Multichannel News reports that “As expected, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has signed the bill, passed in a special legislative session, which authorizes statewide franchises for competitive cable franchises.”
In a press release, Verizon Southwest Region President Steve Banta said “We expect to accelerate our video deployment in Texas beyond our original plans and will work to give more Texans a choice for cable TV service…The Texas Legislature has built a blueprint other states can use.”
From Multichannel News:
The legislative change will be most impactful on Time Warner Cable, the state’s largest operator, but it will also impact Charter Communications Inc. and Cox Communications Inc., in addition to smaller operators…Incumbent cable providers must still adhere to their local cable franchises, but they will be deregulated under the bill when their current pacts expire.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 4:59 PM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Topic A in the blogosphere today is the purported role that Yahoo played in helping to imprison a journalist that allegedly ran afoul of China’s censorship laws. Shi Tao was sentenced to ten years in prison for sending an anonymous email to a U.S.-based Chinese language web site.
Yahoo provided records showing that Shi used his computer at his work place, Contemporary Business News, to access his Yahoo account and send an email on the evening of April 20, 2004. Chinese officials contend that the email contained state secrets — Shi summarized a communique from Communist Party Officials that had been sent to journalists nationwide.
Yahoo contends it merely abided by the laws of the country in which it operates, a policy of the company. A press watchdog group, Reporter Without Borders, has condemned Yahoo’s role in the sentencing of Shi. In a statement, the organization said:
“We already knew that Yahoo! collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well,”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:00 PM | Print | TrackBack
The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both ran articles yesterday about the failures of communication networks in the path of Katrina to withstand the storm’s punishment. According to the WSJ:
For the third time in four years, vital telephone systems failed after a major disaster hit the U.S. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the blackout of 2003 and now Hurricane Katrina, residents and even emergency personnel found themselves cut off.
The systems responsible for transmitting Internet data, landline and cellphone traffic broke down after backup generators, designed to keep phone lines powered, either ran out of fuel or were flooded because they were located on lower floors of phone-equipment centers rather than out of reach from flood water. Phone lines broke as poles went down from high winds or the flooding. And an onslaught of calls overwhelmed the few lines that still were operating.
How can phone systems be made to withstand future disasters? Engineers and telecom executives say that part of the answer could be for the networks to create additional capacity and to install more emergency power systems at secure locations. They add that additional wireless infrastructure — possibly incorporating satellite or microwave technology — could provide backup systems in emergencies.
In addition to describing what went wrong (and right), the two articles, especially the NYT piece, convey the courageous efforts made to keep telecom systems up and running:
Mr. Hales [the director of BellSouth’s facilities in the region] and eight colleagues, who had been hunkered down in the basement of the communications center, ran to the rooftop room. With winds of 130 miles an hour turning shingles, tin and wood into missiles, they furiously patched the wall with plastic tarps, plywood and a cardboard science project made by one worker’s son.
“We grabbed what we could to protect the engine,” Mr. Hales said, standing on the sun-baked roof several days later as workers stacked bricks and the generator roared. “If that generator failed, we’d have been toast.”Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:59 PM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
IEEE Spectrum tells the story of Urban Communications Transport (dba/Urban Telephone and Video), which is profitably delivering triple-play service to 53 apartment buildings in the South Bronx.
The company, founded by Doug Frazier and Stuart Reid, typically deliver 156 Mbps or 622 Mbps fiber circuits to the basement of a building, where a DSLAM feeds Internet access service to individual apartments at speeds up to 8 Mbps, along with VoIP service and more than 300 video channels. It’s “biggest presence is in the Diego Beekman Houses, just a stone’s throw from [its] office.”
Diego Beekman is a cluster of about 40 apartment buildings that were once so dilapidated that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took them over from absentee landlords. HUD cleaned them up, and a local not-for-profit organization, a community group, and the tenants came together and bought it back from HUD for a dollar. That partnership is purchasing computers and giving them, along with an initial free year of triple-play service, to the development’s 1200 families. The only requirement is that they take a 3-hour class to learn basic computer skills and the basics of Internet connectivity.
Frazier and Reid went a step further, helping the Beekman partnership put together a learning center that’s been open for about a year…The center, in a storefront on the grounds of the housing project, has about 20 workstations that use computers supplied by Per Scholas, a Bronx-based computer refurbisher and recycler that has provided over 30 000 reconditioned computers to low-income families in 25 U.S. states.
Frazier says the learning center fills a big void. “In poor inner-city neighborhoods, they ask these children to go to school and stand on line to use the Internet. Biggest city in the world, and you’re asking a kid to stand on line to get on the Internet when he’s got to go compete against other children who have [the Internet] in their house.”Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 12:36 PM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
According to this piece by David Hatch in the National Journal’s Tech Daily, Congress will place on the back burner Telecom Act rewrite efforts in order to focus on matters related to Hurricane Katrina.
“Any legislation that’s not related to the disaster will be a second priority,” said a spokesman for Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. Stevens is spearheading the drive in the upper chamber to overhaul the 1996 Telecommunications Act. “Stevens is 100 percent focused on helping the victims right now,” the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the Senate Antitrust Committee could postpone a hearing on cable television issues. The hearing had been tentatively scheduled for September 28.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:05 AM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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