Monday, May 10, 2010

Wi-Fi: WiGig: 60GHz band

wired.com | New Frequency Set to Turbocharge Wi-Fi

Wired News - Priya Ganapati - 10 May 2010
Wi-Fi is about to lay claim to a new frequency band that could result in speeds at least 10 times faster than what's currently available. ...

Wi-Fi is about to lay claim to a new frequency band that could result in speeds at least 10 times faster than what’s currently available.

An agreement between the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance will let the Wi-Fi Alliance carve out specs and standards to support Wi-Fi operation in the 60-GHz frequency band in a bid to make Wi-Fi faster. By contrast, Wi-Fi today operates in the 2.4-GHz and 5- GHz bands.

“Today’s Wi-Fi speeds are measured in the low hundreds of megabits per second,” says Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.”The 60-GHz band allows for significant boost in performance, so we are talking about speeds in the gigabits per second range.”

Specifically, the move to 60 GHz could allow for speeds in the range of 1 gigabits per second to 6 gbps, in contrast to today’s theoretical maximum of 150 Mbps for 802.11n.

“Wi-Fi in 60 GHz band could mean some compelling apps, such as those connecting your Blu-ray player to your TV or sharing uncompressed video in real time without any degradation,” says Figueroa.

With the proliferation of multimedia such as photos, home video and HD movies, consumers are looking for faster ways to transfer data that can also cut through the cable clutter. Users who are hooked on Lost through Hulu or can’t resist watching Lady Antebellum videos on YouTube currently have to hook up their computers to a TV through an HDMI cable.

Wi-Fi in the 60-GHz band could be the first step toward helping consumers go truly wireless, says Xavier Ortiz, an analyst at ABI Research. The drawback is that the higher frequency waves have much shorter range and won’t go through walls well.

“The 60 GHz is like a beam of light — you have to have line of sight — but you can get multi-gigabit point-to point networking speeds with it,” he says.

The agreement between the Wi-Fi alliance and the Wi-Gig standard also helps two different standards to come together. Earlier, the Wi-Gig alliance, which has been advocating the 60-GHz band, had to work independently to get chip makers and gadgets manufacturers to get on board with its technology.

“Now we are going to rally the industry around a compelling subset of features and go through a process of testing compatibility and interoperability,” says Figueroa.

Figueroa estimates routers and other gadgets that have dual-band or tri-band capability, that is the ability to switch between 2.4 Ghz or 5 GHz and the 60-GHz band, will be available in about two years.

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iPad&WiFi&3G

expertreviews.co.uk | O2 announces UK price plans for iPad WiFi and 3G

10 May 2010

Following the announcement of UK iPad pricing on Friday, O2 has now released details of its dedicated data tariffs for the iPad with WiFi + 3G.

All iPad data tariffs will be available without a long contract and include free unlimited access to BT Openzone and The Cloud Wi-Fi hotspots. The cheapest option is 500MB Pay & Go which costs £2 per day. However, if you know you'll need more than the occasional day of 3G access, you're better off opting for the 1GB plan which costs £10 per month, or the 3GB plan for £15 per month. None of these amounts roll over, so if you don't use your allowance, it disappears. Apple and O2 have devised a way to easily activate, manage and monitor your account on your iPad. This means you'll be notified as you approach your data limit with a direct link to iPad settings to check data usage, top up your account and upgrade or cancel your tariff. "We are truly excited to provide service for iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G," said Sally Cowdry, O2's Marketing Director. "We've worked closely with Apple to make sure customers get an excellent experience when using their iPad Wi-Fi + 3G on O2. Not only will it be quick and easy to buy value for money data access from the device, but customers will also benefit from our overall, award-winning service wrap which includes great network and great customer service and the added benefit of access to thousands of public Wi-Fi hotspots." O2 micro sim packs for iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G will be available through O2 retail stores and O2's website.

