incentives

LAS VEGAS--Peace appears to be breaking out between mobile Internet users and regulators.

During the three-day Innovation Policy Summit here at CES, members of Congress, FCC commissioners, industry representatives, and consumer groups found little to disagree on, whether the topic was incentive auctions for more broadband spectrum, retiring legacy copper networks in favor of native IP, sharing government spectrum in the 5 GHz band for high-speed Wi-Fi, or the continuing threat of international efforts to turn Internet governance over to repressive national governments so they can destroy it.

Some minor skirmishes broke out, of course, but the conversation this week … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission is making progress in its effort to free up 500MHz of additional wireless spectrum by 2020, but much work is still needed in order for the FCC to meet its goal.

On Tuesday, the commission approved rules that would free up 40MHz of satellite spectrum that had been allocated for satellite use to be used for wireless broadband service. And it also moved forward with setting up an auction next year for 10MHz of wireless spectrum in the PCS H block. The H Block spectrum that will be auctioned off sits next to the satellite spectrum … Read more

Early this morning, Syria went offline.

Some more scary news is coming out of Syria early this morning. Apparently the entire country has gone dark, completely vanishing from the Internet over the course of just a few minutes. According to Renesys, a company that operates a real-time Internet-monitoring grid, all of Syria's IP connectivity has become unreachable.

Today Google has announced the acquisition of Incentive Targeting, a maker of coupon programs that tailor to users' behaviors and likes. The company has worked with retailers to design trackable coupons that help gauge their performance and usefulness.

CNET has a review of the Jawbone Up … Read more

Google said today that it has acquired Incentive Targeting, a maker of coupon programs tailored to shoppers based on their individual purchase histories.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Google said the company would become part of its mobile commerce efforts.

"We look forward to working with Incentive Targeting in our ongoing efforts to help consumers save time and money and enable retailers to deliver relevant discounts to the right customers," a Google spokesperson told CNET in an e-mail.

Founded in 2007, Incentive Targeting worked with retail chains and brands to design promotions, deliver them via coupon, … Read more

The U.K. is accusing Facebook of dodging taxes in 2011. According to the Guardian, tax experts said that the tech company reported lower sales figures than estimated and explicitly set up its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, to reap the benefits of lowered tax incentives for corporations.

"The U.K. is being taken for a ride," Tax Research U.K. director Richard Murphy told the Guardian. "Facebook is taking standard practice for these IT companies to a new high, or low, depending on how you look at it."

Facebook paid $313,345 to the U.K. … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission has begun the long process of reclaiming broadcast TV spectrum for wireless use.

The five commissioners unanimously approved a proposal intended to free up spectrum now held by broadcasters and auction it to wireless broadband providers. (See the FCC press release embedded at the end of this article.) CNET followed the hearing via the FCC's public webcast.

The complicated process, which is the first of its kind, will have three components.

First there is the reverse auction, in which TV broadcasters will voluntarily sell their spectrum back to the government. Then there's a "… Read more

As the Federal Communications Commission establishes the rules for its upcoming incentive spectrum auction, competitive carriers say they do not want to see a repeat of what happened with the 700MHz spectrum auction in 2008.

"The 700MHz auction was a disaster," Patrick Riordan, CEO of the rural Wisconsin carrier Cellcom, said at the Competitive Carrier Association's annual conference this week. "The FCC needs to get this one right. We all need spectrum too much. It has to be a level playing field."

On Friday the FCC will open comment on a proposal for how the … Read more

After some push and pull with the Texas authorities, it looks like Apple might have finally sealed the deal on its plans to expand its Austin campus. According to the Austin Business Journal, county records show that three tracts of land near its existing campus were sold to Apple on June 21.

"It's unknown how much Apple paid for the land or how many acres it bought, but officials at two real estate brokerages, which did not want to be identified, confirmed that the long awaited deal had closed," the Journal reports.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced … Read more

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