Verizon thru its MCI acquisition is seeking approval from the FCC to discontinue telex services in its entire service area. Why am I shocked? Why like does ANYBODY use Telex anymore?

With email available and cheaper its amazing it is used. The SWIFT financial system now uses its own transport system for such messages. I can’t imagine the Press still uses this.

Linky.

Google is moving to advance network services in Taiwan. They are cooperating with National Taiwan University and Chiao Tung University.

Most conventional software applications have been designed for processing data and computing in a PC environment, said Christophe Bisciglia, Google’s senior software engineer and key promoter of Google’s Cloud Computing project. Along with the fast increasing availability of broadband Internet bandwidth, Cloud Computing aims to break the limitation of the capacity of PCs by storing software programs and data as well as executing data processing and computing in a Web world, a cloud of computers/servers with a multitude of programs and data files, Bisciglia pointed out.

To meet the requirements of Cloud Computing for Internet-based data storage and parallel processing/computing, the design logic of software based on PC architecture should be modified and/or rebuilt, Chien indicated. This is the core of the cooperation, and Google will provide materials and experts to help university professors train students beginning in February 2008, Chien pointed out.

In addition to the two universities in Taiwan, Google will cooperate with a university in China and another in Israel, Chien noted.

Google’s first off-shore cooperation in Taiwan could be related to a recent report that Google plans to set up its largest data center outside of the US in Taiwan, according to industry sources. In response, Chien declined to comment.

Linky.

Know those Dell locations (I call them and others like them ‘carts’), well they are on their way out. At least in the US. Dell has decided to partner with other retailers instead. –

The company launched the Dell Direct Store model in 2002, setting up kiosks in shopping malls and airports, in addition to its direct-selling method by phone and Internet. Customers could test Dell PCs at the kiosks and order the products.

But the company has been moving to expand sales of PCs in stores, inking a number of deals in recent months to sell its products at U.S. retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and Staples Inc.

“Moving into retail is a prime example of Dell listening to its customers,” said Dell executive Tony Weiss. “This move fits in with how our broad global retail strategy is evolving.”

The Round Rock, Texas, company, which used a purely direct-sales model for more than a decade, is putting more emphasis on consumers and the international market and on selling through retail stores. The direct-sales model began to lose steam in 2005, as consumers - the growth engine in the U.S. market - began gravitating to retail stores to buy portable notebook computers. Dell had largely focused on selling desktops to commercial customers, a market that has slowed.

The question ThirdPipe keeps asking is how can Dell/HP/Leveno keep competing without fundamental change? When a compute device is seriously under a $200 value you aren’t going to call tech support for a fix. The opportunity cost is too high. So tech support will shrink to the corporate - server market with increased costs. A whole cycle of service unbundling is going to occur shortly in this industry.

Surprisingly Dell is not eliminating the overseas kiosk presence.

Full article compliments of WSJ.

The conclusion of round 18 of the auction has met the C block reserve price. That means that not only will the block be sold (barring FCC denial for technical reasons) but that the open devices provisions now kick in regardless of who is the owner of the block.

If you would like to see the results in real time point your browser here. Go to the public access link. Select auction 73 from the dropdown list. Then click results on the top panel. You do require java to be enabled on your browser.

This is a good thing.

Yes quite a claim. But take a look at the image below. That thin film layer will have more impact on technology and hence our world equivalent to the microprocessor.

Awww come on Dog, you have to be kidding me. Nope. Couple of examples –

• Print. As a substitute for pulp paper. Remember the image can be static till rewritten. No longer do you go down to Staples an buy boxes of paper. You buy a box of film and reuse it thousands of times. The ‘printer’ no longer uses ink so there are no consumables to buy. The printer also can be your scanner as well. What can be written to the substrate can also be read off to your compute device. Talk about green technology!
• Displays. No more LCD with a 1″ thick frame. The display is paper thin. So a 1/4″ backer frame for stiffness is all that is needed. A display could be wrap around like Dell displayed at CES. Nor would glass yields be an issue for display sizes.
• DTV. Imagine coming home from Home Depot with what looks like a roll of wallpaper. You unroll it and paste it to the wall. You glue a transducer to the bottom corner that is fed to your HTS. You just installed your 120″ color display. Its a future I grant, the technology is not quite up to snuff for the refresh rates. But the theory is sound.
• Advertising. Couple EInk technology with WiMax. Signage technology right out of Minority Report. Speed signs that post the applicable rates adjusting for night and day. Much more sophiscated and user customizable automobile instrumentation in the dash.

