incentives

On October 4, 2004, the idea of incentive prizes hit the mainstream when Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites launched SpaceShip One into orbit for the second time and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

Since then, prizes like that have become more and more common, and though the X Prizes are still the gold standard, there are now similar competitions from medical research to science to business, and beyond.

Not long ago, however, the U.S. government got into the business (PDF) of using competitions like these to come up with new ways to solve existing … Read more

Weeks after coming under fire from Greenpeace advocates for using excessive energy for cloud computing, Microsoft announced it will become carbon neutral across all of its operations starting July 1.

"It's the right thing to do. And it's also an opportunity to promote positive change, as the world transitions to new ways of using energy and managing natural resources," Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner said in a blog post yesterday. "That's why today, Microsoft is taking a significant step to further reduce our environmental footprint."

July marks the beginning of the … Read more

The small Brazilian city of Jundiai is one step ahead of Cupertino in paying tribute to Apple's late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. Jundiai's city council officially announced that one of its street is being renamed "Steve Jobs Avenue," according to Cult of Mac.

The avenue is the route that connects the small city to Brazil's largest city -- Sao Paulo. It also houses the proposed new address for Taiwanese-owned Foxconn's new iPad manufacturing factory. Nearby Sao Paulo is where Foxconn just opened a facility to produce iPhones.

Jundiai's city council presented the … Read more

It looks like Congress will finally authorize incentive spectrum auctions.

Today, Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate agreed on legislation that will authorize the extension of the payroll tax cuts and the unemployment benefits. And they also authorized the Federal Communications Commission to auction off wireless spectrum as part of the package. Revenue from the incentive auctions will be used to help pay for the tax cuts and unemployment benefits.

The spectrum auction was proposed as part of the 2010 National Broadband Plan. It calls for TV broadcasters who have wireless spectrum they aren'… Read more

Two years into a decade-long plan to free up wireless spectrum to handle an explosion in mobile data traffic growth, Washington politics are crippling the Federal Communications Commission's ability to reach any of its goals.

In March 2010, the FCC identified in its National Broadband Plan a dire need for more spectrum in the U.S. It outlined a timeline for getting 300 megahertz of spectrum in the pipeline by 2015 with an additional 200MHz opened up for auction by 2020. In total the plan would create 500MHz of new wireless spectrum that could be auctioned off, or nearly … Read more

A spectrum bill has passed through a subcommittee in the House of Representatives that authorizes FCC incentive auctions and also allocates spectrum to public safety.

On Thursday, the communications and technology subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Jumpstarting Opportunity with Broadband Spectrum Act (JOBS Act).

The legislation authorizes the Federal Communications Commission to create an auction for selling wireless spectrum voluntarily released by TV broadcasters. And it also includes provisions for allocating spectrum and funding a nationwide public safety mobile broadband network.

Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who sponsored the bill, said it would help create 100,… Read more

President Obama included authorization for incentive wireless spectrum auctions and spectrum reallocation for public safety as part of his American Jobs Act.

On Monday, the White House released a fact-sheet detailing President Obama's jobs bill, which he first talked about last week in his address to Congress. As part of this legislation, he is calling for wireless auctions that would help reduce the deficit and would also provide wireless broadband services for at least 98 percent of Americans. These are goals that his administration has also outlined in the National Broadband Plan.

Specifically, the American Jobs Bill would authorize … Read more

What's keeping Congress from authorizing the FCC to auction off underutilized television spectrum badly needed for mobile broadband? The answer, strangely enough, is Net neutrality--specifically, the FCC's "Open Internet" rules passed at the end of 2010 and which are only now being published.

While mobile Internet spectrum is at a premium, most over-the-air television broadcasters are not making full use of the spectrum allocated to them as part of the transition to digital TV in 2009. So the FCC and the White House have been pushing hard for new powers that would let the FCC conduct … Read more

Congressional leaders seem to be throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the debate over the budget and raising the debt ceiling. Now it looks like the incentive wireless spectrum auctions proposed by the Federal Communications Commission may end up as part of a package that is being hashed out by Republicans and Democrats in Washington, D.C.

On Monday, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid included the sale of wireless spectrum to mobile broadband providers in his proposed package of cuts and revenue-raisers. He said he expects the sale of wireless spectrum to generate $15 billion in revenue for the … Read more