FCC Election Day vote could revolutionize wireless

Most people on Tuesday will likely have their eyes glued to their favorite Internet site or TV station looking for information about the historic presidential race. But another very important vote will be taking place at the Federal Communications Commission--a vote that some say could set a course of massive innovation in wireless broadband services.

On Tuesday, the FCC is set to vote on a proposal that will open up between 300MHz and 400MHz of unused spectrum throughout the country for unlicensed use. This spectrum, known as "white spaces," sits between broadcast TV channels. Today, this spectrum, which is sometimes used for wireless microphones, is mostly left vacant as a buffer to make sure there isn't interference between TV broadcasters.

Technology companies have been lobbying for more than two years to open this valuable spectrum for unlicensed use. They believe this spectrum, which is ideal for sending data wirelessly over long distances and penetrating through walls, can be used to enhance or create new wireless broadband services. And they say they can develop products and services that use this spectrum without interfering with services running on licensed spectrum in adjacent bands.

But incumbent spectrum license holders, such as TV broadcasters, say wireless devices that access this unlicensed spectrum will cause interference. And performers, church organizations, and sports leagues, which use wireless microphones, say that these new devices will be unable to adequately detect when this spectrum is already in use, causing interference.

The issue, which will come to a head on Election Day, has stirred up deep divisions pitting technology companies like Google and Microsoft against old guard TV broadcasters and even performers, such as Dolly Parton.

Despite efforts led by the National Broadcasters Association and others, it looks like the FCC, which had tested several proof-of-concept devices this summer, will likely support overwhelmingly the proposal to open up the "white spaces." While no one other than the five FCC commissioners has seen the proposal that was put together by Chairman Kevin Martin, insiders say that the commissioners feel it adequately addresses interference concerns that broadcasters and wireless microphone users have.

The lessons of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Companies like Google and Microsoft believe this spectrum could spur a major era of innovation around wireless products and services, essentially doing for wireless broadband what other unlicensed spectrum has done for short-range wireless technologies like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Similar interference issues were a concern when the FCC was considering the use of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices. And "white space" supporters, such as Google co-founder Larry Page, pointed out earlier this year on a lobbying mission in Washington, D.C. that radio frequency engineers were been able to work through those issues.

The result has been an explosion in the use of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology. Millions of people throughout the world have used Wi-Fi routers to extend their broadband connections to create home networks. Almost every laptop shipped today has Wi-Fi embedded as a standard feature, and a growing number of portable devices like cell phones are also coming with Wi-Fi.

What's more, millions of people have also used Bluetooth-enabled devices like wireless headsets and other cell phone accessories.

Because the spectrum used to create these products is free, it's easier and cheaper for companies of any size to develop hardware or software applications that use the wireless spectrum. It also means that consumers can use the services for free.

Wireless operators are already starting to position themselves for the next generation of wireless. Sprint is building its 4G WiMax network. AT&T and Verizon Wireless have committed to using a 4G technology called LTE.

Both of these technologies use licensed spectrum. Verizon will be using spectrum it won in the FCC's 700MHz spectrum to build the service. And even though wireless carriers have talked in broad terms about new business models emerging for this next generation of wireless, it's unlikely the service will ever be free. And it's quite likely it could be at least as expensive as today's wireless service.

Technology companies hope that opening up "white spaces" will allow new players to enter the market to create services with different business models. For example, free access to spectrum could allow providers to offer service for free or at least at a much reduced price. This could potentially put competitive pricing pressure on traditional wireless carriers and force prices lower. And as more video is distributed via broadband, it could create entirely new services for viewing movies and TV shows.

Also on the agenda
Aside from "white spaces", the FCC is also considering other issues during Tuesday's meeting, including two announced mergers in the wireless market.

Verizon Wireless is seeking approval to buy Alltel for $5.9 billion plus the assumption of $22.2 billion in debt. Verizon won approval for the deal from the U.S. Department of Justice last week.

The FCC is also expected to approve the merger, which will make Verizon Wireless the largest wireless operator in the U.S. But like the U.S. Justice Department, which is requiring Verizon to sell off assets in 22 states, the FCC is also expected to put conditions on the merger.

The FCC is also expected to approve a deal to merge wireless spectrum from Sprint Nextel with spectrum allocated to a company called Clearwire. The companies plan to use the spectrum to build a nationwide broadband wireless network using a technology called WiMax. Google, Intel, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable have joined forces to invest billions into the $14.6 billion venture, which will be called Clearwire.

