Discussion of Google/Verizon statement on Open Internet #netneutrality #isoc
Google and Verizon’s joint policy proposal for an open Internet is causing an ongoing public discussion. See details and links to commentary here.
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Geoff Huston on Wired vs. Wireless #broadband
Geoff Huston’s latest Internet Society ISP Column examines the Australian scenario where, in the recent election, the vying parties plumped down on either side of the wired vs wireless question. He concludes that, just like the election, there is no outright winner.He notes the reality that while wireless IP service often actually costs less to provide, users are prepared to pay more for it, giving providers little incentive to invest in wire. But wireless bandwidth scalability is, ultimately, limited. What’s more its inherent unreliability is TCP hostile. However ubiquitous wireless service would be a lot cheaper to implement: $6B (AUS) vs $43B (AUS) for wired.
He then gets to the big question, which all countries including the USA are having to address, namely how much of the taxpayer’s money is worth expending, and to what effect:
Where should public funds be spent? On a comprehensive revamp of the wired access network, replacing the aged copper pair telephone network with a highly capable fibre optic network? Or on improving access in those areas where the copper pair network simply cannot support high speed access by public investment in wireless infrastructure?
In trying to answer this question, we return to a persistent theme in the area of public communications infrastructure. What’s the role of public capital investment and how is that balanced against the role of private capital investment? Is it possible for private investment to fulfill the entirety of a public agenda? Given that a capable, cost efficient and effective public communications infrastructure that encompasses an entire national constituency is seen as a core deliverable of any national communications policy regime, then how is this best achieved today?
To move back from generalities to the specifics of this broadband investment choice, is it realistic to expect that we have further decades of useful life from an already ageing copper pair infrastructure? As a consequence, should current public investment focus on current gaps in the national infrastructure, using a relatively cost effective approach of plugging these gaps using wireless infrastructure where the copper network is simply inadequate, and leave the remainder of the network in situ, as being adequate for the moment Or should we leave such wireless infrastructure investment to private enterprise, given that this technology is enjoying strong consumer attention and there is a continuing investment in wireless infrastructure by the industry actors. Instead, should a public investment program focus on a longer term national program of replacing the copper loop with a comprehensive fibre optic network? From such a longer term perspective perhaps the NBN is the better approach, as we need to concede that the level of investment required for a national very high speed access infrastructure in a fibre access network is probably well beyond the scope of private capital works investment. So far all that the industry has achieved in this space has been the rewiring of the CBDs in the major cities, while the upgrading of remainder of the network has been effectively ignored. It appears that this is, like many major infrastructure projects in the past, one that properly sits in the realm of a public investment program, in the same way that we’ve made investments in national road, rail and shipping infrastructure in the past.
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Demo of Popcorn – Mozilla’s new javascript open video library #html5
WebMadeMovies is a new Mozilla project to bring scripting to the html5 movie tag. This demo brings in multiple data feeds from the APIs of Google News, Wikipedia, Twitter, and flickr. It also provides automatic machine translation from Google Translate, and attribution data from Creative Commons. More info in the video below.
- Mozilla wiki PopcornOpenVideoAPI
- Tristan Nitot Video+html5+Popcorn.js=hyper-video
- Webmonkey Mozilla’s Popcorn Project Adds Extra Flavor to Web Video
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NY and NJ awarded Broadband Grants #btop #broadband
The Obama administration has announced the recipients of the second round of Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) funding. $1.8 billion from the American Recovery and Investment Act will fund broadband expansion in 37 states, including New York and New Jersey.Local projects receiving funds include:
- New Jersey Department of Treasury: nearly $39.7 million for public safety agencies in Northern New Jersey, to deploy an interoperable wireless public safety broadband network.
- Windstream Corporation: $856,000 for Windstream to offer broadband at up to 12 MB/sec in several communities in the NY State’s farthest western corner.
- New York State Department of Labor: $536,000, with $230,000 more in matching contributions, to expand occupational skills training and career planning services to low-income areas.
[Source: NYConvergence]
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Audio: Aug 11 Fiber Infra Panel at TMT10 Conference #fiber #TMT10
The Oppenheimer 2010 Annual Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference took place August 10-11, 2010 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. A webcast is available of audio of the Fiber Infra Panel (free login required).
