Morning Broadband Bytes

Rumor Mill: AT&T Wholesale Broadband Price Increase - From the why not increase everything while we're at it dept...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:38:09 EDT

A member here at BBR says that they "Just received notice from AT&T's ASI department. They will be increasing the wholesale rates of many of their DSL products by 33% on May 16th, 2008". AT&T recently increased the prices of four of their High Speed Internet services. That price increase went into effect Feb. 16th for new customers and will go into effect March 1st for existing customers. Needless to say with the telco increasing prices across its board you can probably expect this latest (possible) increase to roll downhill through those who use AT&T's wholesale service. However, since I haven't found a confirming story or info yet, this tidbit should be filed in the "rumor but something to watch for" department for now.

Penetration + Stimulation = $134 Billion - A Connected Nation could add billions annually to the economy

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:36:39 EDT

So, once again I'm surfing along looking for interesting broadband tidbits, and I come along this article at NewsObserver.com. You can see from the first paragraph of the article why it peaked my interest:

A modest increase in broadband adoption could add $134 billion annually to the U.S. economy according to research released today by Connected Nation, a national non-profit. The 30-page report titled "The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally" (PDF) provides new information on the positive economic effects of increased broadband penetration should legislation currently under Congressional consideration pass.

The United States can ill afford the passing of another year without policies that will stimulate broadband growth, particularly in previously underserved or overlooked areas. Much consensus building has occurred around broadband policy needs during this Congress. The time for action is now.

Connected Nation is the organization behind the much ballyhooed ConnectKentucky effort - a program some think should serve as a blueprint to implementing broadband throughout the nation:

"We applaud Connected Nation's efforts to extend the overwhelmingly positive model of ConnectKentucky to the rest of the nation," said Bruce Mehlman, Internet Innovation Alliance Co-Chair. "Initiatives mapping broadband demand are proven to accelerate deployment and adoption, especially to rural and underserved areas, and this study shows the significant economic benefits that follow."

The report details the potential state-by-state impact of legislation to accelerate broadband access and use based on the impact of its first state-based program, ConnectKentucky - "By surveying consumer savings in time, miles driven and healthcare and by calculating the impact on job creation/retention, the report projects the estimated annual economic benefit for Kentucky. From this data, Connected Nation extrapolated the economic impact of modest growth in broadband adoption for each state and the country as a whole."

Now I know this type of "extrapolating" can be hit or miss (see 'muni-fi bandwagon'), and the fact the numbers come from not an independent study but from the organization itself will lead some to question or dismiss the numbers put up in the report. But, for the moment, let's assume the report doesn't pull numbers out of its derriere like certain other recent reports. To that end, this report does cite a study by the Brookings Institution, who developed a formula "gauging the growth in jobs that can be associated with growth in broadband adoption. This study uses the Brookings Institution formula along with direct consumer surveys to estimate the direct economic impacts associated with employment, time saved, direct consumer healthcare savings and economic and environmental impact of fewer miles being driven due to online activity enabled by broadband."

First, let's see what Connected Nation says about its ConnectKentucky efforts:

Exactly how ConnectKentucky works is described in the report -

ConnectKentucky implemented a statewide program that aimed to
increase both the supply of and the demand for broadband. In each of Kentucky s 120 counties, eCommunity Leadership Teams were formed to accomplish the following:

Create and aggregate demand for broadband

Identify locally relevant applications

Foster cooperation across both private and public sectors in order to address the local community s needs that are appropriately addressed through technology and broadband in particular

Create local awareness of the benefits of broadband

Work with providers of broadband to create a business case for extension of broadband to unserved areas

Now we can check out the numbers claimed in this report:

Kentucky experienced an 83% rate of growth in broadband adoption while the national trend was 57%. In 2004, only 60% of Kentucky households had broadband available for subscription.
Three years later, in December 2007, 95% of households could subscribe to broadband, a statewide increase of nearly 60%. Kentucky had 297,000 more subscribers than expected when compared to national growth rates. For Kentucky, this means 297,000 more subscribers are participating in the benefits of broadband today than would have without the ConnectKentucky program.

According to this report, "Kentucky s growth in rural broadband is even more striking considering that Kentucky ranks 48th in educational attainment and 47th in median income in the nation - two indicators that have been shown to significantly affect broadband adoption. Indeed, a 2006 GAO report showed that households with high incomes were 39% more likely to adopt broadband than lower-income households, and those with a college-educated head of household were 12% more likely to purchase broadband than households headed by someone who did not graduate from college.

A 2006 GAO report concluded that when the availability of broadband to households, as well as demographic characteristics, are taken into account, rural households no longer appear less likely than urban households to subscribe to broadband. That is, the difference in the subscribership to broadband among urban and rural households appears to be related to the difference in availability of the service across these areas, and not to a lower disposition of rural households to purchase the service. Therefore, it appears that with the universal availability of broadband, the current 31% rural broadband adoption rate would eventually become much closer to the urban broadband adoption rate of 52%."

The Connected Nation study says that if every state were to use broadband initiatives similar to ConnectKentucky, they could be expectd to gain:

$92 billion through an additional 2.4 million jobs per year created - The seven percentage point growth in broadband adoption in
Kentucky over the expected has resulted in an additional 63,417 jobs created or saved in Kentucky between 2005 and 2007. The average annual economic value of these jobs can be estimated at $1.06 billion in direct wages.

$662 million saved per year in reduced healthcare costs - According to the 2007 ConnectKentucky Residential Technology Assessment, 72% of home broadband users who use the Internet for healthcare purposes report that access to online health information has empowered them to become healthier. Of the residents who have become healthier, 63% report that doing so has saved them money, with an average self-reported savings of $217 per person.

$6.4 billion per year in mileage savings from unnecessary driving - The ability to conduct transactions online also means that Kentuckians with broadband spend less time in their cars. Instant information and broadband-based access to relevant government services means not having to stand in line at shops and at town hall. In the 2007 ConnectKentucky residential survey, 66% of broadband users report driving an average of 102 fewer miles per month because of their online activity. This yields a total annual savings of more than 1.2 billion vehicle miles. Of these savings, approximately 190 million miles per year can be attributed to larger than expected growth in broadband adoption.

$18 million in carbon credits associated with 3.2 billion fewer lbs of CO2 emissions per year in the United States - According to the World Resources Institute, the average 2005 fuel fleet economy was 21 miles per gallon. According to the Center for Environmental Economic Development, 1 gallon of gas equates to 5.159 lbs. of carbon. Given these figures and the savings of 190 million vehicle miles attributed to broadband adoption above expected, it can be estimated that ConnectKentucky efforts generated an annual reduction of 46.7 million pounds of carbon emissions.

$35.2 billion in value from 3.8 billion more hours saved per year from accessing broadband at home - Broadband
users are significantly more likely than dial-up users to agree that doing things online saves them time. Broadband users report saving nearly 40% more time than dial-up users. The average broadband user reports saving 15 hours a month by conducting transactions online. The time saved by the additional 297,000 individuals accessing broadband in Kentucky above the expected amount translates into approximately 53.4 million hours saved each year. Assuming that one hour saved is equal in value to at least one half hour of wage earned, these saved hours can account for an estimated $429.8 million in value.

The total estimated impact of continuing the ConnectKentucky program in Kentucky is $1.59 billion annually. The total direct economic impact of accelerating broadband across the United States would be $134 billion per year.

This based upon just a 7 percentage point increase in broadband in every state. I know I bang on rural broadband a lot, and the numbers show that rural broadband would be the facet that would see the biggest growth. This is just common sense, really, since rural areas are the least covered areas. But never the less, seeing that the national average for rural broadband growth is (according to the report) 72% while Kentucky has seen 106% growth in the same area is pretty impressive to someone who harps on the need for rural broadband expansion and the need for a national broadband policy that would facilitate such growth.

As the Connected Nation report states, "Many have recognized the need for a national broadband policy. The case for such a policy has been eloquently captured in Dr. Robert Atkinson s recent Framing a National Broadband Policy. In that report, Dr. Atkinson suggests that if left to market forces alone and with no intervening factor, broadband is not likely to be adopted at a rate that is universally pleasing or constructive. It stands to reason that national policy-makers would make broadband expanding policy a priority as a platform for developing solutions in a number of critical areas: healthcare, education, environmental degradation and even homeland security.

You would think, yes. But as I have pointed out before, broadband is an invisible issue right now. That, and the big providers will not stand for something like this. That's what they pay their lobbyists to prevent. The last thing they want is a cohesive push by the federal or state government to interfere with their grip on the industry, leaving them to fight their little turf wars on their own terms. Wars even for areas that will never see the broadband light of day from these providers.

But, as this report concludes: "As federal policy attempts to provide solutions to the need for a nationwide ubiquitous broadband, the data from the Kentucky experience and the assessment of Connected Nation analysts conclude that the most constructive national solution for broadband expansion is to enable state governments to implement demand creating and supply enhancing programming. Given the cultural, structural, regulatory and topographical variables that influence how broadband can expand, a state is the largest subsystem that can be identified in which to enact effective and cost efficient solutions."

Based on Connected Nation s experience in Kentucky and after launching similar initiatives in other states, Connected Nation advocates for passage and enactment of legislation that includes:

Recognition of the critical role of public-private partnerships in broadband expansion
Federal enabling of state/local response to broadband deployment and demand aggregation
Recognition of the indispensable role non-profits play in program implementation

Connected Nation has supported the following bills in the 110th Congress that directly seek to replicate and help export the ConnectKentucky model nationwide:

S. 1190/H.R. 3627 the Connect the Nation Act of 2007 - The bipartisan Connect the Nation Act of 2007 was recently filed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D Illinois) to encourage the rapid deployment of affordable broadband Internet service, particularly in rural areas. The legislation supports a grant program that would enable states to implement an initiative similar to ConnectKentucky, a public-private partnership leading efforts to accelerate broadband availability and technology literacy throughout the commonwealth.

S. 1492 the Broadband Data Improvement Act - Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), with the cosponsorship of Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), introduced the Broadband Data Improvement Act, S. 1492, which seeks to improve the quality of federal broadband data collection and encourages state initiatives that promote broadband deployment.

If left to market forces alone and with no intervening factor, broadband is not likely to be adopted at a rate that is universally pleasing or constructive. It stands to reason that national policy-makers would make broadband expanding policy a priority as a platform for developing solutions in a number of critical areas: healthcare, education, environmental degradation and even homeland security.

H.R. 3919 the Broadband Census of America Act of 2007 - The Broadband Census of America Act would require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to collect information on the number of broadband subscribers in each postal ZIP code. It would also require the FCC to separate broadband service into speed tiers when it reports broadband availability in annual reports, instead of classifying everything above 200Kbps as broadband. The bill, along with similar legislation pending in the U.S. Senate, addresses long-time criticisms about the FCC's measurements. Currently, the FCC counts a ZIP code as served by broadband if just one residence has service, but critics say many ZIP codes are only partially served by broadband.

