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[Commentary] The World Conference on International Telecommunications concluded with passage of revisions to a 25-year-old treaty written for a telecom-focused world to include the Internet. One simple sentence caused the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and 55 other nations to vote against a new agreement: “[A]ll governments should have an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security and continuity of the existing Internet.”
How a nation controls the Internet affects commerce, intellectual property rights, and trade. The Internet does not follow traditional borders or stop at nations’ edges so a common understanding of how it should be governed and by whom is critical to its future. Nations, especially those that espouse sovereignty over freedom, know that control over the Internet affects their national and international stature. Deciding whether sovereignty or freedom should underpin cyberspace will set the direction on how nations’ treat significant legal and policy challenges, such as national defense norms; criminal and civil penalties; standards; trade and privacy. If nations are allowed to dictate sovereignty over freedom, then online firewalls will become the Berlin Wall of the 21st Century. While last week’s action is not binding, it does tell us that the U.S. and its allies will need to be aggressive in diplomatic and international negotiations going forward with regards to Internet governance. Tearing down walls, once built, is a difficult, if not impossible, task. In many ways, the future of innovation can and will be decided by who wins the Internet debate on the international stage.
The Future of Innovation is at Stake in the Debate Over Internet Freedom
The Federal Communications Commission announced that savings from its comprehensive reform of its Lifeline program earlier this year reached nearly $214 million in 2012, surpassing the $200 million target the FCC set when it comprehensively reformed the program in January. The FCC also announced the selection of 14 pilot projects in 21 states and Puerto Rico that will field test approaches to using Lifeline to increase broadband adoption among low-income Americans.
Major savings are being realized by:
- Eliminating “Link Up” subsidies for new connections, which were acting as unnecessary “bounties” for new sign-ups. As a result, Link Up expenditures dropped from roughly $14 million in May – the final month Link Up payments were sent to providers -- to less than $200,000 in December. Link Up is still available in some Tribal areas.
- Requiring carriers to obtain proof of income eligibility from new subscribers. These changes took effect in June and were first reflected in August disbursements, which dropped by nearly $40 million in one month.
Clarifying that Lifeline subscriptions are limited to one per household, and scrubbing subscriber roles of duplicates. The FCC has reviewed over 12 million subscriber records and eliminated 1.1 million duplicate subscriptions, which will result in $128 million in annualized savings. The process of examining subscriber rolls state-by-state continues as the FCC develops a comprehensive database that will automatically check for duplicate subscriptions.
Requiring providers to verify the continued eligibility of their subscribers for Lifeline on annual basis.
Using $14 million in savings from reforms, the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau has chosen 14 high-quality pilot projects to advance broadband adoption through Lifeline. The projects will provide critical data and rigorous analysis regarding how Lifeline can efficiently and effectively increase broadband adoption and retention among low-income consumers. Located in 21 states and Puerto Rico, the pilots will also provide broadband for nearly 75,000 low-income consumers who now lack service. In order to rigorously test how best to use Lifeline to support broadband adoption, the pilots will gather
data and provide analysis on a wide a range of geographic, technological, and programmatic variables. Projects include five wireless broadband projects, seven wireline broadband projects, and two offering wireline or wireless technologies. Seven will test discounted service in rural areas, including two on Tribal lands, and seven will test discounted service in urban and suburban areas. Variables that will be experimentally tested include the use of digital literacy training, equipment types, subsidy levels, speed ranges, and usage limits. The Pilot Program will run for 18 months, beginning on Feb. 1, 2013. Winners have three months to set up the pilots, and must provide one year of subsidized service. The pilots must complete data collection and analysis in the final three months.
