By DAVID GOODFRIEND and BRAD BLAKEMAN | 3/26/13

The FCC has made clear that the nation needs to retire outdated non-broadband copper lines and replace them with 21st-century IP-based high-speed broadband data networks that consumers need and demand. Many consumers already have made this transition, abandoning the traditional voice network for IP-enabled voice services. In fact, one in three American homes now relies on wireless-only technologies, according to the U.S. National Health Interview Survey. Wireless Internet access, according to the Pew Trust, is greater in Latino and African-American communities than in the population at large, suggesting that much of this “cord cutting” occurs among people previously harmed by the wireline digital divide.

The FCC can respond to this new reality in telecommunications and foster capital investment and economic growth by accelerating the nation’s transition to all-IP networks. It can authorize beta trials to test the transition to IP networks and services in select service areas. Many questions about the IP transition remain. The trials are a good way to start addressing them.

Our nation has seen this trial model work before. Prior to the digital television broadcast transition, the FCC conducted a successful trial in Wilmington, N.C., that helped to answer regulatory questions and offer logistical insights into how a national transition could best proceed while protecting consumers. Beta trials of a complete transition to IP networks in select neighborhood service areas would provide the FCC with an opportunity to oversee and monitor the transition and examine how best to implement a national transition.

The consumer benefits provided by wireless and next-generation IP broadband networks are significant. The capital investment resulting from building more wireless network infrastructure and transitioning to wireline IP networks would not only help job creation and economic growth, it also would help us achieve the president’s goal of 98 percent of U.S. residents having access to high-speed mobile broadband service within four years. Now is the time to act.

David Goodfriend is a former Clinton White House and FCC official now practicing telecommunications law in Washington. Brad Blakeman is a former George W. Bush White House senior staff member and former president of Freedom’s Watch now lecturing at Georgetown University.

http://politi.co/10cuzzr

By  Mark Williams

The Columbus Dispatch: Tuesday March 26, 2013

A rapidly-growing Texas company tied to the retail industry received state tax incentives yesterday that will help finance an expansion project that will double its work force in Licking County.

Dallas-based SpeedFC, which provides e-commerce services to retailers and other customers, will add 250 jobs and retain 242 as part of the expansion of its distribution operations in Etna Township in LickingCounty. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved the incentives.

The project was one of two in central Ohio to win approval yesterday. The other involves Verizon’s previously announced plan to add 500 jobs and retain 1,900 others in the region.

The 492 jobs that SpeedFC will have when the expansion is finished carry an annual payroll of $11.5 million. The state tax credits the company received have an estimated value of up to $489,595, according to the Ohio Development Services Agency.

The company provides online fulfillment services for retailers including Yankee Candle, Justice and Dress Barn, according to its website. The company also has distribution operations in Dallas.

“Our business is growing 40 percent a year,” said Jeff Zisk, SpeedFC’s president. About half the growth comes from new clients and half from existing clients.

The company is moving into a new 770,000-square-foot distribution operation this fall, said Columbus 2020, the region’s economic-development arm. Hiring is expected to begin in the fall.

Zisk said the company, which has been in the Columbus area since 2006, considered other locations for the expansion project.

“We’ve had really good success in the Columbus area,” he said.

The authority also granted tax credits for a project that will move 1,500 Verizon workers from Dublin to Hilliard and add 500 jobs. About 400 Verizon employees already work in Hilliard.

The existing 1,900 workers have an annual payroll of $94 million. The new jobs will add $20.8 million to that total.

The value of the tax credits has been pegged at up to $4.6 million.

Verizon announced the move about a month ago.

The two projects were among 13 throughout the state approved by the tax credit authority yesterday. The projects will create 1,417 jobs and retain 2,995 others.

The projects are expected to result in new payroll of $57 million and lead to $86 million in investments across the state.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2013/03/26/state-oks-2-tax-credits-to-create-750-jobs.html

By Ian Paul of Techhive:

Mar 20, 2013

Traditional copper wire telephone service is a dying business thanks to the growing popularity of wireless smartphones and tablets, and AT&T knows it.