Speaking of that last one, it mentions "It would also require the FCC to separate broadband service into speed tiers when it reports broadband availability in annual reports, instead of classifying everything above 200Kbps as broadband."

I'm curious as to what the average speed of broadband in the ConnectKentucky initiative is. Getting the broadband available and growth is only part of the equation. Providing broadband at useful speeds is another important part. While all the money and growth looks good in the report, I didn't see an average speed for subscribers in the affected areas. Curious indeed seeing as how Connected Nation supports a bill that wants the FCC to provide speeds available.

Since broadband has come to be such a non issue at the higher levels of government, and since the major providers pretty much have the urban areas covered pretty well, maybe it is best to leave connecting the rest to state initiatives like ConnectKentucky - if Connected Nation's numbers can be counted on. And the average speeds are comparable to other broadband offered in the state.

But to think just a 7% increase in broadband in each state could possibly bring in so much money in so many different ways is amazing.

Will A Broadband Scandal Topple A Presidency? - Plus: As Chinese broadband rises, should we be following its lead?

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:59:07 EDT

Broadband Killed The Presidency

While watching broadband basically fade away as an important political issue in this country, I've been following with great interest the ongoing situation in the Philippines, where a scandal involving the highest levels of the government over a broadband deal gone horribly wrong has been growing and now, for the last month or two, raging. It has all the makings of a Hollywood movie, complete with whistleblowers, kick backs, cover ups, death threats, senate hearings, abductions, the possibility of bringing down a presidency, and even Corizon Aquino getting into the act.

For those of you who have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, the basic premise of the story can be gathered from this article. The Philippine Government contracted Chinese firm ZTE to build a national broadband network for $329-million. It then surfaced that all kinds of kick backs and payoffs were in the deal - about US$130 million. The $329 million contract won by Chinese firm ZTE has since been scrapped amid allegations of bribery and corruption involving senior government officials and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo s husband, lawyer Jose Miguel Arroyo. Now there's an ongoing probe, senate hearings, and all kinds of controversy.

Of course, there's much, much more to the whole story, and it is very complicated - if you type "ZTE" into Google News, you'll see just how complicated it gets with all the accusations and allegations flying around - but I have to say I was really surprised when I ran across this article where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's husbands' lawyers are actually accusing the whistleblowers of trying to bring down his wifes Presidency by exposing the broadband deal gone bad.

The lawyer of Benjamin Abalos Sr. said the motive of whistle-blowers businessman Joey de Venecia III and Rodolfo "Jun" Lozada Jr. to come out with alleged anomaly in the national broadband network (NBN) deal is to bring down President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Lawyer Salvador Panelo said the motivation in the allegations that Abalos brokered for China s ZTE company is ultimately to oust the President.

In a press briefing, Panelo said both de Venecia and Lozada have been trying to linking First Gentleman Mike Arroyo to the scrapped NBN-ZTE deal in order to destroy the Chief Executive. He added that this de Venecia s motive in destroying Abalos is because he did not get the multi-million dollar contract.

After just recently writing about the appalling lack of interest being shown by politicians and government in this country about the state of our national broadband policies and the shenanigans being pulled by providers and the FCC, the fact that the Presidency of a country is in jeopardy over a broadband deal just blows me away.

Of all the scandals and corruptions that abound, a broadband deal gone bad that could kill a presidency? I mean, even their military is on watch over this:

We don t involve ourselves into matters which are political in nature, Bacarro told reporters during in a press briefing in Camp Aguinaldo, while assuring that their troops are always ready and can be deployed immediately to respond to any possible eventuality connected to the probe into the broadband scandal .

I have to add that in a nice bit of irony, ZTE has just entered the US market with the offering of its first handset over here.

Is it bad of me to think that a national broadband scandal is better than the allegedly most powerful and greatest country in the world letting its own broadband policies become a complete governmental non-issue? I mean, sure the deal went bad and there's corruption and all, but when you think about it, the whole thing started with good intentions - that being building a national broadband network. Point is that the government was at least trying to do something. What is our government doing (I ask yet again)?

Eh, on second thought, maybe that is a bit of crazy thinking. We have enough corruption and funny business going on after all - and some of our funny business involves questionable uses of cigars. I guess its that the thought of a broadband deal possibly bringing down a presidency is just something that would have never occurred to me. At the very least its definitely something I never thought I'd see since becoming interested in a not very widespread at the time technology called "High Speed Internet" and getting hooked on a website that almost no one had heard of back then - with that involvement now starting to get towards a decade long now (ack!). And now here I am writing about national broadband policies (or lack thereof).

China Rising - Should We Follow Its Lead?

Last year, 73 million people were added to the nation's total netizen population. Of the increment, 29.17 million, or 40 percent,lived in rural areas. This brought the number of rural Internet users to 52.62 million at the end of 2007, up 127.7 percent year-on-year. The rate was much higher than the 38.2 percent for urban areas. The impressive growth in rural regions was due largely to government efforts and the robust demand from those areas.

Speaking of which - getting back on my favorite subject these days (and you knew I would, heh) - I also ran across this article which I found of interest on the subject of making a national broadband policy and initiative work. And its not from a small, poor, or sparsely populated country. We're talking China here. It seems that according to the article, China's information industry authority plans to expand broadband service to more than 95% of the nation's villages in 2008. Think about that. Nintey-five percent of the countries villages... not towns or cities, but villages - will have broadband access. By the end of this year. Here are some numbers from the article for you to ponder:

Some of the central and eastern provinces will have all their townships and villages covered by broadband service by the end of this year, according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

Telephone service will be expanded further in the rural areas, the ministry said on Sunday, which vowed a more extensive Internet connection to the rural areas with better quality.

Of late some 99.5 percent of the country's villages have access to telephone links, and the broadband connection have reached 92 percent of the villages nationwide.

Last year, 73 million people were added to the nation's total netizen population. Of the increment, 29.17 million, or 40 percent,lived in rural areas. This brought the number of rural Internet users to 52.62 million at the end of 2007, up 127.7 percent year-on-year. The rate was much higher than the 38.2 percent for urban areas. The impressive growth in rural regions was due largely to government efforts and the robust demand from those areas.

China had 210 million Internet users at the end of 2007 and its online population is on course to become the world's largest at the beginning of this year.

And I'm willing to bet the broadband available to the Chinese villagers isn't the 200kbps "broadband" as defined by our lovable FCC. Nope. I'm betting the Chinese villagers's broadband flows faster than the Yangtze River during a flash flood. I guess that would make our FCC-approved average broadband speed about as fast as frozen molasses in comparison. Any takers?

One of the largest, most densely populated countries in the world, second only to the USA as a world power (if that is still the case), will have their rural areas 95% covered by real broadband by the end of this year. I don't know about you, and maybe its bias or ignorance on my part, but when I think of a rural Chinese village, I think of... let's just say really rural living conditions. But they'll have broadband. And, as the quote above states, most of the broadband growth in the country is in the rural areas... "due largely to government efforts and the robust demand from those areas."

You see it coming, don't you? :)

We have demand. In China, their villages are getting what they want because the government has heard the call and is answering. They are apparently keeping their promises. We were supposed to have total coverage by 2007. I don't have to reiterate how the claim that that promise has been met is a lie.

If we can't figure it out for ourselves, maybe its time for those in charge to look elsewhere - to someone who has figured out the correct way... a way that really works... to achieve what has been promised to us without ridiculous definitions and false stats.

Assuming, of course, the Chinese aren't doing the same stat dance. :)

Has Broadband Finally Jumped The Shark In Politics? - Is our national broaband policy a political priority anymore? Does anyone care?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:08:26 EDT

In a previous entries. I have argued about the lack of broadband in rural areas, and more recently touched on the fact that a national broadband policy is just not high on the priority list in this country or in this Presidential campaign.

Cruising around the Net in search of interesting bits of broadband news for you to ponder in the morning and evenings, I came across a couple of pieces that not only show that these issues are (barely) being noticed in the tech world, but no where else. Apparently because no one else cares, or nobody wants to deal with it.

People and politicians in this country are starting to treat - check that - are definitely treating the words "Digital Divide", "Duopoly", and "Net Neutrality" as a kind of joke... buzz terms that have now jumped the shark. You may be thinking this to yourself right now as you read this. "Net Neutrality? Duopoly? Digital Divide? How many times do I have to hear and read about that crap? Who cares now anyway? I got my broadband!" I wouldn't be surprised. Now if I mention the word "Throttle"... that's a different story, right? Yup... "Throttle" sure does piss a lot of people off. Who cares if the farmers have broadband, but don't you dare throttle MY connection!

Heck, I might just put the word "Throttle" as the title of this entry. I bet there woud be more views than if I put "Rural Broadband", "Net Neutrality", "Duopoly" or "Digital Divide".

Other countries.. some of which you don't think much of - from Denmark to Japan to Korea to Australia to Canada to Sweden to Iceland, and others - have realized just how important broadband is to the modern world and its economy and have made broadband a priority. Not just for personal use, but as an economical tool.

The first article comes from Farming UK. Yeah yeah... I can hear the snorts of derision already about the website name, but the message in the article is important:

Findings from rural economy experts, the CLA, portray a countryside where broadband is becoming increasingly unreliable at a time when rural-based businesses need it most. CLA President, Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, said that rural businesses could not survive without a competitive broadband service, and would either relocate to urban areas or cease to trade. The organization is now calling for high level talks to level the playing field between rural and urban enterprise.

CLA has found that:
Businesses are having to pay for the full cost of broadband when sometimes only half - or less - of the advertised connection speed is available;
Respondents felt that customer service is poor, particularly when the call centre fails to understand the problems involved;
Communication between Internet Service Providers and their customers remains poor and in some cases, non-existent;
There is, in practical terms, little genuine competition in the rural market.
Rural businesses have not been able to piggy-back onto public sector broadband availability despite assurances that this would be the case.

The Net is being throttled by telecoms and cable companies with a record of spotty service quality, a broadband rollout that has left more than half the nation behind, and overpriced "high-speed" broadband services. Businesses should pressure the telecom/cable duopoly to make a competitively priced, nationwide infrastructure a priority.

»www.newsfactor.com/news/Keeping-···01D13S3C

This all reiterates what I have said before. Just because one is born in or lives in a rural area does not and should not make them a second class broadband citizen. More importantly, the article makes the point that broadband everywhere is economically imperative. Businesses are leaving rural areas to go where they can either just plain get broadband, have reliable broadband, or get the speeds they are paying for.

"There are still some rural areas that cannot access ADSL broadband in 2008 that is wholly unacceptable. The digital divide is getting wider and it seems the promises from BT and others are proving as fickle as the technology itself."

The small rural town governments realize how important broadband is to their economic health, because they see the businesses moving away. You see these towns trying to get broadband delivered to their areas, and time and time again such endeavors are mired in red tape, or the company they select backs out, or there is some other brick wall.

