The Internet Innovation Alliance is a broad-based coalition of business and non-profit organizations that aim to ensure every American, regardless of race, income or geography, has access to the critical tool that is broadband Internet. The IIA seeks to promote public policies that support equal opportunity for universal broadband availability and adoption so that everyone, everywhere can seize the benefits of the Internet - from education to health care, employment to community building, civic engagement and beyond.
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Rick Boucher
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Wednesday, April 08
According to a blog post from Facebook founder Mark Zuckeberg, the social networking behemoth is expected to land its 200 millionth user sometime today.
Today’s Washington Post has a report on the agency’s project, and how the process may be a bit pokey for the flurry of broadband action spurred by stimulus funds:
[B]y the time the FCC creates its plan for broadband, it is likely that Internet service providers will have claimed much of the $7.2 billion in stimulus funds set aside to build high-speed networks without major input from the agency. And that has some worried that the Obama administration’s call to wire the nation risks having taxpayer money going toward projects that are not needed and have been created without clear guidelines.
Later in the story, IIA co-founder Larry Irving is quoted on the need for the stimulus funds to be put into action quickly:
Ideally, the FCC’s plan would have been in place before stimulus funds were granted, say tech advisers who helped craft President Obama’s broadband strategy. But the urgency of the economic crisis called for quick ways to create jobs, including through broadband deployment, they said.
“We need the stimulus to create jobs that are timely, targeted and temporary,” said Larry Irving, a former head of the NTIA and an adviser to Obama’s transition team. “That was the first stage of a multistage effort to get our arms around national broadband strategy.”
As the FCC begins work on drafting a national broadband plan, the agency is taking comments from the public for the next 60 days, along with an additional 30 days for reply comments. From the agency’s press release (available on its website):
In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – known as the stimulus package – Congress charged the Commission with creating a national broadband plan. In a Notice of Inquiry adopted today, the Commission begins a proceeding to create that national broadband plan, seeking input from all stakeholders: consumers, industry, large and small businesses, non-profits, the disabilities community, governments at the federal, state, local and tribal levels, and all other interested parties.
The Commission must deliver the plan to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010. It will provide a roadmap toward achieving the goal of ensuring that all Americans reap the benefits of broadband
Hot on the heels of the Obama administration creating a national cybersecurity czar comes word that the U.S. electrical grid has been hacked. From the Wall Street Journal:
Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.
The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven’t sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.
“The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid,” said a senior intelligence official. “So have the Russians.”
The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn’t target a particular company or region, said a former Department of Homeland Security official. “There are intrusions, and they are growing,” the former official said, referring to electrical systems. “There were a lot last year.”
Tuesday, April 07
In an effort to protect its content—and earn additional revenue—the Associated Press is planning to demand sites like Google News and The Drudge Report begin asking permission, and paying, to use its content. From the New York Times:
A.P. executives said they were concerned about a variety of news forums around the Web, including major search engines like Google and Yahoo and aggregators like the Drudge Report that link to news articles, smaller sites that sometimes reproduce articles whole, and companies that sell packaged news feeds.
They said they did not want to stop the appearance of articles around the Web, but to exercise some control over the practice and to profit from it.
Whether sites that use A.P. content will play ball—and whether the A.P. is willing to head to court to try and re-define “fair use” for the online age—remains to be seen. But as more and more traditional media find themselves clobbered by the Internet, expect more arguments about content and use in the future.
Via TechCrunch comes word of Google India Elections Center, a site dedicated to educate India’s 700 million voters on the country’s upcoming election. The site is available in both English and Hindi, and helps voters find polling locations, see their constituency on a map, and get election news, among other things.
While U.S. officials are still kicking around how to spend the $7 billion allocated for broadband expansion, Australia is making a much bigger investment. How big? As GigaOm reports:
The Australian government said today it will spend up to A$43 billion ($30.67 billion) to help set up a national broadband network. This is far from a purely socialist undertaking, however, as private sector involvement is expected as well. Regardless of where the funding comes from, the scope of the project is such that it’s going to revolutionize the Australian landscape.
By 2018 at least 90 percent of Australians will have access to speeds of around 100 megabits per second, mostly through a fiber network that will be built by a company formed expressly for this task. The remaining 10 percent will get their broadband via wireless or satellite links. The network is expected to be complete in 7-8 years, but the government plans to sell its stake in the company within five years.
Today’s New York Times has a great piece by early Internet developer Stephen D. Crocker on an important anniversary. It was on this day, 40 years ago, that Request for Comments were written, creating the rules for using the Internet. From the article:
A great deal of deliberation and planning had gone into the network’s underlying technology, but no one had given a lot of thought to what we would actually do with it. So, in August 1968, a handful of graduate students and staff members from the four sites began meeting intermittently, in person, to try to figure it out. (I was lucky enough to be one of the U.C.L.A. students included in these wide-ranging discussions.) It wasn’t until the next spring that we realized we should start writing down our thoughts. We thought maybe we’d put together a few temporary, informal memos on network protocols, the rules by which computers exchange information. I offered to organize our early notes.
What was supposed to be a simple chore turned out to be a nerve-racking project. Our intent was only to encourage others to chime in, but I worried we might sound as though we were making official decisions or asserting authority. In my mind, I was inciting the wrath of some prestigious professor at some phantom East Coast establishment. I was actually losing sleep over the whole thing, and when I finally tackled my first memo, which dealt with basic communication between two computers, it was in the wee hours of the morning. I had to work in a bathroom so as not to disturb the friends I was staying with, who were all asleep.
Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.” R.F.C. 1, written 40 years ago today, left many questions unanswered, and soon became obsolete. But the R.F.C.’s themselves took root and flourished. They became the formal method of publishing Internet protocol standards, and today there are more than 5,000, all readily available online.
The entire article is definitely worth checking out.
Monday, April 06
Here at IIA, we have a great and diverse membership representing a cross-section of the country. Each member represents communities with unique perspectives and needs. However, they share a common belief in the transformative power of broadband. We are kicking off a series of video testimonials of our members explaining “Why Broadband Matters to Us” in their own words.
The first installment is from Mary Hunt, a county commissioner from Washington state and a member of the National Grange, which is an IIA membership organization. Here, Mary talks about why broadband is so important to rural communities like hers.
With more and more government business being dependent upon the Internet, cybersecurity is of utmost importance.
With President Obama’s 60-day comprehensive review of US cybersecurity still underway, Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) on Wednesday introduced sweeping legislation that would establish a cybersecurity “czar” within the White House and bring both governmental and private sector “critical infrastructure” under a unified regulatory regime.
The “czar”—more precisely, an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor within the White House—is established in a separate short-but-sweet bill running a mere three pages. It specifies that the post will be subject to Senate confirmation, and it gives the cybersecurity advisor a backstage pass to all of the federal government’s cyber-related “special access programs,” a designation given to highly secret initiatives.
The full text of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 can be found here.
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