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Wi-Fi celebrates silver jubilee

lirneasia.net | Wi-Fi celebrates silver jubilee

Written by Abu Saeed Khan on May 5, 2010

Wi-Fi marks 25 years this month since the FCC decision of 1985 that allowed using spread-spectrum technologies in unlicensed spectrum and sparked a huge dose of innovation in the process. Today if you offer even million dollars for a laptop without Wi-Fi, you will not get it. It has become embedded in the DNA of all portable computers. As a result we can bypass phone networks and make free calls using Skype, Googletalk etc. Only dumb authorities don’t provide Wi-Fi in the airports. Wi-Fi is also increasingly getting implanted in mobile phones. Further bypassing of networks will proliferate. Innovation disrupts anything orthodox. Telecom TV reports.

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Twenty-Five Years of Wi-Fi

cellular-news.com | 10 May 2010 | Twenty-Five Years of Wi-Fi

­On May 24, 2010 it will be exactly 25 years since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the regulator of the radio spectrum for public use in the USA, released the decision to permit unlicensed access to the radio spectrum for communications, provided the devices use "Spread Spectrum".

That paved the way for the IEEE 802.11 committee to start developing "Wi-Fi" - an interoperability standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) - which encouraged regulators in other countries to adopt similar rules. Canada and the European countries agreed first, then dozens more governments allowed license-free use of the radio spectrum by WLANs.

"Prior to the FCC decision, spectrum was released only in response to carefully documented 'requirements'. This process was much slower than the rate of innovation in the IT community". said Michael Marcus, the person behind the FCC decision. "The way industry and end-users embraced this new approach to spectrum regulation and the creativity it unleashed, surpassed our wildest dreams", said Vic Hayes, the co-establisher and 10 year leader of the IEEE 802.11 working group, nicknamed "Father of Wi-Fi".

Today Wi-Fi is built into all lap-top computers and it is becoming a "must have" feature in smart phones and consumer electronics generally. Internet access through Wi-Fi is now common at home, in offices, in hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, at airports, railway stations, on university campuses and even in airplanes and trains. Many communities use Wi-Fi for providing broadband internet access in areas where operators cannot or will not provide service. Wi-Fi is a major driver of ubiquitous connectivity. In 2008, the readers of Stuff magazine voted it the best technical innovation of the last decade.

Other license-exempt devices enabled by the FCC's decision are Bluetooth and Zigbee. Bluetooth is a short range wireless standard to connect mobile phones to appliances such as headsets and computers, and Zigbee is a low power connectivity solution for wireless sensors, climate control systems, etc.

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Thursday, May 06, 2010

Wi-Fi: 25 Years

[As I spent a large part of the years 1999-2008 engaged in wireless & Net politics, here's a quick assemblage of links, notes & videos for further reflection. Whilst the technology and regulatory "how" is fascinating, my interest has been in pushing the social "why". | John Wilson, May 2010]


[1] 25 years of Wi-Fi: Empowering the user


May 2010 marks the 25 th anniversary of the American communications regulator the FCC's ruling to allow no-licence access to the radio spectrum for spread-spectrum radio devices for civil and commercial use.

Far from a notable public event at the time, this new regulatory arrangement opened the door for a succession of wireless technology innovations of global impact in subsequent decades: from mobile telecoms (CDMA & 3G cellular systems), to Wi-Fi wireless Internet access (enabling WLANs wireless local area networks) and Bluetooth short range connectivity between wireless devices (creating PANs personal area networks).

Wi-Fi has helped re-shape our communications landscape ecology, and in particular to empower the end-user. The fact that it blends into the background of our everyday lives, is the sign of its success.



[2] Links


Some links to highlight the origins of Wi-Fi, regulatory issues, and current agendas (2010)



[3] The origins of Wi-Fi: Beyond technologism


Regulation, technology and market development

Beyond the prevalent technologistic view in which new technologies are seen to emerge as the inevitable result of pure and rational scientific discovery to simply sweep society before them, there lies a largely invisible human history which is characterised more as a contested process of technology, regulatory, commercial, political and social options and conflicts. And far from being of second order importance, government regulation performs a structural role to enable the emergence of new technologies.

