Tech Policy Summit blog

President Signs E-911 Bill Into Law

President Bush signed the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008 yesterday, enacting into law several measures designed to ensure better Enhanced-911 services for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) customers and to work toward a national IP-enabled emergency network.

VON coalition founder Jeff Pulver, who's been a long-time backer of IP technologies for voice and video, celebrated it as "hugely important legislation" in a post on his blog. Below is an excerpt that explains the bill's impact on the VoIP industry and what Pulver believes it means for 911 services going forward:

This is the first major piece of telecommunications legislation signed into law this year -- and it happens to be a bill designed to help advance VoIP.

The bill provides tools that the FCC failed to provide 3 years ago when first adopting rules for VoIP 911. Even without these tools, VoIP providers have made extraordinary efforts and now provide E911 to a greater percentage of subscribers than any other kind of voice service. Its been the fastest and broadest onetime implementation of E-911 in the history of public safety. As a result of these unprecedented effort by VoIP providers, Americans who dial 911 using interconnected VoIP services can now rest assured they can reach help in an emergency. It is a particularly remarkable achievement considering that no underlying network connectivity provider can yet offer VoIP providers the ability to connect to all selective routers nationwide. This bill now gives VoIP providers a chance to expand their base, and VoIP consumers assurances that they can be safe and secure using a dependable VoIP service.

But more importantly, thanks to the work of the VON Coalition, the bill also recognizes that when we put VoIP at the heart of the 911 network itself, we can achieve breakthrough new advancements in emergency service for all Americans -- regardless of the type of service you use. It's no secret that America's 911 network is still providing 911 and E911 today using 1960s-era technology. The bill calls for a new national strategy for upgrading the nation's entire 911 network from 1960s era technology to 21st century IP and VoIP technologies at its core to help make Americans more safe and secure.

You can read more of his post here, and the text of the legislation is available here.

Clearwire 2.0 Renews WiMAX Push

It's official...Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are joining forces to create a new -- and, they hope, improved -- wireless broadband company under the Clearwire brand.

After a rocky partnership that was put on hold last November with the announcement that the two had ended their agreement to develop a nationwide WiMAX network, Sprint and Clearwire are once again on the WiMAX bandwagon together. And they're not alone.

The "new" Clearwire has help in the form of a $3.2 billion investment from Intel, Comcast, Google, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. According to the Associated Press, the deal is expected to close during the fourth quarter with Clearwire founder Craig McCaw serving as chairman and the chief execs of Sprint, Time Warner Cable and Comcast getting board seats. Clearwire's CEO is Benjamin Wolff and Sprint's CTO Barry West will serve as president (Sprint Nextel will have a 51% equity stake in the company). 

AP reports that Clearwire's targeting 120 million to 140 million U.S. customers by the end of 2010.

UPDATE: Google, which contributed $500 million to the new venture and will partner to offer apps and services to Clearwire customers, has high hopes for its investment. In a post on the company blog this morning, Googler Larry Adler explains: "As we've supported open standards for spectrum and wireless handsets, we're especially excited that Clearwire intends to build and maintain a network that will embrace important openness features."

EU Endorses DVB-H as Mobile TV Standard

As expected, the European Commission took the next step in promoting a single standard for mobile television in Europe when it added Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld (DVB-H) to the EU List of Standards yesterday. In picking DVB-H as the mobile TV standard of choice, over competing standards Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) or MediaFLO, European Commissioner Viviane Reding hopes to spur adoption of the technology and create a single market for mobile TV in the EU.

In a statement yesterday, Information Society and Media commissioner Reding said:

"For Mobile TV to take off in Europe, there must first be certainty about the technology. This is why I am glad that with today's decision, taken by the Commission in close coordination with the Member States and the European Parliament, the EU endorse DVB-H as the preferred technology for terrestrial mobile broadcasting."

Survey Says: U.S. Morally Opposed to Nanotech

Even though the U.S. is a global leader in nanotech research and development, a recently released survey by Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that Americans are much more likely than Europeans to oppose nanotechnology on moral grounds.

In fact, the 2007 study of 1,015 U.S. adults found that only 29.5 percent of American respondents agreed that nanontechnology was "morally acceptable", compared with 54.1 of British adults, 62.7 percent of Germans and 72.1 percent of French respondents in similar surveys.

Why the concern over nanotechnologies at a time when the President's FY2009 budget calls for increasing funding for the federal National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) to $1.5 billion?

According to one of the survey researchers, the differences can be attributed to Americans' religious beliefs and a perception "that nanotechnology, biotechnology and stem cell research are lumped together as means to enhance human qualities."

Efforts to change that perception have been underway, and will likely increase since the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, which authorized appropriations for nanotech funding over the last several years, is up for renewal.

DTV Transition's "Mixed Signals"

With a little over one year left until the digital TV transition goes into effect in the U.S., federal agencies and consumer interest groups expressed concerns (again) this week about the plan to prepare the public for the end of analog broadcasting in February 2009.

During Wednesday's hearing of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, ranking member Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) noted that consumers have requested almost 5 million coupons to purchase converter boxes for their existing televisions, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will start mailing those out as early as next week. Rep. Stearns also cited data from the Consumer Electronics Association that indicates consumer awareness of the DTV transition has increased by 80% since 2006.

