The OECD has just released its latest global broadband statistics (as of December 2006), which show, among other things, continued decline in the worldwide ranking of the U.S. in terms of broadband use per capita. The U.S. now ranks 15th out of 30 member nations, down from 12th place six months ago and fourth place in 2001.
The U.S. also ranks 20th out of 30 in terms of broadband penetration growth rates over the past year. The inevitable drumbeat has resumed for a national broadband policy that spurs greater incentives for and investment in broadband deployment and usage, particularly on the eve of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “Communications, Broadband and Competitiveness: How Does the U.S. Measure Up?”
Although a lot of smart people think these semi-annual OECD statistics are irrelevant at best, or misleading at worst, for some reason the National Cable and Telecommunications Association has taken particularly umbrage at the most recent rankings. NCTA’s CEO Kyle McSlarrow sent a letter today to relevant House and Senate leaders telling them not to believe everything they read when it comes to U.S. broadband deployment and adoption. McSlarrow says things are far better than the OECD would suggest:
Broadband deployment in this country continues to grow at a robust rate, and the number of consumers who have signed up for high-speed Internet service in the U.S. far exceeds that in any other country in the world.
Citing a slew of third-party statistics, McSlarrow points out that broadband is available to 93% to 94% of U.S. homes and that speeds are growing all the time. Korea, the gold standard for these kinds of broadband comparisons, is not like the U.S. (it’s more dense, etc.), so stop comparing, McSlarrow said.
Despite the rosy picture painted by McSlarrow, NCTA is in favor of a number of legislative and government programs aimed at bringing broadband to rural areas, such as tax credits for building networks where none exist, low-cost loans for rural providers and usage of universal service funds for network build-outs in unserved areas. Cable is not, needless to say, in favor of net neutrality regulations, McSlarrow reiterated.
Not sure why NCTA is taking a big stand on this report (didn’t see that any other player, say a telco, issued a comparable letter yet), other than the fact that the hearing is tomorrow and it looks like no cable-related people will be testifying. But hey, not much else is happening on the Hill so my guess is that the cable folks are weighing in where they can.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:28 PM | Print | Comments (0)
With blogs, social networking, live video conferences, YouTube-posted videos and even SecondLife campaigns swirling around the 2008 presidential candidates, it was inevitable that someone would host an online presidential debate. That someone is three entities — Yahoo!, Huffington Post and Slate magazine, which announced this morning two online-only presidential debates that will be hosted by PBS’s Charlie Rose.
The first (one for the Democrats and one for the Republicans) is slated for Labor Day and will appear at least on Yahoo!’s “destination” for all things related to the campaign, Yahoo! Elections, if not all three sites. What’s weird is that neither Huffington Post nor Slate have posted any ruminations on this novel debate, or at least none that I can find on either site.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:01 PM | Print | Comments (0)As I began what is my inevitable daily round of Google searches today, I noticed the search giant’s logo was, well, interesting. It’s the name Google in the form of a partially submerged iceberg that is melting.
Although I paused enough to run the cursor over the image to find out what the logo signified - Earth Day - I didn’t stop to think of the implications of the design.
Fortunately, Louis Gray did my thinking for me. The logo is a clear reminder of the threat of global warning. With as many smart, socially conscious employees as Google has, this makes a lot of sense.
But at the same time, the company houses some of the brightest minds in technology, and with buildings full of Ph.D.’s, it’s no surprise they would find the very real issue of global warming as one they would highlight on Earth Day. Good for Google.
Update: On a related note, the New York Times’ Bob Tedeschi has this piece today about the rise of “green” online publications, including Post-Newsweek’s Sprig.com.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:42 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Time Warner Cable and Wi-Fi start-up FON are slated to unveil today a program that allows Time Warner customers to create their own Wi-Fi hot-spots, a practice that has been accepted in Europe but hasn’t emerged in the U.S. Fon, founded in Spain and backed by big-ticket investors including Google and Skype, sells (and more frequently gives away) a router called La Fonera, that splits the Wi-Fi connection in two, allowing the broadband customer to sell part of the signal to the public.
Fon’s goal is to take a swipe at the huge fees that Starbucks and other convenience Wi-Fi outlets charge travelers desperate for a connection. The public portion of the split Wi-Fi signal could be sold to harried Internet surfers at a cut-rate price, say $2 or $3 per day instead of $9.95 or $10.95 or $12.95.
Om, btw, had the scoop on this deal almost three weeks ago.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:47 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Vonage is going down the tubes in large part because Verizon has crippled the company through a deadly patent litigation lawsuit that centers on key VoIP patents. Fears abound that, bolstered by its big victory, Verizon will lob infringement lawsuits against other independent VoIP providers, and even cable operators, knocking down competitors one-by-one until no rivals are left standing.
But will the validity of Verizon’s patents withstand the inevitable backlash? Already one VoIP pioneer, Jeff Pulver, is questioning one key patent that Verizon wielded in its fight against Vonage. Verizon claims to hold the patent on the general process of “name translation,” which enables callers to make phone calls over the Internet without having to enter the specific IP address of the destination devices.
The problem for Verizon is that Pulver’s Free World Dial-Up (FWD), the first company to complete an Internet to public switched telephone network call, used a process way back in October 1995 which sounds exactly like the patented process outlined in Verizon’s patent application. Pulver even published the details of this process in his “Internet Telephone Toolkit” book in January 2006, two months before Verizon filed for its patent.
Verizon, in its application, doesn’t seem to have mentioned Pulver’s process. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademark examiner apparently didn’t search hard enough for “prior art,” or a preceding invention, otherwise the discovery of FWD’s process may have scuttled the telco’s patent.
Part of the problem is that the USPTO is so overburdened, and lacks the resources to hire enough technical experts, that prior art searches are, in a word, a joke. That’s part of the reason why Congress is perpetually trying to reform the patent system, a tough task given the arcane nature of the patent system and the enormous economic windfalls at risk with true reform.
The latest effort is the bi-partisan Patent Reform Act of 2007, which, if it were law in 1995, might have thwarted Verizon’s patent award at the outset. The bill allows for interested third parties to submit their own “prior art” when a patent application is submitted, providing tremendous research assistance to the overworked patent examiners.
The bill also allows for a new post patent-grant review, available at any time during the life of a patent, that makes it easier for parties to challenge the validity of patents. Existing law basically gives people like Pulver two options — a request for reexamination by the USPTO, which hasn’t worked well, or litigation, which is time-consuming, expensive and difficult.
But, the Patent Reform Act of 2007 is just draft legislation and until that law, or one like it, gets passed, it seems that Pulver’s best bet for invalidating Verizon’s patents is to sue. (Pulver, btw, wants the process to be in the public domain so that everybody can use it.) I suspect a group of independent VoIP providers, not to mention cable operators, would chip in to help foot the legal bills to wrest this patent out of Verizon’s hands.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:19 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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