Like the Internet itself the pre-history of Wi-Fi technology and its regulatory enabler lies in the invisible universe of military technologies, first and foremost, alongside the academic research community and government regulatory agencies. There could be no guaranteed path for technology or policy success in such a complex world of interlocking, and often mutually hostile, institutions and actors.

The history of the regulatory opening of the Pandoras Box of unlicensed access to the radio spectrum through spread-spectrum radio technologies, which opened the way for Wi-Fi some fifteen years later, was framed by the 2008 conference The Genesis Of Unlicensed Wireless Policy: How Spread Spectrum Devices Won Access to License-Exempt Bandwidth ( George Mason University School of Law, Arlington, Virginia, USA). The conference brought together key actors in the invisible technology and regulatory drama of spread spectrum digital radio and unlicensed spectrum access. Two contributions are of especial note: the presentation by Michael Marcus (see also Marcus, Early Civil Spread Spectrum History), who drove the FCC rule making to establish licence-exempt access for spread spectrum radio devices (and see 2006 video: Michael Marcus, Spectrum Issues: "classical spectrum management policy is a balance between the haves and have nots") ; and the presentation by Vic Hayes - dubbed "the father of Wi-Fi", who was a co-founder and 10 years Chair of the IEEE 802.11 working group which steered the technical standards for wireless networking that have been branded as Wi-Fi.


[4] The Wi-Fi wireless revolution: The benefits of unlicensed spectrum access

From the year 2000 the availability of mass market Wi-Fi wireless devices - based on the new IEEE 802.11b global technical standard for wireless networking - unleashed the wireless Internet revolution that has brought us ever closer to the ideals of ubiquitous communications and end-user empowerment. The everyday utility of Wi-Fi is highlighted by its being voted the best technological innovation of the decade in one poll in 2008.

The wireless communications revolution has been unprecedented in its rapid evolution as a mass communications medium. The success of technology and market developments in both mobile cellular and Wi-Fi wireless Internet wireless communications has highlighted the efficacy of both licensed and unlicensed approaches to spectrum access, leading to consensus for a mixed approach to spectrum management policy.

Whilst the success of the spectrum licensing and auctions approach has been proven for the initial phase of mobile cellular communications (- although the year 2000 3G auctions scenario proved problematic -) which opened up a whole new commercial market space over the period ca. 1995 - 2000, there has been a complementary emphasis upon the public interest value of the unlicensed approach to Wi-Fi wireless Internet access to engage the digital divide agenda in "remote and rural areas" (where network economics can invariably lead to conditions of "market failure") and developing countries.

In today's world of digital convergence moreover we arrive at the smart phone, bringing together into a single device both Wi-Fi and mobile cellular (see X and X; and X). And indeed Wi-Fi is set to colonize the whole field of consumer electronics, as the world of must-have gadgets now comes with built-in wireless access.

Mobile - With rapid and spectacular success mobile cellular has become an everyday utility, overtaking fixed line telephony use in mature markets (see for eg the USA). Mobile cellular has been the sole preserve of the big industry players, as spectrum licenses are auctioned to the highest bidder.

Wi-Fi - By contrast the low barrier to entry through no-licence spectrum access of Wi-Fi wireless Internet access has led to forms of innovation beyond the traditional telecoms company and its mobileco variant, contributing to the revolution at the edge of the network that empowers the end-user, new business opportunities and local communities.