The same day, consumer watchdog group U.S. PIRG released a report that claimed electronics retailers were providing misleading information to consumers (see this clip from the Media Vault ). The organization conducted a series of "secret shopper" investigations at stores around the country, concluding the following:

81% of sales staff provided inaccurate information about converter boxes

78% of sales staff provided inaccurate information about the coupon program

42% of sales staff provided inaccurate information about the transition date

20% of sales staff tried to up-sell surveyors to digital TVs or upscale converter boxes

In a statement in response to the U.S. PIRG report, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner Jonathan Adelstein referred to sales associates as the "first line of defense" in educating consumers about the switch to DTV and renewed his call for the FCC to create a federal interagency task force to develop benchmarks and a timeline for educating consumers. He quipped, "Communication is the FCC's middle name, but we haven't lived up to it."

For more info on the Subcommittee hearing, check out this video archive. Witnesses included FCC chairman Kevin Martin and NTIA's acting assistant secretary Merideth Baker.

Dueling Press Releases

The rift between the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA) over use of the so-called white spaces was all too apparent yesterday when the organizations issued conflicting accounts of recent FCC prototype testing.

The two groups have been at odds over WIA's desire to deliver wireless broadband via unused portions of television spectrum. NAB has insisted that using the white spaces would interfere with existing services offered by broadcasters, an assertion that WIA has repeatedly refuted.

NAB fired the first shot in this latest battle when it issued a news release stating that a prototype developed by Microsoft had failed FCC testing when the device lost power. The release quoted an NAB exec as saying, "By failing two out of two tests at the FCC, Microsoft and the Wireless Innovation Alliance have demonstrated that unlicensed devices are not ready for prime time."

WIA shot back with its own release that accused the NAB of using "scare tactics" and said, "to be clear, the Microsoft device successfully tested both digital TV signals and wireless microphones." The WIA characterized the power failure as an unrelated issue and stated that it "expects a successful conclusion of the testing process."

You can learn more about the FCC's ongoing testing here.

Comcast Resolves to Promote Open Standard

Hoping to avoid regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Comcast and other cable operators are finally planning to introduce standardized technology that will allow consumers to take advantage of interactive TV services like video-on-demand, without needing a set-top box from one of the cable providers. That's just one of the announcements from this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where over 140,000 industry watchers have gathered.

According to the Associated Press, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will share more details about the initiative in his CES keynote on Tuesday, but the plan is for Comcast to introduce the technology by the end of the year. Competitors Time Warner and Cox Communications are also on track to do the same, with support from Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Intel and Broadcom. Originally called the OpenCable platform, the standard has been rebranded as "tru2way" -- referring to the promise of two-way interactivity.

Showing that "open" is still the rage in 2008, Roberts told the AP, "Our business model has changed completely, from a closed, proprietary model to an open architecture that will work across cable companies." For more tech policy news and info, check out our Tech Policy Central site.

Taking It To The Streets

Earlier this week, Google launched its Street View feature in six more metropolitan areas, including Boston, Dallas and Detroit. The voyeuristic tool allows you to use Google Maps to zoom in on panoramic street-level scenes that have been compiled from photographs. It's one of those technologies that you need to see to appreciate -- check out the Media Vault for a campy Google video that explains how it works.

I recently used it myself to get a peek at an unfamiliar neighborhood we were considering moving into and it did a fairly amazing job of showing whether or not it looked like the type of place I'd consider calling home. But while there's an undeniable cool factor associated with Street View, not everyone is feeling the love.

Since it first launched in May, privacy advocates have expressed concerns that Street View puts individuals' privacy at risk by capturing images of them without their knowledge. There's the ironic example of Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Kevin Bankston getting nabbed smoking a cigarette by Street View in San Francisco (a habit he had not divulged to certain loved ones). Google responded by allowing users to request that photos of themselves be removed.

To read the rest of this post, please visit our Tech Policy Central site.

New Alliance, Same White Spaces

Members of the White Spaces Coalition have joined forces with a number of associations and organizations, including CompTIA, TechNet, Public Knowledge and New America Foundation, to form a new group called the Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA). Together, alliance members will continue the push for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval to utilize unused portions of television spectrum -- aka the white spaces -- to deliver wireless broadband services.

In a press release about the Coalition, New America Foundation VP Michael Calabrese (who will be speaking at Tech Policy Summit in March) called white space devices "the building blocks of a 21st century communications infrastructure."

Read the rest of this post at our new Tech Policy Central site.

Should EU Mandate a Single Mobile TV Standard?

This summer, we wrote about the European Commission's decision to endorse a single standard for the emerging mobile TV market in Europe. The Commission chose Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) as the preferred standard over competing standards Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) or MediaFLO, and it's considering the possibility of mandating DVB-H as the sole option in 2008.

Which has supporters of other standards fighting back, like Dr. Kamil Grajski who heads the FLO Forum consortium. According to Telecommunications Online, Dr. Grajski has warned that EU Commissioner Viviane Reding's strong backing of DVB-H would would harm EU companies that have already invested in FLO technology, and his group is pushing the EU to back a "technology neutral" policy that enables all three standards to co-exist.