Consumers Union and others who criticize sporadic shortages of DTV converter boxes are reminiscent of “the 1969 moon landing being criticized because the pictures were fuzzy,” CEA CEO Gary Shapiro told us in an e-mail. “Some shortages and surpluses among retailers are natural, and in the age of the telephone and the Internet, we have not heard of one consumer who after a couple of phone calls or web searches could not get a box,” Shapiro said. “This has been the biggest technology transition in the history of broadcasting, and is by every indication has been and will be a phenomenal success! The cooperation among industries, government and public interest groups has been unprecedented.”
The construction of undersea fiber cables serving Africa is moving forward, but has been slowed by opposition from some governments and incumbent telecommunications providers, said people involved. With the SAT3 network installed on the west coast, Seacom on the east coast scheduled for activation in June and other digital cables in various stages of progress, problems persist with infrastructure, open access, and licensing, they said. Still, Africa is becoming more competitive, Seacom President Brian Herlihy said in an interview.
Google jacked up keyword prices for an AdWords client to block a potential competitor, said a lawsuit filed by TradeComet.com in U.S. District Court in New York. Claims that Google discriminated against a Web site or advertiser are nothing new, and they have found little sympathy from judges (WID March 23/07 p11). But TradeComet prefaced its complaint by noting the Justice Department was hours away from filing a lawsuit against Google to block its planned search deal with Yahoo before Google backed out. TradeComet is represented by Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, which also represents Microsoft concerning compliance with the government’s antitrust settlement.
The construction of undersea fiber cables serving Africa is moving forward, but has been slowed by opposition from some governments and incumbent telecommunications providers, said people involved. With the SAT3 network installed on the west coast, Seacom on the east coast scheduled for activation in June and other digital cables in various stages of progress, problems persist with infrastructure, open access, and licensing, they said. Still, Africa is becoming more competitive, Seacom President Brian Herlihy said in an interview.
On February 13, 2009, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Economic Stimulus Bill) conference report1.
Books and articles never intended for marketing or sale outside the U.S. are landing their authors in foreign courts with less tolerance for unflattering speech, lawmakers and legal scholars said at a House Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee hearing Thursday. “Libel tourism” is especially prevalent in British courts, which have welcomed defamation lawsuits from plaintiffs around the world against U.S. writers and their publishers, who must prove their writing wasn’t libelous. The availability of writing online, to a worldwide audience, has given new justification for lawsuits in recent years, they said.
As part of her confirmation process, Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano submitted to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee responses to a pre-hearing questionnaire.
The FCC gave Ronan Telephone one more year to meet a tribal land bidding credit construction requirement for the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana. In an order Wednesday, the FCC waived the requirement, which was bundled with one of the C-Block licenses won by the company in the 700 MHz auction. Ronan now has until Jan. 29, 2010, to complete build-out.
In anticipation of President Obama's trip to Canada on February 19, 2009, New York Representatives Slaughter and McHugh sent President Obama a letter requesting that the U.S. restart Shared Border Management (SBM) negotiations with Canada.
Verizon Business will continue to upgrade its infrastructure and deploy new long-haul fiber projects this year, the company said. It’s continuing to expand its MPLS network across Asia, Mexico, the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, said the company, which logged $17.8 billion in wireless and wireline network projects worldwide in 2008. It will also continue to invest in submarine cable capacity. The second phase of the 10,500 mile Trans-Pacific Express cable network is expected to land in Japan in early 2010. In addition, as a member of the Europe India Gateway (EIG) consortium, a direct high-bandwidth fiber system to be built connecting the U.K., the Middle East and India, Verizon is putting in a cable terminal facility in Marseille, France, for the 9,000 mile, $700 million-plus project, giving EIG direct connectivity to the Verizon Business network in Europe. The terminal should be ready for EIG equipment installation in Q3 2009, with EIG system service ready in 2010. Increasing redundancy and fault-tolerance, the company will expand its global mesh network to India and Egypt, as well as continue expanding optical mesh links in the U.S. and Canada. Other projects on deck in 2009 include a second phase of network expansion in India, deployment of reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers, deployment of 40 Gbps on selected network routs for IP traffic, and continued testing of 100 Gbps.