Meanwhile, another controversial issue on the FCC's agenda has been put on hold. Late Monday, Chairman Martin pulled an item that would have overhauled how phone companies pay each other for carrying long-distance traffic. The measure, which was criticized by consumer groups for potentially raising the cost of phone service, also would have dealt with reforming the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service in rural parts of the country. These issues are expected to be at least discussed, if not voted on, at the FCC's December 18 meeting.

Source : http://news.cnet.com/

Salesforce.com Links With Amazon and Facebook

Salesforce.com moved deeper into the world of cloud computing on Monday, announcing partnerships that link its Force.com hosted applications platform with services from Facebook and Amazon Web Services.

The deal with Facebook allows Salesforce customers to build applications on its Force.com platform that appear natively inside Facebook, CEO Marc Benioff announced at the start of Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

He showed an example of a recruiting application that an employee could embed in their Facebook page, where they can then use their social connections to recruit new employees for their company.

The Amazon partnership makes the company's on-demand storage and computing services available from Force.com. A developer in need of extra storage, for example, could offload some of their data onto Amazon's S3 storage service, Benioff said. They can also use Amazon's EC2 computing service.

Addressing a packed hall of Salesforce.com customers, Benioff painted a picture of a computing Wild West in which cloud platforms from different vendors are combining to create new opportunities and challenges.

"These are crazy times; these are whacky times," he said. "No one can predict these times, but there's never been a better time for cloud computing."

China Martens, a senior analyst with The 451 Group, said it makes sense for cloud providers to combine their services. "They don't really compete and they each have their own specialty, so it makes sense to have the integration," she said.

Combining the services may also ease fears about getting locked into a cloud platform, she said, something some customers have worried about. But she wondered about the implications of mixing personal data with business applications on Facebook.

"What kind of issues does that throw up? Maybe we need to start drawing rings around personal and professional data," she said.

Executives from Facebook and Amazon joined Benioff on stage for the announcements. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, said she hoped the partnership would pave the way for a new wave of enterprise applications on the social-networking site.

In the recruiting application demonstrated here, the interface looked like a standard Facebook program but was hosted on Salesforce.com's servers and built using its Visual Force user-interface tool. Developers can download a new toolkit, Force.com for Facebook, free from the Force.com Web site today, Benioff said.

Salesforce.com added 4,100 new CRM (customer relationship management) customers during its July quarter, Benioff said, for a total of 47,700. It expects to pass US$1 billion in annual revenue for the first time this fiscal year.

Competition is increasing, however, as more packaged-software vendors start to offer their products as hosted services. Oracle, SAP and Microsoft already offer hosted CRM, and Microsoft last week announced a new project, Azure, that will compete with Force.com by providing a platform for building hosted applications.

Benioff mocked Azure, calling it "vaporware," and suggested that Microsoft will lock developers into its platform. The future will be about combining open cloud platforms that create "the best of all worlds," he said.

"This isn't about one vendor standing on stage and saying it's only our OS, our devices and our ecosystem, like we saw last week," he said, referring to the Azure launch. "Those days are over."

Monday's speeches here focused on the Force.com platform; Tuesday's will address the applications suite, Benioff said. He hinted that presidential hopeful Barack Obama will make an appearance during Tuesday's speech, though he didn't say if it would be in person or by video.

Monday's announcements take Salesforce.com further from its core business of providing an online CRM service. Force.com was a first step in that direction, providing a platform where companies can build and host add-ons for its CRM programs. Salesforce.com is now trying to diversify further.

Earlier Monday it announced Salesforce.com Web Sites, where it offers to host internal and public Web sites for its customers. Those Web sites link to a customer's back-end Salesforce.com applications, so that changes on the back-end appear immediately on the Web sites.

The service is in beta now and slated for introduction next year, Benioff said. Salesforce Professional customers get up to 250,000 page views per month for no charge, Enterprise customers get 500,000 page views, and Unlimited customers get 1 million. Additional page views cost $1,000 per month for 1 million pages, or $3,000 per month for 5 million pages.

Dreamforce ends Wednesday.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com/

Apple's iPod chief to step down - report

Tony Fadell, largely regarded as the grandfather of the iPod and Apple's audio strategy, is leaving the company for personal reasons, according to a report published Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal.

Apple declined to comment on the story, but the financial paper cited people familiar with the matter as saying the executive will be replaced by Mark Papermaster, a top chip designer recently recruited from IBM among much controversy.

Fadell joined Apple as the first member of its iPod hardware engineering team in 2001 and was promoted to vice president of iPod engineering in 2004. He's served as the senior vice president of Apple's iPod division since April 2006.

