October 30th, 2009

ZDNet Government version of Throw out the Trash Day

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 30, 2009 @ 1:12 PM

Categories: Blogs, Congress, E-government, FCC, Government 2.0, Government technology, Journalism, Open government, State & Local Govt, Telecom, UK, White House

Tags: FCC, Web Site, Wired Magazine, Web Site Development, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Web Technology, Federal Government, Internet, Government, Doug Hanchard

Friday is always an interesting day to report news. In the hit political drama series produced and written by Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing, he came up with how the White House Press Secretary got into a routine with staffers in the Communications office to gather up all the news that should be announced, but prayed nobody read about it. Well guess what, covering the news on Government issues can be the same! So every Friday, it will be Take out the Trash Day .

Here’s my take on some news that isn’t all that interesting but still made it online somewhere….

Throw out the trash day

From the New York Times - Governor of California sends secret code message (this too was a story line in one of the episode of  The West Wing) - Arnold got some pretty good writers!

Wired Magazine says an ISP owner still under gag order by the FBI. Wonder if the ISP had any other news to report, like are customer connections still working?

The BBC found thieves who think copper is still worth stealing from British Telecom - an entire Kilometer ripped out from a conduit by truck!

Minister of Environment for Australia jumps onto the smart grid energy bandwagon.  Soon the entire world will have governments and utility companies capable of remotely shutting off your electricity and you won’t have a choice.

Also included on the last Friday of each month, I will blog my take on the best and worst government websites. Send me an email if you find ones that I should rate. At the end of the year I’ll announce the ‘awards’ of each category.

Best Website for month of October for Content

City of Los Angeles

Best Website - Organization of Content

Whitehouse, Washington D.C.

Most innovative government website:

Open Internet by the FCC

Worst website for Content

City of New York

Worst website - Organization of content

Federal Communications Commission

October 29th, 2009

Start up cellular provider Globalive denied license to operate in Canada

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 29, 2009 @ 7:17 PM

Categories: Canada, Courts, Mobile/wireless, Regulations

Tags: Financial, Commission, TELUS Corp., Canada, Bell Canada, Globalive, CRTC, Orascom, Canadian Law, Telephony

In a stunning victory for Bell Canada, Telus and Rogers, the CRTC denied new start up Globalive a license to operate as a telecommunications (cellular) service provider in Canada. Over the past month the CRTC held hearings whether or not Globalive met ownership rules required to operate as a carrier. The commission’s hearings today determine that it did not. In a press release issued this afternoon:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today determined that Globalive Wireless Management (Globalive) does not meet the Canadian ownership requirements set out in the Telecommunications Act. Under the legislation, a telecommunications company is only eligible to operate in Canada if it is not at any time owned and controlled, in law and in fact, by non-Canadians.

Orascom is one the largest cellular players in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe and is based in Eygpt. Managed by CEO Naguib Sawiris, he and Canadian CEO of Globalive Tony Lacavera believed that majority financial investment did not translate into the mandatory Canadian ownership Laws.

Canadian Law requires majority control of the company be Canadian controlled. The CRTC stated:

The Commission found it particularly important that Orascom owns 65.1 per cent of the equity, has entered into a strategic technical arrangement with Globalive, controls and holds the “Wind” brand under which Globalive will operate, and holds the overwhelming majority of the outstanding debt.

Orascom has invested over 400 Million (Cdn) into the new company’s cellular operations which are to be called Wind, which is also Orascom’s European brand.

All three major incumbent players, Bell Canada, Telus, and Rogers, aggressively argued that Globalive was not a Canadian controlled entity, submitting strong evidence and regulatory requirements were being sidestepped under illegal pretenses. The CRTC commission agreed with just about every argument the three made during hearings in September.

No public announcement has yet been made by Globalive appealing the CRTC’s decision. Several options are possible including bringing in a majority Canadian financial interest into the company. The CRTC did not mandate Globalive to halt construction on any of the towers that they have currently being built.

October 29th, 2009

Traffic management: New Internet coming to your local roads

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 29, 2009 @ 9:18 AM

Categories: Canada, Congress, Government 2.0, Government technology, Intelligence, International, Mobile/wireless, Networking, Regulations, State & Local Govt, Transportation

Tags: Internet, Traffic Management, Australia, Radio, Advertising & Promotion, Wireless And Mobility, Marketing, Doug Hanchard

Since the mid 1980’s, there have been proposals to implement traffic management via wireless. Often referred to as Intelligent Transport System (ITS), the goal is to enable analysis and traffic flow services on a nation’s road system.  Study and working groups have been active in the Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Other European countries are in various stages of reviewing similar requirements.

