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The FCC recently posted a Notice of Inquiry, FCC-09-51. The purpose of this NOI is stated in the Introduction, which begins:

This Notice of Inquiry seeks comment to inform the development of a national broadband plan for our country. Its focus is to enable the build-out and utilization of high-speed broadband infrastructure. But “infrastructure” barely hints at the importance of what we are undertaking. High-speed ubiquitous broadband can help to restore America’s economic well-being and open the doors of opportunity for more Americans, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of their lives. It is technology that intersects with just about every great challenge facing our nation.

I signed and support this Comment in response to the NOI. The comment points out that (1) the term “broadband” is not the same as the Internet, (2) broadband’s true value is that it gives access to the Internet, and therefore (3) when designing a National broadband policy, we should make sure that it supports the value of the Internet.

Network, Policy broadband, Comment, definitions, infrastructure, Internet, national broadband plan, Net Neutrality, Network, NOI, Policy

Holding a position as an incumbent or primary telecom carrier bestows certain monopoly-ish benefits including limited (or no) competition in connection choices to homes and certain businesses. A person representing a home or business needs a phone or cable connection in order to obtain a connection to the Internet.

This privileged position implies a certain duty of care for their customers by the carriers. That duty, however, is sometimes misplaced. For example, storing customer passwords in the clear, as text that anyone could read, is not a “best practice” in security circles. It came as a shock that TrendMicro wrote of about this practice by noted telecom company Orange (Telecom) in France:

The showstopper however is the vulnerability on the orange.fr website which was posted today. According to 2fingers over at HackersBlog a SQL injection vulnerability was discovered by fellow hacker Unu, that exposes not only the account details of almost a quarter of a million customers, but also their passwords in clear text…

Why is this important? The article continues:

Recently published research showed that 61% of people use the same password for multiple sites, so this kind of compromise represents real risk for many people.

HackersBlog state that they have alerted the folks over at orange.fr but have not yet received a response.

If Orange was truly storing passwords in a clear text file, the rest of their security practices should rightly be questioned. This practice applies to all providers: take care, use best practices to protect your customers.

This post should also serve as a reminder to everyone that’s a customer of an Internet Service Provider: periodically change and protect your passwords.

Identity, Network, Policy, Scenarios best practices, password, plain text, security, telecom

ProPublica’s story Rural Broadband Stimulus Program Slammed in Gov’t Report points out that connecting rural areas continues to be problematic.

The Rural Utilities Service’s broadband program faced heavy criticism in 2005 when auditors found irregularities (PDF) with a quarter of the funds the program had received in its first four years of operation. In one case, the program loaned $45 million to wire affluent subdivisions in the Houston suburbs—including one that was built around a golf course and another outside one of the richest cities in Texas.
…

“We remain concerned with RUS’ current direction of the broadband program, particularly as they receive greater funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” Assistant Inspector General Robert W. Young wrote. “RUS’ broadband program may not meet the Recovery Act’s objective of awarding funds to projects that provide service to the most rural residents that do not have access to broadband service.”

No surprise there. Projects want to go where the easy money is, and “rural” (less than 20,000 people) mean that there are problems inherent in the build-out (not enough people to be “profitable” in the incumbent duopoly sense, and/or trees and mountains getting in the way, for example).

Profitability, however, is not the appropriate perspective or framework. The government is making funds available so that the benefits of broadband reach more of the nation’s citizens. As Sean McLaughlin of the Times-Standard points out in his article What broadband access means to rural areas such as ours,

Representing most of the land and water resources, rural communities are essential for the well-being of our nation and interdependent with the 80 percent of our population that live in non-rural communities. At the same time, remoteness and isolation challenge rural people who are more likely to be poor, undereducated and unhealthy. Of the 250 poorest counties in the United States, 244 are rural. So the promise and opportunity of new communications technologies to improve health, education and public safety for rural communities are particularly important to our nation.