In other cases, the providers nod and smile when begged for help in getting rural areas connected while getting free good Samaritan publicity then turn their backs as soon as the local/rural governments and agencies go away:

"While we kept the issue on the politician's screens and in the media, BT and others were only too happy to talk to us - and even benefited from our campaign. It seems that , now that the fuss has died down, they really have turned their back on rural Britain. They are letting their rural customers down and they must redress this imbalance."

This obviously is an example from the UK, but it applies to this country as well. You can see the FCC doing the same thing - big talk and workshops and no action.

Which brings me to the point I touched on in this entry and is mentioned at the end of this ZDNet blog entry. The piece talks about Miro.

"Miro, the open source video player, is on a roll. The company is planning a European tour (hope it goes better than the Spice Girls tour) following a co-branding announcement which drew immediate support, including Germany s public broadcaster. The new version of the software has improved BitTorrent support based on libtorrent.

The authors of the entry would love to review it for you, but they seem to have run into a problem:

"I would love to offer a full review but I can t. I get my broadband from Comcast, which has decided to throttle the protocol to protect its own monopoly on video. Could I switch ISPs? Yeah, to AT&T. No thanks. How long will it be before they do the same thing? Therein hangs the problem. Many countries, using a regulatory model based on our 1996 Telecommunications Act, have separated the delivery and transport of Internet services. The present Administration has reversed this, creating a duopoly in which many consumers just have two choices for broadband, and others have just one."

Uh-oh! There's one of those joy-killing shark jumping buzz words again! But it's really the last line of the entry that I'm most interested here:

Today is a Primary Day around most of the country. We the people have the power to change this policy. That s not considered a high-profile political issue. But it should be.

Amen, brother. It should be... but it's not. And it is not going to be for a very long time. Why? Because this is America, and we are arrogant and selfish: "I got mine, why should I care about someone else?" And we have the best of everything, right? I guess so... if being #15 is what is considered 'best'. Besides, we have more important things to worry about than a sound national broadband policy, right? Broadband isn't that important in this day and age, is it?

Even more bothersome to me, in all my travels on the Net looking for your daily dose of broadband related linkage, I can only remember seeing the tech sites I frequent mention the current candidates technology agendas once or twice. If the major tech sites aren't even covering this or taking notice, who will?

I'm sure other countries have problems of their own, but if all these other countries are aware of the importance of broadband everywhere and consider it important enough to have it near the top of their political and economic agendas, why don't we? Have you been watching the campaigning? Has anyone heard a mention about broadband for everyone or net neutrality? I haven't. At least Dubya made some sort of promise... which, of course, was not kept - even though a recent report makes it seem like he came close by using false stats and dubious counting methods. Hmm... "NO NEW TAXES!!" "BROADBAND FOR EVERYONE BY 2007!!" Like father, like son I guess. No new taxes and broadband for everyone sure would have made a lot of people happy.

The politicians obviously don't care about the need for a major overhaul of this nations broadband policy, judging by the overwhelming lack of decisive action, or even so much as a passing mention in the current campaign - much less about rural broadband, even as rural businesses are starting to move away from those areas because they know they need a good solid affordable selection of broadband connections and services to survive today, leaving the areas to suffer economically. They don't even know how wired we really are.

The providers sure don't care. All they want is the prime broadband real estate to make money and to control as much of the nations infrastructure as they can. They definitely don't want to spend the money to connect rural areas, leaving states to take action on their own, like ConnectKentucky, Utopia, and various other larger and smaller scale state and local FTTH, WiFi, etc. projects.

The FCC is an ineffectual joke when it comes to broadband policy these days as they let the providers run roughshod over them. Oh, but we'll all have digital TV soon! Yay! I can only hold my breath and tremble at the thought of how smoothly that transition will go. The only seemingly redeeming thing here is that the spectrum auction met and triggered an open access wireless policy. Then again, infallible do-gooder Google, who pushed for the open access policy, lost the auction on purpose to further its agenda for its Android platform. And guess who (probably) won the auction? Verizon. Oh yes... a victory for all!

What, exactly, is the broadband agenda for America? Does one even exist anymore? The providers fight amongst themselves as net neutrality moves further from being realized while duopoly gets stronger. We're watching ourselves fall farther and farther behind more countries with smarter broadband policies and better infrastructure while the promises of total coverage ring emptier and emptier - or don't ring at all. Parity for rural areas looks more and more like a never-will-be. Ubiquity is looking more and more like a never-will-be. Is fast, reliable, affordable, and economically important broadband for all really just becoming just another pipe dream in this country? Has the recognition for a new broadband policy on a national level itself finally jumped the shark in this country?

You tell me.

"It is in the interests of this CorporateNet to rigidly control what you do online, and probably in the interests of police agencies to control you as well. But it s not in the interests of technology. It s not in the interests of users. And it s not in the nation s best interest, since the speed of your commerce is increasingly determined by the speed of your network, and your ability to use it."

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26 Secret Comcast Supervisor Phone Numbers - Please don't flood the lines....

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:28:43 EDT

I ran across this potentially useful bit of info for you frustrated Comcast customers tired of the the cableco's customer support shenanigans. The Consumerist, in an article titled "26 Secret Comcast Supervisor Phone Numbers", has been kind enough to leak some potentially very useful numbers when dealing with the tech support run around. I thought the numbers worthy of posting here in the MBB. Happy dialing... though that may be while you can - because I have a strange feeling once Comcast gets flooded with calls to these numbers, one may suddenly find themselves unable to connect to them anymore. I wouldn't put it past Comcast, heh.

Anyways, without further ado... here are the numbers and info, quoted in full from The Consumerist:

Here are 26 unpublished direct numbers for level 2.5 and above Comcast supervisors. According to our inside source, these people know how to fix your problems. We've got numbers for high level people on the national level, as well as numbers which are good for central Pennsylvania customers:

These support desk people have national access:

888-345-5731 National Support Desk - Dispatchers, day of install issues, etc. IVR requests Remedy TTS ticket number, but once you're on the phone they're not likely to turn you away, even if you just need a box hit.
877-456-5488 Support Desk Pager
Manager Elizabeth Carpenter - Cell - 267-303-1123, Desk - 856-317-7417, Pager - 888-438-2983
Director Mike Nocitra - Desk - 484-530-5541, Cell - 610-306-3750
The latter two are pretty much required to be nice to you and help you as much as possible even though it's nowhere near their job description. It's not as if they can refuse to take an escalation, even if you escalate yourself to them.

The below people can help if your account number starts with 01603, 01622, 01711, 01692, 05818, 09547, 09549, or 09560:
Barb Fry - Retention Sup - 717-202-8130
Brandon Mitchell - Billing Sup - 717-202-8142
Cory Graby - Sales Sup - 717-202-8281
Dennis Shadle - Sales Sup - 717-202-8106
Don Brickley - Service Sup - 717-202-8112
Elisha Kunkle - Sales Sup - 717-202-8290
Giancarlo Rodriguez - Marketing Manager - 717-202-8176 (Not really a sup per se, but can get things done quickly if need be)
Jawal Boyd - Billing Sup - 717-202-8139
Jeff Eck - Billing Sup - 717-202-8234
Jen Boyer - Billing Sup - 717-202-8235
Mary Ellen Fahringer - Sales Manager - 717-202-8122 (She is the manager of the Sales Supervisors above. If you get nowhere with them, it might not hurt to drop MEF's name (Yes, she is called "Mef" by anyone who knows her) and mention you have her number and would be happy to call her if necessary)
Mike Noren - Billing Sup - 717-202-8218
Peggy Shea - Sales Sup - 717-202-8217
Sherree Henley - Retention Sup - 717-202-8115
Tim Miller - Billing Sup - 717-202-8136
Tom Zimmerman - Billing Sup - 717-202-8135

(Sup hours can vary widely. Try them all. Leave a voicemail. Or ten. Then call MEF and tell her no one will return your calls. They'll get back to you.)

And then there's the bridge and headend people. It's not their job per se to help customers, but if one called them, the bridge has access to help and would be angry enough to do it just to make someone go away, and the headend, while not all THAT useful, is important enough to irritate someone into taking action on your behalf...

Lebanon Call Center Bridge 717-202-8202 (7 AM-12AM)
Lebanon Headend 717-202-8190

The sups and other numbers on here are limited to a certain geographic area, roughly PA from the New York line to the Maryland line, west as far as Breezewood, East to just shy of Plymouth Meeting.
Additionally, any Comcast customer in rural WVa, VA, or a small piece of PA west of Mercersburg who is CONSTANTLY getting misdirected to either Pittsburgh or Lebanon PA, we route calls based on the number you call from, and it inevitably ends up wrong if you're in one of those areas and a legacy Adelphia customer. So go right to the source. You are in "corp" 01626, and are served out of the Hancock, MD service center and the Manassas, VA call center. Only the people in Manassas can pull up your account. Dial direct 703-740-2225

Kudos to The Consumerists' Ben Popken for posting this, and I hope this helps some frustrated Comcast customers out there. Enjoy!
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MS, Yahoo, Motorola, Sprint, Qwest, AMD, And Spectrum Wars - 2008 starts off with a bang, and some speculation

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:27:41 EDT

Looks like 2008 is starting off with a bang or two. First is the news that Motorola may spin off its wireless division, then we hear that Microsoft has finally made a serious move to acquire Yahoo. Not to mention the C-Block auction action. There's also the rumors of Sprint finally paying the piper for its Nextel blunder. Qwest and chip maker AMD also have rumors swirling around their possible demises.

Motorola, Sprint, AMD, and Qwest's problems have been mentioned on this site already.

I'm no industry insider or analyst, so I have to say that Motorola's wireless woes are kinda surprising. My first couple cellphones were Motorolas. I also remember the popularity of the StarTAC and, more recently, the RAZR. But I have read that a least part of Motorolas problems stem from a lack of innovation and a failure of its recent offerings to catch on. And that's not counting trying to compete with the current technophile darling, Apple's iPhone. LG and others have come out with some innovative handsets in order to compete with the almighty iPhone. Motorola has been conspicuously absent from the buzz mill when it comes to creating excitement in the sector. I mean, how many new RAZR variations can you come out with?

After grabbing world market share of 23% in 2006 on momentum led by its Razr phone, the company has lost nearly half that as rivals outpaced it with successful new products. The company said it is looking at ways to "better equip its mobile devices business to recapture global market leadership and to enhance shareholder value." It wasn't clear whether that means a spinoff, sale or joint venture is more likely. According to Morningstar analyst Jordan Zounis "It sounds like everything's on the table."

The revised strategy comes just one month after Greg Brown succeeded Ed Zander as CEO and a year and a day since Carl Icahn initiated a proxy fight to shake up a company that was already in the throes of a severe decline in sales and profits. Icahn apparently still isn't happy with the spin-off idea either: " We believe Motorola is finally moving in the right direction, but certainly still has a long way to go.

