VoIP pioneer Jeff Pulver and tech veteran Tom Evslin have submitted a petition to the FCC asking the Commission to require phone companies, or at least telcos that are obligated to offer e911 service, to provide call forwarding and voice mail any time a phone line is out for twelve hours or more.
Most phone companies already provide this service to customers that pay a fee, but as Evslin points out, most of those left homeless and disconnected by Katrina’s wrath typically couldn’t afford these premium voice options. Or as Pulver puts it,
In the wake of Katrina, those who had mobile and VoIP phones could be located quickly. They took their phones with them when they evacuated. They left greetings saying where they were so that, even when their phones weren’t operable, loved ones could be reassured and rescuers could be spared searching for them. Even those who had voice mail and call forwarding as features of their PSTN service could quickly reestablish communication. But, as the tragedy made plain, a large percentage of low income people do not have any mobile phones, VoIP, or even the premium features of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Their numbers became useless once their local lines were inoperable or inaccessible.
With emergency voice mail and call-forwarding, the aimless refugees from national disasters will at least have an electronic home base at which they leave can leave messages, or pick them up.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:06 PM | Print | Comments (0)
A law moving forward in France would make it legal to crack open Apple’s DRM if the purpose is to convert digital media files to another format. The law, presumably, would require all digital content vendors to allow customers to download content for play on any device, a requirement that would run afoul of Apple’s proprietary system which enables play-back only on iPods.
The true purpose of the bill is to fight online piracy, with users who illegally download content subject to a fine of 38 euros per violations, and users who share videos subject to a fine of 150 euros per violation. People who make and sell software for unauthorized file-sharing would be subject to a fine of 300,000 euros, under the bill.
This legislation is not the same as the infamous (and now derailed) legsilation that would make P2P file-sharing legal in France. Instead, it is a move by France to adapt the European directive on copyrights into its own law, something that France and Spain have yet to do.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:42 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Continuing with this ambitious agenda of hearings, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold hearings tomorrow in the run-up to the Telecom Act rewrite legislation. Two topics are on the table: Wireless Issues and Spectrum Reform in the morning and Wall Street’s Perspective on Telecommunications in the afternoon.
Here’s the witness line-up for the morning:
Catherine Seidel, FCC
John Kneuer, NTIA Dept. of Commerce
JayEtta Hecker, GAO
Thomas Walsh, Rural Cellular Association
Dr. Kevin Kahn, Intel
Robert Hubbard, Assoc. for Maximum Service Television
Thomas Sugrue, T-Mobile USA
Jeanine Kenney, Consumer Union
Lawrence White, Progress and Freedom Foundation
Here’s the witness list for the afternoon:
Aryeh Bourkoff, UBS Investment Research
Kevin Moore, Wachovia Securities
Craig Moffett, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Luke Szymczak, JP Morgan Asset Management
As usual, the Committee will have a live webcast of the event, or you can watch live on CSPAN-3 or on the C-SPAN web site. (Thanks as usual to Peter for the heads-up.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:54 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of Mark Evans, this funny piece from Canada’s National Post about a new social woe: Bad Google. Bad Google can afflict all of us and consists of embarassing entries that pop up when someone types your name in the Google search box.
It’s not only seriously bad information, such as an arrest or public disgrace, that can haunt us. Stupid items, such as blog entries written in one’s adolescence or satirical writings, can cause great discomfort if the wrong person finds them.
The article describes a writer identified only as “Ed” who wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on erectile dysfunction and to his great dismay, that article appears near the top of Google searches on his name.
“I don’t know who looks you up on Google, but I guess it’s mostly old friends thinking, ‘Hey, I wonder what ever happened to Ed? What’s this? Oh dear, it looks like Ed has erectile dysfunction.’ “
Another writer, Sarah Marchildon, has been confronted with ardent emails from posterior aficionados ever since she wrote an article that included a funny photo of her (clothed) “big butt.” As it turns out, her article ranked third for quite some time when someone searched the term “big butt.”
But Mark Evans tries to put a semi-serious spin on this, warning that “bad Google” could affect the body politic.
As a colleague pointed out, anyone with political aspirations will have to know enough to restrain themselves from a very early age not to write or say anything online that could come back to snap them in the ass down the road. It could lead to some very dull politicians or perhaps some very smart and devious politicians who do all of their bad stuff offline.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:56 PM | Print
Discovery Communications has kicked off a new online subscription video-rich site called Cosmeo that the cable network company is positioning as a homework helper for students. (Saul Hansell had word of this launch yesterday.)
Cosmeo costs $9.95/month and features more than 30,000 video clips along with documents, pictures, games, links and more resources aimed at helping kids with various homework activities. Cosmeo is really a consumer-oriented version of an in-school service that Discovery has been providing for a while, with the material cross-tabulated with state academic standards.
The videos on Cosmeo are organized by grade-level and topic, and reflect Discovery’s education, and not entertainment, themed programs.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:57 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Jessie Seyfer at the San Jose Mercury News has this almost-humorous piece on whether p*rn will migrate to mobile phones in a big way. The answer: probably not.
One reason is that mobile phone companies are doing their best to block delivery of questionable content. Another reason, and here’s the humorous part, is that the displays on mobile phones are just too small to properly, um, enjoy risque videos.
And another thing. Who wants to watch p*rn on such a teeny screen? The screen size is “inferior for viewing that type of content,” Patel [Nitesh Patel, of Strategy Analytics] said. “It might be OK for a gimmicky show for your friends at the pub to have a bit of a laugh, but I don’t think you’ll see people seriously using that way.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:48 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The New York Times’ Ken Belson and Geraldine Fabrikant have this item today about the cable industry and the competition—both in Washington and in the marketplace—that cable faces. Former cable exec Leo Hindery is quoted in the piece as saying that cable is on the losing side of the equation and is getting boxed in.
“The playing field is being leveled, and it’s Comcast’s mountain that is getting leveled more than AT&T’s,” said Leo Hindery Jr., a former cable executive and a partner at the private equity firm InterMedia Partners. “The cable guys are boxed in, and I don’t think there’s a Hail Mary pass.”
It doesn’t help that the Bell companies, despite their relatively more volatile income statements, are giants in comparison to cable companies—both in Washington and in the marketplace. The article notes that “[s]heer size also helps the Bells throw their weight around in Washington,” an assertion that borne out by last week’s news that the upcoming House telecom reform bill is nothing but bad news for the cable industry.
Size, however, may not really have anything to do with cable’s losing game in DC. Industry insiders say that cable doesn’t stand a chance in the House because of the composition of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s majority and minority leadership — Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), a long-time cable foe and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), a congressman beholden to his home state’s telecom powerhouse AT&T.
Cable operators, however, are publicly confident. And they may have good reason to be — the incumbent telcos have taken a run at video services several times before and haven’t been able to make it work.
“When one of your major competitors gets bigger, we have to notice,” said Stephen B. Burke, the chief operating officer at Comcast. “But we’re so far ahead of them. What is going to be fun is to prove that the market is wrong by putting great numbers on the board.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:13 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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