ITS services would be operated via wireless devices attached to any motor vehicle. It could monitor volume, speed and direction of traffic. There would be significant benefits of such a tool for various agencies. The current designs being contemplated are looking for synergies on platform standards along with radio assignment in the 5.9 GHz frequency band.

During initial development the goals became clear and benefits in public safety and traffic management could save billions of dollars. Fast forward to see how we use technology today brings new concerns and other challenges that may cause significant concerns with respect to Law, Privacy and a host of security implications.  It could also prove to be a terrorist’s or hacker’s dream come true and thus a whole new level of challenges arise.

Australia has just released its analysis and request for comment for ITS solutions and the future of such a project. In it you will find some fascinating ideas, concepts and issues that raise more questions than there are answers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is specifically looking for comments on the radio frequencies recommended for such a deployment. There is no current timetable when this infrastructure would be enabled. Is this the beginning of a new era of how people management maybe becomes the norm? Perhaps…

October 27th, 2009

Banks and auto sector got bailed out, are telecom providers next?

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 27, 2009 @ 12:45 PM

Categories: Budget, Canada, Comcast, Commerce, Congress, E-government, FCC, Google, Government technology, IT Management, International, Microsoft, Net neutrality, Personnel Management, Regulations, Telecom, UK

Tags: Innovation, Bank, Debt, Internet, Telephony, Smb/Sme, Government, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Strategy

U.S. Senator John McCain came out with statements against government interference or the creation of regulations by the FCC. Instead he came out proposing a new law to prevent law. The Senator stated that Net Neutrality would stifle profitability, innovation, commerce and that jobs would not be  created with such regulation. Telecom and Internet Service providers are not hiring and with current debt levels some are barely profitable. But for how long? The FCC’s proposed Net Neutrality rulesare probably the least of the worries that are on the horizon for the Internet. Worldwide the industry has been turned upside down and none of the industry players got bailouts like the banks or auto sector did. Debt at many of the main telecom players are at unbelievable levels;

• France Telecom: 34.7 Billion Euros
• British Telecom: 16.1 Billion Euros
• Cable & Wireless: 922 million Pounds
• Italia Telecom: 35.8 Billion Euros
• Telstra : 16.1 Billion Au
• New Zealand Telecom: 2.8 Billion NZ
• NT&T : 639 Billion Yet
• Bell Canada: 14 Billion Cdn
• Telus: 7.5 Billion Cdn
• AT&T: 60.8 Billion US
• Sprint: 21.6 Billion US
• Comcast: 30.0 Billion US

These levels are sustainable for most, providing the economy doesn’t get any worse and credit facilities do not collapse any farther. Nortel collapsed under debt, Alcatel and Lucent merged and is heavily leveraged,  leaving Cisco as the only healthy one. Job creation and innovation will have to come from companies that have little or no debt burden. Most of ones listed above have made significant cuts in employment. Government regulates providers already, and does offer some incentives, grants and loans for internet innovations, and they are in debt in the trillions of dollars already. The private sector will be the innovator and career opportunities engine for internet services and applications that create healthy profit. Companies like RIM, Microsoft, Cisco and Google have significant advantages in growth capabilities. But it will be small and medium business (SMB) sized companies that will likely be responsible, and are rarely given credit for doing so around the world. Many wonder if they can bail out the industry before government has to.

October 26th, 2009

Talk and drive? More governments ban handheld phone use in vehicles

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 26, 2009 @ 12:34 PM

Categories: Canada, Courts, International, Law enforcement, Mobile/wireless, Telecom, Transportation, Twitter

Tags: Phone, Lufthansa, Government, Cell Phone, Accident, Ontario Provincial Police, Telecom & Utilities, Policies And Procedures, Cellular Phones, Human Resources

You just finished buying a new cell / mobile phone and it’s got everything you need in one neat little gadget. Your email, address book and calendar. It has your presentation, web browser and of course the ability to twitter what you are doing right this second…like getting a ticket for using it while driving down the road.