I don't know what Icahn is thinking, but Motorola's handset division is clearly not headed anywhere near the right direction, judging by Motorola's weak fourth-quarter results. The company's profit fell a whopping 84%, handset sales were down 38%, and its share of the world handset market continues to fall after being reduced by nearly half since hitting that 23% mark at the end of 2006. Motorola's share price was over $25 in late 2006. It is now below $13. Analysts seem to think an Asian buyer would be the best fit for Motorola's handset division, and rumor has it Samsung might be the one to snatch the ailing company. Another possible buyer could be Sony-Ericsson.

In addition, Motorola's enterprise telecom and home set-top businesses could be acquired by Cisco or Nortel. A tech-oriented private equity firm might also buy the set-top box unit. As an independent company, it may be that Motorola has no future. We'll just have to wait and see how things develop as the new year gets started.

Sprint, on the other hand, has been in obvious trouble ever since it bought Nextel. It traded above $23 about a year ago and recently fell to close to $8. While AT&T and Verizon post enviable wireless numbers, Sprint struggles to keep current subscribers. And Sprint was just in the news after announcing a huge layoff of employees. SK Telecom, a big Korean operator, has already come to Sprint with a proposed investment. The board did not listen. But, the company's shares were not at $10 then. SK may well be back. Rumors continue to swirl about a possible Comcast buy out. I don't even want to think about that, considering Comcast's less than stellar performance, especially with Concast's position as the poster child for bad customer service (seen any sleeping Comcast techs, anyone?). However, it would be a clear gambit on Comcast's part for some quadruple play action: Internet, TV, Phone, and cellular service. Something that, if succuessful, would be highly desirable in the race for convergence.

There have been recent rumors that Sprint and ClearWire are again in talks and may be close to a deal to get Sprints much ballyhooed Xohm Wimax service off the ground. You may recall that this venture was pretty much put on the backburner after Sprint's chief executive Gary Forsee, the architect of Sprint's WiMax plan, was forced out. However, IF Sprint and Clearwire can work out a deal, and IF Xohm takes off like hoped, then Sprint may be able to save its skin yet. On the bad side, Sprint said Thursday it might have to write off all of the $30.7-billion goodwill value from its purchase of Nextel Communications and smaller deals as it struggles with customer losses.

Another surprise to some, but apparently not to industry insiders and followers, is the possible demise or absorption of AMD. Word has it that AMD is falling father and father behind rival Intel in the chip making business. The company had a pretty rough 2007 with the bug-plagued Barcelona and the ongoing success of Intel s Xeon processors. But perhaps the company is back on track with new chips coming out and new customers on board. AMD recently pulled in longtime Intel customer Gateway, which has agreed to use the new Phenom quads for the GM and GT series desktops. Gateway will still use Intel quads, but this deal shows that AMD can still get its foot in the door.

Word has it that the fix for the translation-lookaside buffer (TLB) is ahead of schedule, with a possible release this spring or summer. AMD still has egg on the face because they had to issue a temporary patch, but at least the problem was not so severe that corrected chips were delayed until next fall, or later. The same TLB bug showed up in the Phenoms, but corrected Phenoms are due out this spring as well, along with the new three-core Phenom 8000 series. The rumors is that a 2.1 GHz Phenom 8400 and a 2.3 GHz 8600 could show up as early as March, with a 2.4 GHz 8700 available by the summer.

The company is also making headway on the graphics front. The new ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 is the first to hit 1 Teraflop and the first to support DirectX 10.1 that not only offers enhanced graphical display but comes with a new toolkit for developers.

Qwest CEO Edward Mueller envisions in-home integration. Unlike his fellow CEOs, he s not building Qwest into a company that will deliver its own voice, data, video and wireless services to its consumer customers. Instead, Mueller is pointing Qwest toward a different kind of future, based on delivering massive amounts of bandwidth into each home, partnering where needed for wireless and video services and trying to keep a finger on the pulse of the up and coming markets.

The last of the Baby Bells standing from the break-up of the old AT&T and the dominant phone company in 14 states shares have fallen from a 52-week high of $10.45 to below $6. Qwest has two problems which it cannot solve. The first is that it has no real wireless operations. Cellular service is what is driving the market valuation of rivals AT&T and Verizon. Qwest also does not have the balance sheet to upgrade all of its infrastructure to fiber like Verizon is doing. AT&T has started the fiber build-out process. There are rumors that it will get into the TV business by buying one of the satellite TV companies. Either way, Qwest does not have the balance sheet to run fiber across its service area. Qwest is content not owning content or even network infrastructure where wireless is concerned, as long as it can partner with companies that do. By owning the network into the home and the customer, Qwest can make money from both consumers and content companies that want to reach those consumers.

Says Mueller of Qwest's current situation:

What brought me here is that the crisis was over. I started looking at Qwest, and I see a significant amount of cash flow. I thought this is sustainable. My one concern was that the overhang of the legal liabilities could take us under, but we got the last part of that done last quarter. Now it s time to take Qwest to the next level, and that is what interests me. It s a huge challenge, but this is a real market, and I love this business. I know this business. I thought, What a great chance to end my career.

Be careful Mr Mueller. That last part sounds suspiciously like the proverbial 'famous last words'. Verizon may be knocking on your door soon in order to after that customer base to push its own wireless services in bundles. Not to mention building out its FIOS network in such a large and desirable geographic area.

By far the biggest two issues at the beginning of the new year are the spectrum auction and the surprise $44.6 billion bid made by Microsoft for search giant Yahoo. Not surprisingly, both these issues involve Google. But analysts have said that Yahoo was not going to make it as a standalone, especially after Q4 earnings

Microsofts $44.6 billion bid came as a surprise to most, though MS says they have been engaged in talks for several months now. Adding fuel to the coming firestorm is the recent news that Yahoo thinks that MS's bid undervalues the worth of its stock and has started talks with Google about a possible alliance.

According to Reuters, Yahoo is considering an alliance with Google to counter a $44.6 billion take over bid from Microsoft. Google and Yahoo had held talks several months ago about such an alliance. Reuters reports that at $31 a share, Yahoo feels MS's bid undervalues the company. Another source tells that Yahoo has also been contacted by a number of media, technology, financial, and telephone companies - though it seems that few companies besides Google and MS could really engage in a bidding war for Yahoo. And, if Yahoo feels it has to sell or ally itself with another company, playing MS and Google to induce a bidding war could be just what the company is intending in order to inflate its possible selling price.

Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, has fired back at MS's sudden bid for Yahoo, saying that:

Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers.

Microsoft responded to Google's arguments by saying that a merger with Yahoo would create a "compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising" to market leader Google. Microsoft's proposed merger with Yahoo would combine the No. 1 and No. 2 suppliers of Web-based e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and portals.

I think its a fair assumption that Yahoo is trying to spark a bidding war between the two Internet giants. But I'm not sure if we, the average Internet using Joe's, would benefit from either MS or Google winning an alliance with Yahoo. That means one less company, one less choice, and less competition. Everyone picks on MS as the evil monopoly, but in this case, does the possibility of Yahoogle make Google any better than MS in the 'kill all competition and rule the world' category? When does Google start coming under attack for trying to become an Internet monopoly as MS became an evil PC monopoly?

Google probably pushed the auction over the open access top, but I agree that they really don't want to win. Sure, Google is seen as some sort of Internet Robin Hood, especially after getting the spectrum auction to require open access. But Google isn't going to spend the money to build their own network. Thats what Android is for. Many are guessing that Verizon is the one who put up the winning bid. I don't know if this was something Google was banking on, or if they had talks with Verizon or another company.

Google wants their platform on every phone. Its a clever strategy, really. They're punting in order to get that last minute drive for the TD. In this case, getting their platform on every phone they can would be a major victory. Right now, Google is like Mozilla and Firefox... seen as rescuers and the alternative to evil mopoly holders. But when do the rescuers turn into what they are fighting against? I don't think Mozilla is going to oust IE any time soon, but Google certainly has the clout to become the very thing they are fighting against.

It may be soon that we will be down to two search/IM/portal/etc. choices. MS and Google. How does this benefit us? I don't see any - especially in this day and age when 'competition' is a buzz word heard around the industry and a cry from Internet users around the world.
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'Networked Nation: Broadband In America' - Skewed stats and an old man trying to get into heaven

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:46:10 EDT

"Networked Nation: Broadband In America" - thats the name of the report due out Thursday, January 30, 2008. It was prepared by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency within the Commerce Department that acts as the president's principal adviser on telecommunications and information policy issues. The report claims that President Bush and his administration have 'mostly' succeeded in making Bush's 2004 promise to connect all Americans with broadband by 2007 come true.

The report and claim are so wrong and skewed on so many levels, I can't see how the Administration can release the report with a straight face. To even call it 'upbeat' is seriously ovestating the issue.

The first thing you go to is how the Administration defines 'broadband'. Everyone knows that the FCC defines broadband as 200kbps. Compared to how the rest of the world views what constitutes broadband speeds, this definition is the equivalent of dial-up speeds. Speaking of which, I'm not even sure why dial-up is still allowed. Oh yeah... because not every American has affordable broadband available to them. How stupid of me!

If we were truly the technological powerhouse the Administration seems to think we are, dial-up would have been extinct 3 years ago. But this is not so because of the real issue behind the failure of Bush's broadband promise: penetration. You remember the big to-do when the last ratings came out which revealed that the US had fallen to 15th place in 2006 from number 4 in 2001. Hello? Anyone home? Does that actually mean anything to you there in the administration?

The answer is obviously a resounding "NO". If you want to see what it looks like when a country really wants to do something about lagging behind in the broadband world, go google Australian broadband and Telus. Broadband is a very hot-button issue Down Under, and a key part of recent politics and elections. The debate about what to do about its broadband ranking and how to go about improving it is front page news in that country. When is the last time you saw broadband make national headlines here? I can't remember. You might ask why I'm not going on about Japan and Korea. There's no point. It'll take us 10 years just to get to where those countries are NOW.

Another embarrassing issue with the new report is the well covered and documented fact that the numbers and stats used in the reports are completely bogus. The NTIA will tell you its report drew its conclusions using data from the FCC and other sources. The FCC reported that more than 99% of all U.S. ZIP codes received broadband service from at least one provider by the end of 2006. But get this: a broadband provider has to serve only a single residence in a ZIP code for it to be counted. After getting caught using this ridiculous method of measuring penetration, the agency said it will launch its own inquiry into how it can "develop a more accurate picture" of broadband deployment. I'm sure by investigating itself the agency will take a hard, fair, and objective look at its own processes. Your tax dollars hard at work.

I love this quote in an article from the York Dispatch by Meredith Attwell Baker, the acting chief of the NTIA: "More data is necessary. We support the FCC's current efforts to produce better data."

Is it me, or is that just a little bit of passing the buck? Try this, Meredith: "We used the FCC's data, which is wrong. We knew it, but we went ahead and used it anyway. Those guys need to get their facts straight. We're just using what they told us to." Is that a little closer to home? There is a bill sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband services has passed the House and awaits action in the Senate. Thats a baby step in the right direction, but what does it really mean in the long run? Do you think we'll ever really see the true numbers and stats on broadband deployment and penetration? Not likely, no matter what bill passes or who calls for an inquiry.