The company since at least 2009 has been trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission to roll back requirements that AT&T and other companies offer public switched telephone networks.

Instead, AT&T would serve customers with its wireless and broadband networks for everything from Internet access to voice calls. The FCC in 2009 issued a public call for comment (PDF) on the idea of moving America’s phones from a circuit-switched network to an all-Internet Protocol network.

While AT&T wrangles with the FCC over legacy technology, the company is moving ahead with new services to convince its phone customers to give up their legacy services.

AT&T Wednesday announced it now offers its Wireless Home Phone service contract-free for $20 per month, which includes unlimited, nationwide calling.

How AT&T Wireless Home Phone works
If you already have AT&T wireless service, you can add your home phone to an existing Family Talk plan for an extra $10 per month.

For another $15 per month, you can also purchase 1,000 monthly minutes of international long-distance calling to wireless and POTS (plain old telephone service) numbers in Mexico and Canada, as well as another 49 countries.

Wireless Home Phone also includes free voicemail, caller ID, and call waiting.

AT&T isn’t the only traditional phone operator offering wireless replacements for the home. Verizon has a similar service called Wireless Home Phone Connect.

How does AT&T Wireless Home Phone work?
Wireless Home Phone is exactly what it sounds like: instead of using a traditional land line, you hook up your legacy home phone to a base unit plugged into the wall that provides access to AT&T’s wireless network—for voice services only. If you decide to go contract-free, you pay a one-time fee of $100 for the wireless network box, or you get the box for free with a two-year contract.

Anyone who does give up their wired service for a wireless home phone from AT&T would still have access to the emergency 911 service, but using it would work similar to how it works with mobile phones. That means you could still call 911, but AT&T says you may have to provide your home address to emergency responders.

The AT&T Wireless Home Phone base unit
In the fine print for Wireless Home Phone, AT&T says it “recommends that you always have an alternative means of accessing 911 service from your home or business during a power or network outage.” Wireless Home Phone may not be a perfect replacement for some, as the service also doesn’t work with other services relying on a traditional phone line. This includes home security systems, fax machines, and medical alert systems.

If all you’re looking for is a service to make calls, $35 per month for nationwide and international calling minutes is a pretty good deal; AT&T’s standard home phone service starts around $24 per month.

However, Wireless Home Phone won’t get you out of paying all those annoying fees attached to telephone services. AT&T’s fine print currently says Wireless Home Phone includes a $36 activation fee per line, and you may have to pay a “Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge” of $1.25 per month, in addition to other charges.

Potential problems
Nevertheless, Wireless Home Phone could convince some people to jettison their landlines—at least for anyone in areas where AT&T wireless service is available. One problem there is that traditional landlines are often the only viable communication service available to residents in remote, rural communities where cellular service can be spotty at best. So for a small portion of the U.S. public, POTS is an essential lifeline to the rest of the world.

But that may be changing; AT&T announced in late 2012 that it plans to invest $14 billion to expand the company’s 4G LTE network and wired broadband network to cover 300 million Americans by the end of 2014.

The investment means 99 percent of current wireline areas would have access to a modern wireless or wired network, making it much easier to cut or at least reduce traditional networks. What’s not clear, however, is whether wireless networks can stand in for the reliability that basic telephone services have provided for decades.

By Chris Castle, Huffington Post

A huge technological transformation is underway in the U.S. and around the globe: Consumers are abandoning older technologies in favor of high-speed Internet services that rely on modern, fiber-based or IP-enabled broadband networks. As consumer demand skyrockets, it becomes more and more imperative to upgrade the old public switched telephone lines to high-speed IP-enabled broadband networks.

Telecom carriers, cable companies and satellite providers are investing billions to deploy and upgrade broadband networks across the country to meet burgeoning consumer demand. This commitment will lead to the replacement of old copper telephone lines and connecting communities to next-generation high-speed wired and wireless broadband networks. These new networks can dramatically enhance a consumer’s communications experience by offering video and Internet access in addition to voice.

