GigaOm

[Commentary] Despite all the hubbub, though, there’s precious little evidence that US consumers are willing to actually pay a premium or even go much out of their way to protect their privacy in an increasingly connected world.

A 2013 survey from the Pew Research Center found that only 41 percent of US Internet users had set their computer browsers to turn off or disable cookies, and a recent Microsoft survey found that only one-third of consumers had adjusted privacy settings in their social networks. And a 2013 survey form the tech market research firm uSamp indicated a mere 4 percent of users had switched mobile service providers due to privacy concerns.

Fears about mobile security and privacy grow more legitimate by the day, but there’s no reason to think consumers will pay to alleviate them.

The “Internet of things” refers to the idea of turning everyday objects around us into responsive data devices. It’s one of the hottest ideas in tech right now -- even if we’re totally lacking the resources we need to support it.

For Tamara Budec, an executive with data services provider Digital Realty, the building of the physical layer for the Internet of things has barely begun, and moving forward will require constructing new clusters of data centers and also and freeing up more wireless spectrum.

There are also questions of how to build in global security and privacy controls, according to Jai Menon, VP and chief research officer at Dell Research. The challenge is especially daunting, Menon said, given the sheer scale of data that can now be collected. He pointed out that capturing all the information points generated by New York City’s taxi fleet would produce an unmanageable 26 exabytes a year.

Menon also noted that building an infrastructure for the Internet of things will involve constructing not only physical plant, but next-generation analytic tools that are not just predictive, but prescriptive too -- for instance, sensors that would not just predict a storm tomorrow, but also be capable of sending emergency responders to meet it.

Most of the laws governing data privacy and security in the US are nearly 30 years old, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said -- but with gridlock in Congress, that may not get better any time soon.

Private companies have to step up and make sure that customers’ data is secure, Smith said.

“We’re living in a time when Congress doesn’t get much done,” he said, but acknowledged that data privacy issues are also uniquely complex, making it more difficult for lawmakers to act on them. “It’s technically complex, it’s legally complex” and it involves two equally important values -- privacy and public safety.

It’s fair to say that since John Legere became CEO of T-Mobile US nearly two years ago, the US mobile industry has changed a lot. Not only has T-Mobile triggered some big shifts in how mobile devices and service plans are sold, Legere has also injected a lot of excitement into a normally staid mobile market.

As to whether T-Mobile questions the notion that mobile data capacity is a rare commodity that has to be metered and meted out sparingly, Legere said: “I do believe there have been artificial barriers and scarcity put up by the duopolists.”

Part of the reason is pure capitalism, he thinks. AT&T and Verizon want to maximize the return on their investments, so they charge as much as they can for data. By preserving the illusion that data is a limited resource, they can justify such high rates. Consequently, when T-Mobile offers lower rates for data, people assume that T-Mobile is vastly underpricing that resource.

Legere and his CTO Neville Ray believe that their competitors are also using the notion of scarcity as a crutch when they should actually be investing more in their networks. While T-Mobile does offer cheaper individual smartphone data plans than its competitors, Legere pointed out that T-Mobile hasn’t embarked on a quest to commoditize data or to start a price war in the US mobile market.

The burgeoning Internet of Things is a great idea but it won’t really take off without some serious breakthroughs in security, said Dan Kaufman, director of the Information Innovation Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Kaufman pointed out that the PC industry was unusual in that customers pay thousands of dollars for products that are broken from the start -- you buy a new machine and the first thing you have to do is patch it -- and this model won’t fly when you’re dealing with smart homes and so on.

“If we don’t have a fundamentally new security model, then I don’t know how we’re going to enjoy the Internet of Things,” Kaufman said. “Patch Tuesday for your car or your insulin pump doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

That said, DARPA is working on it. Kaufman noted that the defense research agency is trying to build an unhackable operating system, and it’s starting with the real-time operating systems that power embedded systems, such as those that will underpin the Internet of Things.

Not content to remake the server, Facebook’s engineers have taken on the humble switch, building their own version of the networking box and the software to go with it.