The kind of technology is transformative in nature. Besides cost and refresh rates the lack of color has been a restricting factor to widespread adoption. Well Cool Gadgets reports that this technical hurdle has been broached. EInk, has cooked a deal with LG, a large compute display mfr to codevelop the technology.

This is the stuff that rocks the world.

Asustek, the company most have never heard of till the release of the eePC laptop is going to provide for a whole range of products — desktop, all-in-one monitor/PC, a 42″ LCD TV/PC combo.

First out of the blocks will be a low-cost desktop computer dubbed the E-DT. It will be built around an Intel Celeron processor and will ship without a monitor to (hopefully) keep the price somewhere between $US200 and $300 dollars. No Australian pricing is yet available and units are expected to appear in April.

The company is also planning to release the E-Monitor, an all-in-one device similar in concept to Dell’s XPS One and Apple’s iMac. Details are still sketchy however it is believed the Linux-based E-Monitor will also contain a digital TV tuner card. With either a 19-inch or 21-inch screen it should retail for around $US500.

The third new product in the range will be a 42-inch LCD HD television which incorporates a Linux-based PC. Slated for a September launch, this device is likely to cost only slightly more than non-PC enabled models already on the market.

The desktop I can see as a fit, even the All-in-One as a bit of upscale. But the price point is the key component. here. At < $200 a compute device becomes possible for a much larger component of the world population. AMD knew that 3 years ago when it lauched the AMD PIC.

Sadly the PIC was a little ahead of its time, used a processor little known outside of the embedded processor world, lacked a ethernet port and was never properly marketed. But it was low power, extremely small, had a sealed case and a target price < $200. Shame.

ThirdPipe has said before that the high dollar Swiss Army knife model will come under attack by these low cost single purpose type devics. Ausutek's expansion underscores that fact. The price points will drop still further over the next couple of years to the extent that a HP or Dell PC market may not be sustainable. You don't dink with tech support when the device is a $100.

Linky

There’s something very telling in reports released by the Japanese and US governments about the respective nations broadband goals and accomplishments.

For the Japanese, not only did they set a goal for 100 MBPS access, they have huge deployment numbers and the cost to the consumer is lower than what most in the US pay for 5 to 10% of the bandwidth.

At an address to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Kiyooshi Mori, the Japanese vice-minister for communications policy, said that Japan had already rolled out 100Mbps fibre broadband to 85% of households.

Japan expects ubiquitous access for businesses and consumers to high-speed broadband by 2010 - the result of a four-year government programme designed to improve access.

“Studies showed that the ICT industry accounts for 40% of real Japanese GDP. This helped the government realise the importance of starting a programmme for ubiquitous access with a deadline.”

Mori said the government also introduced competition policies to make it easy for new ISPs to enter the market and for open, shared access to networks. As a result, the price of broadband per 100kbit/s is 0.07 dollars compared with the UK where it is 0.69 dollars. (from Computer Weekly)

And from the US government where 200 KBPS is considered broadband:

“Networked Nation: Broadband in America” is an upbeat assessment of the administration’s efforts to spur growth and competition in the high-speed Internet market. Critics said the report’s conclusion is too rosy.

The report was prepared by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency within the Commerce Department that acts as the president’s principal adviser on telecommunications and information policy issues.

The report concludes that “a reasonable assessment of the available data indicates” that the objective of affordable access to broadband for all has been realized “to a very great degree.”

Richard Russell, deputy director for technology in the executive office of the president, also answered the question in the affirmative, but with a caveat.

“The answer is by most metrics yes,” he said. “However, there’s still a lot more that needs to be done.”

Broadband penetration has been a sore point for the government and industry as international surveys have shown that the United States, the birthplace of the Internet, lags behind other nations. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked the U.S. in 15th place for broadband lines per person in 2006, down from No. 4 in 2001.