- Frontier Communications Corporation (OH, WV)
- Gila River Telecommunications, Inc. (AZ – Tribal)
- Hopi Telecommunications, Inc. (AZ – Tribal)
- National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA) Project (which includes the following carriers: Alpine Communications (IA); and Leaco Rural Telephone (NM))
- Nexus Communications, Inc. (OH, MI, IA, NV, CA, LA, MS, NJ)
- Partnership for a Connected Illinois Project (which includes the following carriers: Adams Telephone Cooperative; Cass Telephone Company; Harrisonville Telephone Company; Madison Telephone Company; Mid-Century Telephone Cooperative; Shawnee Telephone Company; and Wabash Telephone Cooperative (IL))
- PR Wireless, Inc. (Puerto Rico)
- Puerto Rico Telephone Company (Puerto Rico)
- T-Mobile Puerto Rico LLC (Puerto Rico)
- TracFone Wireless, Inc. project using smartphones (FL, MD, TX, WA, WI, MA)
- Troy Cablevision, Inc. (AL)
- Vermont Telephone Company, Inc. (VT)
- Virgin Mobile USA, L.P. (MA, OH)
- XChange Telecom Corp. (NY)
FCC’s Lifeline Reforms Saved More Than $210 Million in 2012; FCC Announces 14 Broadband Pilot Projects FCC (read the FCC Order on pilot projects)
[Commentary] When Google began deploying its gigabit-to-the-home, fiber network in Kansas City, many techies watched with envy. The lure of Midwestern kindness, affordable rent and cheap food, combined with world-leading bandwidth at prices equal to far slower options elsewhere has proven so enticing that some have even moved there. But they don’t have to move to the Midwest just yet; they can spur their hometown to action.
Seattle just announced a plan to bring gigabit service to a dozen of its neighborhoods. Once an agreement is signed, the City, the University of Washington and Gigabit Squared–a digital economic development company—plan to build out wireless and wired connectivity to over 100,000 Seattle residents in the span of 24 months. Seattle’s announcement is significant for its size, but more importantly because it points to a path, with proper strategy and planning, that any community can follow to an upgrade. This project shows how smart use of community assets like rights of way and dark fiber can improve the conditions for investment in next generation networks. Under Mayor McGinn’s leadership, Seattle added and made available additional conduit underground as part of its planned revitalization of the historic Pioneer Square and approved a policy to lease unused capacity from its existing 500 miles of fiber so providers could improve broadband access and services throughout the city. This forward-leaning approach to digital infrastructure has paid off: in a recent State by State Broadband Study, Washington State ranked first out of all 50 U.S. states on indicators of broadband adoption, network quality and economic structure. Not only has the infrastructure improved, but, as we found in our study, states actively investing in and utilizing broadband networks are “seeing stronger economic growth, better connected communities and enhanced quality of life.” While Washington benefits from a healthy tech economy, great local leadership such as Seattle has with its Mayor and the University of Washington has with its President has maximized the region’s assets.
Seattle Leads the Way to Strategic Bandwidth Advantage for America
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski celebrated the innovative achievements of technologists whose work in communication-related areas benefits people with disabilities, bestowing the second Awards for Advancement in Accessibility (Chairman's AAA).
The Chairman’s AAA, a project of the FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative (A&I Initiative), based on a recommendation of the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan, recognizes outstanding private and public sector ventures in accessibility and innovation. The A&I Initiative seeks to facilitate dialogue among industry, assistive technology companies, app developers, government representatives, and consumers to allow stakeholders to share best practices and solutions for accessible communications technologies. Seven winners and two honorable mentions were recognized, chosen in six different categories: Consumer Empowerment Information; Mobile Applications; Civic Participation Solutions; Education: College or University; Video Programming; and Geo-Location Solutions.
- Consumer Empowerment Information -- Project StAR: Accessible Radio 2012/The Narrator: This AM/FM/HD radio follows the principle of universal design by providing simple, tactile controls that talk so that people who are blind or visually impaired can control the user interfaces on their radio. Neely Oplinger of Metropolitan Washington Ear, Mike Dahnert of Best Buy and Al Shuldiner of Ibiquity accepted the award.
- Mobile Applications -- WGBH National Center for Accessible Media: "Media Access Mobile": This mobile technology enhances the user experience for multimedia presentations at cultural institutions, museums, exhibits, or other venues by providing synchronized text for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and synchronized audio description for people who are blind or visually impaired. Larry Goldberg from the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media accepted the award.
