ManyMedia

Two quick bits from Sunday’s SF Chronicle. First, “City-owned broadband networks fighting corporate telecom”

Frustrated with the high cost and slow pace of broadband deployment in much of the country, 511 publicly owned utilities now provide telecom services for residents, schools, city agencies and their internal operations, up nearly 14 percent from a year ago, according to the American Public Power Association.

Some utilities built networks from scratch. Others extended infrastructure they already had, such as fiber-optic lines and networking equipment needed to monitor power flow or remote substations.

Not surprisingly, big phone and cable companies hate this, and have fought with some success to block public gas, water and electric utilities from providing telecom services. Eleven states bar or restrict the practice, sometimes by imposing artificial costs on municipal telecoms so the prices they charge end up closer to what private companies offer.

And while I’m at it, in David Lazarus’s column, Thank SBC for nothing:

Sometimes it’s the little things. Like the 28 cents SBC charges every month to not do any work on your behalf.

The Bells wonder why we want a competitive alternative?

Network, Policy broadband, fiber, muni nets, municiple networks, telecom, utilities

Those crazy incumbents. News.com is reporting on their latest mis-adventure in “Net phone hang-ups looming?”

Net telephony providers such as Vonage and Net2Phone enjoy an unfettered stream of new numbers passed down from other carriers, which they can hand out to customers as they wish. Now, Verizon Communications, BellSouth and Qwest Communications International want federal regulators to tell the newcomers to heel.

Verizon and the others raised their concerns most recently at a meeting Wednesday of the North American Numbering Council (NANC). The industry group is chartered by the Federal Communications Commission and is charged with developing policies on how to distribute telephone numbers.

If successful, some observers warn, the lobbying push could dampen the market for Internet-telephone service in the United States.

“The results could choke off the industry before it really gets going,” according to a source familiar with the ongoing debate.

Now why would they do this? Could it have anything to do with the “phone number shortage?” Why is it that current phone numbers are assigned in vast blocks that, by in large, are unused by certain carriers? What about number portability? Are they afraid they’ll have to route a call from a designer phone number that they don’t collect a monthly fee on? What’s the deal here?

Policy BellSouth, FCC, lobbying, Net2Phone, phone numbers, Qwest, telecom, Verizon, VoIP, Vonage

NY Times’ article, “F.C.C. Expected to Extend Satellite Operators’ Reach,” reports:

After months of rumors that a decision would be handed down “any day now,” the Federal Communications Commission is expected to announce this week that satellite voice and data companies can supplement their services with land-based wireless networks. …

Lobbyists on both sides say the F.C.C. has concluded that the satellite operators cannot succeed financially unless they are allowed to use some of their allotted spectrum for land-based networks to extend their voice and data services into urban areas and indoor locations where satellite signals are obstructed. …

Communications analysts and companies involved in the debate also expect the commission to announce that it will reclaim and auction off a portion of the radio spectrum that was reserved for satellite communications but has not been used. Conventional cellular and other wireless companies would be eligible to bid for that spectrum to expand their own land-based networks.

Industry executives predict that the F.C.C. may also discuss its plans to revoke the licenses of satellite companies that have failed to meet certain requirements in the deployment of their networks.

In light of the Supreme Court’s recent NextWave decision, I’m curious to see how this coming and going of spectrum plays out in the court. Patience may reveal “the best-laid plans” result in a somewhat dysfunctional patchwork of efforts.

Policy FCC, NextWave, satellite, spectrum

Two stories of note from the Washington Post this morning. First, “FCC Chief’s Plan Would Ease Line-Sharing Rules“, reveals:

The nation’s big regional telephone companies would be able to provide ultra-fast Internet and video services over new fiber-optic lines without having to lease those lines to competitors, under a draft plan circulated by the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Sources familiar with the proposals by Michael K. Powell said that in “new-build” areas, where copper phone lines aren’t in place and where the phone companies run fiber cables directly to homes or businesses, requirements to share those lines would be eliminated. …

Powell generally agrees with many arguments for deregulation, but, sources said, his plan would phase out many of the rules over time. It would free the regional companies from sharing requirements on their current broadband service — digital subscriber lines — only as they upgrade it by pushing fiber lines closer to homes, which would improve performance.

Details were less clear on Powell’s proposals to adjust the rules governing local phone competition, which is complicated by the fact that public utility commissions play a large role in determining rules and rates in individual states.

