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Europe’s top trade official has demanded a bigger share of the Chinese market in telecoms network equipment in an increasingly heated dispute that risks escalating into a full-blown trade war.
Chinese diplomats privately complained about the EU’s demands this week with at least one EU capital, expressing frustration at what they believed were unreasonable – and possibly illegal - demands, officials and diplomats said. They claimed that Karel De Gucht, the trade commissioner, requested that EU suppliers be given a 30 per cent share of China’s telecoms market in return for dropping a highly contentious EU investigation into alleged subsidies to Chinese companies. Gucht also insisted that the Chinese companies, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, raise the price of their exports by 29 per cent as part of the agreement, these people said. The row is expected to come to a head on Feb 1 when top Chinese meet De Gucht in Brussels.
China anger at EU telecoms demands
North Korea may be the world’s most shrouded country, but on Jan 29 Google Maps lifted the veil just a little, uploading a map of the police state complete with street names in the capital.
The new map, built with the help of what Google called “a community of citizen cartographers,” provides people who normally visit the site for driving directions with a peek at places they previously may only have read about, probably in news articles about the North’s nuclear program or its devastating food shortages. The map of Pyongyang, the capital, shows all sorts of landmarks — the tower that celebrates the country’s self-reliance doctrine of Juche and Kim Il-sung Square, where military parades are held — as well as hotels, schools and hospitals. Users can zoom in and post comments and photos; the map also includes what the site suggests are four gulags, marked as gray splotches. The map is still empty in most areas of the country, but is much more detailed than the one that was on the site until Jan 29, which was mostly blank.
A New Target for Google Maps: The Streets of North Korea Google Fills In North Korea Map, From Subways to Gulags (WSJ) Google Maps presents North Korea through a new lens (CSM)
Fighting for Internet Freedom: Dubai and Beyond
Subcommittee on Communications and Technology
House Commerce Committee
February 5, 2013
10:30 a.m.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/hearing/fighting-for-internet-freedom-du...
H.R. ___, Discussion Draft on Internet Governance
Witnesses:
Commissioner Robert McDowell
Federal Communications Commission
Ambassador David A. Gross
Former U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy
U.S. Department of State
Ms. Sally Shipman Wentworth
Senior Manager, Public Policy
Internet Society
Mr. Harold Feld
Senior Vice President
Public Knowledge
The State Department launched the Open Book Project, an initiative designed to promote and create open-access Arabic language educational resources.
State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs is working with the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization to create open access educational resources with a specific focus on science and technology oriented materials.
The Open Book Project will:
- Support the creation of Arabic-language Open Educational Resources and work to translate existing material.
- Help distribute the materials free of charge through partners.
- Train governments, teachers, students and individuals looking to use these resources.
- Promote and raise awareness of open educational resources.
State Promotes Open Access to Educational Materials in Arabic Remarks at the Announcement of the Open Book Project (State Department)
Nearly two-thirds of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) language services -- offices that produce content for particular languages and regions -- overlap with another BBG service by providing programs to the same countries in the same languages.
GAO identified 23 instances of overlap involving 43 of BBG's 69 services. BBG officials noted that some overlap may be helpful in providing news from various sources in countries of strategic interest to the United States; however, they acknowledged that overlap reduces the funding available for broadcasts that may have greater impact. BBG budget information indicates that BBG spent approximately $149 million in fiscal year 2011 to maintain language services broadcasting in the same countries and languages -- nearly 20 percent of its total appropriations. However, BBG has not estimated the potential savings and efficiencies from reducing unnecessary overlap. Further, BBG's annual language service review -- its primary means of prioritizing broadcast languages and planning resource allocations -- does not systematically consider the cost and impact of overlap. As a result, BBG may be missing opportunities to reduce overlap as appropriate, strengthen impact, and improve BBG entity coordination. GAO recommends that BBG systematically consider in its annual language service reviews (1) the cost and impact of overlap among BBG entities' language services and (2) the activities of other international broadcasters. BBG agreed with GAO's recommendations and reported taking initial steps to implement them.
Additional Steps Needed to Address Overlap in International Broadcasting
The Federal Communications Commission announced details for a January 31, 2013 telemedicine demonstration by Georgia Telehealth Partnership, in conjunction with an FCC staff presentation at the Open Commission meeting earlier that day regarding the FCC’s ongoing work to expand broadband access and spectrum availability for health care uses.