- Civic Participation Solutions -- Prime III: A Universally Designed Voting Machine: This system allows people with visual, hearing, reading, or dexterity disabilities to privately and independently vote using the same voting machine as everyone else. Andrea Johnson from the Clemson University Human-Centered Computing Lab accepted the award.
- Education: College or University -- Project: Possibility SS12: Code for a Cause: This event educates computer science students about accessibility, making these students better equipped to develop accessible technology solutions for people with disabilities. Accepting the award: Sean Goggin from Project accepted the award.
- Video Programming -- Accessible Media Inc. (AMI), and Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE): AMI’s Described Video Guide builds awareness about video description while providing an accessible, aggregate daily list of described video programming to enable individuals who are blind or visually impaired to plan their TV viewing. Robert Pearson and David Errington accepted the award for AMI. SMPTE’s 2052 suite of Standards and Recommended Practices for “SMPTE Timed Text” (SMPTE-TT) enable television content delivered over Internet protocol to retain closed captions for the deaf and hard of hearing communities. Robert Seidel accepted the award for SMPTE.
- Geo-Location Services -- Tiramisu Transit: This app, which intelligently crowd-sources information on bus schedules, timing, and space availability, was written to be compliant with accessibility guidelines of various platforms and is intended to benefit people with and without disabilities. Aaron Steinfeld of Tiramisu Transit accepted the award.
Honorable mentions went to: Google+ Hangouts and Virtual Braille Keyboard.
FCC Honors Innovators in Accessibility Communications Technology Remarks (Chairman Genachowski)
Our national security depends on our ability to share the right information, with the right people, at the right time. This information sharing mandate requires sustained and responsible collaboration between Federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and foreign partners. The 2012 provides guidance for effective development, integration, and implementation of policies, processes, standards, and technologies to promote secure and responsible information sharing. Our responses to these challenges must be strategic and grounded in three core principles. First, in treating Information as a National Asset, we recognize departments and agencies have achieved an unprecedented ability to gather, store, and use information consistent with their missions and applicable legal authorities; correspondingly they have an obligation to make that information available to support national security missions. Second, our approach recognizes Information Sharing and Safeguarding Requires Shared Risk Management. In order to build and sustain the trust required to share with one another, we must work together to identify and collectively reduce risk, rather than avoiding information loss by not sharing at all. Third, the core premise Information Informs Decisionmaking underlies all our actions and reminds us better decisionmaking is the purpose of sharing information in the first place.
The Strategy focuses on achieving five goals:
- Drive Collective Action through Collaboration and Accountability.
- Improve Information Discovery and Access through Common Standards.
- Optimize Mission Effectiveness through Shared Services and Interoperability.
- Strengthen Information Safeguarding through Structural Reform, Policy, and Technical Solutions.
- Protect Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties through Consistency and Compliance.
National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding
Four out of 10 Americans have connected their TV to the Internet, according to a new Forrester study.
If you’re just talking about the whippersnappers in the 18-to-32 age bracket, the number shoots up to 6 in 10. Forrester credits Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PS3 for most of that; it says 42 percent of connected TV watchers are hooked up via a game console. If you do want to pick at these numbers, there are a couple ways to do that. For starters, note that the Forrester poll asks people if they have “ever accessed” the Internet on a TV, which is different from regular use. And it’s possible that many gamers are simply counting playing with other gamers as an Internet connection. Most important is that Forrester’s numbers come from an online survey. And, as Forrester notes in the footnotes to their research, “respondents who participate in online surveys generally have more experience with the Internet and feel more comfortable transacting online.” In other words: You can probably knock these numbers down a bit if you want to talk about the entire U.S. population. But even then, there’s definitely something here. And maybe that’s old news to everyone but me.