Back in the 1990s, Fadell started a company called Fuse, which aimed to produce a new array of consumer electronics devices for the masses. One such product was a hard disk-based digital music player.

When Fuse ran out of funding, Fadell explored the possibility of developing his gadgets for another company. He initially joined RealNetworks in 2000, but left just six weeks later. The next company he approached was Apple.

While presiding over the iPod boom, Fadell was also instrumental in the development of the first iPhone and oversaw other smaller products during his tenure at the company, including the iSight.

Fadell's big break came on October 14, 2005, when Apple announced that he would replace the retiring Jon Rubinstein as Senior Vice President of the iPod Division.

Fadell has filed more than 20 patents for his work, several of which have been covered (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) by AppleInsider.

According to the Journal, Fadell plans to take time off after leaving Apple but may still keep a role at the company as a consultant.

Source : http://www.appleinsider.com/

FCC Chief Pulls Plan to Rework Phone Fees

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission yesterday scrapped a controversial proposal to overhaul how telephone companies pay each other to connect calls after the plan met bipartisan resistance from his fellow commissioners.

Republican Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who had drafted the proposal for a vote at today's agency meeting, has been criticized by lawmakers and consumer groups who say the plan could raise home phone fees by as much as $1.50 a month. Martin also dropped a proposal that would reorganize a $7 billion federal program that subsidizes the deployment of broadband services to underserved areas. The other commissioners had said that proposal needed further review.

The FCC is still scheduled to vote today on a plan to use idle airwaves between TV channels, called white spaces, for wireless broadband service. Entertainers such as Guns N' Roses and Dolly Parton oppose it, saying it would interfere with wireless microphones. Internet search giant Google supports the proposal.

The agency will also vote on proposals for Verizon Wireless to merge with rural wireless carrier Alltel, and for Sprint Nextel to merge with Clearwire to form a nationwide high-speed wireless Internet network based on WiMax technology.

Critics of Martin's telephone carrier payment plan said details were not open to the public and needed to be reviewed before a vote. They said they were concerned that what Martin had broadly outlined to other commissioners would benefit telecommunications giants AT&T and Verizon Communications by lowering the fees rural and smaller carriers can charge for connecting calls on their networks. Losses from lower fees could be made up by charging consumers more, they said.

"Consumers pay the rates in the end," said Chris Murray, senior counsel for Consumers Union. "What was on the table was impossible to evaluate, because there were billions of dollars at stake there but not a paper was to be found on it."

AT&T has told the FCC that the average increases in monthly phone rates would be about 67 cents for residents, with some residents not seeing any increase. But some lawmakers and consumer groups have said rates could go up to as much as $8 a month from $6.50 a month.

Martin criticized the other commissioners for being afraid to move forward on the overhaul because it was controversial, and he said it was long overdue. He rejected suggestions to open up the item for public comment and delay a vote until the agency's next meeting on Dec. 18, saying the issues have been debated at the FCC for the past seven years and had been open for comment two times before -- in 2001 and 2005.

Judging from his fellow commissioners' questions on the proposal, he said he doubted they would vote on the issue before the end of the year. "Whenever you are talking about wanting to deal with a comprehensive reform, you have to be willing to make a decision for what you think the right approach is," Martin said in an interview yesterday. "This is a missed opportunity."

Sources at the agency who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate on the issue was ongoing said Martin wanted to make a decision before the change of administration.

In a joint statement yesterday, the two Democratic and two Republican commissioners said the proposal needed to be given more time and public scrutiny.

"We approached this proceeding with the common goal of modernizing our universal service and intercarrier compensation policies, and commend the desire to tackle some of the most important issues facing this Commission. It is equally important to ensure that any reform proposal receive the full benefit of public notice and comment -- especially in light of the difficult economic circumstances currently facing our nation," the commissioners said in the statement.

Martin said he plans to rewrite a narrower version of the overhaul proposal.

Martin's proposal to allow portable devices to use "white spaces" airwaves for wireless broadband service is supported by tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. They hope it will spur the development of new wireless gadgets and services. But broadcasters and wireless microphone users say letting unlicensed devices use the airwaves would disrupt existing TV broadcasts and other nearby signals.

Martin has enough support from other commissioners to pass the white spaces order, according to people familiar with the matter. But in the past two weeks, opponents have aggressively lobbied to delay the vote to allow for more public comment. The National Association of Broadcasters and key lawmakers, including House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), have written letters urging Martin to postpone the vote.

Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/