federal

Controversial cable vote delayed at FCC

WASHINGTON--The Federal Communications Commission has postponed indefinitely the start of its monthly meeting, at which it's supposed to vote on a controversial report that could lead to new regulations on the cable industry.

Chairman Kevin Martin emerged briefly from closed-door deliberations at FCC headquarters here midday Tuesday to tell reporters that commissioners were still negotiating how to handle an internal report about the state of cable industry competition. The meeting, which was originally scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. EST, was bumped to 11 a.m. and now has no new projected start time.

The report's … Read more

Don't expect Google to take on AT&T

Google is lining up financing to bid on wireless spectrum in the Federal Communication Commission's upcoming 700MHz auction, and it's already built a small high-speed wireless network at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to test out what it could do with the spectrum, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The Journal cited sources saying the company is planning on bidding in the auction, set to take place early next year. Google has obtained a test license from the FCC that it's using to test technology on a small wireless network on its campus, the article said. … Read more

Cable industry head says FCC is 'broken'

The cable industry is gearing up for battle against the Federal Communications Commission, as the head of its trade group calls the federal regulating agency "broken."

Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, stopped short of saying that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is picking on the cable industry, but he made it clear during a conference call with reporters Wednesday that he views the FCC's handling of cable-related issues as biased and hurtful to the industry. He also accused Martin of pushing his agenda on a la carte cable pricing at the expense of … Read more

FCC chairman supports Google's Open Handset Alliance

Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin on Tuesday threw his support behind Google's Open Handset Alliance.

On Monday, Google officially unveiled Android, its new mobile phone software. It also announced the Open Handset Alliance. Thirty-four companies have said they will join the alliance, which will work on developing applications on the Android platform. Members of the alliance include mobile handset makers HTC and Motorola, mobile operators T-Mobile and Sprint-Nextel, and chipmaker Qualcomm.

It should come as little surprise that Martin would support the alliance. Earlier this year, he made open devices a requirement in the rules for the upcoming 700MHz spectrum auction, … Read more

55% of the US government dabbling in open source

When you read things like this report from the Federal Open Source Alliance, you've got to feel for Microsoft, Oracle, etc. They're making bank today, but if open source trends continue, the future will look very different from today's lock-em-in and fleece-them-hard model.

Across the globe, governments have led the adoption of open-source software. The United States, however, has tended to lag behind (followed by the United Kingdom). Recent numbers, however, indicate that we're picking up open-source steam here in the USA.

Consider the following numbers gleaned from FOOA's survey of Department of Defense, Federal civilian, and Intelligence IT executives:… Read more

FCC urged to stop Comcast Internet blocking

Members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and Internet scholars from Harvard, Yale and Stanford law schools filed a petition and complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Thursday in response to claims that Comcast is blocking some kinds of peer-to-peer traffic.

The complaint comes after the Associated Press discovered, based on its own testing, that content was blocked on several Comcast broadband connections using the peer-to-peer filing sharing network BitTorrent. Other Comcast users have also complained that their BitTorrent content has been blocked.

In their petition, the groups claim that Comcast is violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which essentially … Read more

US federal government wasting billions on buggy, risky software

Devis just lost its bid on a big US government software contract through the GSA (General Services Administration). That's just competition. But how it lost that contract is exceptionally frustrating if you're a US taxpayer:

GSA told Devis at its debriefing that contractor risk was not a determining factor in the award decision, despite the fact that a majority of the evaluation panel found the [winning] Symplicity proposal to be "unacceptable" and offering "little confidence" of successful performance.

I'm all for a software proposal that stinks at the outset. How about you? :-)

Taking this one step further, I'm positive that the US federal government is also not taking into account just how risky every purchase of proprietary software is. Every dime of my tax dollars that is spent locking up government files (Microsoft Office) and/or content (Microsoft Sharepoint), email (Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus/Domino), database records (Oracle, IBM DB2), etc. is money thrown down the overpriced toilet. The US military alone, as the Government Accountability Office notes, is wasting billions and billions of dollars on shoddy software that is only promised to work.… Read more

FTC: Let us fine spyware operations, already

WASHINGTON--Federal consumer protection authorities say they want nothing more than to put the financial hurt on deceptive spyware purveyors. The trouble, they say, is that the law still doesn't let them.

Sure, the Federal Trade Commission has the ability to go after spyware purveyors now, and it has done so a dozen or so times. So can state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Justice.

But currently, the FTC can only force an offending company to turn over ill-gotten profits or to pay a finite amount to affected consumers--"consumer redress," as it's known … Read more

Phishing e-mails drive FTC chief 'insane'

WASHINGTON--If your in-box is pelted by a seemingly ever-growing supply of inquisitive e-mails purporting to come from the likes of PayPal and Bank of America, the federal agency charged with consumer protection says it feels your pain.

The deceptive technique--in which crooks dispatch e-mails requesting sensitive personal information, typically by masquerading as financial institutions--"is one practice that absolutely drives me insane," Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras told attendees at the first National Cybersecurity Awareness Summit, which was put on here Monday by a nonprofit partnership of federal government agencies and software vendors.

That's because … Read more