Your Internet Is Already on Your TV
Tucked into the annual U.S. defense budget bill making its way through Congress this week is a long-fought and potentially lucrative reprieve for U.S. satellite manufactures and suppliers to export their products, officials said. Since 1999, spacecraft and their components have been grouped with ammunitions, fighter jets and other defense technologies and subject to the nation's most stringent export controls. The restriction followed a 1996 Chinese rocket launch accident that claimed a U.S.-manufactured satellite. In the course of the investigation, the company was accused of inadvertently transferring restricted technology to China.
Defense bill lifts barrier on satellite exports
[Commentary] A decade and a half ago, as Internet adoption began to accelerate, David Isenberg wrote what may well have been the manifesto for the revolution, “The Rise of the Stupid Network.” He argued that seismic shifts were shaking the very foundations of the telecommunications industry: data traffic was overtaking voice, circuit switching was succumbing to packet, price-performance was radically improving, and customers were increasingly taking control. The network, he contended, should be “stupid,” carrying bits from point A to point B, and not doing much else. Functionality was best delivered by intelligent endpoints interacting over a dumb network. As he foresaw, the interoperability benefits of a ubiquitous protocol like IP, which has now worked itself into our smartphones, tablets, and TVs – not to mention everything from electric meters to light bulbs – cannot be denied. And, thanks to Moore’s Law, even preschoolers can have hundreds of GigaFLOPS at their disposal for less than the price of a swing set. Of course, 15 years is a long time, especially in the field of computing and communications. So the question is, does Isenberg’s line of thought still hold true? I would argue that, rather than stupid networks, we’re entering an era of “pervasive intelligence,” where endpoints are intelligent, but the network can be as well. Networks can be smart. Tunable. Programmable.
[Weinman is a senior vice president at Telx, a provider of interconnection and data center services]
Why the “Stupid Network” isn’t Our Destiny After All
Consumers keep hoping for an unlimited mobile broadband plan revival, but the opposite keeps happening. What few remaining unlimited plans carriers offer are disappearing – or at least becoming more restrictive. On Jan. 20, Boost Mobile, one of Sprint’s prepaid brands, will start throttling its so-called unlimited plans after customers surpass 2.5 GB a month, according to a company Facebook post first spotted by FierceWireless. Sprint’s unlimited contract plans will remain unthrottled – a strategy CEO Dan Hesse has stressed is key to differentiating Sprint from the competition – but now both of Sprint’s primary prepaid services, Virgin and Boost, will have usage restrictions. Broadband Reports confirmed that Clearwire is now experimenting with usage-based pricing plans in 10 cities, selling customers 2 GB a month for $20, 4 GB for $40 or an unlimited package for $60. The 10-city trial aside, all of Clearwire’s current plans are marketed as unlimited, but many customers have complained that throttling policies have kicked in at seemingly arbitrary usage levels.
The Unlimited Mobile data Plan Suffers more Casualties Sprint's Boost Mobile to start smartphone throttling in January (Fierce)
Macmillan CEO John Sargent sent a letter to authors and agents on Wednesday afternoon, saying that the publisher does not plan to follow Penguin’s lead and settle with the Department of Justice in the e-books lawsuit. But, Sargent said, Macmillan voluntarily entered new retailer contracts that conform with many of the requirements in the DOJ’s settlement. Macmillan is the smallest of the big-six publishers, and the only one that is wholly privately owned. Sargent says there are two reasons Macmillan is not settling: “First, it is hard to settle when you have done nothing wrong. Much as the lawyers explain to me that settling is completely standard business procedure, it still seems fundamentally flawed to me somehow.”
More importantly, he writes:
“Since the very beginning, the government’s demands have never wavered in all our discussions. They still insist on the two year discounting regime that forms the heart of the agreement signed by the three settling publishers. It was our belief that Amazon would use that entire discount for the two years. That would mean that retailers who felt they needed to match prices with Amazon would have no revenue from e-books from five of the big publishers (and possibly the sixth) for two years. Not no profit, no revenue. For two years. We felt that few retailers could survive this or would choose to survive this.”
Macmillan CEO: No, We Won’t settle with DoJ in E-Book Case