Derek Turner, research director for Free Press, a nonprofit public interest group that studies media and technology issues, pretty much sums up the case of broadband penetration and deployment in the US (in a nice, diplomatic way): "In rich suburban areas they're getting broadband. But in many poor and many rural areas we're not seeing the same kind of competitive marketplace that President Bush outlined in his speech in 2004."

Like I said, that's stating the situation very diplomatically. The bottom line is that as predicted so many times, the heavily populated areas are getting the competition, the services (EVDO, fiber, etc.), and generally reaping the benefits of the attentions of the big providers while the less populated areas squeak by with whatever they can get. And I'm not just nitpicking the urban vs. rural issue (again). We are truly a country of multiple Digital Divides. We have divides within divides. Divides within quality, affordability as well as availability. Even in a major urban center, you can be on one block and get kick-ass speeds and several options, then proceed to walk a couple blocks down and only have satellite or dial-up available. Now that is just crazy. Or, the providers don't even bother to build or maintain their networks in a poorer area because they know few can afford their services. Even in areas they do maintain they sometimes neglect one kind of service in order to push customers towards new, more expensive services. But the providers and their defenders will say that's just sound business strategy - if they admit such strategies at all.

Go out into rural areas, and you have people with only satellite, which is expensive and has high latency; crazy EVDO setups just to get a taste of broadband using a technology that is considered merely a convenience to be used with a smartphone in other areas; or, you guessed it, dial-up. None of the big guys will go near these areas because its not worth them spending the money to build out such a larger area where people are spread relatively thin. Again, good business practice for the providers, right? Meanwhile the unlucky are left in the lurch.

Our broadband future, at least in the near term, looks bleak as ever. As has been the case for the past few years, we'll watch other countries keep pulling away in broadband deployment and penetration while back here at the farm nothing will get done until something drastic happens.

As far as broadband affordability, availability and penetration becoming an important issue in the upcoming election - don't hold your breath. Oh sure, you might hear a mention or two during the campaign - but that will be just lip service. The truth is that broadband deployment is just not high on the agenda these days in the USA. We have other concerns, like the war in Iraq, the housing issue, etc. that comes in way before the administration and candidates even start thinking about 'a series of tubes', how many Americans are able to play with a fat pipe, and whether they can use those fat pipes to their full advantage.

Speaking of fat pipes, let me briefly touch on the recent controversies surrounding the ISPs and the prioritizing, filtering, and/or throttling of bandwidth. While the practice has been outed (first by members right here on Broadbandreports.com, thank you very much AP and others who took this story as their own), the fact that the providers are doing so is an indication that we really don't have the infrastructure to handle the bandwidth requirements of today.

Filtering, throttling, and prioritizing is a band-aid disguised as business strategy - or, as the providers like to think - caring about the quality of service its customers receive. The providers already realize that they don't have the capacity to handle the bandwidth intensive services available on the Net today, let alone what is going to be available in the near future. But they choose to blame so-called "bandwidth hogs". There are actually very few true bandwidth hogs. Most of the accused "bandwidth hogs" are people just streaming TV or radio, etc. like they're allowed to. Sooner or later the providers are going to have to beef up their networks, whether they like it or not.

Anyways, even if improving broadband was up on the agenda for the US, the telcos and cablecos will make sure the current status quo is maintained by any means necessary as they battle it out amongst them selves for supremacy without outside interference. The fact that the current spectrum auction has reached the reserve and triggered Google's open access stipulation will have little to no effect, regardless of who the high bidder turns out to be. A noble gesture that will go to waste.

I also just read a piece on the Internet saying it would take about $100 billion just fix US broadband as it is. That's not saying improve it... that's just fix it and keep up with everyone else.

This report paints the picture of Broadband America as just peachy with a 'mostly' rosy outlook. Of course it does. That's what happens when you use skewed stats to make your promises look like they have been kept. But hey, at least we make the most of what we have!

I don't know about you, but to me our broadband future, at least in the near term, looks bleak as ever. As has been the case for the past few years, we'll watch other countries keep pulling away in broadband deployment and penetration while back here at the farm nothing will get done until something drastic happens. Hey, maybe even that total Internet crash that everyone makes fun of. Or when some South American native tribe has faster, more reliable broadband than we do. Then we can all sit back and watch the finger pointing begin. And listen to more promises.

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In-Flight Broadband - What's the big deal? Let it take full flight!

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:59:05 EDT

There has been a recent spate of airlines installing in-flight broadband connectivity - albeit crippled/filtered in some way in most cases. VoIP or voice capabilities seem to be the one app that many people hope is not allowed, citing that they don't want to have to listen to their neighbor chatting away for the duration of the flight. The people who are in favor of such services seem to be agreeable to being able to receive and reply to emails, and text while in flight.

Its not like this hasn't been tried before. Why the sudden interest in this niche service again? Yes, niche service, since logically the ability to access the Internet would be most useful to business class customers. You'd think in-flight broadband would be a no-brainer in this day and age. At least geeks, technophiles, and some business people would. But we all remember the failure that was Connexion by Boeing, don't we?

WiFi, high speed Internet, and broadband are still buzz words, really. Some companies still look at these words with an "if you build it, they will come (and use it and pay for it)" attitude (cough*muni-fi*cough). Therefor, I find it interesting - and somewhat surprising, honestly - to run across, on a somewhat regular basis, articles and studies that indicate that a fair number of people - business and non-business alike- are a bit wary of having access to in-flight broadband. Especially non-filtered/crippled broadband. I mean people do these things and use these services on buses and trains, don't they? People talk on their cellphones. They surf with their smartphones and laptops, thanks to 3G and WiMax, in those places. It isn't growing at an astoundingly fast pace, but you see such services catching on slowly but surely, especially on commuter trains, around the world. Right here in the good old USA Boston just announced they'll be testing such a service on some of their trains very recently. Why the mini-backlash against doing it on a flight?

Looking at it this way, I find the "I don't want to listen to my neighbor chatting away for the duration of the flight" argument ridiculous. People are doing it everywhere else. Why not a plane? Heck, if you want to sit at a Starbucks and enjoy your mochaccino, chances are you'll have to do it while listening to the clickety clack of keyboards and such. The same is true at some McDonalds. Hey, you can even count some bars and pubs in this list too. Last time I went to my favorite local watering hole, 75% of the people in the place were yapping into a cellphone or texting or googling some obscure factoid on their hacked iPhone in order to prove their buddy wrong during some beer-fueled debate. You'll tolerate it all while eating your BigMac or putting away a couple beers, but not while flying in a plane? Yeah, that makes sense.

Are flights then considered to be in the same category as, say, a theater? Not chatting away on your cellphone during a movie or performance makes perfect sense. No one wants to be distracted, and no one wants to distract the performers. But really, even this rule has been somewhat twisted in the modern era as you see people texting away during a movie/performance all the time. Since when has a plane become akin to a fortress of solitude? By its very nature, it is not... considering the amount of seat spacing (or lack there-of) on some flights. Been to library lately? Maybe no one chatting away on their cell - because that would be bad etiquette in a library - but plenty of people surfing porn and/or downloading music or gaming while you're looking for that book you have to read for your book report thats due the next day, or pouring over books researching for that term paper. That is fine according to etiquette.

I guess that brings up the "personal space" argument. If you're going to be in such close proximity to a stranger as one usually is for the duration of a flight, then the unspoken "personal space" etiquette rules come into play. You know... if you don't think doing certain things - like chatting on the phone while squashed next to a stranger - is polite, then you expect that your counterpart will respect the same unspoken rules. But again, the train, bus, and automobile point comes into play here. And again I ask what the difference is about a plane flight.

I do think that some filtering might be acceptable for the case of in-flight broadband. While I think in-flight broadband and the ability to surf the Net would be a good time-killer on a long flight or useful for the business person to get work done, etc., as a parent I would not like it if my 9 year old was squashed next to a person who is happily (make that probably very happily) surfing porn. Most people should agree with that kind of situation. So if we're going to do this thing, then yes, I think some common sense filtering is acceptable.

Hmm... that makes me think. If someone downloads music or a movie via P2P using an airlines' Internet service, who would the RIAA and MPAA sue? The customer, or the airline for allowing the downloading? Knowing the RIAA and MPAA, they'd probably sue both for copyright infringements, heh. And what about watching on YouTube that episode American Idol or whatever show you're missing while on your flight? Who would be responsible for that heinous crime? Eh, but I suppose that falls into the 'who is responsible for piracy, the user or the provider' debate, no? And moot anyway if the airlines filter P2P.

While writing this, I decided to call my brother, who is a very frequent business flier, to ask his opinion on in-flight Internet access and voice capability. He said he would absolutely use such a service if available, and also VoIP/cellphone service if he could - for many of the same reasons I mention above. That being the point that people do it everywhere else, so why not on a plane too?

The bigger sticking point, in my opinion, is cost. This is one of the main reasons behind the failure of Boeing's Connexion service. Reports will cite demand, but this is directly related to cost. The demand was there, else there wouldn't have been such a to-do when Connexion went under. Nor would there be airlines trying right now to resurrect an in-flight broadband service. Free would be cool, of course, but you know that woud mean ad-supported plus cost automatically included in the price of your ticket whether you use it or not. It would be better to be able to select Internet access as an option when you buy your ticket, with price dependent on the duration of the flight.

Clearly the airlines see potential for Internet access, even if its just text and email. With the way the industry is now, they wouldn't be investing in such a thing if they didn't think there was enough potential for revenue from such a service. Though there are some dissenters, voice capabilities would make it even more attractive to business travelers. I don't see the big deal in giving people the same access they have in other modes of pubic transportation. If people want to get testy about chatty people on long flights, this could be easily solved by limiting the times between which you can make voice calls on longer flights.

Let in-flight broadband fly, with voice capability. If its there, people will use it. I think the indifference right now to the possibility of the service is because people really haven't had a full taste of it and what it can do for them. And, as with other places and services, once people become used to having it and then come to rely on it, just as they did with the cellphone, in-flight netiquette will eventually develop of its own accord.

How Dare You Invade My Sanctuary With The Internet?? - And hey - I've been facebooked! w00t!

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:12:29 EDT

News From Around The Industry:

In-flight broadband is a threat to the sanctuary of being on a plane?:
Airlines see airborne Internet access, which typically uses Wi-Fi technology deemed safe for flights, as producing both revenue and a competitive edge against one another and over trains, buses and automobiles. Frequent fliers said the temptation to go online would be overwhelming, though they were divided over whether they would rejoice. Frequent travelers said catching up with e-mail in the air frees up their time at their destination in the hotel or back home with family. Good decisions and breakthroughs often arise from "the kind of deeper, reflecting thinking" not possible when new messages continually arrive, said on Carson, chief executive with online fundraising company cMarket Inc. Jay Pease, a regional marketing director for Exstream Software LLC, said he needs to rest during trans-Atlantic flights for morning meetings in Europe. But he often has trouble sleeping, and he worried that "the temptation would be there to say, `I'll just log on and surf the Internet for a while.'" I say if you're afraid you'll lose sleep because you have Internet access on a flight or think of a plane as a refuge from the Internet, you should probably check into one of those Internet addict rehabs in Japan or China.

