Viodi View – 12/03/13

It is nice when someone is listening. That’s the feeling I had last Friday while reading Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s (D-Ca) letter. Her letter was in response to my suggestion that Senator Rockefeller’s bill, S1680, provides an opportunity to reconsider the best way to serve the public interest with spectrum now used for broadcast television. She indicated she would consider my suggestion and reminded me of her discussion draft, the Video CHOICE Act, which was released on September 9th and is intended to update legislation to reflect today’s video market place realities.

With the turmoil, rancor and election year politics in Washington, the odds are extremely low that there will be any updates in 2014 to last century telecommunications’ laws. Still, could there be enough common ground for Congress to find a solution that advances the legal framework to match today’s video marketplace, which has shifted to broadband as the delivery vehicle of choice?

Too Much Delegation

“We have got to do everything possible to get the regulatory dog back on the Congressional leash,” said Congressman John Barrow (D-Ga). In this video, he suggests that too much power has been delegated to regulatory agencies. While Congress is infighting, they are not providing the oversight necessary to keep regulatory agencies in check. He points out that unless both sides of the aisle have a shared view of how a law is supposed to be implemented, it is going to be difficult to provide this oversight. Barrow’s comments were made prior to the arrival of new FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler.

Click here to view the interview with Congressman Barrow.

Regulating the Internet a Non-Starter

The location of FCC Chairman’s first public comments may be as important as the content of the comments, as he made them outside Washington D.C., in Columbus, Ohio. Speaking to Ohio State University students, he points out that the purpose of the FCC is to serve the people. Suggesting that we are in the transition to a fourth network revolution (Guttenberg press, railroads and telegraph being the first three, as he suggests), he indicates that, “’Regulating the Internet’ is a non-starter.”

He does suggest some level of FCC oversight is necessary to ensure competition and he likens the need for oversight to a see-saw, whereby more competition means less regulatory oversight. He also suggests a “Network Compact”, which provides for basic rights of consumers and basic responsibilities of network operators. There are three key elements of the Network Compact – accessibility, interconnection, and public safety and security.

Click here to read his entire speech and click here to read his just published e-book, NET EFFECTS: The Past, Present, and Future Impact of Our Networks, which lays out his philosophy for the role of the FCC, as well as provides a good historical perspective of how we got to the point, where as Wheeler puts it, “Information networks aren’t ancillary; they are integral.”

Getting People to Work Together

“The thing that really pleased me is that those two mayors were willing to put aside their geographic boundaries  their voting constituent boundaries and to say, ‘if we collaborate, then this entire area will benefit,’” said Hilda Legg Vice Chair of the 2013 Broadband Communities Summit and former Administrator of the Rural Utilities Service. Legg was referencing the work of the mayors of Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri in working together to facilitate the rollout of Google Fiber in the Kansas City region.

Click here to read more and view the interview.

Datacenter in the Himalayas of South Florida

Hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding are some of the concerns for businesses in a low-lying tropical climate. A disaster recovery plan for mitigating the loss caused by one of these inevitable natural disasters is mandatory. ITS Fiber, with its roots as the local telephone provider in rural Indiantown, Florida, saw its location as a key asset in helping businesses integrate disaster recovery into their standard operating processes, such that disaster recovery becomes a strategic advantage.

Click here to read more and view about this unique local datacenter that Viodi documented earlier this year.

Going Beyond Phone Therapy

“It has to go beyond, what we call, phone therapy,” said James Morehead. Morehead, VP of Product Management for Support.com explains the importance of being able to provide fast and efficient support to meet the demands of consumers. He explains that being able to embed software hooks to enable remote the monitoring of devices within the home is a critical element for providing efficient and invisible support.

Click here to view the interview.

Some Tweets and Short Thoughts

• Great #callcompletion analogy “..a car driving across America taking only back country roads to avoid paying tolls..…
• #SmallCable Must Be Compensated For Post-Auction TV Channel Relocation Costs, suggests the American Cable Association.
• Similarly, in comments to the FCC, “Sennheiser argues that the winners of the spectrum auction should compensate owners of wireless microphone equipment that will be rendered obsolete as a direct result of the planned spectrum repacking.” Ouch, my favorite microphone uses frequencies in the 600 Mhz band.
• November 21st was the 50th anniversary of the touchtone phone

The Korner – At the Pinnacle of Trade Show Exhibition

An exhibit booth has to have something unique to catch the eye of this grizzled veteran of the trade show floor. To stand out among hundreds of competitors is always the challenge for the person responsible for a trade show booth. What really makes for a successful display is the integration of the conference theme into the booth, while providing visitors with something memorable and doing so without spending a fortune. Of course, all the aforementioned must be accomplished while imparting a desired message to the attendees.

Pinnacle’s exhibit at the Minnesota Telecom Association’s Annual Convention stood out above and beyond any of the  thousands of booths I saw this year. As seen in the following video, they incorporated the theme of the conference into an interactive booth that told the message of how their business has transformed from analog to digital. As such, they were awarded with the MTA 2013 Best Booth Design!

Click here to view.