The panel included Hunter Newby of Allied Fiber and an extended slideset of his recent ISOC-NY presentation is provided as an adjunct to the audio. Other panelists are Dan Caruso of Zayo, Bill LaPerch of Abovenet,
NiQ Lay of HKBN and Frank Mambuca of US Metrotel. -
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NY Senate releases iPad app #opengov
The New York State Senate today announced availability of “NYSenate for iPad,” the first application in the nation developed by a legislative body for the Apple iPad. The application can be downloaded for free today from the Apple iTunes App Store.Like its predecessor, NYSenate Mobile for iPhones and Android phones, the app enables users to search for bill information, contact their Senator, review event calendars, read Senator’s blogs, watch archived video of Senate Session, Committee Meetings and Public Hearings, and even submit Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests.
“NYSenate for iPad” was built entirely in-house by Senate staff, at no additional cost to taxpayers. As with all software developed within the Senate, this mobile app has also been released at (see http://github.com/nysenatecio) under dual BSD and GPLv3 open-source software licenses; other legislatures, as well as non-profit organizations, media and small businesses are free to leverage the software to develop their own custom applications for the iPad.
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Wired: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet
A Wired article reports on the relative demise of the hypertext protocol as other means of content acquisition / delivery (i.e. apps) begin to predominate. A convenient diagram illustrates the point.
The writers conclude:
The wide-open Web of peer production, the so-called generative Web where everyone is free to create what they want, continues to thrive, driven by the nonmonetary incentives of expression, attention, reputation, and the like. But the notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery is now in doubt.
The Internet is the real revolution, as important as electricity; what we do with it is still evolving. As it moved from your desktop to your pocket, the nature of the Net changed. The delirious chaos of the open Web was an adolescent phase subsidized by industrial giants groping their way in a new world. Now they’re doing what industrialists do best — finding choke points. And by the looks of it, we’re loving it.
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joly
The NY Times picks up on a Boing Boing story, that indicates that there is another way of looking at the data, as indicated on the chart below.
Boing Boing notes: “Between 1995 and 2006, the total amount of Web traffic went from about 10 terabytes a month to 1,000,000 terabytesThe Times concludes
as more devices become connected to the Internet, even if they’re built to access beautiful walled gardens, like mobile apps or TV-specific interfaces, they will continue to access the Web too, enabling each platform to grow concurrently.
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Open World Forum – Paris: 9/30-10/1 #open #freeculture
The third Open World Forum – being staged in Paris on 30 September and 1 October 2010 .Year on year, the Free / Open Source model is affirming itself as the invisible driver behind the digital revolution, whether at the level of emerging technologies (Cloud computing, the Internet of Things…), business models and societal trends. The aim of the Open World Forum is to gather together all the key decisionmakers and interested parties – political leaders, CxOs and decision-makers, Community leaders and stakeholders, entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and academic – to evaluate possible trends and cross-fertilize growth initiatives around the open digital world.
This year’s theme, ‘OPEN IS THE FUTURE‘, will be explored through 15 Keynote addresses, 20 conferences and workshops, 8 Think Tanks, 1 Demo Cup, 1 Open IT ShowRoom and a TV Channel, organized into 3 main strands and 9 themes, plus associated events:
- Press release | News Desk
- Program | Agenda
- Twitter: @OpenWorldForum | #OpenWorldForum
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Disney etc sued over zombie cookie practices
CNET reports on a California suit against Disney, Warner Bros, and some other big pockets. The suit alleges that, on their behalf, Clearspring (famous as the creators of ShareThis) used Flash cookies to re-install deleted http cookies on user’s machines, contravening the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, California’s Computer Crime law, and that state’s Invasion of Privacy Act. The filers are seeking class action status.
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joly
One comment on the story adds a cautionary note:
browsers have options to disable third-party cookies, but like http cookies, it removes functionality from websites. now, this all wouldnt be a problem if the user would just clear cookies every time they open or close their browser. which brings us to Local Shared Objects (LSO), better known as flash cookies because right now only Adobe Flash makes use of it. however, when HTML5 becomes standard, H.264 will make use of LSO as well. right now, Adobe doesnt allow flash cookies to read across domains, so for now, we dont have to worry about privacy issues on that front. i very much doubt HTML5 will come with the same guarantee.
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Video: Eben Moglen @DebConf10 : Freedom in The Cloud II
At the recent Debian Conference in NYC Eben Moglen gave a follow-up to his Feb 5 ISOC-NY talk, addressing specifically the role of developers. His theme “How We Can Be the Silver Lining of the Cloud“.
Download: ogv
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joly
Moglen plans a third presentation at the Open World Forum in Paris on September 30.
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