It’s now law. The government of Ontario has banned operating handheld devices while driving any motor vehicle on public roads. There are exceptions made for public safety and other government agencies. But these are exceptions. You can still talk and drive, providing you are not actually holding the device. Blue-tooth enabled phones or headsets are allowed. Fixed devices to dashboards are allowed, such as GPS units. The law will be enforced in all jurisdictions with warning tickets for approximately 30 days prior to fines being issued.

The Ontario Provincial Police is warning people publicly that if caught driving while holding and talking on a cell phone a fine could be just the start of your problems. If during an accident investigation it’s determined that driving while talking on a cell phone is a contributing factor to the accident, existing laws and fines may expose the driver causing the accident, fines to be levied at the maximum rate and driver points assessed at the maximum allowed under law. Read the rest of this entry »

October 23rd, 2009

Government in action: 1.3M mobile plans; Mexico's Internet tax; England's crime map

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 23, 2009 @ 5:48 AM

Categories: Government technology

Tags: Crime, Mobile, Internet Tax, Web Site, Mexico, U.K. Home Office, Internet, Web Site Development, Web Technology, Taxes

A roundup of government news…

Mobile plans for everyone with a few options

You want a wireless cell phone package. Which one to choose from? Maybe you want Caller ID and a long distance package that’s only to all of the UK and not International because you don’t call there that often. You text / SMS messages now and then, perhaps they have a package of 20 per month or something. There should be something available right?

Turns out, you have more than a few. The BBC has reported that mobile wireless carriers in the U.K. offer over 1.3 million different plans! Talk about chaos in the billing department. But wait, there’s more: Turns out that is an option in your plan too. One should think there might be a job or two available in Ofcom’s office with all the complaints they are receiving. Read the rest of this entry »

October 22nd, 2009

Net Neutrality: Why the Internet will never be free. For anything. So get used to it

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 22, 2009 @ 10:10 AM

Categories: Antitrust, Canada, Censorship, Commerce, Congress, Copyright, Courts, E-government, FCC, FTC, Google, Government technology, Green Dam, ICANN, Intellectual Property, International, Journalism, Justice, Microsoft, Net neutrality, Open government, Privacy, Regulations, Social networks, Standards, State & Local Govt, Telecom, VoIP, Web browsers, Web services

Tags: Provider, Google Inc., Network, Law, Net Neutrality, Yorkton, Market Pie, Internet, Networking, Doug Hanchard

Call it Net Neutrality if you want, but it doesn’t exist, nor is it required when you already have antitrust, regulatory and other local and state, and international law in place. Choice, innovation and open access are the principles in a free enterprise competitive market, not the halls of government.

Before I start, I wish to make clear that ’Law’ is what makes our society what it is today. Without, we would have anarchy and society as we know it today would not exist. Also this is not your typical blog story, what follows is an medium depth look at the problems and challenges Net Neutrality would have on providers, users and government policy if implemented. It doesn’t ask all the questions or give solutions to every aspect in fine detail but does give the reader a general knowledge and sense of issues.

Overview - Net Neutrality - a philosophy or set of regulations?

Your government will ensure Net neutrality with whatever they believe it is. You may not like it, but it is coming. I just don’t know if the lawmakers know what they are getting themselves into. The world believes the Internet is open to everyone. Some are arguing and even demanding we need Law and the RIGHT to eliminate censorship and have choice in all its forms.  The Internet is the People’s network and everyone owns it. Thus Net Neutrality would enable and ensure innovation, freedom, choice and access. Read the rest of this entry »

October 21st, 2009

Net Neutrality: Hit satire coming to a theatre near you

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 21, 2009 @ 5:49 AM

Categories: Congress, Government technology, Journalism, Net neutrality, Open government, Telecom, White House

Tags: Net Neutrality, Actor, Doug Hanchard

The world is a simple place, until someone wants to tell you what to do.  The realization that not everyone believes in common ground that surrounds each of us seems to be a new discovery to some. The sanctity of individual requirements is wrapping around our lives with a plethora of effects that will have long term consequences. Hey - wake up!! Don’t go to sleep reading this post just yet! Allow me to entertain you. After all, one component of a Internet blog is to entertain, right?

Net Neutrality is a theatre stage play written in Washington D.C. and this is a glimpse of what’s happening behind the scenes. There’s a pile of actors dancing around ready to be heard by you in the audience. What you don’t know is that the audience is about to watch chaos in motion amongst the actors and not realize that many simply turn around and walk out before they even get to their seats. The show is the story about Net Neutrality that never settles down. Right off the bat, the writer has lost control of the script because of all the request for rewrites. The producer doesn’t even remember what the storyline is. I’m usually asleep by Act II if it’s Opera and if this play doesn’t figure out what it IS soon, I won’t even finish writing this blog! The story…right….about Net Neutrality, I think.

