TELEPHONY
MCI, Sprint Could Pass Antitrust Test (WSJ)
Long-Distance Market Calls to Bell Atlantic (WP)
Forum On Advertising of Long Distance Services (FCC)
INTERNET
As America Online's No.2 Brand These Days, Compuserve Is
Being Rejuvenated (NYT)
Internet Governing Body Needs Limits, Consumer Advocate Says (NYT)
Web Snares More Employment Ads (WP)
BROADBAND
Phone Firms Give Video A Look (SJM)
EDTECH
Hearing: Schools and Libraries Internet Access Act (House)
Lucas Film Follows Teachers Who Are Light-Years Ahead (USA)
Patents: A Computer Tutor for Children Learning to Read (NYT)
RECENT SPEECHES
Speech: New Century, New Media, New Opportunities (NTIA)
Speech: Vision to Mission: A Blueprint for Architects of the Global
Information Infrastructure (FCC)
TELEPHONY
MCI, SPRINT COULD PASS ANTITRUST TEST
Issue: Mergers
A merger of the nation's second- and third-largest long-distance telephone
companies
might win approval if the companies agreed to sell certain assets, federal
officials say. MCI WorldCom Incorporated is considering a buyout of Sprint
Corporation. "Even
though the numbers might suggest this would make the market too
concentrated," the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department
would take into account new entrants in the market and the imminent entry
of the Bell companies, said a senior regulator who would be directly
involved in reviewing the transaction. "These would all be in favor of
allowing a deal." According to 1998 FCC figures, counting by revenue and
including residential and business traffic, Sprint had 11% of the market,
MCI WorldCom had 26% and AT&T led with 43%. MCI WorldCom might not get Sprint's
Internet-services network. Previously, the Justice Department forced
WorldCom to sell MCI's Internet-service assets to resolve antitrust
concerns when it approved the WorldCom buyout of MCI in July 1998. A
Sprint-WorldCom union would enable the company to dominate much of the
traffic on the Internet's "backbones," including many of the interchange
points that route traffic to and from high-speed data highways. New
entrants to the market are building their own networks including Qwest
Communications International Incorporated, Level 3 Communications
Incorporated and Frontier Corporation (which is being acquired by Global
Crossing). The large Bell companies are expected to argue for approval
of their own efforts to get into long distance, if the Sprint WorldCom deal
were to be approved.
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A3), AUTHOR: John R. Wilke, Kathy Chen]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB938386410256181152.htm)
SEE ALSO:
TALK OF MCI WORLDCOM BID TO ACQUIRE RIVAL SPRINT CONNECTS ON WALL STREET
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (B6), Author: Rebecca Blumenstein, Nicole Harris]
(http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB938386755204299861.htm)
LONG-DISTANCE MARKET CALLS TO BELL ATLANTIC
Issue: Telephone Regulation
Bell Atlantic Corporation is expected this week to ask federal regulators
for the right to become the Baby Bell to secure approval to sell
long-distance service in its home-region. The Baby Bells, such as Bell
Atlantic, control the wires to homes and businesses and
were offered an incentive under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to loosen
their monopolistic grip and allow competition. If they could satisfy the
Federal Communications Commission's directive to open their local markets to
competition, they could claim the right to sell long-distance service.
Nationwide, long-distance service is worth about $95 billion/year, with the
New York market accounting for $8 billion. Bell Atlantic's competitors say
the company shouldn't be allowed into long-distance service, maintaining
that New York is still unfairly dominated by a single local player and in
need of competition. But even those competitors concede
that Bell Atlantic has done more than any other Baby Bell to open its local
franchise. BellSouth Corporation was already rebuffed by the Federal
Communications Commission in its attempt to provide long-distance in
Louisiana and South Carolina. SBC Communications Incorporated is pressing to
enter the Texas market, while Pacific Bell is seeking approval in
California. Bell Atlantic has filed to get into long-distance markets in
Massachusetts and has given notice of intent to do the same in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (A1), AUTHOR: Peter S. Goodman]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/sept99/bell27.htm)
FORUM ON ADVERTISING OF LONG DISTANCE SERVICES
Issue: Long Distance
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) announce that they will convene a joint public forum on November 4,
1999, to address the advertising and marketing of long distance services,
including dial-around services -- often called "10-10" numbers. The forum
will provide an opportunity for government, industry, and consumer groups to
discuss recent trends in how these long-distance services are advertised and
what principles should guide industry advertising. The FCC and the FTC have
determined that a joint public forum would be an appropriate way to give
interested individuals an opportunity to explore the issues raised by the
advertising and marketing of these services. For example, participants at
the forum will examine mock ads and discuss whether the ads fail to
adequately disclose the actual cost to consumers for using the services, or
only reveal in fine print important information about additional fees or
other charges.
