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Just three months after settling into geostationary orbit, Hughes Network Systems’ new EchoStar 17 satellite is ready for commercial service.
Hughes Net launched new plans offering download speeds as high as 15 Mbps, in the process joining the growing ranks of satellite operators bringing true broadband speeds to rural areas. HughesNet has named the new service Gen4 and the satellite utilizes EchoStar-Hughes’ new Jupiter high-throughput technology, which expands the total capacity of the satellite to 100 Gbps. That has allowed Hughes to distribute that capacity more liberally to its customers, bumping up download speeds from 1-2 Mbps to 10-15 Mbps and upload speeds above a megabit. ViaSat launched a similarly brawny satellite last year, and began offering a $50/month 12 Mbps service in January. Hughes service plans are comparably priced with cable broadband, ranging from $50 to $100 a month, but the satellite’s finite capacity does give the service some stiff limitations. Unlike its previous plans, these newer, faster tiers come with caps. At the low end customers are limited to 20 GB, while the upper tier taps out at 40 GB. By comparison cable operator Comcast recently raised its monthly cap from 250 GB to 300 GB a month. What’s more, customers are restricted when they can consume that data -– on all plans, half of the monthly data bucket can only be tapped between 2 AM and 8 AM. But Hughes also seems to have done away with the old daily throttling policies that irked so many of its customers.
With new satellite tech, rural dwellers get access to true broadband
ZenithOptimedia, the media buying/research group has cut its global ad spend forecast for the year from 4.3 percent to 3.8 percent, because a big chunk of Europe is melting down. (Zenith expects Europe to start improving as early as next year.)
TV dollars remain dominant and unmoved. Digital’s growth, to date, remains fueled in large part by the decline of print. Things get most interesting when you dive deeper into digital, and look at how that money is being split up. For a very long time, “Internet advertising” has essentially meant “paid search advertising,” which means Google. Not anymore. Display ads are finally gaining speed. Google is a big player in display advertising, too — it has been spending heavily on acquisitions there for years — but it doesn’t have anything like the lead it does in search.
That’s a big growth story for Facebook and a potential lifeline for Yahoo and AOL.
Why Google Doesn’t Own the Next Chapter in Web Ads
The Obama campaign has spent 9% of its local television political ad budget on Spanish-language media, more than twice as much as the Romney campaign, but that is still only a combined 5%. That is according to a study of spending in 10 states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas and Virginia -- released by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce from Kantar Media local TV advertising data. That is over the entire general election period starting with the effective conclusion of the GOP primary campaign.
Hispanic Chamber Says Spanish-Language Media Isn't Sharing in Ad Windfall Press release (U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce)
Ad-supported Internet sites created twice as many jobs (2 million total) in 2011 compared to 2007, according to a study conducted by the Harvard Business School and commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Startups made up 19 percent (375,000) of those digital gigs, per the IAB-sanctioned report. The New York-based trade org also says that the ad-supported Internet ecosystem contributed $530 billion to the U.S. economy last year, up 77 percent from 2007’s $300 billion mark. In addition, its study suggests that ad-supported Internet businesses actually created 5 million direct and “indirect” jobs total.
The Digital Stimulus Package Internet-Media Employment Fuels Digital Job Growth (AdAge) Internet Jobs Booming Across All Sectors (MediaPost)
A group of electric companies says it is not opposed to working with the federal government to secure power-grid computer networks, as long as regulators don’t proscribe new burdensome and inflexible rules.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) helped sponsor legislation that would have created more government oversight of certain critical networks, including those that control electric grids. After that bill floundered in the Senate partly because of industry opposition to new rules, he wrote a letter to top leaders of Fortune 500 companies asking them about their views on cybersecurity. In a response to that letter, industry associations that represent electric companies, including 24 that received Rockefeller’s letter, say they are open to voluntarily collaborating with government officials.
Utilities Open to Cybersecurity Dialogue
The recent surge of investment and energy in education technology is bringing a new wave of tools to schools across the country. But determining which options are most appropriate and effective for specific classrooms is becoming an increasing challenge for teachers and administrators. Education blogs and newsletters, as well as social platforms such as Edmodo and Schoology, are helping educators discover new products and services. But a proposal recently presented to the nonprofit Hamilton Project calls for a Consumer Reports-like independent third party to evaluate and rate new learning technologies. Submitted by two business school professors, Duke University’s Aaron Chatterji and Northwestern’s Benjamin Jones, the nonprofit program, called EDU STAR, would quickly and rigorously assess new learning tools and then report the results to the public. Their goal is to encourage innovation in ed tech by reducing buyer uncertainty on the part of the schools and lowering the cost of marketing for entrepreneurs.
Does ed tech need its own Consumer Reports?
President Barack Obama announced his intent to appoint John G. Stratton to be a member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.
Stratton is President of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a branch of Verizon Communications Inc. Mr. Stratton has worked for Verizon and its predecessor, Bell Atlantic Mobile, for over 18 years. He has held a number of executive level positions in the company, including Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Verizon Wireless from 2010 to 2012, and Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Verizon Wireless from 2009 to 2010. He joined Bell Atlantic Mobile in 1993 as Director of Retail Sales and Operations.
The mission of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee is to provide the U.S. Government the best possible industry advice on the availability and reliability of telecommunication services.
Verizon Exec Picked for President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee
Iran has unblocked access to Gmail as of October 1; Google's popular worldwide email service was placed under a HTTPS block on September 24. But while Iranian internet users can now use Gmail securely, the Iranian government has announced plans to enact . Mohammed Reza Miri of Iran's Telecommunications Ministry told the Mehr news agency that the Gmail blockage was an unintended consequence of a new censorship regime for YouTube. “Unfortunately, we do not yet have enough technical knowhow to differentiate between these two services. We wanted to block YouTube and Gmail was also blocked, which was involuntary […] We absolutely do not want YouTube to be accessible. That is why the telecommunications ministry is seeking a solution to fix the problem to block YouTube under the HTTPS protocol while leaving Gmail accessible. That will soon happen.”
Iran Unblocks Gmail
Two federal officials with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology are calling for an all-out effort to ensure that at least 1,000 small, rural and federally designated critical-access hospitals become meaningful users of health IT by 2014.
The "call to action" was posted on Health IT Buzz, the ONC's official blog, by Mat Kendall, director of the ONC's Office of Provider Adoption Support, and Leila Samy, the ONC's rural health IT coordinator. There were 1,987 rural hospitals across the U.S. in 2010, according to the American Hospital Association's 2012 AHA Hospital Statistics reference book. According to Kendall and Samy, rural hospitals with fewer than 50 beds and critical-access hospitals "face unique challenges" not only because of their remote locations, small size and low patient volumes but also because of limited workforces, clinician shortages, tight finances and, in some cases, lack of adequate or affordable data connectivity.
ONC sets meaningful-use goal for rural providers
In the current economic climate, it is vital that we seek out ways to keep and create jobs locally. As consumers and businesses continue to grow more reliant on broadband and wireless technologies, updating today’s outdated laws becomes even more vital.
Current laws were put in place in a different era where Americans were literally shackled to their homes by phone cords. Today, nearly a quarter of American homes have no “home phone,” while another 15 percent consider their wireless phones to be their primary line. Government must match the private sector’s enthusiasm for improving productivity and efficiency. We must modernize our regulatory system if we are to position our economy for success in the 21st century. Properly done, we can produce better regulatory outcomes and a stronger American economy.
Living in a Modern World with Less Than Modern Regulations