The two major-party presidential candidates agree on broad telecom goals but differ on solutions, according to a report released Wednesday at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation forum. The 2008 election focuses more on technology policy than in 2004, but candidates could benefit by being clearer about policy, the report said. U.S. technology research and development investments are decelerating, it said.

Mytopia hopes to open its digital game community to users of Xbox 360 and other videogame platforms after the coming launch on mobile devices, Galia Ben-Artzi, director of marketing and business development, told us. The company is “right at the beginning” of discussions to bring the community to home console and handheld videogame systems, she said, predicting that will take at least “a couple of months” to become a reality. Until now the Mytopia game community has been available online only in beta form, open to users of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and Friendster. But the company said Wednesday at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco that the game community soon will be available via iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, PalmOS, Windows Mobile and other mobile devices. For the first time, Mytopia members from social networks, widget communities, mobile devices and “every smartphone operating system will be able to seamlessly play games and chat together in real-time,” it said. The game community will be embedded on various mobile devices worldwide, with initial release on the complete smartphone catalog of wireless telecom service provider Orange Israel, it said. The Mytopia community is a virtual world incorporating casual games and social features. Games offered now are all internally- developed, but Ben-Artzi said the goal is to make third-party titles available as well via licensing. Games at the Web site include bingo, chess and poker. Players earn silver and gold “nuggets,” the Mytopian currency, and can “cash out” winnings for virtual and actual prizes in the company online shop, it said. The community features real-time connectivity. Mytopia Mobile will enable the company to explore new business models, Ben-Artzi said. Mytopia has been free-to-play on the Web but will charge for mobile game play, either a monthly fee of about $9.99 or a la carte game purchases at about $7.99 to $14.99 per title, Ben-Artzi said. The new business model will free Mytopia of its reliance on ads, which can interfere with the user’s immersive online game session, the company said. The game community is powered by a Real Time Universal Gaming System (RUGS), the company’s patent-pending “write once, run anywhere” framework that it said “enables users to play classic games together in real-time from any device or network.” The technology emerged in-house after the company tired of spending 60 to 70 percent of its resources porting games among platforms, said Ben-Artzi. The technology eliminates the “fragmentation” that complicates bringing a game from one device to another, she said. Mytopia was started in 2005 by Ben-Artzi and her older brother, Guy Ben-Artzi. The company raised $1.5 million in initial funding from unspecified investors, it said. So far, it’s drawn about 850,000 users, with concurrent users at times numbering 2,000, she said. Those gamers have visited the site without seeing a single ad promoting it, but the company plans to advertise after expanding to mobile devices, she said. To date, it’s generated revenue but Ben-Artzi wouldn’t say how much. The company expects to become profitable in early 2009, she told us.

Mytopia hopes to open its digital game community to users of Xbox 360 and other videogame platforms after the coming launch on mobile devices, Galia Ben-Artzi, director of marketing and business development, told Consumer Electronics Daily. The company is “right at the beginning” of discussions to bring the community to home console and handheld videogame systems, she said, predicting that will take at least “a couple of months” to become a reality. Until now the Mytopia game community has been available online only in beta form, open to users of Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and Friendster. But the company said Wednesday at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco that the game community soon will be available via iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian, PalmOS, Windows Mobile and other mobile devices. For the first time, Mytopia members from social networks, widget communities, mobile devices and “every smartphone operating system will be able to seamlessly play games and chat together in real-time,” it said. The game community will be embedded on various mobile devices worldwide, with initial release on the complete smartphone catalog of wireless telecom service provider Orange Israel, it said. The Mytopia community is a virtual world incorporating casual games and social features. Games offered now are all internally-developed, but Ben-Artzi said the goal is to make third-party titles available as well via licensing. Games at the Web site include bingo, chess and poker. Players earn silver and gold “nuggets,” the Mytopian currency, and can “cash out” winnings for virtual and actual prizes in the company online shop, it said. The community features real-time connectivity. Mytopia Mobile will enable the company to explore new business models, Ben-Artzi said. Mytopia has been free-to-play on the Web but will charge for mobile game play, either a monthly fee of about $9.99 or a la carte game purchases at about $7.99 to $14.99 per title, Ben- Artzi said. The new business model will free Mytopia of its reliance on ads, which can interfere with the user’s immersive online game session, the company said. The game community is powered by a Real Time Universal Gaming System (RUGS), the company’s patent-pending “write once, run anywhere” framework that it said “enables users to play classic games together in real-time from any device or network.” The technology emerged in-house after the company tired of spending 60 to 70 percent of its resources porting games among platforms, said Ben-Artzi. The technology eliminates the “fragmentation” that complicates bringing a game from one device to another, she said. Mytopia was started in 2005 by Ben-Artzi and her older brother, Guy Ben- Artzi. The company raised $1.5 million in initial funding from unspecified investors, it said. So far, it’s drawn about 850,000 users, with concurrent users at times numbering 2,000, she said. Those gamers have visited the site without seeing a single ad promoting it, but the company plans to advertise after expanding to mobile devices, she said. To date, it’s generated revenue but Ben-Artzi wouldn’t say how much. The company expects to become profitable in early 2009, she told us.