The forum will convene at 8:30 a.m. on November 4th at FCC Headquarters at
445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC, in the Commission Meeting Room. The
morning session will focus on the current state of long-distance
advertising, including dial-around services, as well as applicable law. The
afternoon session will feature analysis, by panelists, of mock
advertisements for long-distance services and a discussion about what can be
done to ensure that ads for long-distance telephone service provide
consumers with truthful information on which to make informed purchasing
decisions.
[SOURCE: FCC]
(http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/News_Releases/1999/nrcc9070.html)
(http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Public_Notices/1999/da991972.html)
INTERNET
AS AMERICA ONLINE'S NO.2 BRAND THESE DAYS, COMPUSERVE IS BEING REJUVENATED
Issue: Online Services
Viacom operates MTV and VH1. Coke has Diet Coke and Tab. Can America Online
be successful operating Compuserve? AOL announced last week that Compuserve
added 300,000 subscribers in this past quarter; during that time, Compuserve
had started offering rebates to consumers who purchased certain brands of
computers and signed up for three years of Internet access at ~$22/month.
AOL executives believe that the Internet access market will fragment into
different consumer tiers -- budget of value tiers, premium tiers and various
other levels in between. AOL is considered the premium service, Compuserve
the value. America Online's reasoning differs from the conventional wisdom
about the market for Internet service providers. Until very recently, many
industry executives and analysts predicted that providing Internet access
service was a business that would go the way of utilities; as with
electricity, consumers would care little who provided access so long as the
electrons flowed.
[SOURCE: New York Times (C6), AUTHOR: Matt Richtel]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/articles/27serv.html)
INTERNET GOVERNING BODY NEEDS LIMITS, CONSUMER ADVOCATE SAYS
Issue: Internet
At a conference organized by Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility and attended by many critics of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, consumer advocate Ralph Nader offered a 13-point
proposal to limit and define ICANN's authority. "ICANN has procedural
problems," Nader said. "Lack of openness is one. Lack of accountability,
lack of membership at the moment, and an unelected board making policy
decisions... And what is at stake here is the principal democratic
communication technology for the next century. These are big stakes." Esther
Dyson, chairs of ICANN's interim board, defended ICANN and its process at
the conference, saying the organization has strict bylaws that prevent it
from moving beyond decisions affecting the Internet's "plumbing" and from
being taken over by special interests. Dyson said that with the exception of
the proposal for an international charter, ICANN's bylaws look a lot like
Nader's plan. "We are not trying to be something that can be used as an arm
of governments or big corporate interests," Dyson said. "The goal of this
organization is to keep itself very limited." Milton Mueller, associate
professor of information studies at Syracuse University , said ICANN was
formed largely to protect trademark interests before new domain name
suffixes are added to the global network. All of ICANN's actions to date
reflect that, he said. "It is controlled by a faction with a specific
agenda," he said. "All of this has nothing to do with the technical
coordination of the Internet."
[SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Jeri Clausing (jeri( at )nytimes.com)]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/cyber/articles/27icann.html)
WEB SNARES MORE EMPLOYMENT ADS
Issue: Old vs New Media
The volume of help-wanted ads in newspaper has abruptly stopped growing
nationwide, according to the Conference Board in New York. There are three
theories for why this happening: 1) employers are anticipating a slowdown
in the economy next year, 2) employers have cut back recruitment because
available workers are so scarce, and 3) corporate recruiters are switching
significant amounts of ads to proliferating Internet recruiting World
Wide Web sites. It is the last theory that poses a potential problem for
the nation's newspapers. While surveys show newspaper help-wanted ads are
still preferred over online sites by a majority of job seekers, the gap
between the two sources is expected to close in a couple of years, unless
the newspapers capture a portion of the Web activity with sites that can
make money. CareerPath, operated by about 85 newspapers, is among the
largest online job sites, drawing on online versions of the newspapers'
classified ads. Approximately 4.5 million resumes are posted on 300 Web
sites, a figure that is projected to leap to 11.4 million by the end of
2001, according to Computer Economics, a Carlsbad, CA, research firm.
[SOURCE: Washington Post (30) AUTHOR: Peter Behr]
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/27/036l-092799-idx.html)
BROADBAND
PHONE FIRMS GIVE VIDEO A LOOK
Issue: Broadband
Recently, the promise of cable companies offering a host of communication
services, including Internet and telephone connections, via upgraded TV
cables into the home has created a great deal of excitement. A handful of
phone companies, on the other hand, are equally excited about the prospect
of using digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, which operates over
existing copper
wires, to offer customers dozens of high-quality TV channels, movies on
demand and Internet access via TV sets. DSL makes possible the ability to
store dozens of shows and to pause and rewind live broadcasts. U S West, the
largest U.S. phone company to offer TV over DSL commercially, is using an
ultra-fast version of digital subscriber lines to bring 170 channels of TV,
high-speed Internet access and other services to suburban Phoenix. The video
costs $32/month, while the Internet link is $35 to $50/month. The up-front
cost of upgrading networks with more fiber-optic lines has prevented U S
West from debuting the service in any new cities this year. "In the U.S.,
cable's basically won," said analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research
said. "And the most serious challenges to it are satellite and cable
overbuilders...(who are) not building phone networks, they're building other
cable networks to compete with the cable operators."
