Tech Policy Summit blog

Big TPS Thank You

While we're still getting settled in the office after a busy week in Hollywood, we wanted to thank everyone who took part in the 2nd annual Tech Policy Summit at the Renaissance hotel. Our goal has been to bring together a diverse group of experts from government, industry, academia and the nonprofit community who share a common interest in understanding policy's impact on tech innovation (and vice versa), and we're grateful to all of the individuals who embraced that mission and made the 2008 Summit a success.

There is a long list of people and organizations who contributed behind the scenes and on stage, but there are a handful of key players who deserve special recognition. First and foremost, BusinessWeek technology columnist Steve Wildstrom who volunteered to emcee this year's Summit in addition to hosting several interviews and roundtables. Steve did double duty, and did it well, and we can't thank him enough for his assistance.

We also want to thank Cathy Rought of FD Dittus Communications and the other members of our on-site team who made sure everything went smoothly: Terry, John, David, Wendy, Loren and Lori. Anyone who's ever been involved in a startup knows that, despite your best efforts to do it all yourself, you're only as successful as the people on your team...and we are very fortunate to have had such an incredible group of people involved in this year's Summit.

Thank you again,
Marc and Natalie

Viviane Reding's Video from Tech Policy Summit

We opened the second day of Tech Policy Summit '08 with a special videotaped message by Viviane Reding, the European Union's Commissioner for Information Society and Media. In her remarks for Summit participants, Commissioner Reding discussed how the EU is dealing with the challenges of convergence in areas like telecom reform and content distribution.

In case you missed this year's Summit, the full video is available now in Who's Who.

Staying In Touch After The Summit

We've begun the process of preparing podcasts of all of the sessions from last week's Tech Policy Summit conference. Our goal is to have the entire collection in the Media Vault next week. Registered attendees will be notified via email once podcasts are online, and anyone can download and listen to them for free.

We'll also be uploading several hundred images of the conference that will be available for sharing under a Creative Commons license.

In addition, there's a private LinkedIn group that is open to participants of Tech Policy Summit. If you registered for the 2007 or 2008 Summits and did not yet receive an email invitation, you can request one at LinkedIn.com or contact us directly. And those who like to tweet can keep tabs on TPS by following us at Twitter. Just search for "TechPolicy."

From the Summit - News.com Q&A with Comcast's Joe Waz

The theme for this year's Tech Policy Summit is Markets in Transition: Collaborating to Drive Technology Innovation and Adoption, and so it's a welcome coincidence that Comcast and BitTorrent just announced plans to collaborate in an effort to resolve the dispute over Comcast's network mangement practices. Though their partnership doesn't mean the larger issue has been resolved yet, it's a step forward from where things have been.

The news comes as both companies are scheduled to speak at today's Summit. Comcast public policy exec Joe Waz and BitTorrent co-founder and president Ashwin Navin are on the agenda today, speaking in separate sessions. News.com's Declan McCullagh, who's interviewing Mr. Navin on stage this afternoon, caught up with Mr. Waz at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel where the Summit is being held for a Q&A.

Here's an excerpt (the full version is at News.com):

Q: What brought on this detente?
Waz: We and BitTorrent, we and a lot of players in the application and technology space, have been talking for years about issues of mutual interest. I think the thing that prompted this latest conversation and the announcement is that since last fall, when the Internet community expressed concerns about the form of network management that we had selected, we wanted to find out why. We did a ton of outreach: "Explain to us what the concerns were, help us to address the fact that...P2P traffic can account for such a large percentage of traffic." We learned a lot, frankly. We learned that there are a large number of points of view out there.

We also took the approach that making networks and applications work well together is a two-way street. What's terrific about this announcement is that it says a leading network provider and a leading application provider are stepping up and finding ways (to make this work).

Q: Your announcement says you're working on "a capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic." What does that mean, exactly?
Waz: The method we had chosen to try to be minimally intrusive in our network management was, as we had described it to the FCC, (a focus on) P2P apps that accounted for the bulk of bandwidth consumption.

Latest Coverage of Tech Policy Summit '08

Day two of Tech Policy Summit is well underway, with Summit emcee Steve Wildstrom of BusinessWeek interviewing Verizon EVP and CTO Richard Lynch on stage now.

We kicked off the morning with a special video message from EU commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding, followed by a keynote by FCC commissioner Robert McDowell and a roundtable on wireless innovation hosted by CPUC commissioner Rachelle Chong (who knows how to keep it interesting even at 9:00am). Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal also interviewed craigslist founder Craig Newmark about the future of the Internet.

A podcast of all of this year's sessions will be posted on in the Media Vault starting next week.

We've also started to post photos from yesterday on Flickr. We have HUNDREDS yet to add, so keep checking back as the week goes on. You can also read more about the Summit at the links below -- thanks to all of the journalists and bloggers who've been covering the Summit. If you have a post you'd like us to point to, just let us know.

• Anne Broache of CNET's News.com spoke to speaker Robert Hoffman of Oracle and Compete America about H-1B visas
• Nate Anderson of Ars Technica, one of the Summit's media sponsors, on yesterday's keynote by Jon Dudas, Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
• Roy Mark of eWeek and Sylvie Barak of The Inquirer wrote about the roundtable on "The Making of a Tech President.
• Matt Kapko of RCR Wireless News on the 1:1 interview with Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs
• There are several posts by Andrew Noyes at CongressDaily's Tech Daily Dose and by Andrew Feinberg at Capitol Valley.
• If you're a subscriber of Washington Internet Daily or CongressDaily, they're also reporting on the Summit.
• Paul Sweeting of ContentAgenda.com on Congressman Howard Berman's fireside chat and the upcoming interview with BitTorrent president Ashwin Navin later this afternoon.