Telemedicine and telehealth applications can improve the quality of health care delivered to patients in rural areas, generate savings in the cost of providing health care, and reduce the time and expense associated with travel to distant locations to receive or provide care. The demonstration will include a simulated patient examination with the Coffee Regional Medical Center in Bacon County, Georgia, a participant in the Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The demonstration will be followed by audience questions and comments.
The demonstration will highlight some of the technology applications that will be enabled by FCC initiatives. In particular, the FCC created the Rural Health Care (RHC) program to improve access to communications services for eligible health care providers. In December 2012, the Commission reformed and streamlined this program, creating a new, efficient Healthcare Connect Fund. Healthcare Connect will expand health care provider access to broadband, especially in rural areas, and encourage the creation of state and regional broadband health care networks. The new program will continue to help health care providers obtain broadband to implement telemedicine and telehealth applications.
FCC Announces Details For January 31, 2013 Telemedicine Demonstration
NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS) is hard at work in our Boulder, Colorado labs testing next-generation technology that will be used in a new nationwide public safety broadband network to be built by the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet).
Congress directed that the new FirstNet public safety network utilize Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio technology, a developing commercial network standard for broadband transmission. The public safety community identified LTE as the most promising technology to satisfy its growing need for advanced communications capabilities. As a result, voice communications for first responders will migrate to LTE networks using Voice over LTE (VoLTE), a digital protocol under which the network handles voice as just another form of data. ITS is working with the public safety community to ensure that mission-critical voice transmission using this new technology is at least as clear to practitioners in field conditions as current technologies.
Testing by NTIA’s ITS Paves the Way for First Responder Broadband Interoperability
[Commentary] The future of the U.S. economy depends upon technological progress, and learning basic skills like computational thinking and programming are great ways to expose students at an early age to its importance.
If the U.S. doesn't follow suit, we will lose out in the global economy. By 2018, there will be nearly three times as many job openings requiring computer science knowledge than qualified applicants. This goes well beyond just becoming a professional programmer -- learning computer science can teach problem solving skills, new ways of breaking down complex scenarios, and a means to build something tangible in our software-driven age. We're at a crossroads as a nation. It's inevitable that computation and software will surround us moving forward, and we have a choice between two futures. Future A is one in which everyone has basic code literacy and is empowered to build the future. Future B is one in which only an elite few know how to interact with the system, and the rest remain powerless. Which one do you choose?
US kids need computer-science education
The Department of Homeland Security urged computer users to disable a common networking technology feature, after researchers warned that hackers could exploit flaws to gain access to tens of millions of vulnerable devices.
The US government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, on its website, advised consumers and businesses to disable a feature known as Universal Plug and Play or UPnP, and some other related features that make devices from computers to printers accessible over the open Internet. UPnP, a communications protocol, is designed to let networks identify and communicate with equipment, reducing the amount of work it takes to set up networks. Dave Marcus, chief architect of advanced research and threat intelligence with Intel's McAfee unit, said hackers would have a "field day" once the vulnerability in network devices is exposed.
US government warns of hack threat to network gear
Amazon announced fourth-quarter earnings slightly below investor expectations — but operating income, widely viewed by investors as an important measure of the company’s overall health, rose, driving shares up in after-hours trading.
Net income for the quarter was $97 million, or $0.21 per share, on revenue of $21.27 billion — compared to profits of $177 million on revenue of $17.43 billion a year ago. Operating income rose 45 percent to $405 million. Analysts had expected earnings of $0.27 per share on revenues of $22.3 billion, and $506 million in operating income. In the release, CEO Jeff Bezos called out e-books in particular: “We’re now seeing the transition we’ve been expecting. After five years, e-books is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast — up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5 percent.” The company didn’t share actual e-book numbers, but North American media revenues were $2.9 billion for the quarter and $9.19 billion for the year — up 13 percent and 15 percent, respectively, over 2011. International media revenues were $3.6 billion for the quarter and $10.75 billion for the year.
Bezos: With e-book sales up 70% in 2012, Amazon has hit “transition” it expected Amazon’s eBook Business Is Up 70 Percent, but It’s Still Not Disclosing Kindle Sales (WSJ)