Digital Divide - In developing countries and emerging markets, new wireless Internet access technologies - both licensed and unlicensed - have the potential for use as a leap-frog technology by-passing the need for traditional fixed line telephony. A 2004 OECD report affirmed the rapid spread of commercial-off-the-shelf Wi-Fi technology and urged spectrum reform to enable licence-exempt access in order to address the digital divide in developing countries: "The rapid adoption of Wi-Fi has pushed prices down and allowed entrepreneurs in developing economies to use off-the-shelf equipment to quickly roll out wireless networks. These new wireless networks usually operate in license-exempt spectrum bands. Policy makers can help spur innovation in these wireless networks by making certain frequency bands license-exempt..." ( Regulatory Reform as a Tool for Bridging the Digital Divide ). See also for example Building Digital Bridges with Emerging Technologies (ITU, 2004), especially the introduction and conclusion; and Isabel Neto, Bjorn Wellenius, Managing the radio spectrum: Framework for reform in developing countries (Policy Research Working Paper4549 | The World Bank, Global Information and Communication Technologies Department, Policy Division | March 2008) (See full view in Google Books here; download free pdf from worldbank.org)


Spectrum policy reform: Unlicensed access

By 2004 the international trend in spectrum reform was clear, that the unlicensed approach to spectrum management policy was an efficient driver of technological innovation and market developments beyond the traditional, default policy tool of licensing.

"More and more policy-makers are questioning the utility of licensing and demanding that licences be adapted to achieve policy goals without hindering market development and technological advancement", stated a 2004 report by the International Telecommunication Union, " The allocation of spectrum for licence-exempt use is increasingly viewed as a catalyst for the development of more efficient and cost effective wireless technologies. By late 2004, 55 countries had allocated spectrum for unlicensed use..." (Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2004-5: Licensing in an Era of Convergence, ITU, 2004).

Hence some 20 years after the innovative 1985 FCC ruling to enable unlicensed access to the radio spectrum for spread-spectrum wireless devices for communications use, the rapid global success of Wi-Fi over the period 2000-04 had led to international consensus on the efficacy of the unlicensed spectrum approach. Hence the passage of the unlicensed spectrum access approach "from pariah to paradigm" (see Carter, Unlicensed to Kill, 2009), to become a normative spectrum management policy tool promoting technological innovation, market developments, and social and economic benefits.


[5] A reflection on Wi-Fi

[ The following reflections are by way of personal shorthand for engagement with the wireless & digital divide agendas. Also in [6] below I have managed to archive some Open Spectrum videos - mostly from events that I have organised - showcasing presentations by leading technologists and Open Spectrum advocates. Thanks to the generosity of James, San & dicktonyboy for making the videos possible! ]


Ubiquitous communications, the digital divide, and the end-user

Wi-Fi has helped re-shape our communications landscape ecology, and in particular to empower the end-user. The fact that it blends into the background of our everyday lives, is the sign of its success.

1

Wi-Fi has made a major contribution to making ubiquitous communications a reality:
  • In 1985 the FCC ruling allowed no-licence access to the radio spectrum for spread-spectrum radio devices for civil and commercial use in the so-called ISM bands ( - 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands) previously earmarked for Industrial, Scientific and Medical use and with no guarantees against interference. Following the formation of industry body the Wi-Fi Alliance (WECA) in 1999, the new "Wi-Fi" wireless Internet access technology (in the first instance, through the IEEE 802.11b standard which appeared on the market in early 2000) experienced phenomenal growth as a mass communications medium once regulatory clearance and global standards allowed end-user devices to be taken to market.
  • In the process the myths of spectrum intereference and of the "tragedy of the commons" were belied by mass adoption, and the fact that the technology was fitter for purpose than anyone had really anticipated.
  • Nowadays Wi-Fi capability is simply assumed as a given for any personal lap-top computer (and now the smart phone); as Wi-Fi is embedded in any new lap-top at effectively zero cost to the end user.