Powell has said that wireless and voice-over-Internet technologies already provide a lot of competition, and he has questioned rules that force the regional phone companies to share their systems with competitors.

Then in “Supreme Court Sides With NextWave,” the Supreme Court ruled:

…that the government wrongly seized more than 200 lucrative wireless licenses from a bankrupt telecommunications company. …

Now NextWave can finish building a network or sell the licenses to other companies. It will free up wireless spectrum in dozens of crowded markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.

The court, on an 8-1 vote, rejected arguments that the FCC had a regulatory interest in taking licenses from a company that is reorganizing its finances.

The Hawthorne, N.Y.-based NextWave’s $4.7 billion bid for the frequencies was the highest in 1996. After taking them back, the FCC sold the licenses in 2001 to Verizon Wireless, VoiceStream Wireless and other companies at a second auction for nearly $16 billion.

Lemme see… the Supreme Court has made a string of decisions lately that seem to indicate the FCC is not entirely on the right path. It will not be soon enough that the access issues in the first article are back in the court for Supreme consideration.

Network, Policy competition, DSL, FCC, licenses, line sharing, NextWave, PUC, telecom, wireless

The Daily Texan’s story, “FCC forces pirate radio station off air,” describes the closing of a small, pirate radio station:

“Pirate radio’s amazing,” Smith said. “It’s vital that it exists because FCC regulations are biased against small-scheme radio stations. The very founding purpose of micro radio is to diversify in whatever way possible, and KAOS did that.”

Pirate radio exists more often than not for a communal purpose, Smith said. KAOS radio started out to serve a community of hard-core punk kids. Unfortunately, he said, these communities are not recognized by the FCC as deserving of a communal radio station. And without an FCC license, radio stations are forbidden to broadcast over a large radius.

“For a station that had such a small radius, [KAOS] was really well-known,” Smith said. “That dooms any pirate radio station.”

Jason Kane, regional vice president of programming for Clear Channel Communications, agreed FCC regulations have created an environment where large companies like Clear Channel, which owns six Austin radio stations and more than 900 stations nationwide, can be formed. However, he said he sees the situation as a positive one.

“Consolidation has actually created more diversity because we are called on to give each of our radio stations a unique identity,” Kane said.

mm-hmmm…

FCC regulations and its licensing process are essential to keep airwaves organized, Kane said.

“Fundamentally, any society that is going to organize electronic media in some way needs an arbitrating body,” Kane said. “If the FCC is not vigorous in cutting down pirate radios in today’s environment, we will have anarchy.”

Apparently this is very scary stuff, especially to the (are there only two yet?) largest media conglomerates.

Network, Policy FCC, pirate radio, radio

CommsDesign (for comms design engineers, of which I am not one) has an article, “Intel tips plans for reconfigurable radio architecture,” which describes Intel’s work on a software-based radio:

Intel conceives the architecture as a solution to the problem of highly mobile digital appliances that must move not only from cell to cell, but from protocol to protocol and band to band in order to maintain connectivity. In operation, the proposed Intel device would continually query its environment to determine what services were available. It would then switch on the appropriate antenna and analog front-end combination to connect to the service, and configure out of the processor array an appropriate PHY/MAC layer implementation for that standard. This process would be transparent to the user, except for permission and billing issues.

Uh, folks, that last part is kind of important…

Software defined radio (SDR) is a pretty cool idea. It allows your radio to, say, display the title of the song playing or the name of the person speaking. It allows you to upgrade your radio when new facilities or capabilities become available. The nature of SDR is it’s software and hardware technologies. This FAQ will tell you a little more.

Network hardware, Intel, radio, SDR, software

Perhaps you’ve heard of TIA: the Department of Defense’s Total Information Awareness, a plan to gather all available information, from database everywhere, about every person in the U.S., ostensibly to counter “terrorism through prevention.” Heh. More like “government as a terrorist organization” these days, against their own citizenry.

The USACM, ACM’s public policy group, has written a great letter with an offer to help:

Because of serious security, privacy, economic, and personal risks associated with the development of a vast database surveillance system, we recommend a rigorous, independent review of these aspects of TIA.  Such a review should include an examination of the technical feasibility and practical reality of the entire program.  USACM would be pleased to assist in such an effort.

A good outline of why we should be worried about this Orwellian plan.

