BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 2010
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Unleashing American Broadband
Why Google & Verizon Won't Be BFFs Forever
Google Gets in Bed With Verizon
AT&T, Verizon Fault FCC Wireless Decision on Leases
Cue the "Mission Impossible" Theme for Harbinger's LTE Plans
Missouri Governor Supports 12 Broadband Stimulus Proposals
COMMUNITY MEDIA
Better Coordination Needed to Map Local Media Ecologies
INTERNET/BROADBAND
UNLEASHING AMERICAN BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Eric Schmidt, Ivan Seidenberg]
[Commentary] Innovation in technology and business is one of America's major comparative advantages in the global information economy. That's why at least three key components of the Federal Communication Commission's recently released National Broadband Plan deserves attention: 1) recommendations around health care information technology, education, job training, and a smart electricity grid; 2) increasing access to the highest-quality broadband; and 3) making high-speed Internet connections available to all Americans. The Internet has thrived in an environment of minimal regulation. While our two companies don't agree on every issue, we do agree generally as a matter of policy that the framework of minimal government involvement should continue. [Schmidt is CEO of Google; Seidenberg is CEO of Verizon]
benton.org/node/33909 | Wall Street Journal | ars technica
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WHY GOOGLE AND VERIZON WON'T BE FRIENDS FOREVER
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
Google's and Verizon's joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal manages to gloss over areas where the two firms differ, and instead highlights the fact that both favor the plan's proposals for faster speeds, its emphasis on universal access, as well as its push to move broadband deeper into the health, education and energy management fields. This isn't the first time Verizon and the search giant have worked together. They also joined forces to file joint comments on network neutrality (although they filed separately as well). I've long thought that it was more interesting to see where the two firms differ (much of their agreement on the net neutrality issue was superficial, especially when it came to wireless networks ), so why are they so visible teaming up? It's partly because neither firm wants to get the Federal Communications Commission even more involved in regulating them -- Google is worried about the agency attempting to police Internet applications and Verizon, about its focus on anything above transmission itself. This debate in itself is enough to drive both firms closer, but there are other theories about their budding relationship. While the two are friends in public and in the occasional FCC filing, the mutual interests of these two companies may be sorely tested when it comes time for the FCC to really dig into net neutrality, as well as when Congress and the FCC get into figuring out how to regulate the web.
benton.org/node/33908 | GigaOm | ars technica
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GOOGLE GETS IN BED WITH VERIZON
[SOURCE: The Huffington Post, AUTHOR: Josh Silver]
[Commentary] The Google-Verizon Wall Street Journal op-ed is mostly boring; until it gets to the punchline and tells us that government should have as little role as possible in delivering broadband to America. Just like government should stay out of banking regulation, I take it? Let me translate their rhetoric: The FCC's plan is great -- as long as they don't try to implement it. Or rather, as long as they don't do anything that doesn't fit within Verizon and Google's idea of "minimal government involvement." It's no accident that the CEOs don't try to explain what they mean. If they did, they would step directly into a big, steaming pile of hypocrisy. Most agree that the market is the preferred mechanism for achieving the goals of the nation in digital technology and infrastructure. If the market is working, government plays cheerleader. But, hello, the whole reason the Congress mandated a National Broadband Plan from the FCC is because the market isn't working; we're slipping perilously behind the rest of the world. The objectives set out in the plan, all of which are applauded by these companies -- world-class fiber networks, the expansion of broadband for universal availability and adoption, and the extension of broadband into every aspect of our lives -- aren't being delivered without government action. Like most big companies, Google and Verizon hate regulation and government involvement in business when it limits bad behavior and anti-competitive activity. But they absolutely love it when it helps them. In fact, both of these companies maintain small armies of lobbyists to ply the government for all the regulations that they want, even as they fight off all the regulations they don't want.