2

Beyond its initial intention as a means of short-range communications within buildings, Wi-Fi has even helped re-shape our wider social spaces. Wi-Fi was helped to empower whole communities that found themselves on the wrong side of the "digital divide":
  • Wi-Fi was promoted as a community "first mile" (as opposed to what the telco's call the "last mile" of the network) broadband solution in "remote and rural areas", where there was market failure and the telcos claimed that broadband Internet provision was uneconomic.
  • Wireless ISP's and community wireless networks thrived in rural regions that were written-off by the telcos.
  • And the same pattern of telco neglect saw the emergence of municipally supported wireless Internet networks.

3

Wi-Fi has helped to drive the revolution at the edge of the network, that serves the needs and unleashes the potential of the user:
  • Above all Wi-Fi has helped to empower the end-user through access to the Internet and it's new tools for personal communications, creative expression, productivity & wealth creation.
  • This communications revolution is displacing the traditional telco-centric model of artificial scarcity and pay-per-use,
  • towards a new communications ecology of abundance in which the Internet is evolving towards a free and open access medium, through which new commercial value-added services are accessed.


[6] Video showcase

Open Spectrum & community wireless networks

The following Open Spectrum videos showcase a number of presentations by leading technologists and Open Spectrum advocates, exploring issues of wireless technology, regulation and history, and the prospects of an open future for spectrum.


May 2006 | Michael Marcus | Spectrum Issues


Michael Marcus, former Chief Technologist at the FCC, presentation to The Wireless Event (Olympia, London).

"Some basic laws of spectrum economics, based on my twenty years of experience at the FCC. | Thus classical spectrum management policy is a balance between the haves and have nots. The haves generally control the national regulatory agencies, the Ofcoms of the world. And the have nots don't. And what you see are battles between the haves and have nots. And nobody seems to care about GDP. | (...) Nobody needs spectrum. It's a lie to say "I need spectrum". People need communications capacity, which is a function of both spectrum and technology"


May 2006 | Peter Cochrane | Seamless Freedom: The Wireless Revolution

Former BT Chief Technologist Peter Cochrane's keynote presentation to The Wireless Event (Olympia, London).

"The need for regulation goes from 100% regulated and controlled - otherwise you are going to run into all kinds of interference problems- to an era where 'heh! has the regulator got a job any more?' "



Jan 2004 | Dewayne Hendricks | Towards Open Spectrum: Locating Wireless Technology, Regulation and History

Leading US open spectrum advocate Dewayne Hendricks' keynote presentation to the ABC2 Conference Revolution at the Edge: Broadband Networks and Innovation (Cisco, EMEA Headquarters, Middlesex, England).

"We are undergoing a paradigm shift from the property regimen to the new commons world and beyond (...) in which we may turn the regulatory authority over to the device itself"


May 2002 | Connecting Keokuk | Wireless Broadband Case Study

A video case study of a succesful wireless ISP in rural Iowa, USA. Interlink LC's community approach to broadband Internet provision highlights the use of licence-exempt 802.11 wireless technology as a first mile broadband solution for remote and rural areas.

"If you aint got broadband, then you're just outta luck" (The architect).


March 2001 | Dave Hughes | A wireless vision for Wales

A video documenting John Wilson's March 2001 visit to American grassroots telecoms activist and no-licence wireless pioneer Dave Hughes, Colorado, USA.

Dave Hughes' wireless vision for Wales has a universal currency in its advocacy of no-licence wireless technologies as a "first mile" broadband solution for remote and rural regions, with reference to the community wireless networks model.



