later had him distribute the set-top pay-TV codes of rival ITV Digital. NDS denied this and said Thoic was only used to gather intelligence on hackers. It says Lee Gibling worked as a consultant who was used legitimately to inform on hackers. ITV Digital was first launched as "On Digital" and was set up as a rival to News Corporation's Sky TV in 1998. But the widespread availability of the secret codes meant ITV Digital's services could be accessed for free by pirates. The company went bust in 2002.

Benton

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