"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary:
"w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. Merriam-Webster said "w00t" reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging. Visitors to Merriam-Webster's Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers. Runner-up was "facebook" as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site.

Georgia's governor feels that his state's IT is inefficient and ineffective, and has decided to outsource it:
Georgia state Governor Sonny Perdue has announced that he is moving all of the state's IT over to... no, not to India -- to the private sector. The move what Perdue calls the most ambitious outsourcing over services in the state's history is expected to result in pink slips for about 200 state employees. Perdue told a press conference Dec. 11 that Georgia's executive branch is currently spending more than $617 million each year on IT and that his new plan will consolidate the 11 state agencies that make up most of the branch's IT spending. "Maintaining the status quo is not an option," said Perdue at the conference. "Technology is the underpinning for a well-run, modern enterprise. My vision is for Georgia to lead the nation's state governments in IT enterprise management and the innovative use of technology." This announcement follows an assessment which found large gaps in the state's IT network security.

Winamp Media Player Opens Windows to System Hijacking:
Even as Microsoft prepared to release critical updates for flaws in multimedia frameworks and APIs, proof-of-concept exploit code came out over the weekend that shows how an attacker can target the Winamp multiformat media player, a media player from Nullsoft that runs on Windows and is second only to Windows Media Player in worldwide popularity. Symantec on Dec. 8 produced a security advisory warning that attackers can take over systems due to a vulnerability in how Winamp processes some MP4 files. Nullsoft has since addressed the issue, which boils down to a buffer overflow problem, in Winamp 5.35. The problem affects Winamp 5.02 through 5.34. Symantec is advising users that if they can't immediately install the patch, they should deploy network intrusion detection to monitor network traffic for suspect activity, including NOP commands and unexplained traffic that may originate from exploitation attempts or a successful system takeover.

The crash of Digital Download 1.0; and if you bought one of MovieBeams set-top boxes, its a brick now:
Movie rental service MovieBeam, once backed by Walt Disney, Intel and Cisco Systems, will close down Saturday, stranding people who paid $200 for its set-top box with a useless piece of hardware. The MovieBeam box stored 100 movies that were continually refreshed through a wireless connection. Backers invested some $50 million in the venture before selling it a year ago for $10 million to Movie Gallery, the movie rental store chain, now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. It will shutter the service "in light of the company's ongoing efforts to enhance its financial performance," said a spokeswoman. The collapse of MovieBeam follows the recent sale of Movielink, a movie download Web site backed by big Hollywood studios that pumped $148 million into the money-losing venture. Call it the crash of Digital Download 1.0, an eight-year effort by Hollywood and tech startups trying to do an end-run around cable and satellite TV firms by selling movies and TV shows direct to consumers via the Internet. Other pioneers still standing despite taking some arrows in the back include CinemaNow, Akimbo and Vongo.

Microsoft Fixes Glitches in IE, Multimedia, Vista:
Microsoft released seven security bulletins that addressed 11 vulnerabilities on its Dec. 11 Patch Tuesday. Of those, three bulletins containing seven client-side vulnerabilities are rated as critical and affect nearly all major Microsoft operating systems: 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. "The more alarming vulnerabilities are those in Windows Media Format Runtime and Internet Explorer, since a successful exploit could occur when a user visits a malicious Web page or when viewing a malicious e-mail. Neither issue requires any further interaction by the victim to exploit, compounding the problem," Ben Greenbaum, senior research manager for Symantec Security Response, said. Microsoft said in its security advisory for four IE flaws that it has received information that at least one of the IE vulnerabilities is being exploited in the wild.

NBC Universal Taps SanDisk's Service As Replacement For iTunes:
NBC Universal, which recently pulled its TV shows off of iTunes in a well-publicized spat with Apple, has revealed a new content platform partner. On Tuesday, the joint partnership of General Electric's NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment said it plans to offer some its most popular shows onSanDisk (NSDQ: SNDK)'s online video-download service. Under the agreement, NBCU shows could be downloaded onto SanDisk's new PC-to-TV video player that lets users download content from a USB port, and then carry the files over to a living room television for playback through standard audio/video sockets. To feed its Sansa TakeTV device, SanDisk has launched a download site called Fanfare, which is in beta and would compete with Apple's iTunes music and video store. NBCU plans to start offering content on Fanfare in January. The shows will only play through TakeTV. NBCU dropped its shows from iTunes in August after Apple refused to budge on pricing.

How the Grinch Stole OLPC - No such thing as altruism in business or charity...

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:25:02 EDT

News From Around The Industry:

'Give One Get One' Is a Hit, So OLPC Wants To Kill It:
TechDirt points out this feel-good Xmas Season gem: "When the One Laptop Per Child project announced its "Give One Get One" program in September, I praised it as an opportunity to get some laptops in the hands of real users. And apparently the program has proven a big hit, raking in as much as $2 million a day in revenues. With numbers like that a normal firm would be looking for ways to expand the program. But not OLPC. While they have extended the program through the end of the year, Nicholas Negroponte is apparently anxious to phase it out after New Years, so that they can focus on a "give only" strategy. It almost seems like Negroponte believes there's something dirty about having people actually pay for his product. That doesn't make any sense. There's nothing wrong with making a profit, especially when those profits would presumably be plowed into giving away more free laptops to poor kids. It also appears that Negroponte is still bitter at Intel for introducing a competing low-price laptop. His angst seems rather misplaced. The goal is to get laptops into the hands of poor kids. If that goal is being accomplished, it doesn' really matter whose laptop ends up being the most popular. Poor countries have as much right to seek the best products they can get as anyone else. Intel has apparently used its considerable engineering resources to produce an attractive alternative to the XO. If third-world governments choose Intel's laptop over his own, Negroponte should be congratulating them for helping achieve the goal of universal laptop ownership, not griping about the fact that his product didn't make the cut." Am I just another commercially brain washed jaded American because this kind of thing really doesn't surprise me in the least? Bah humbug.

Apple QuickTime zero-day flaw 'extremely critical':
Secunia has reported what it calls an "extremely critical" vulnerability in media-streaming program Apple QuickTime. The flaw, which affects the latest versions of QuickTime, 7.x, has not been patched and could allow a hacker to gain remote control of an affected system. It lies in a boundary error, when the program processes Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) replies, according to Secunia's advisory, published on Monday. RTSP allows a client to remotely control video streams. A working exploit code is in the wild, said Secunia. Secunia is advising that users do not browse untrusted websites, follow untrusted links, or open untrusted QuickTime Media Link files. With Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, and the Safari 3 beta, the attack appears to be prevented because standard buffer overflow prevention processes act before any damage can be done, Florio wrote. With Firefox, the QuickTime RTSP response is unmoderated. As a result, the exploit works against Firefox if QuickTime is the default multimedia player.

Skype must 'rebuild trust' after number debacle:
Last week it emerged that the VoIP company was withdrawing almost 10,000 0207-prefixed numbers from its SkypeIn service. SkypeIn is a paid-for service which gives users a geographic number for incoming calls. The withdrawal of the numbers came after talks broke down between Skype and its supplier of 0207 numbers, GCI Telecom. Due to the popularity of 0207 numbers, their cost has risen, and it seems Skype was unwilling to pay more than before to maintain those numbers. Ian Fogg, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said that Skype must "rebuild trust" among its business customers. "My advice to Skype would be: if you, as a company, wish to target small businesses or even consumers, you need to respond swiftly to reassure your users that this isn't going to happen again," he said. "Don't offer a different number without some kind of transitionary agreement." Skype has offered affected users new SkypeIn numbers which don't begin with 0207. The 0207 prefix has always been popular with business customers because it implies that the user is based in central London. Fogg added that the issue was not so much the changing of numbers, because London's dialling codes have changed several times over the last two decades, but the fact that, with only a month's notice, no transitionary arrangement seems to have been in place for the affected users.

Google makes bid to hold all your data:
Google is hatching a cunning plan which will have it store all your hard drive data on its servers. Google will let people put all their files including documents, vid clips and images on its servers in a spooky replay of Larry Ellison's cunning plan of the 1990s. Ellison said then our data would be safer on his servers than on our own machines. Apparently it wants to give people a chunk of storage where they can bung all their crap and presumably use its mini-apps to access the stuff. The egregious outfit already indexes the world+dog but let's face it, who wants to allow a multinational giant with a somewhat dodgy record on China to be the custodian of well, everything connected with a computer. No doubt many will go for it. And it would certainly allow for the creation of very cheap devices with bills of materials (BOMs) that make an OPLC seem like a very expensive luxury.

Microsoft on the hunt for 'serious' Windows flaw:
Microsoft bug squashers are investigating reports of a serious security vulnerability in Windows operating systems that could allow attackers to take control of vast numbers of machines, particularly those located off US shores. A Microsoft spokesman had only minimal details about the investigation, which was prompted by a presentation last week by researcher Beau Butler at the Kiwicon security conference in New Zealand. According to reports, the flaw affects every version of Windows including Vista and is actually the continuation of an old vulnerability that Microsoft supposedly fixed years ago. The bug, according to Symantec's DeepSight threat notification service, resides in a feature known as Web Proxy Autodiscovery (WPAD), which helps IT administrators automate the configuration of proxy settings in Internet Explorer and other web browsers. The vulnerability can be "widely exploited" to "intercept web sessions, direct browsers to malicious proxies, and effectively gain control over unsuspecting users' web traffic," according to Symantec, which said it had yet to confirm the vulnerability.

Early Tests Say SP3 Speeds Windows XP:
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft's Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported. "Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus," Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, said. "In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a 'must-have' update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond's not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS." "None of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than two times slower than the most current builds of its older sibling," said Barth. While Microsoft was not available for comment over the weekend about XP's performance, it defended Vista SP1 after Devil Mountain's first round of tests. "We appreciate the excitement to evaluate Windows Vista SP1 as soon as possible. However, the service pack is still in the development phase and will undergo several changes before being released," a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

Sales Of Multimedia Phones To Pass TVs Next Year, Report Predicts:
Worldwide shipments of multimedia-enabled mobile phones will exceed 300 million units next year, surpassing shipments of television sets, according to a research report being released this week by MultiMedia Intelligence. Sales of such phones will generate over $76 billion in revenue. By 2011, about 9 of 10 mobile phones will include basic multimedia capabilities, which consist of an image sensor, MP3 audio support, and video playback. Currently, these capabilities are available in 60% of mobile phones, according to the report. In general, MultiMedia Intelligence defines basic multimedia phones as those that have at least a 1.0-megapixel camera, MP3 audio and video playback capabilities, Java, USB, Bluetooth, 16-bit screen color, QVGA resolution, as well as Wireless Application Protocol and Multimedia Message Service support. Wireless carriers view multimedia phones as a great opportunity to attract new subscribers. Consequently, they're turning to leading manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG Electronics, and Sony Ericsson, for exclusive phones with innovative form factors and multimedia features. A touch screen will be another prominent feature on mobile phones in the near future. The number of phones with touch screens will reach almost 200 million by 2011.