For creators in particular, the transition to IP-based networks holds enormous promise. It has the potential to expand creators’ customer base and ultimately offer new apps and services to consumers and businesses in the digital age.

The FCC Should Provide Incentives to Speed Broadband Conversion

Only by converting outdated copper telephone lines to high-speed broadband networks can we be sure that the technology infrastructure is in place to make programing and broadband services available to all U.S. households. When the dust settles on this massive investment, copper telephone lines connecting a phone in one place to a phone in another place will be replaced with robust networks that connect people, businesses, schools and others through both wireline and wireless broadband devices for the benefit of our creative economy and global competitiveness.

However, an uncertain regulatory environment is slowing investment in the transition to all IP-enabled networks. Currently, incumbent telephone companies are required to maintain the current copper wireline services despite the fact that less than one-third of American households continue to rely on the traditional wireline telephone as their primary means of communications.

This obligation diverts investment from where it is most needed to roll out the IP conversion. The FCC should correct this regulatory anachronism. Rather than sustaining an outmoded system, the FCC should provide incentives to encourage the massive investment needed to expand broadband networks. The migration of tens of millions of US consumers to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services such as Vonage and/or to wireless demonstrates the clear need for federal regulators to catch up with the times. Creators, too, will benefit from the improved wireless and wireline services that an expanded IP network infrastructure will provide.

Broadband Conversion Will Grow the Market

Roughly one-third of U.S. households currently lack access to the wired broadband infrastructure. Connecting these households to IP networks could dramatically expand the audience for content and programming.

Looking at the demographics of these consumers who lack access to broadband and instead may rely on POTS lines or Lifeline, it seems unlikely that they currently connect to “over the top” programming now and may lack access to services beyond basic cable. These users, therefore, represent a potential new customer base for programming services in a new IP network environment.

However, creators’ ability to reach these potential consumers with compelling original programming — new music video outlets, the next House of Cards, or video on demand — is currently constrained by the regulatory requirements forcing incumbent carriers to maintain antiquated copper-based telephone lines. Instead regulators should encourage providers to not only replace old communications networks with new IP-based technology, but also to make the long-term investments in high-speed wired broadband service that will connect more Americans in their homes.

Efforts to accelerate the IP transition nationwide are under consideration at the FCC. Now is the time for creators to engage in this policy conversation to secure the benefits of IP for consumers, businesses and our country as a whole.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-castle/growing-the-internet_b_2909807.html

From Columbus Business First:

IBM Corp. has won a 10-year, $267 million cloud-computing contract with Ohio that’s expected to save the state $150 million over the next five years. IBM will work to reduce the number of machines, power consumption and overall expense of running the state’s secure data center powering the IT of public agencies.

The contract with IBM (NYSE:IBM) accelerates work started more than five years ago to move more agencies into a state-owned “cloud,” a storage method using specialized virtualization software that allows many agencies to use the storage and computing capacity of many servers working together – without their data actually intermingling.

The state estimates that over five years it can save $150 million, said Stu Davis, Ohio’s chief information officer. Savings on energy and staff would continue after that.

Kevin Hill, IBM’s Columbus-based client executive for Ohio, said the work will start with renovating the State of Ohio Computing Center to upgrade its power sources and cooling equipment to enable the facility to do more at less cost. That includes removing walls in a facility first designed for mainframe computers, Davis said.

Then IBM will start consolidating servers of about 16 state agencies already located within the center, upgrading equipment as needed. That work will clear space for an eventual state goal of moving all state agencies’ computing within the facility – allowing the state to close 30 data centers distributed throughout Columbus, Davis said.

“The work we’re doing will lay the foundation,” Hill said.

While IBM’s contract is focused on those agencies already in the facility, the state is already starting parallel work of moving more agencies to the center without disrupting any state business, Davis said.

Nearly one-third of the state’s IT work force is eligible for retirement, he said, and reducing the number of sites where equipment is stored will allow the state not to replace many retirees.

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2013/03/21/ibm-wins-267m-cloud-computing.html?ana=e_colum_bn&u=BB+VKPU50UvnBuWGEYaDmQ0bd0621b