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Archive for the 'Commentary' Category

The Internet is Tubes

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 31st, 2008

Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens will be allowed to vote in next week’s election, despite having been convicted of multiple felonies in federal court. “I have not been convicted of anything,” he maintained during a Thursday night debate in Anchorage, only days before Tuesday’s election.

I don’t believe in taking cheap shots. But it’s Halloween.

FCC Commissioners: Coming to Your Town

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 20th, 2008

FCC Commissioners may be in your town this week for their DTV Outreach program.
The FCC identified target television markets for specific DTV outreach, including all those markets in which more than 100,000 households or at least 15% of the households rely solely on over-the-air signals for television reception.
The five FCC Commissioners and senior Commission [...]

Telepresence: On the Bus?

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 15th, 2008

Cisco says their TelePresence rooms are now available for public use. They’re available on a pay-per-use model to any organization and available immediately at the Cisco TelePresence Suites in Santa Clara, Boston, London, and major cities throughout India, including Bangalore and Mumbai, in collaboration with Tata Communications.

Cisco TelePresence rooms are built on the existing footprint [...]

Red Light Cameras: License to Print Money

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 14th, 2008

The Philadelphia Parking Authority will give $100 refunds to 4,390 motorists ticketed this year, because its red-light cameras were a little too quick on the draw.
Seven months after discovering that cameras were suffering from “premature activation” - but failing to determine the depth of the problem - the authority yesterday announced that it would wipe [...]

11 Troubled Web Companies

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 10th, 2008

Fans of Twitter, Pandora, Skype, Zillow, and seven other Web companies had better hope these start-ups find creative business plans to weather the financial downturn, says C/Net. These 11 Web 2.0 favorites have landed on Webware editor Rafe Needleman’s list of companies that are potentially in peril.

On Friday’s edition of the Daily Debrief with [...]

Cellular’s 25th Anniversary

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 10th, 2008

The CTIA Wireless Association is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first commercial cellular call in the United States this month.

The first commercial cellular call was placed on October 13, 1983 to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell in Germany from the president of Ameritech Mobile Communications at a ceremony held outside of Soldier [...]

AWS: Strike Out for Comcast?

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 6th, 2008

Comcast is expected to launch WiMax femtocells during the second half of 2009, reports Unstrung. Comcast is investing more than 1 Billion in the Clearwire/Sprint/Google joint venture. Cable doesn’t have mobile voice. They want in.

Dave Williams, senior VP for wireless and technology at the cable giant, revealed earlier this year that Comcast is looking [...]

WiMAX Doomed? Not.

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 3rd, 2008

C/Net’s Marguerite Reardon says Sprint’s new 4G network could be heading down the same doomed path as EarthLink’s citywide Wi-Fi networks.

It may only be a test bed for future WiMax deployments, but I think the business model Sprint is using in Baltimore looks eerily similar to what EarthLink attempted to do with its citywide Wi-Fi [...]

Laptop, Netbook or Android?

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 1st, 2008

With (affordable) WiMAX around the corner, I’m looking at Netbooks and Laptops. I favor cheap and small Netbooks, but built-in WiMAX on Centrino 2 laptops would be nice.

The Gigabyte M912M tablet (reviewed by UMPC Portal’s Steve Paine) looks slick. Pop in a WiMAX Express Modem ($59) and you’re good to go. Unfortunately, it’s [...]

Xohm Acceptable Use Criticized

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 1st, 2008

The Washington Post reports that in Sprint Nextel’s unveiling of its new Xohm WiMax service in Baltimore, it also revealed rules for using its service.

At question is Sprint’s Acceptable Use and Network Management Policy. In their usage policy statement, Sprint warns against usage that could “result in an excessive burden of system or network [...]