Notes

The March 2001 video of Dave Hughes' advocacy of no-licence wireless as a first mile broadband solution for community wireless networks in remote and rural areas predates the Wi-Fi explosion:
  • The March 2001 video of Dave Hughes' advocacy of no-licence wireless - and the related video Connecting Keokuk - was used as a lobbying tool to influence government and regulatory policy in the UK: arguing from the regulatory precedent of the USA for the opening up to no-licence (- or "license exempt", in UK discourse) access of the 2.4 GHz band, and subsequently the 5.8 GHz band (- eventually resolved as "light-licensing" in UK discourse) which was designated in explicit public interest terms in the USA as the UNII band - the Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure band (: see here and here). These two videos were also used to promote grassroots community wireless networking in Wales and across the UK.
  • Dave Hughes was also involved in locating the Connecting Keokuk case study, as a means of engaging the wireless policy debate with a successful demonstration project for a community wireless network (which in the case of Interlink's Keokuk network was based upon a public and private partnerships approach to solve the local and regional broadband deficit)
  • The March 2001 video of Dave Hughes' advocacy of no-licence wireless was noted in Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (2002), which has a full chapter covering the wireless activism of Dave Hughes (and Dewayne Hendricks): seeChapter 6, Wireless Quilts, Tonga, Mongolia, the Rez and Wales: The New Electronic Frontiers, pp 144-152 (read chapter overview here). See the Smart Mobs website for ongoing discussion.

.

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Friday, January 01, 2010

2010 Enigma of Capital

"The current crisis originated in the steps taken to resolve the crisis of the1970s."


Comment


Transforming Capitalism: Back to the 70s


David Harvey's forthcoming book The Enigma of Capital (April 2010) locates the 1970s as the moment of shift from the post-45 social democratic consensus into the Neo Liberal world of more flexible forms of capital accumulation and exploitation.

Heading the list of (capitalist) interventions (transforming economy, politics, society) are an attack on organised labour and a displacement of "the previous stage of (nation-state) monopoly capitalism".

Harvey's analysis of this latest phase of the constantly revolutionizing dynamics of Capitalism concludes: "The system that has been created amounts to a veritable form of communism for the capitalist class."

Harvey's utopian project as a prominent public intellectual is to engage the agenda for "another world is possible": "Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition".



Excerpt


  • "The system that has been created amounts to a veritable form of communism for the capitalist class"


"The historical geography of capitalist development is at a key inflexion point in which the geographical configurations of power are rapidly shifting at the very moment when the temporal dynamic is facing very serious constraints. Three-percent compound annual growth (generally considered the minimum satisfactory growth rate for a healthy capitalist economy) is becoming less and less feasible to sustain without resort to all manner of fictions (such as those that have characterized asset markets and financial affairs over the last two decades). There are good reasons to believe that there is no alternative to a new global order of governance that will eventually have to manage the transition to a zero growth economy. If that is to be done in an equitable way, then there is no alternative to socialism or communism. Since the late 1990s, the World Social Forum became the center for articulating the theme "another world is possible." It must now take up the task of defining how another socialism or communism is possible and how the transition to these alternatives is to be accomplished. The current crisis offers a window of opportunity to reflect on what might be involved.

The current crisis originated in the steps taken to resolve the crisis of the1970s. These steps included:

(a) The successful assault upon organized labor and its political institutions while mobilizing global labor surpluses, instituting labor-saving technological changes, and heightening competition. The result has been global wage repressions (a declining share of wages in total GDP almost everywhere) and the creation of an even vaster disposable labor reserve living under marginal conditions.

(b) Undermining previous structures of monopoly power and displacing the previous stage of (nation-state) monopoly capitalism by opening up capitalism to far fiercer international competition. Intensifying global competition translated into lower non-financial corporate profits. Uneven geographical development and inter-territorial competition became key features in capitalist development, opening the way towards the beginnings of a hegemonic shift of power particularly but not exclusively towards East Asia.

(c) Utilizing and empowering the most fluid and highly mobile form of capital -- money capital -- to reallocate capital resources globally (eventually through electronic markets) thus sparking deindustrialization in traditional core regions and new forms of (ultra-oppressive) industrialization and natural resource and agricultural raw material extractions in emergent markets. The corollary was to enhance the profitability of financial corporations and to find new ways to globalize and supposedly absorb risks through the creation of fictitious capital markets.