Hackers will feed on Vista in 2008, says McAfee:
Microsoft will face more than 40 vulnerabilities in Windows Vista next year, as the operating system climbs past the 10% market-share milestone and malware authors really start to find flaws, a McAfee analyst said. According to data from Web metrics vendor Net Applications, Vista's market share was about 7.9% at the end of October, up from 7.4% the month before. "Most of the current malware has ignored Vista," said Craig Schmugar, a threat researcher at McAfee's Avert Lab -- but that's not because the operating system has been frustratingly secure. In fact, Schmugar argued, Vista has been a worthwhile target in the first year of its release. "These people make their living writing malware or attacking users," he said. "They're driven by financial motivation, and only when market share has an impact will they really work on Vista."

Femtocells to cure 3G headaches?:
Market demand for ubiquitous access to mobile services is making the case for femtocells - aka small indoor cellular base stations which utilise broadband connections for backhaul. Mark Heath, co-author of the report and director of research at Sound Partners Research, told silicon.com: "The idea of femtocells is a really clever way to avoid needing to make these big 3G networks more dense to provide the necessary quality of service." Some operators would have to double or triple the number of base stations they have to provide the very high quality of service required for indoor coverage, according to Heath. He added: "By eliminating transition costs by utilising DSL connections already in people's homes and getting the unit price down to a very low level, it could be a more cost effective way to deliver services."

BBC apologises for calling Sky Broadband users stupid:
BBC columnist Bill Thompson has apologised to users of Sky Broadband s e-mail service after making a somewhat poorly informed remark about the providers recent e-mail migration problems (original news):

"It's rare that I find myself on the side of large companies such as Google and Sky when it comes to the way they treat customers, but the current furore over the way Sky moved over a million UK customers from its own servers to Google's GMail service has resulted in what seems to be rather undeserved criticism.

But I am starting to think that anyone who can't follow the step-by-step guide to updating their Outlook account settings really shouldn't be using e-mail at all - they clearly have so little understanding of the technology in their hands that it's like letting a small child play with an unlicensed nuclear reactor."

Had Thompson researched the situation then he would have seen that the migration suffered from a number of technical and communication related problems, which Sky itself had already admitted to. Thompson has now apologised (albeit without the use of sorry ):

So, it's clear that I missed the real problems facing lots of Sky users, and in discussing the transition from Sky mail to Google I have not represented the real state of affairs. No point messing around or trying to wriggle out of it, and I'll talk to my editor at the BBC tomorrow morning (I've just picked up my emails after a day out teaching) and add something to the piece to reflect this."

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Mobile OS's are an unsexy rocket science - Mobile Linux is like a common cold, and Google has no idea what its doing

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:04:45 EDT

News From Around The Industry:

Symbian: Mobile OS's are an unsexy rocket science, mobile Linux is like a common cold, and Google has no idea what its doing:
Google's dominance of the web will not translate to the mobile phone market, a senior executive at Symbian has said. John Forsyth, vice president of strategy at Symbian, the platform that powers many of the world's phones, said Google lacked experience. Mr Forsyth said there was nothing to indicate that Google's dominance of the web would make it successful as a mobile phone platform provider. "Search and a mobile phone platform are completely different things. It's costly, arduous and at times a deeply unsexy job of supporting customers day by day in launching phones. That's something there's very little experience of in Google's environment. If you are a serious phone maker and you are asked to bet your handsets on somebody, you would want to bet on someone with a track record of delivery and support." Gee... is someone getting a little touchy about some possible competition? Or are they afraid of the name Google cropping up in their territory? Forsyth also said Google had to be aware that making a "mobile OS is a very specialised form of rocket science. "It's not search rocket science." He said Google's alliance with 33 firms was yet another attempt to launch a Linux-based operating system to drive mobile phones. "About every three months this year there has been a mobile Linux initiative of some sort launched. It's a bit like the common cold. It keeps coming round and then we go back to business. We don't participate in these full stop. We make our own platform and we are focused on driving that into the mobile phone market at large ever more aggressively."

First magenta, now berries:
Hot on the heels of TMobile claiming to have patented the color magenta, RIM has sued LG Electronics Inc. this week as it tries to stop that company from using names that are a bit too BlackBerryesque, including Black Label, Strawberry and Black Cherry. As far as RIM is concerned, any wireless device with the words Black, Berry or Pearl in their name should be off limits to rivals unless they have its consent, the company says in a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The aforesaid actions of LG have caused, and, unless enjoined, will continue to cause monetary damage and irreparable injury to RIM and the BlackBerry marks for which there is no adequate remedy at law, Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM said. None of the allegations have been proved in court. A spokeswoman for LG's U.S. operations didn't return a call seeking comment. A RIM spokeswoman said company executives weren't available for comment. Has the word "ridiculous" been patented yet? Probably.

Government: File sharing may increase CD sales; Economist: Uh, no:
When Industry Canada came out with a study last week that found file-sharing doesn't lead to reduced CD sales -- and in fact may even lead to an increase in sales among those who download a lot -- it came as a surprise to many, most of all the music industry, which has been arguing for years that downloads are killing the record business. It also came as a surprise to Stan Liebowitz, an economist with the University of Texas, who has been studying the impact that file-sharing and other Internet-related technologies have on music sales for several years, and has repeatedly come to the exact opposite conclusion. In a nutshell, Liebowitz says, the Industry Canada paper is at odds with well-established research that shows a prominent decline in CD and record sales over the past several years, a period in which the use of file-sharing software has grown dramatically. If downloading either doesn't affect CD sales or actually has a small positive effect, he says, then how can we explain that large a decline? But what about the 2004 study by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of the Harvard Business School and University of North Carolina economist Koleman Strumpf? They came to almost the exact same conclusion as the Industry Canada study -- that is, they found the effect of downloading on CD sales was "statistically indistinguishable from zero." Prof. Liebowitz says that the Oberholzer-Strumpf study's research methods were also flawed. It's natural to assume that downloading music would lead to fewer sales of CDs. But is it solely responsible for the decline in sales over the past decade, or are there other factors at work? And while CD sales have declined, have overall music revenues -- concert-ticket sales, public appearances, T-shirts, endorsements, etc. -- gone down as well, or have they made up for the drop in CD revenues? The debate continues.

FCC seeks more data in XM-Sirius review; analysts optimistic the merger will happen:
Regulators reviewing Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s proposed purchase of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. are asking the companies to turn over more information about the deal, as some analysts expressed growing optimism that it will be approved soon. The FCC, the U.S. regulating authority, has sent letters to the companies' lawyers requesting documents on any marketing agreements they have with major retailers, equipment and vehicle manufacturers and content providers. The FCC request, from the agency's Media Bureau chief, also asked the companies to provide information to back up claims that the merger will cut costs and benefit consumers. It set a Nov. 16 deadline for the companies to respond. "It does mean FCC is getting closer to a decision," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin said. The move could be an indication that the FCC is putting together a rationale to the endorse the deal, Levin said. But more likely, he said, it's "just the process playing out." Sirius plans to buy XM in an all-stock deal worth about $4-billion. The merger would combine the only two providers of satellite radio service in the United States and has sparked concern among some U.S. lawmakers and consumer groups.

GOP Calls for Closer Look at Google-DoubleClick Deal:
Republican members of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection are seeking a further look at the privacy implications of Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. The deal is currently under regulatory scrutiny at the Federal Trade Commission. In a Nov. 6 letter to Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush, D.-Ill., Republican members of the panel urged Rush to schedule an oversight hearing on the merger. The acquisition would combine two of the biggest players in online advertising. Google's text-based AdSense business is based on clickable links, while DoubleClick's technology places targeted banner ads and other display advertising on popular online sites. "It seems to me that policymakers should know more about Google's intentions than we do, and a serious hearing to get at the facts looks like a very good idea," Rep. Joe Barton, R.-Texas, said in a statement. At a September Senate hearing on the merger, Google Chief Legal Counsel David Drummond contended the deal does not foreclose other companies from competing in the online advertising market. Drummond pointed to Microsoft's $6 billion acquisition of online advertising firm aQuantive, which already has received the Federal Trade Commission's blessing, Yahoo's deal to buy Right Media and AOL's purchase of AdTech and Tacoda as proof of a vibrant online ad market. House Republicans, though, are more concerned about the privacy aspects of the merger. "One focus of this hearing could be on how this information is used and what could be done to better protect consumer privacy," the Republicans' Nov. 6 letter states. "The privacy implications of such a merger are enormous and without an in-depth examination, we and the American public will not fully understand what all those implications might be."

Mac's First Trojan Begins to Breed:
The Mac's first Trojan won't be its last: Security researchers at F-Secure have found that the gang behind the malware has been churning out slightly modified versions to evade anti-malware detection. That's nothing new the fake codec the Trojan is masquerading as is a variant of Trojan.DNSChanger, malware that's been plaguing Windows users for some time. "This operation keeps modifying their Trojans constantly: they have been doing this for their Windows malware for a long time; now they are also doing it for Mac," F-Secure's Mikko Hypp nen said. "Welcome Mac anti-malware companies to our world," Hypp nen said. Many Mac enthusiasts have been skeptical about this Trojan, dismissing the hype as overreaction. Their arguments boil down to three tenets: There are far fewer threats to the Mac operating system than for Windows, users are at risk only if they surf porn, and a user must go to great length to get infected i.e., download the fake codec, open it, run the installer, and enter in an administrative password. Craig Schmugar of McAfee Avert Labs rebutted these arguments noting that it only takes one threat to get infected, dozens of domains have been found that serve the malware and yet have nothing explicitly to do with porn, and a click-to-install requirement didn't keep Bagle from becoming one of the most successful pieces of Windows malware ever.

Thousands snared by malware warning from big-name websites:
Thousands of PC users have been duped into surrendering sensitive information and installing malicious software after falling victim to a complex scam that continues to plague well-known websites, a researcher warns. The scam is the latest to piggyback on banner ads that are fed to high-traffic destinations. Malicious code hardwired into the ads prompts a pop-up that warns of a bogus security threat on the visitor's machine. It offers to fix the problem in exchange for a fee and for credit card information. The ad then attempts to install a back door on the victim's machine. "These are pretty well-respected, high-traffic websites," said Don Jackson, a researcher with security provider SecureWorks. "The point is to compromise the user's machine and basically have it on demand." Jackson estimates the rogue ads have appeared on anywhere from "several hundred to 1,000" sites, which tend to be related to television and entertainment. Jackson has managed to shut down at least two servers serving the bad ads, but warns at least two more are still operational. He declined to identify the servers or the websites by name.