The NTIA report drew its conclusion using data from the Federal Communications Commission and other sources. The FCC reported that more than 99 percent of all U.S. ZIP codes received broadband service from at least one provider by the end of 2006.

Critics say the FCC’s data is misleading. A broadband provider has to serve only a single residence in a ZIP code for it to be counted. The agency has launched its own inquiry into how it can “develop a more accurate picture” of broadband deployment.

“More data is necessary,” Meredith Attwell Baker, acting chief of NTIA, said in an interview. “We support the FCC’s current efforts to produce better data.” (from Cnet)

What makes the US study even worse is availability to a single customer in a zip code enabled the access provider to claim a zip code was served.

The US has set a low goal and missed it horribly. The fact is that there is far less access competition now than there was in the days of dial up access. Those say the private enterprise solution failed do not understand we do not have a working martketplace in the access business. What we have is a cartel that has been franchised by our government. We have the best politicians money can buy, and they belong to the duopoly. Every time we pay a duopoly bill, we continue to enable it.

Life is good if you are an FCC commissioner reporting to the powers that be about bringing in revenues. As for the rest of us, it’s a mixed bag. The open access rules on the C block will not kick in until the $4.7 billion reserve is met, and that has not happened so far. Is Google taking donations?

Bidding topped $11.57 billion on the fifth day of the U.S. government auction of coveted 700-megahertz airwaves.

The figure represented the highest bids received for five separate blocks of spectrum in the Federal Communications Commission auction.

Bidding on a piece of the airwaves known as the “C” block reached $4.29 billion in the first round on Wednesday, approaching the $4.7 billion minimum price set by the FCC. But there were no further bids on it for the remainder of the day.

If bidders surpass the $4.7 billion threshold, it would trigger a requirement sought by Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) that would require the winning bidder to open the C block spectrum to all devices and software applications. (from Reuters)

I think AT&T may have really bungled this one by getting out in front of the issue and saying they would monitor for copyright violations. It may be justification for messaging traffic on an AT&T network that is rapidly becoming too puny to be up the the task in the very near future. A very big problem with this statement is that if the RIAA or MPAA discovers copyright violations on a “monitored network” they could try make AT&T liable in a law suit.

For Verizon’s part, they are making a policy statement that they will be much more cautious and hands off:

It’s not that Verizon doesn’t believe that it’s vitally important to protect intellectual property, said Tauke, who heads the company’s public affairs, policy, and communications department. Rather, the company is concerned that inspecting individual packets, as rival AT&T is currently testing, poses potential dangers to consumer privacy and opens up a host of other potential watchdog duties that Verizon isn’t keen on undertaking.

“From a business perspective, we really don’t want to assume the role of being police on the Internet,” Tauke, a former Iowa Republican congressman, said in response to a question from Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who moderated discussion with the executive. “We are leery of using these technologies on our networks.”(from Cnet)

Your humble admin thinks Verizon is more leery of the legal exposure. While neither of the Telco giants is famous for making smart decisions, but in this case Verizon clearly proved to be smarter than AT&T once again.

The FCC is collecting comments on changes to the Universal Service Fee. Don’t get your hopes to see it disappear, at best it would be a restructuring. –

In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice), we seek comment on ways to reform the high-cost universal service program. Specifically, we seek comment on the ecommendation of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service (Joint Board) regarding comprehensive reform of high- cost universal service support. We also incorporate into this Notice the following two Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRMs): (1) the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released by the Commission on January 29, 2008, which seeks comment on the Commission’s rules governing the amount of high-cost universal service support provided to eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs), including elimination of the “identical support rule;” and (2) the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking released by the Commission on January 29, 2008, which seeks comment on whether and how to implement reverse auctions (a form of competitive bidding) as the disbursement mechanism for determining the amount of high-cost universal service support for ETCs serving rural, insular, and high-cost areas.2 We also will incorporate the records developed in response to those Notices of Proposed Rulemaking into this proceeding. We note, however, that such incorporation of these two NPRMs does not change or otherwise affect, and we expressly
preserve, the positions of the Commission members with regard to those particular NPRMs and the Joint Board’s recommendation.

They are also considering using reverse auction methodology as well.

FCC Notice 1.
FCC Notice 2.