benton.org/node/33907 | Huffington Post, The | dslreports.com
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AT&T, VERIZON FAULT FCC WIRELESS DECISION ON LEASES
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Todd Shields]
AT&T and Verizon Wireless faulted federal regulators for adopting restrictions on airwave leases the two companies can negotiate with a wholesaler of wireless Internet service. The Federal Communications Commission on March 26 approved Harbinger Capital Partners Funds' acquisition of SkyTerra Communications, a Reston, Virginia-based provider of mobile satellite services that plans to sell access to operators of high-speed wireless data, or broadband, networks. The FCC required SkyTerra to seek approval before leasing capacity to "the largest or second-largest wireless provider," a condition Harbinger had proposed. Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone, is the biggest wireless company, followed by AT&T. "The commission is setting a very disturbing precedent when it implies that it may use allocation of spectrum to manipulate the wireless market," Jim Cicconi, AT&T's senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said in an e-mailed statement. "This action is manifestly unwise and potentially unlawful." The requirements on Harbinger "do not prohibit any specific transactions," Paul de Sa, chief of the FCC's Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, said today in a blog posting. "They do provide some reassurance that the approval will ignite new broadband competition while protecting the public from any potential harms."
benton.org/node/33906 | Bloomberg | FCC
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HARBINGER'S LTE PLANS
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
[Commentary] Harbinger Capital Partner's bold plan to build out an open 4G wireless network has more moving parts than the latest OK Go video, and would require a minimum of $6 billion for the terrestrial and satellite infrastructure alone. Based on the expenses and the difficulty of building a cellular network, Higginbotham is skeptical that a competitive LTE network will come out of the plan. The proposed network will be expensive, hard to deploy and face opposition from AT&T and Verizon.
benton.org/node/33905 | GigaOm
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MISSOURI LIKE 12 BROADBAND PROPOSALS
[SOURCE: Governor Jay Nixon, AUTHOR: Press release]
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) is supporting 12 different proposals from across Missouri that would expand broadband Internet access in rural and underserved parts of the state for health care, business, education and consumers. Those proposals - from private companies, local governments and rural electric cooperatives - have been submitted for federal funding through the Recovery Act. Missouri is partnering with those businesses and agencies to expand broadband through MoBroadbandNow, a five-year initiative launched by Gov. Nixon last summer. The initiative coordinates efforts to obtain funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Commerce specifically set aside for broadband expansion. MoBrandbandNow seeks to expand broadband accessibility to 95 percent of the total population, a significant increase from current projected accessibility of 79.7 percent. Five of the applications supported by the State of Missouri are for developing middle-mile infrastructure for broadband; six are for developing last-mile projects; and one is for developing public computing centers, which will provide broadband access in public locations, often targeting a specific vulnerable population such as low-income, minority, disabled or unemployed Missourians.
benton.org/node/33904 | Governor Jay Nixon
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COMMUNITY MEDIA
BETTER COORDINATION NEEDED TO MAP LOCAL MEDIA ECOLOGIES
[SOURCE: MediaShift, AUTHOR: Jessica Clark]
[Commentary] Back in 2008, I co-organized a conference called Beyond Broadcast. That year's theme was "mapping public media," and was designed to both call out the rising importance of maps as a platform for sharing digital media, and to "map" the fragmented universe of public service media projects. The maps I found at the time underscored the siloed nature of news production. There were maps of public TV stations, community media projects, and citizen bloggers, all maintained separately by different entities and aimed at very different users. Such isolation made it difficult to trace the relationships between these different kinds of outlets in any one place. However, as concerns about local media ecologies have sharpened -- spurred in part by the focus of the Knight Commission on the information needs of communities -- such mapping has taken on a new urgency. Knight provides interested locales with a starting point: A simple survey for assessing the health of their information environment. The Knight Media Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation (NAF), where I'm now a fellow, has begun to develop a set of analyses of local media/governance ecologies. The goal is to "align policy recommendations with needs on the ground," said Tom Glaisyer, who is coordinating NAF's initiative, and plans to work with others seeking similar information. Various scans of the community media landscape have already been launched, including a survey by the Free Press, a field scan by NAMAC, and this crowdsourced directory of cable access stations.
benton.org/node/33903 | MediaShift
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