The resulting switch, dubbed Wedge, and the software called FBOSS will be provided to the Open Compute Foundation as an open source design for others to emulate. Facebook is already testing it with production traffic in its data centers.

Jay Parikh, the VP of infrastructure engineering at Facebook shared the news of the server onstage at the Gigaom Structure event, explaining that Facebook’s goal in creating this project was to eliminate the network engineer and run its networking operations in the same easily swapped out and dynamic fashion as their servers.

Facebook’s infrastructure is relatively unique in that it wholly controls it and has the engineering talent to build software and new hardware to meet its computing needs. Google is another company that has built its own networking switch, but it didn’t open source those designs and keeps them close. But many enterprise customers don’t have the technical expertise of a web giant, so the tweaks that others contribute to the Open Compute Foundation to make the gear and the software will likely influence adoption.

Where does this stop? Courts in Europe have been forcing Google to scrub embarrassing search results, and now one in Canada has made an even broader ruling: it ordered the search engine to delete websites not only from the Canadian version of Google, but across the world as well.

The decision is part of an alarming trend of disappearing online information. The Canadian decision, in case you missed it, is about a company that is trying to stop a rival from selling network devices that it claims are the fruit of its stolen trade secrets. As part of its lawsuit, the company wants Google to remove all search results that link to the rival’s more than 300 websites.

In response, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has issued a sweeping temporary injunction. The injunction matters because it will have a global effect; in less than 14 days, people in Canada will be no longer be able to find the websites in Google, and neither will Google users in other countries.

Sprint’s LTE rollout may be behind those of its nationwide competitors, but it appears to be getting close to completion.

Its 4G network now covers 225 million people, and it plans to hit the 250 million mark by mid-year. It kicked off a program that brings its 4G coverage to small markets and rural areas it never planned to target with 4G service.

Sprint announced roaming agreements with 12 regional and rural carriers as part of a LTE network sharing agreement with the Competitive Carrier Association and the NetAmerica Alliance. The idea is to create a common device portfolio and nationwide LTE footprint that Sprint and all its regional partners can share in.

[Commentary] With the end of Federal Communications Commission enforcement of open Internet rules, a few select companies will very quickly be making major decisions on how fast most users will be able to access content across the web.

Video streaming, as we know, takes up a plurality of bandwidth usage (and will only increase in popularity). However, the danger isn’t just limited to video. The major ISPs in the United States -- Comcast and AT&T among others -- often also provide voice services that directly compete with many of the services provided by VoIP.

What’s more, the innovative possibilities of VoIP and VoIP-related technologies, like WebRTC, will also be throttled by the lack of open Internet standards. New VoIP technologies are often not just limited to voice; they incorporate video capabilities as well. VoIP services require simultaneous high quality upload and download streams, instead of just download streams as with a service like Netflix. As such, VoIP shares many of the same concerns as video streaming, and the dangers for VoIP services may be even greater.

[Aylarov is the CEO of Zingaya, which enables online calls from web pages]

If you want to sell a telecom merger to the American public, the hip to do is promise more broadband access. Sprint chairman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is making such claims to justify his forthcoming bid for T-Mobile, and now AT&T is on its own broadband kick to push its proposed acquisition of DirecTV.

In a regulatory filing with the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T promised to deliver broadband to 15 million more homes and businesses, but Ma Bell isn’t just talking about wireline technologies like DSL and U-Verse. It plans to build the bulk of this network using wireless airwaves. AT&T said it would target 13 million primarily rural locations outside of its broadband footprint with a technology called wireless local loop (WLL).

Local loop is the telecommunications term for the circuit a copper line completes going from a telephone company’s switching office to the customer’s home. But in this case of WLL, the circuit is made via wireless, not copper.

AT&T says its WLL network could deliver speeds of 15 Mbps to 20 Mbps. That isn’t as fast as the speed we’ve come to expect from cable, but it’s certainly not bad either, especially considering the limited options in rural areas. The big question is whether it can deliver the monthly capacity to individual subscribers to make it a truly competitive offering.