Benton RSS Feed
To illustrate the impact of the $4 billion Recovery Act investment in the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) and State Broadband Initiative (SBI), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has developed a user friendly online tool to visualize the high-speed broadband networks, public computer centers and Internet training programs funded across the country.
The BTOP map went live in 2012 with data submitted by NTIA’s grantees in their 2011 progress reports. And we recently updated the map using data from last year’s progress reports. As of the end of 2012, our projects had built or upgraded more than 86,000 miles of high-speed network infrastructure and connected more than 12,000 schools, libraries and other anchor institutions. They had installed more than 41,000 workstations in public computer centers, provided more than 12 million hours of computer and Internet training to more than 4 million people, and recorded more than 521,000 new residential broadband subscriptions.
Mapping NTIA's Broadband Investments
Venture-capital firms are showing greater interest in U.S. higher education because as a system, it’s no longer working, said Sebastian Thrun, co-founder of online learning company Udacity.
“Education is broken. Face it,” said Thrun, a Stanford University research professor who helped create Google Inc.’s self-driving car. “It is so broken at so many ends, it requires a little bit of Silicon Valley magic,” he said. “If you look at Stanford, they are wonderful but they are small, by choice,” Thrun said. “What is missing is scale.” Thrun said the tens of thousands of people around the world who took one of his classes on artificial intelligence online would never have been accepted to Stanford.
Venture Capital Needed for ‘Broken’ U.S. Education, Thrun Says
Dish Network called the lawsuit Sprint filed against Dish a “transparent attempt” to distract shareholders from its own failed bid for Clearwire.
Dish said it has offered a fair price for the WiMAX operator and accused Sprint of trying to use its majority ownership position to block shareholders from accepting the offer. The irony of this situation is that Clearwire a year ago was a failing company with outdated WiMAX technology and neglected by its owners. Today it is the acquisition target of two of the biggest companies in the communications industry. Sprint already owns the biggest stake in Clearwire, but wants to consolidate its ownership before its pending acquisition by SoftBank. Dish wants to become a wireless carrier and needs Clearwire to break into the mobile industry.
Dish to Sprint: Stop whining and get out of the way of our Clearwire deal
[Commentary] Imagine providing essential information to your customers, in the exact time and place they need it — and delivering that information right in front of their eyes, where they can’t miss it. That’s the vision of marketing on Google Glass. Marketers must think differently about Glass than they do about their Web or smartphone applications. And they should start thinking now about Glass, even though the device likely won’t be shipping to consumers before 2014.
[Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research]
Google Glass: What Marketers Should Know
The upfront has moved at a snail’s pace this year, with two broadcast networks, ABC and NBC, still in negotiations three weeks after the selling season broke. That’s a reflection of two things.
First, the economy, while certainly on the mend, is still not healthy. And second, broadcast TV has lost some of its potency. Both are evident in a new forecast from ZenithOptimedia. The London agency foresees steady but not strong growth of 3.5 percent for total U.S. ad spending this year, consistent with its most recent forecast in March. But it’s also forecasting a 2 percent dip in broadcast TV ad revenue, echoing a similar prediction by another forecaster, Magna Global, last week. “While we are well past the worst of the economic downturn, economic growth remains slow,” says the report. The only significant area of growth in the coming year will be internet, which is seeing a lot of dollars moved from traditional media including magazines, newspapers and radio. So far television isn’t seeing the same drain from new media, and in fact has gotten a boost by selling cross-media packages that include mobile and online ads with offline buys. But it is suffering from decreasing live viewership as people increasingly use DVRs to record shows or catch up with missed episodes online. That’s led to ratings declines and thus a smaller amount of rating points to sell to advertisers. It’s also resulted in fewer must-buy programs.
This won’t be a great year for broadcast
Verizon Wireless filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission ahead of its 17th annual mobile competition report. This post is excerpted from our executive summary.
The mobile wireless marketplace is even more robust, competitive, and innovative than it was last year and the year before. Output is increasing, prices are decreasing, and there is massive, ongoing investment and innovation that is fueling even more competition – all to the benefit of the U.S. wireless consumer. Competition is being driven not only by mobile carriers but from a large and increasing variety of device and application suppliers, resellers, over-the-top providers, and other entrants across the mobile ecosystem, enabling consumers to “mix-and- match” services, devices and applications that are both complements and substitutes. Indeed, not only is the U.S. wireless consumer experience the best in the world, it is constantly getting better. The facts are clear – the mobile wireless market is “effectively competitive” for the American consumer.
Making the Case for Competition Ahead of the FCC’s 17th Mobile Competition Report
You have to wonder if President Barack Obama ever thought, when he first ran for the White House, that he would need to defend himself from accusations his presidency would be a mere extension of his Republican predecessor.
But there he was with journalist Charlie Rose having to explain why his approach to national security wasn't really like that of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The main reason President Obama is no repeat of that previous administration? He pointed to his championing of strong checks and balances on federal government surveillance (his strong suggestion was that his immediate predecessors didn't). Further, he seeks a "national conversation" about data-gathering by the government and other entities. Again, the implication there was that any broad debate during the Bush-Cheney years about surveillance was something the prior administration was only brought to while kicking and screaming.
Obama's Unplanned NSA Discussion
Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to give the government.
The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic. Google, one of nine companies named in NSA documents as providing information to the top-secret PRISM program, has demanded that U.S. officials give it more leeway to describe the company’s relationship with the government. Google and the other companies involved have sought to reassure users that their privacy is being protected from unwarranted intrusions. In the petition, Google is seeking permission to publish the total numbers of requests the court makes of the company and the numbers of user accounts they affect. The company long has made regular reports with regard to other data demands from the U.S. government and from other governments worldwide.
Google challenges U.S. gag order, citing First Amendment Google Formally Petitions to Publish Statistics on FISA Requests (WSJ)
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) encouraged the intelligence community to restructure a National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program that gathers metadata on the phone records of Verizon and other phone providers' customers. Rep Schiff argued that Americans may feel "much more comfortable" if telecommunications companies retained the metadata on customers' phone calls rather funneling it to the secretive spy agency. This way, the NSA would have to go to the telecommunications companies to query phone records of interest. "What are the prospects for changing the program such that rather than the government acquiring the vast amounts of metadata, the telecommunications companies retain the metadata and then only on those 300 or so occasions where it needs to be queried, you're querying the telecommunications providers for whether they have those business records related to a reasonable articulable suspicion of foreign terrorist connection?" Rep Schiff asked NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on the agency's surveillance programs.
"If you leave it at the service providers, you have a separate set of issues in terms of how you actually get the information, then how you have to go back and get that information, and how you follow it on and the legal authority … to compel them to keep these records for a certain period of time," Alexander said. "The concern is speed in crisis. How do we do this? And so that's what we need to bring back to you, and then I think have this discussion here and let people know where we are on it," he added.
Rep Schiff: Phone providers should retain metadata on phone calls, not NSA
The United States and Europe stepped up cooperation on security issues after Sept. 11, 2001. But that doesn't mean they agree on everything.
The latest point of friction: What are the rules when it comes to privacy rights The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs not only touched off a ferocious debate in the U.S. but also struck a nerve in Europe. The Europeans appear to be reacting mostly to the reports that the NSA tapped the servers of Google, Facebook and other Internet companies for personal data. The companies have hundreds of millions of users worldwide, including in Europe. And just as there has been mixed reaction in the U.S., the same is true in Europe.
US, Europe May Share Intelligence, But Not Privacy Rules