Microsoft to patch software driver vulnerability:
Microsoft has warned that a faulty driver used for copy protection could allow a hacker to gain high-level access to a PC. The problem lies with a driver called secdrv.sys, which is part Macrovision's SafeDisc software included with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The software, which can block unauthorized copying of some media, also ships with Windows Vista, but that OS is not affected. Microsoft said it knows of "limited attacks" that try to use the vulnerability, in an attack known as an elevation of privilege. The vulnerability could allow a hacker with local access to a machine to elevate his access rights and gain administrator rights, for example, allowing him to install software. Macrovision has issued an update for the driver. Microsoft said it also plans to issue a fix as part of its monthly patch cycle. Secunia said the vulnerability was first reported as a zero-day about two weeks ago, meaning the problem was being exploited by hackers as it became known.The company rated the vulnerability as "less critical," it's second lowest risk ranking for a vulnerability.

Trend Micro offers free security service for Sony PS3:
Trend Micro launched a new Web security service for Sony's PS3 game console. Trend Micro claims that as game consoles with Web browsers proliferate, so too will security problems. Trend Micro Web Security for PS3 relies on Trend Micro's Web reputation and URL filtering technology to keep users safe from malicious and harmful Web sites. It provides filtering of Web sites by category -- Adult/Sex, Alcohol/Tobacco, Violence/Hate/Racism, for example. Gamers can thus fire virtual weapons in games like Metal Gear Solid while being denied access Web sites detailing the real thing. Robert Hansen, known in security circles as RSnake, said in a May blog post that vulnerable Web-enabled devices like the PS3 could pose a serious threat. "Let's say for a second that PS3 was sitting behind a firewall of someone who worked at supersecurecompany.com and they use a VPN only to connect to their company," he said. "Now that I am running my code on that system, I could theoretically break into other machines on the network much easier since I am behind the firewall. This is far more nasty than I think most people realize. It might be a video game console but if it is Web-enabled and running over a shared Internet line it should be just as secure as anything else." PS 3 relies on a version of the NetFront browser, provided by Access Co., a maker of software for portable devices. In March, a hacker going by the name Anathema reported that the NetFront browser could be exploited. The vulnerability was added to the Bugtraq list in May. To date, however, such risks remain largely theoretical.

A broadband duel that both TalkTalk and BT can win:
Nowhere is the territory where telephony meets the internet more fiercely fought over than in the UK. On the broadband battlefield, Charles Dunstone, Carphone Warehouse's chief executive, has painted himself as the champion of the consumer (a strategy that almost backfired when his "free" TalkTalk service was swamped with applicants) in a fight to the death with the incumbent BT. To make money, TalkTalk has to "unbundle" broadband customers from BT exchanges - a process in which not only users but revenues migrate from BT to Carphone. In the second quarter to end-September, the impact of the accelerated pace of unbundling was felt within BT's wholesale division, where external revenue fell 9 per cent compared with the equivalent period of 2006. But this is no war of attrition. BT continues to earn residual charges on the unbundled lines. In any case, it has long predicted the trend of lower revenues in this area, while its retail division is expanding in broadband. BT took a higher than expected 37 per cent share of the UK's net new broadband users in the second quarter. Both companies also claim to be making a better profit from their growing customer bases. A lot of propaganda is spouted in this war, but it may be one of those rare duels where both parties emerge victorious.

The Philadelphia experiment: Making muni Wi-Fi work:
Carol Ellison comments over at MuniWireless: "The group has already far outdistanced my original expectation (and this is where your humble commentator eats some serious crow). Back in 2005 when Wireless Philadelphia was little more than a dream on a drawing board and I was a wireless editorialist at eWEEK, I wrote that the only thing larger than Philadelphia's ambitions were the challenges it faced in achieving them. I, frankly, doubted that a city as big, as political, and as struggling as Philadelphia was in so many ways could make much headway at all. The city's crime and poverty rates were and are daunting; the notoriety of its politics span generations. So today, it's really quite heart-warming to be able to say I was wrong. Two-and-a-half years later, Wireless Philadelphia is not only scoring successes in addressing the digital divide, it continues the drive toward its goals when similar groups in communities like Sacramento, a fraction of Philadelphia's size with a fraction of its problems, are struggling. "

No More Whois? - And how to run Leopard on a PC

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:15:35 EDT

News From Around The Industry:

• Whois may be scrapped to break deadlock:
Like a "411" for the Internet, Whois contains information such as names and phone numbers on the owners of millions of ".com" and other Internet addresses. Some privacy advocates are proposing scrapping the system entirely because they can't agree with the people who use the system on how to give domain name owners more options when they register such as designating third-party agents. Privacy advocates say individuals shouldn't have to reveal personal information simply to have a Web site. The so-called "sunset" proposal is expected to come up Wednesday before an ICANN committee. It will have a tough time winning approval and could create chaos. But the fact that abandoning Whois is on the table underscores frustrations among privacy advocates that ICANN appears on the verge of launching new studies and deferring a decision yet again after some six years of debate.

• Apple OSX 10.5 hacked in one day:
In what seems like record time, OSx86 scene has released details of a hack to allow the newest and greatest edition of OSX, 'Leopard', to run on a non-Apple computer. Full details were released here on how to get the new operating system, only released earlier this week, running on your own 'HackinTosh'. Unfortunately, even if you own a legitimate copy of Leopard, this kind of tinkering is against Apple's terms and conditions. Even more unfortunate, is the fact that Leopard torrents are already swamping the pirate scene. The forum link consists of full instructions on how to install the OS, screenshots showing the installation process worked, and then feedback from the multitude who've grabbed the patched image torrent and are busy playing with their new installation of Leopard.

• HP admits wireless laptop problems:
After sticking its fingers in its ears and going la-la-la really loudly, HP has finally admitted that there are problems with the built-in Wi-fi on its 6000 and 9000 series Pavilion notebooks. For a while the HP forum has been all a-buzz with problems about the lappies' Wi-fis not working. The wireless card detected the network with all the efficiency of a blind person trying to find a black cat in a dark room that was not there. However there had not been a dicky bird from HP until hacks at ZDNet wrote an attack on the outfit for ignoring its users. Now it seems that someone from HP Total Care has logged on to say that HP has a BIOS update and some instructions on getting this resolved. The spokesHP seemed to think that the problem only hurt those with AMD machines running Vista. Readers of the forum also seemed to treat HP's advice with a large dose of mock. For a start the fault effected XP users and it was not a driver problem as fresh installs of the OS don t resolve it. It appears it cannot be a Wi-fi card fault because those who replaced it found that it still does not work. Others who tried HP's new Bios update found it hopeless too. In fact, the only cure that anyone has found that worked with 100 per cent certainty was to replace the motherboard or get a new computer.

• Shaw expects price increases for cable and telecos:
Prices for communications services are headed up despite the battle between phone and cable companies for customers, predicts Shaw Communications Inc. chief executive officer Jim Shaw. "Consistently, all telcos and cablecos will continue to raise rates," Mr. Shaw said on a conference call to discuss the company's fourth-quarter financial results. That would be a bonus for both Shaw along with its peer Cogeco Cable Inc. Both companies reported higher revenue Friday as they not only added subscribers, but also charged them more. Life isn't nearly so comfortable for the U.S. cable operators. The biggest one, Comcast, said rivals are cutting prices more than everOne big difference is that the cable operators in the U.S. face intense competition from phone carriers that offer land-line TV service, analysts say. The big Canadian telcos have been slower rolling out land-line TV service. That means that while the cable operators are quickly luring away phone customers, they aren't facing fierce competition for their TV clients from the telcos. The different competitive landscapes are reflected in the performance of cable stocks on both sides of the border. Shaw and Cogeco have gained 41 and 52 per cent respectively, this year, while Comcast is down 25 per cent.

• Apple sets two-iPhone limit at stores, no longer accepts cash:
Apple has set a limit of two iPhones per person at its stores and is no longer accepting cash, in an attempt to stretch supplies and discourage unauthorized reselling of the smartphone. The new policy, started last Thursday, does not apply to Apple's online sales or to AT&T stores. "Limiting iPhone sales to two per customer helps to ensure that there are enough iPhones for people shopping for themselves or buying a gift," an Apple spokeswoman said Monday. The policy of credit or debit cards only is to discourage unauthorized resellers. Before the new policy, customers could pay cash, and there was a limit of five iPhones per person.

• Singapore offers safest networks in Asia:
A low broadband growth rate coupled with a lower level of pirated software use compared to the rest of the region appear to be key factors behind Singapore's positive showing in a recently released Internet security threat report, which covered the first six months of this year. Carried out by security software provider Symantec Inc., the Symantec Asia Pacific and Japan Internet Security Threat Report provides a six-month update of Internet threat activity within the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region. Countries surveyed were Australia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The report includes analysis of network-based attacks, a review of known vulnerabilities, and highlights of malicious code. The report ranked Singapore seventh out of 10 for malicious bot-infected countries across APJ, accounting for 1 per cent of the total number of bot-infected computers in the region. China topped the charts with 78 per cent of the total.

• From Closed to Open: Sprint Changes its xOHM Tune:
Under siege from Wall Street investors, and facing competition from other potential wireless networks (700 MHz), Sprint Nextel (S) has a new-found appreciation for the need for openness. And its executives are taking every opportunity to extoll the virtues of open networks, especially xOHM. Rick Robinson, VP of products and services of xOhm, told attendees of the Play conference in Berkeley, Calif., that xOhm will tear down the walled gardens and do away with restricted access to the mobile Internet. Xohm will tear down this wall. We will provide complete access to Internet from a WiMax enabled device, he said. The current problems at Sprint have nothing to do with their WiMAX plans, but instead are a result of a botched merger with Nextel and disparate and incompatible networking technologies. Sprint is not out of the woods, but if it can quickly showcase the promise of xOHM, it could buy itself time.

Morning Broadband Bytes

Rumor Mill: AT&amp;T Wholesale Broadband Price Increase - From the why not increase everything while we're at it dept...

Penetration + Stimulation = $134 Billion - A Connected Nation could add billions annually to the economy

Will A Broadband Scandal Topple A Presidency? - Plus: As Chinese broadband rises, should we be following its lead?

Broadband Killed The Presidency

China Rising - Should We Follow Its Lead?

Has Broadband Finally Jumped The Shark In Politics? - Is our national broaband policy a political priority anymore? Does anyone care?

26 Secret Comcast Supervisor Phone Numbers - Please don't flood the lines....

MS, Yahoo, Motorola, Sprint, Qwest, AMD, And Spectrum Wars - 2008 starts off with a bang, and some speculation

'Networked Nation: Broadband In America' - Skewed stats and an old man trying to get into heaven

In-Flight Broadband - What's the big deal? Let it take full flight!

How Dare You Invade My Sanctuary With The Internet?? - And hey - I've been facebooked! w00t!

How the Grinch Stole OLPC - No such thing as altruism in business or charity...

Mobile OS's are an unsexy rocket science - Mobile Linux is like a common cold, and Google has no idea what its doing

No More Whois? - And how to run Leopard on a PC

Rumor Mill: AT&T Wholesale Broadband Price Increase - From the why not increase everything while we're at it dept...