Coverage of Tech Policy Summit '08, Day 1

We're still getting caught up on our reading, but below are a few links about this year's Tech Policy Summit in Hollywood.

• Paul Hartsock of TechNewsWorld wrote this piece called "The Techies Meet the Wonks."
• When he wasn't on stage interviewing Congressman Howard Berman, CongressDaily's Andrew Noyes wrote about several of the Summit sessions on TechDaily Dose and CongressDaily (sub required).
• Wired.com writer Sarah Lai Stirland, who hosted this afternoon's roundtable on "The Making of a Tech President," posted this article about Steve Wildstrom's interview with Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs.
• And Andrew Feinberg at Capitol Valley continues to outpace everyone with his live coverage, which includes photos.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow. The Summit resumes bright and early at 8:00am PDT with a keynote by FCC commissioner Robert McDowell.

Tech Policy Summit '08 Opens

It's always a bit surreal when a project you've been working on for many months "goes live," and that's certainly the case with this morning's opening of the 2nd annual Tech Policy Summit. We're at the Renaissance Hollywood hotel through Friday and the first roundtable of the Summit is underway now.

The topic for the opening session is Accelerating Innovation: How Enhanced Collaboration and Smart Policy Fuel Economic Growth. Roger Cochetti, who is the group director of U.S. Public Policy for the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is moderating and he's joined on stage by Dr. Prith Banerjee of HP, Lesa Mitchell of the Kauffman Foundation, Tom Kalil of UC Berkeley and former FTC commissioner Mozelle Thompson.

We'll be posting photos and podcasts of this and other Tech Policy Summit sessions on TechPolicyCentral.com in early April -- if not sooner. We will also point to some of the media/blog coverage by the press attending the Summit.

To start, check out the quickest live blogging in town at Capitol Valley. They've officially beat us to the punch by posting the first post and photo of the conference. Which is why we love bloggers.

Next up on stage is a one-on-one interview with BusinessWeek's Steve Wildstrom and Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO of Qualcomm.

The Future of Municipal Broadband

An article in Saturday's New York Times recounts the recent setbacks facing U.S. communities that once had high hopes that municipal Wi-Fi projects would provide free or low-cost Internet access to residents and businesses.

The most oft-cited example has been Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love jumped on the Wi-Fi bandwagon early, back in 2005, charting a course that convinced local officials in cities like Chicago and San Francisco to launch their own plans for muni Wi-Fi. That was then.

According to the NYTimes, "the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches." Sascha Meinrath, research director for New America Foundation's Wireless Future program, adds, "the entire for-profit model is the reason for the collapse in all these projects."

So what's next?

That's the topic that will be explored at one of Tech Policy Summit's breakout sessions this Wednesday, March 26th. Hosted by Dr. Simon Wilkie of USC's Center for Communication Law and Policy, the discussion about the future of wide-area public broadband will feature USC professor Jonathan Taplin, San Francisco's chief information officer Chris Vein, One Economy Corporation's EVP of external affairs Alec Ross and Sascha Meinrath of New America Foundation.

Registration for the 2008 Summit is now closed, but you can check back here for updates throughout the week.

Click here to read the full NYTimes article.

U.K. Court, Patent Office at Odds Over Software Patent

A recent court ruling in Britain may end up changing the way software patents are granted in the country.

While the United States allows patents on software and business methods, a practice that some would like to see abolished, Europe has stricter guidelines that are intended to ensure that patents are only issued on computer code in rare cases.

According to Computerworld, the British Court of Appeals has ordered the U.K. Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to approve a software patent application by London-based Symbian. The IPO had previously rejected the application and is appealing the court's ruling in hopes of clarifying how the guidelines governing software patents should be interpreted.

The topic of patent modernization here in the United States will be addressed at next week's Tech Policy Summit where Jon Dudas, Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will be a keynote speaker.

FCC Nets $19.592 Billion in 38 Days

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s 700 MHz spectrum auction, which ended yesterday, raised an impressive $19.592 billion, exceeding expectations by several billion dollars. The federal government will use the funds to support public safety and digital TV transition initiatives.

Of course, what everyone wants to know now is who placed the winning bids, especially on the C-Block license that included open access requirements. Those answers are expected soon -- within 10 days. First, the Commissioners need to officially close the auction.

As RCR Wireless News reports, the one "black eye" for the auction was the failure of the D-Block license that was set aside for a national public safety network. After startup Frontline Wireless withdrew from the auction because it couldn't raise the necessary funds, bidding on the D-Block failed to materialize to reach the $1.3 billion reserve price.

In a statement yesterday, FCC chairman Martin said that the Commission "remains committed" to solving public safety challenges and that it's evaluating its options for the spectrum. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, also announced plans to hold a hearing about the auction and what's next for the D Block spectrum.

According to RCR Wireless News, Congressman Markey said, "In developing a plan for a re-auction of the D-block, the FCC should also take into account the auction results to gauge the level of new competition achieved. Policymakers should also analyze whether a need for a high reserve price continues to exist."

FCC commissioner Robert McDowell will be speaking at the 2nd annual Tech Policy Summit in Southern California next week.