It’s not for lack of desire or hard-working people in rural areas that will help make this happen. Rather it seems to be a lack of imagination on the part of broadband suppliers. Creative partnerships are out there.

Network, Policy broadband, federal assistance, public good, rural, Rural Broadband Stimulus Program

Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets, by Peter Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson, “discusses why we are on the brink of a third transformation of global information and communication markets that requires innovative global governance.” This book is now available through MIT Press or via download!

From the Introduction:

As 2009 nears, the world is in a time of gloom and panic. Will global governance and the global economic order survive? In retrospect, some saw the collapse of the dot com bubble as a portent of the fi nancial meltdown and the collapse of confidence in the future. In the United States there is a dour bipartisan consensus that escalating special interest politics, budget deficits, economic insecurity in the midst of more consumption, environmental and energy policy gridlock, and deep uncertainties about national-security strategy point to intractable problems in the design and conduct of public policy. In other countries the specifi c bill of complaints may differ, but a similar uneasiness is widespread.

Although we can gripe as well as anyone about the world’s follies, this book is more upbeat. Since World War II, a planet-straddling information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure has created a global information economy at an ever-accelerating pace. A radically different model for competition and public policy for this infrastructure was introduced that is far sounder than its predecessor. More remarkably, countries agreed to rewrite the basic international agreements governing commerce for the communications and information infrastructure in a way that makes more sense than the consensus that was forged immediately after 1945.

For once, the transformation in governance and technology is not just a tale of the prosperous states doing better. These changes boosted the economic takeoff of India and China and other emerging powers, and also brought a much greater level of digital connectivity to the poor than anyone dreamed of in the late 1980s. Much remains to be done in poor countries, but an expanding record of successes now exists. For example, banking done over mobile phones (“m-banking”) is taking off faster in developing countries, which lack well-developed financial markets, than in wealthy countries.

This book explains how and why a combination of technological innovation, market strategies, and political entrepreneurship propelled …

Policy, Scenarios digital connectivity, global, globalization, markets, telecom

Has Divestiture Worked?
A 25th Anniversary Assessment of the Breakup of AT&T

This looks like a fascinating–albeit short–event. Three panel discussions and a great lineup of speakers on the agenda. If you’re in New York, I highly recommend going.

UPDATE: If you’re not in New York, here’s the link to the stream! (Excellent, thanks!)

Events, Network, Policy, Scenarios ATT, controlling network, divestiture, Network, telecom

DRCN, Design of Reliable Communication Networks, will be held in Washington DC on Oct. 26-29, 2009. This is the group’s seventh conference, first time in the United States.

About the conference:

DRCN 2009 is a well established forum for scientists, engineers, designers and planners from industry and academia who have interests in reliability and availability of communication networks, end systems and related topics. From equipment and technology for survivability to network management and public policy, through theory and techniques for survivable and robust network and application design, the aim of the conference is to bring together people from those disciplines in a lively forum. We hope you will join us in Washington, D.C., USA during October of 2009.

At this point they’re calling for papers (limited 8 pages, to be published in IEEE Conference Proceedings) by April 1, and proposals for tutorials by May 15.

Events, Network, Policy conference, Internet, reliability, SOHO nets, telecom

One of the latest buzzwords in technology is cloud computing. In this scenario, the Internet is considered to be “the cloud.” The basic idea, roughly stated, is that we no longer need to rely on our local computer hard drives for everything–including software applications and storage. Now we can just log into various Internet-based services, use their applications, and store our documents on their servers.

Many examples of cloud computing are common and in use every day. On a personal level, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn help you manage your contacts and address book (friends, colleagues), and Flickr helps manage and display your photo collection. On a business level, Google Docs and Zoho offer a suite of tools for writing, accounting, and much, much more.

We all know that technology is not perfect. Combined with human interaction, we get a system that can be surprisingly fragile. Cloud computing is one example of this.