The House Oversight Committee is reviewing responses by 24 carriers it queried on their use of high-cost universal service fund subsidies, a committee spokeswoman said Tuesday. Responses were due at the end of August (CD July 29 p6).

An FCC rural broadband workshop in Austin, Texas, will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 18 at the Thompson Conference Center on the University of Texas campus, the FCC said Thursday. The workshop will explain “the resources, programs, and policies of the FCC and USDA,” the FCC said. Topics include: Broadband technologies, USDA funding for broadband deployment, the Universal Service Fund, the FCC Rural Health Care Pilot program and wireless spectrum access, the FCC said.

As expected, a challenge by a group of wireless carriers to an interim FCC cap on the Universal Service Fund high-cost program will go to federal appeals court. Friday, the Rural Cellular Association and a group of small wireless eligible telecom carriers petitioned for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The parties had petitioned the FCC for reconsideration, but last week withdrew that challenge to permit court action (CD Aug 26 p8).

The FCC should more narrowly target Universal Service Fund high-cost support, Embarq said. In a Wednesday meeting with the Wireline Bureau, the carrier proposed new high-cost support reforms that it said would boost broadband deployment, stabilize support for carriers of last resort and leave the door open for further USF reform. Embarq urged the FCC to be explicit in targeting support using wire centers, rather than implicitly targeting it through study area averaging. “The use of average cost calculations assumes that a CoLR’s rates will be averaged and, therefore, that higher returns in low-cost areas will offset negative returns in high-cost areas,” Embarq said. “Competition has invalidated this assumption, however, as competitors charge lower rates and win customers in low-cost areas, thereby reducing the CoLR’s revenues and eliminating the higher returns that were implicitly subsidizing the below-cost service in high-cost areas.” Embarq suggested that the FCC replace today’s non-rural high-cost support mechanism with a new “Broadband and Carrier-of-Last-Resort Support (BCS) mechanism that supports wire centers with average loop costs greater than a national benchmark.” Once established, the BCS would be capped at its initial level, rising only through FCC action, the carrier said. The FCC would need no new USF funding to create the BCS, Embarq said. Instead, money would come by adding access replacement funds received by wireless carriers, it said. The proposal promotes broadband deployment because BCS support recipients in price-cap areas would commit to building out a minimum of 1.5 Mbps broadband in at least 85 percent of their wire center lines, Embarq said. To keep CoLR service affordable, recipients also would commit to providing local service at rates meeting an FCC- designated benchmark. Failure to meet the benchmark would mean forfeiting the difference between its actual rate and the benchmark, multiplied by the number of lines served, Embarq said. The company’s proposal “would not necessarily take support away from wireless CETCs,” unlike the FCC’s reverse auctions proposal, Embarq said. “Rather, these CETCs would be eligible for support under the new BCS mechanism, provided they meet the conditions to build out network throughout each supported wire center and meet the broadband commitment in those wire centers.” Embarq plans to file a full proposal and support documents this week, it said.

Rate-of-return incumbent carriers should be allowed to allocate federal Universal Service Fund audit costs solely to interstate operations, said the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. In a Friday petition, NTCA urged the FCC to clarify and/or waive a rule on how rate-of-return carriers should assign USF audit costs via the jurisdictional separations process. “Federal USF audit expenses are solely interstate in nature,” NTCA said. “Consequently, it is appropriate that those expense be allocated to the interstate jurisdiction.” Rate-of-return carriers now can be denied recovery of federal USF audit expenses if a state declares the costs to be “clearly interstate in nature,” NTCA said. “Should these carriers not be allowed to recover all of the costs spent on USF audits, their ability to serve their customers will be impaired, to the detriment of the public interest.”

The National Exchange Carrier Association filed revisions to its average schedule formulas that will apply for all of 2009 pending FCC approval. The formulas are used to calculate interstate Universal Service Fund high-cost loop expense adjustments. Under the proposed formula, average payments to average schedule companies in 2009 will total about $26.6 million, payable to 394 average schedule study areas, NECA said. That’s 33.3 percent less than in 2008, whose payments are expected to total $39.9 million to 362 study areas, the group said. In 2009, high-cost loop funding for all rural companies will amount to $996.6 million, it said.

The Missouri Public Service Commission authorized a state court suit against Global Touch Telecom seeking fines for providing telecom service without a state business license, PSC intrastate operating authority, paying into the state universal service fund, filing reports of intrastate operating revenues or paying regulatory administration fees. The PSC said its staff repeatedly asked the company to correct these deficiencies but received no response. It said evidence indicates Global Touch is providing illegal phone service to hundreds of state residents. The PSC has no authority to fine violators of its rules and regulations; it must sue offenders in state court.