Content, Identity, Policy databases, DOD, securit, terrorism, TIA, USACM

After news that the DMCA was being used by Lexmark against inkjet cartridge manufacturers, and a garage door opener company against generic door openers, it was with some amusement that I read the story “Adobe agrees to anti-piracy measure:”

All the parties who are in agreement–including Dell, Microsoft and Apple–pledge to argue against hardware copyright protection schemes as well as against new bills currently before Congress that explicitly give consumers the right to make a limited number of personal copies of software under the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright law. For its part, the RIAA has dropped its pursuit of forcing manufacturers to build copyright protection into hardware.

The terms “pledge to argue” is an understatement. They know that if Congress were to mandate something like copyright enforcement in hardware, Congress would unknowingly be creating a new techno-Medusa, turning all progress into stone.

Content, Policy Adobe, Apple, Congress, Content, control, copyright, Dell, DMCA, fair use, Microsoft

Noted local pundit Dan Gillmor ran a piece a few days ago, Internet content in peril in non-competitive world , in which he correctly points out:

As competition bogs down for high-speed Internet access in the United States, prices are rising. This helps explain why it costs much more for people here to subscribe to cable-modem or digital subscriber line services than it does, for example, next door in Canada.

Stunted competition also may be a harbinger of something even more pernicious, says Yale Braunstein, a professor in the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California-Berkeley. The same companies that are gaining oligopoly power over the transport of data have every incentive to influence the content, too. …

This is why Walt Disney Co. signed a little-noticed letter late last year to the Federal Communications Commission, urging the FCC to insist on equal treatment for all Internet services on these increasingly concentrated pipelines. Disney’s co-signers included Microsoft and several public-interest groups that are normally not on the side of either of those companies.

The cable-TV industry responded to the letter by noting, accurately, that Microsoft was hypocritical to be decrying the kind of anti-competitive tactics for which it had become notorious over the years. Apparently, we should encourage such anti-customer tricks for everyone.

The cable giants have an even greater incentive to rig their systems than SBC does at the moment. They own much of the TV programming that flows on their systems. Comcast, which has been given approval to buy AT&T’s cable arm, has many ownership interests in content.

And who’s controlling the networks?

Content, Network , cable, control, Disney, Microsoft, telecom

Many of us know that Korea (.kr) is the source of a large proportion of spam. It was with some amusement, this morning, that I noticed a lesser number of unwanted emails in my inbox, followed by stories of the SQL worm that affected Microsoft servers worldwide:

• First article pointed out by Adam Peake of Glocom in Japan, Korea’s MIC Issues Emergency Alert Against Computer Hacking:
  

  The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) issued emergency alerts Friday warning domestic personal computer (PC) users to be on guard against being used for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults. The ministry said it was raising the alarm after it received reports international hackers were using Korea as a springboard to launch their electronic attacks on other computers.

  It said that starting from Jan. 5, the Korea Information Security Agency (KISA) has been receiving a large number of reports from U.S. and Australian media companies that their systems were being disrupted by Korean PC infiltrated by DDoS software.

• AP News also ran a story, Virus Overwhelms Global Internet Systems:
  

  Bank of America Corp., one of the nation’s largest banks, said many customers could not withdraw money from its 13,000 ATM machines because of technical problems caused by the attack. A spokeswoman, Lisa Gagnon, said the bank restored service to nearly all ATMs by late Saturday afternoon and that customers’ money and personal information had not been at risk.

  Millions of Internet users in South Korea were stranded when computers at Korea Telecom Freetel and SK Telecom failed. Service was restored but remained slow, officials said. In Japan, NHK television reported heavy data traffic swamped some of the country’s Internet connections, and Finnish phone company TeliaSonera reported some problems. …

  The virus-like attack, which began about 12:30 a.m. EST, sought out vulnerable computers on the Internet to infect using a known flaw in popular database software from Microsoft Corp. called “SQL Server 2000.” The attacking software was scanning for victim computers so randomly and so aggressively, sending out thousands of probes a second, that it saturated many Internet data pipelines.

More info on the problem is available, both at Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-039.asp) and at CERT (http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-04.html). I’d think that any sys admin who chose to run MS servers would be aware of the special, well-documented, and ongoing need for extra care in monitoring the need for and applying patches, but apparently this isn’t so. As Walt Kelly said some 30 years ago, “We have met the enemy… and he is us”

There’s a thread following this on Dave Farber’s Interesting People archive. Of special note are comments by Karl Auerbach (regarding vulnerability of cross-linking communications systems) and Rich Wiggins (Microsoft isn’t mirrored? How shortsighted!).

Content, Network CERT, ddos, KISA, Korea, Microsoft, security, servers, spam, virus