I have had the frustrating experience (many times) of using–and coming to depend on–GoogleDocs for group writing projects. I always found it frustrating when, without prior notice, Google would implement changes in the user interface that complicated our group work; or when Google Docs had a service hiccup and our group’s documents became unavailable for some time.

Similarly, others are documenting problems. I wrote about Digital Eviction (on Digital ID Coach) a couple of weeks ago citing Phil Wolff’s Data Portability article that’s timely and relevant to this post about having growing pains in cloud computing. Phil’s post offers six actions that might be appropriate to address the problems that cloud computing are likely to create. Briefly, those include:

• Intervention with a back-up service
• Prevent and educate on graceful exit strategy
• Commit to adding appropriate language to contracts (EULAs and TOSs)
• Insure your digital assets
• Advocate for the little guy
• Enforce with real laws and penalties

As we are increasingly dependent on cloud-based service providers, recognizing the vulnerability of these services makes it more important than ever to create back-ups of our work. One place might be on our local hard drives. I urge you to do it now.

Content, Network, Policy, Scenarios backup, cloud computing, digital assets, SAAS, service providers, terms of service

MuniWireless has a post called Find out if your ISP is a bad ISP with Glasnost in which author Esme Vos asks if your ISP is “playing funny games” with your Internet connection. She urges inquiry:

Simply go to Glasnost (appropriate name as it refers to a period in the 1980s in the USSR when there was a bit more openness and transparency). Glasnost is but one weapon in your arsenal for finding out the TRUTH about your broadband connection and your ISP. It is a product of Measurement Lab, founded by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, Google Inc. and academic researchers: “M-Lab was developed in 2008 after Vint Cerf and others at Google initiated conversations with network researchers to learn more about challenges to the effective study of broadband networks.”

Vos reported that her ISP came out clean. I can report (finally, after days of busy servers) that my ISP is doing well as of this post. However, all ISPs will not have such good reports.

As a matter of business ISPs will remind us that there are two sides to every story, in this case the service users and the service providers. To their credit, they will need to take steps to understand the user-side demand and manage their resources to provide the best services possible. I’d give them this credit if they didn’t “play funny games” in the process.

Content, Network Glasnost, Internet, ISPs, MuniWireless, service providers

eComm, “the world’s leading-edge telecom, Internet communications and mobile innovation event,” is being held in San Francisco, CA, at the San Francisco Airport Marriott Hotel, from March 3-5, 2009. This year’s theme is Defining the Post-Telecom Era, which the conference organizers will do in a series of rapid-fire talks from a wide range of speakers.

You can save $400 on registration fees by registering before the end of January. Additionally, if you wish to save an additional 20%, contact me for details.

Content, Events, Network, Policy communications, conference, Internet, telecom

Here’s a link to the website for Challenges for FTTB/H in Europe, an International WIK conference, which is coming to Berlin, Germany on March, 23rd/24th 2009. The site offers PDF files for the program and for registration.

WIK is organizing an international conference on critical issues of FTTB/H deployment in March 2009. Following our successful NGA conference in 2007 where VDSL was in the centre of attention the focus of the 2009 event (Berlin, 23/24 March) is on deploying fibre towards the building/home. The conference addresses key issues of technology, deployment & operation, regulation, investment & financing, national fibre broadband strategies and business cases.

This conference will provide insights into the experiences, expectations and perspectives of leading international network operators, investors, equipment manufacturers, National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), representatives of the European Commission, government officials and independent experts. WIK is delighted to announce many senior speakers including Joeri Van Bogaert (President FTTH Council Europe), Henry Ergas (Chairman Concept Economics Australia), Timotheus Höttges (Board Member T-Home Germany), Kip Meek (Chairman Broadband Stakeholder Group UK), Alf Henryk Wulf (Chairman of the Board, Alcatel-Lucent, Germany).

Events business, conference, Europe, fiber, fiber optic cable, fiber to the home, FTTB, FTTH