(d) At the other end of the social scale, this meant heightened reliance on "accumulation by dispossession" as a means to augment capitalist class power. The new rounds of primitive accumulation against indigenous and peasant populations were augmented by asset losses of the lower classes in the core economies (as witnessed by the sub-prime housing market in the US which foisted a huge asset loss particularly upon African American populations).

(e) The augmentation of otherwise sagging effective demand by pushing the debt economy (governmental, corporate, and household) to its limits (particularly in the USA and the UK but also in many other countries from Latvia to Dubai).

(f) Compensating for anemic rates of return in production by the construction of a whole series of asset market bubbles, all of which had a Ponzi character, culminating in the property bubble that burst in 2007-8. These asset bubbles drew upon finance capital and were facilitated by extensive financial innovations such as derivatives and collateralized debt obligations.

The political forces that coalesced and mobilized behind these transitions had a distinctive class character and clothed themselves in the vestments of a distinctive ideology called neoliberal. The ideology rested upon the idea that free markets, free trade, personal initiative, and entrepreneurialism were the best guarantors of individual liberty and freedom and that the "nanny state" should be dismantled for the benefit of all. But the practice entailed that the state must stand behind the integrity of financial institutions, thus introducing (beginning with the Mexican and developing countries debt crisis of 1982) "moral hazard" big time into the financial system. The state (local and national) also became increasingly committed to providing a "good business climate" to attract investments in a highly competitive environment. The interests of the people were secondary to the interests of capital, and in the event of a conflict between them, the interests of the people had to be sacrificed (as became standard practice in IMF structural adjustments programs from the early 1980s onwards). The system that has been created amounts to a veritable form of communism for the capitalist class.

These conditions varied considerably, of course, depending upon what part of the world one inhabited, the class relations prevailing there, the political and cultural traditions, and how the balance of political-economic power was shifting." (...)


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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Broadband: FCC: Civil Right

Monday, December 14, 2009 Broadband Touted As 'Civil Right'

By Sara Jerome

Broadband advocates, civil rights activists, and FCC officials described high-speed Internet service as a "civil right" during an FCC public hearing Monday night in Memphis focused on the digital divide. "Universal access to broadband needs to be seen as a civil right...[even though] not many people have talked about it that way," Commissioner Michael Copps said. The event was one in a series as the FCC works to craft a national broadband plan by February.

Panelists described a digital gap in which rural, minority, and low-income Americans subscribe to broadband at lower rates than the general population. Non-users face educational challenges, difficulty applying for jobs, and limited access to government services in a world where many of these functions have moved online, panelists said.

"Broadband is becoming a basic necessity," Benjamin Hooks, the first black FCC commissioner and a former NAACP executive director, said. Panelists noted that affordability and a lack of education about broadband's benefits are key barriers to universal adoption. Increased access at community centers could serve as a "first step" in informing these groups about the need to adopt broadband, Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association Vice President Dianne Polly said. (...)

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Maps

Microsoft Releases New Map App and Bing Features By Ryan Singel December 2, 2009
(...)

More impressively, Microsoft also launched a new beta mapping site Wednesday powered by its Adobe-Flash-like Silverlight technology, rather than HTML and JavaScript.

It gracefully renders cities in 3-D views using 45-degree aerial photos, paired with traditional satellite and street-based photography.

The Silverlight tech makes moving through the city very smooth, losing the jarring changes that are common as you move around various street views in products like Google Maps.

Users can then drop into photosynths — geo-located collections of photos created by users — by dropping their little map onto geo markers, say for example the large collection of photos documenting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Additionally, users can quickly see what places are nearby other places on the map. For instance, you could see what restaurants are near the MOMA, see which ones are best-rated on the web, and then zoom in to see the restaurant.

Finally, the new Silverlight-powered mapping site adds “apps” that let people check out newspaper headlines around the world, see roadside attractions across the United States and map local blog posts onto a city. Another app uses Twitter’s new geo-location features to see Twitter posts as bubbles on the map.

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