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Jon Healey]
(http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/indepth/docs/telco092799.htm)
EDTECH
HEARING: SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES INTERNET ACCESS ACT
Issue: Erate
Thursday, September 30, 1999 at 10:00 a.m. in 2322 Rayburn House Office Building
Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection hearing
on H.R. 1746, Schools and Libraries Internet Access Act. ** See summary below **
[SOURCE: House of Representatives]
(http://www.house.gov/commerce/)
LUCAS FILM FOLLOWS TEACHERS WHO ARE LIGHT-YEARS AHEAD
Issue: EdTech
In his latest production endeavor, George Lucas has taken a break from
light sabers and space ships to focus on classrooms and computers. _Learn
&live_ , a documentary airing on public television this fall, highlights
the practices of five schools innovatively using technology as a learning
tool. "Why not mobilize the best technology, architecture, glitz and
imagination and bring kids along?" asks Harvard University's Howard Gardner,
who provides commentary for the film. "That's the catalytic power in Lucas'
vision." The film was co-produced by the George Lucas Foundation -- a
non-profit that promotes innovative teaching techniques -- and DC-based
multi-media company State of the Art. "There's been enough education
bashing," said Milton Chen, the foundation's executive director. "We want
to highlight the success stories in schools and help others learn to teach
in the digital age."
[SOURCE: USA Today (10D), AUTHOR: Olivia Barker]
(http://usatoday.com/)
PATENTS: A COMPUTER TUTOR FOR CHILDREN LEARNING TO READ
Issue: EdTech
Prof Jack Mostow and Project Listen at Carnegie Mellon University have
developed computer software that speaks and listens to children and helps
them learn to read. Students, wearing headsets with microphones, read aloud
short stories as the computer flashes them, sentence by sentence, on its
screen. If the computer hears the child stumble over a word or mispronounce
it, the computer offers a clue, such as a rhyming word that has a similar
spelling. For example, if the word is "sight" the computer will say and
display words like "right" or "fight," but not dissimilar rhymes like
"height" or "kite." "This project is feasible because the computer knows
what the child is attempting to read," Prof Mostow said. "That's why it's
much easier than taking voice dictation in that sense. It's harder in the
sense that there are an infinite number of ways to misread a word." For more
information, see (www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen).
[SOURCE: New York Times (C8), AUTHOR: Teresa Riordan]
(http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/articles/27pate.html)
RECENT SPEECHES
SPEECH: NEW CENTURY, NEW MEDIA, NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Issue: Digital Divide
Remarks by Larry Irving at the Congressional Black Caucus Science and
Technology Braintrust, Washington, D.C., September 17, 1999. "Our economic
growth has been spurred by the stunning development of the high-tech sector
and Internet commerce, which have created tremendous new opportunities and
new jobs. These opportunities promise only to grow in the next century. Our
goal now, as Federal officials, legislators, and community activists, is to
ensure that these opportunities and jobs are available to people of all
races, all ages, and all areas, so that our "new economy" is truly an
inclusive economy. And the CBC has been, and can continue to be, at the
forefront of those efforts." Asst Sec Irving speaks to The Growth of New
Media, The Implications of the Technology Gap, and Opening Opportunities to
All Americans. He concludes: "The next century promises a digital economy
that is profitable and dynamic. And it is worth all our efforts to ensure
that every American can participate in the digital world. Author William
Gibson has been quoted as saying that "the future has arrived; it's just not
evenly distributed." As we move into the digital world, we cannot afford to
let technological literacy become unevenly distributed. We cannot afford to
become a nation divided between "information haves" and "information have
nots." CBC is one of the alliances that can prevent that result, and I look
forward to working with you in that campaign."
[SOURCE: NTIA]
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/speeches/cbc9171999.htm)
SPEECH: VISION TO MISSION: A BLUEPRINT FOR ARCHITECTS OF THE GLOBAL
INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
Issue: International
September 23rd Remarks of Chairman Kennard Before the World Economic
Development Congress. "If we are going to be serious about implementing
global [communications] infrastructures, we must think of them as global
from the start. We must envision them as global. We must build them as
global. We must operate them as global. We must create a structure to train
independent regulators in the world's developing nations. We must provide
others with institutional support. I see the need nearly every workday...
Each year, more than 200 delegations from around the world visit the
FCC for guidance in managing technology's gifts. It is time for the world to
step up to this challenge... before the digital divide grows even wider."
[SOURCE: FCC]
(http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Kennard/spwek932.html)
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