The players are the same ones we’ve become used to. Government, Corporations, and Consumers. Mixed in with those groups are the supporting actors; lobbyist, agents and the commentators. All the players described are going to make money, except one. You do know which group that is, right? Read the rest of this entry »

October 21st, 2009

Global cyberwar: Installed in your PC at home, the office and government

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 21, 2009 @ 5:32 AM

Categories: Government technology

Tags: Network, PC, IRC, Attack, Terabyte Version, Internet, Government, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Networking, Security

It starts out as banter on Internet Relay Chat (IRC); on one end, a teenager programs a small program called a botnet, and instructs it to begin pinging your IRC client with lots of packets. You find a little botnet script yourself and retaliate. The war begins, albeit 1 versus 1. In military terms, that’s how wars start. While individual users laugh and watch how they kept you off an IRC channel and poof! — you’re eliminated — from a computer screen. That was over 15 years ago. Today it’s no longer 1 PC versus 1 PC or 100 v. 100. Now it scales into the millions with command and control from a BlackBerry. This time, somebody is going to get hurt.

A private war becomes public

Denial of Service attacks are generally one of activists or individuals that have a warped reason or a political point they want to make, often with unknown rationale. The evolution of this became the learning ground of cyber terrorism and eventually all out war between nations via the internet - nation vs. nation. The goal is achieving serious economic and social impacts and not just infiltrating two or three university servers that used to be compromised by amateur hacks, fanning out to a few hundred computers. Geeks in dungeons are now in uniform and they don’t take prisoners or feed you.

Militarization of the Internet

For the past several years, military and intelligence organizations have been upgrading their abilities to safeguard their networks from attack by anyone or any nations. It’s the modern version of the Cold War, truly preparing for a global cyber launch of World War III. Don’t think in terms of the United States vs. Cold War era rivals that will start it. It will be nations on their own continent fighting each other, expanding to continent v. continent. Or a country that considers itself under attack by other means such as trade sanctions or ideological differences sets the conditions for using the internet as a weapon.

The board game becomes real

Imagine the board game Axis and Allies evolved into 21st century digital world. (Even they are on Twitter!)
With over 1.6 billion people now accessing the internet, more being added daily and the evolution of I.P.  addressing I.P. to IPV6, the network world will becoming more complex. Routers that routinely pass traffic at 40- to 100 GB per second are available for peanuts. Terabyte versions are now on the leading edge and low cost. A government purchasing  gray-market terabyte routers, switches, encryption software and cloud servers are probably already in the arms dealer’s inventory sitting on a shelf beside bomb detonators. In the not too distance future, Petabyte technology is coming to a local PC near you. Cheaper than any smart bomb to put it succinctly.

Read the rest of this entry »

October 21st, 2009

Antitrust: Time to break apart the phone companies -- again?

Posted by Doug Hanchard @ October 21, 2009 @ 4:00 AM

Categories: Antitrust, Commerce, Congress, Courts, FCC, Government technology, International, Municipal broadband, Net neutrality, Open government, Regulations, Telecom, Web

Tags: U.S., Phone, Antitrust, Network, AT&T Corp., Corporate Law, Telephony, Telecom & Utilities, Telecommunications, Security

In the global meltdown of the economy, corporate earnings are the bellwether of survival. The old adage that the strong get stronger and the weak….  they just collapse. But some corporations now control significant market share that some believe borders on antitrust violations in the U.S. In Australia, Canada and Japan, corporate consolidation has risen significantly over the past several years. There’s no indications of policy direction or change at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the U.S, CRTC (Canada) or OFCom (U.K.). which would trigger antitrust or anti-competition hearings.

There are very few industries collecting guaranteed revenue. Utilities and financial institutions are the two biggest. Within utilities, telecommunications has had a unique blend of service ‘delivery’ since the beginning. Initially, a single entity that provided everyone the services, is what created instant monopolies. Fast forward 80 years, and antitrust had its second big challenge (after Standard Oil) with AT&T, which was broken up in the United States in 1984 and the Canadian “group” of telecommunications known as Stentor self-destructed in 1999 because regulator tariffs choked their ability to compete with new entrance into the market. Read the rest of this entry »