Whither Google now that S.F. Wi-Fi deal is dead?

Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, August 30, 2007

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/30/BUT6RSDTU.DTL>

(08-30) 14:32 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — The collapse of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ambitious plan to bring free wireless Internet access to San Francisco dealt a blow to Google Inc., which had hoped to use the system as a test-bed for an array of new products.

Google, the Internet giant, had championed the initiative, and the company’s celebrity had helped spark a nationwide frenzy of similar projects. But now the future of municipal wireless Internet access is in doubt, not only in San Francisco, but across the country.

Google’s downfall in San Francisco was the result of financial troubles by its partner Earthlink, the company chosen by the city to build the network. On Wednesday, while awaiting final approval from the Board of Supervisors, Earthlink notified the mayor that it was pulling out after deciding that the system wasn’t financially viable.

That Google was interested in municipal wireless Internet access, known as Wi-Fi, shocked many when the company submitted its initial bid two years ago to offer free connections to San Franciscans. Ultimately, Google joined hands with Earthlink, which was to have built the network and offer a faster tier of service to residents for $21.95 per month.

Did Google want to create a national Wi-Fi Internet network? Did the company have aspirations to become an Internet service provider, taking on industry giants AT&T and Comcast?

Google denied the speculation and said it merely wanted to use the San Francisco network as a testing ground for new products for mobile phones, including online advertising that would be targeted based on where users were located. Other than setting up a wireless Internet network for its home town, Mountain View, Google hasn’t bid on other municipal Wi-Fi projects.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, has frequently extolled the virtues of showing a person searching for a pizza place using a mobile phone an ad for a restaurant located just around the corner. Chris Silva, an analyst for Forrester Research, said that Google would have learned more from testing its ads in San Francisco than it would have in a small town like Mountain View.

Capitalizing on mobile advertising could be even more important if Google wins an upcoming auction in January of wireless spectrum by the federal government against potential bidders such as AT&T and Verizon. Google, or its partners, would then be able to offer wireless access across the country, no doubt accompanied by Google’s targeted advertising.

“The spectrum will be far more lucrative than rolling out Wi-Fi networks across the country,” Silva said.

San Francisco’s scuttled plan comes as a number of cities reconsider deploying citywide wireless Internet access. Adoption by residents in several cities where networks have already been built is lower than expected, raising the questions about whether the systems are financially feasible.

Chicago and Anchorage, Ala. recently pulled out of citywide projects. Houston, Alexandria and Arlington, Va. and St. Petersburg, Fla. have projects on hold that were to have been built by Earthlink.

Craig Settles, a consultant who is focused on the wireless industry, blamed Google for some of the troubles cities are now having with Wi-Fi. He said that Google’s proposal to offer free access in San Francisco, at least partially offset by online advertising revenues, unrealistically raised expectations that cities could cash in on the deals.

[snip]

[Note:  This comment comes from reader Jock Gill.  DLH]

From: jock@tetherless.com (Jock Gill)

Date: August 30, 2007 4:17:16 PM PDT

To: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks)

Subject: Re: [Dewayne-Net] Nasa climate change error spotted by blogger

Hotter by less than 1 degree.  This correction does not alter the conclusions.  Jock

Jock Gill

On Aug 30, 2007, at 7:07 PM, Dewayne Hendricks wrote:

[Note:  This item comes from reader Steve Wulchin.  DLH]

Nasa climate change error spotted by blogger

By Natalie Paris

Last Updated: 3:24pm BST 16/08/2007

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/eaclimate116.xml>

[Note:  This item comes from reader Steve Wulchin.  DLH]

Nasa climate change error spotted by blogger

By Natalie Paris

Last Updated: 3:24pm BST 16/08/2007

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/16/eaclimate116.xml>

A US blogger has caused a stir in the climate debate by forcing Nasa scientists to admit errors in some of their data showing increases in global warming.

The corrected data shows 1934 to be the hottest year in the US since records began

Amateur meteorologist Steve McIntyre, who has in the past challenged “the hockey stick” model of climate change data used by green campaigners, emailed Nasa suggesting there were anomalies in their data.

Mr McIntyre noticed that analysts at some North American monitoring stations were recording unexpected trends in temperature patterns.

The Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS) in New York found that this was caused by a switch between two sources of US temperature data and adjusted the figures.

Climate change sceptics in the blogosphere claim the error casts doubt on figures relied on by global warming campaigners such as Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth.

The corrected data shows 1934 to be the hottest year in the US since records began, not 1998 as had been claimed by climatologists at the GISS.

In a blog attributed to Mr McIntyre, he argues that the data, when readjusted, showed that “there was a change in the ‘leader board’ and 1934 emerged as the warmest US year.”

“More warm years were in the top ten from the 1930s than from the past 10 years,” he adds.

He also criticises Nasa for its handling of the changes.

“I think that Nasa might reasonably have foreseen that the change in rankings would catch the interest of the public and, had they made a proper report on their web page, they might have forestalled much subsequent criticism.”

However, climate change campaigners have argued that Mr McIntyre is making a fuss over nothing and submit that the atmosphere is getting warmer.

Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at GISS and author of the website RealClimate.org, described the changes as “very minor re-arrangements”.

[snip]

Security group voices concerns over VoIP

News.com.com

By Tom Espiner

A leading member of the Jericho Forum security group has criticized the security of voice over IP technology after researchers revealed that it was possible to eavesdrop on VoIP conversations.

An eavesdropping vulnerability was revealed on the Full Disclosure mailing list on Wednesday. Vulnerability researchers Humberto Abdelnur, Radu State and Olivier Festor claimed the exploit could allow a remote attacker to turn a VoIP phone into an eavesdropping device, citing a Grandstream SIP phone as an example.

<http://news.com.com/2102-7355_3-6205178.html?tag=st.util.print>

August 28, 2007

EDITORIAL

Digital ‘South Park’

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/opinion/28tue3.html?ex=1345953600&en=f1f9d0f612f64344&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>

Never underestimate the explanatory power of “South Park,” the animated Comedy Central show created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Again and again over the past 11 seasons, “South Park” has offered a satiric primer on adult behavior, including notably trenchant, compact analyses of the Mormon faith and whatever you choose to call Scientology. It would be interesting, now, to see a “South Park” episode devoted entirely to the groundbreaking new contract Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker have just signed with Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central. The contract creates a new digital hub for all things “South Park” and also brings Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker half of the ad revenue their show generates. Historically, that kind of revenue sharing goes entirely against the principles of Hollywood.

What made this possible wasn’t merely the success of “South Park,” the show that really got Comedy Central off the ground and is still its most valuable franchise. It was a clause in the original contract that reserved to the show’s creators a slice of any revenue generated apart from actual broadcast on Comedy Central. At the time, it was unclear where any of that extra revenue might come from. But that clause has essentially kept “South Park” clear of Viacom’s efforts (not notably successful) to become an Internet power. And it has created what may be a new model in the balance of power and money between creative artists and companies like Comedy Central.

So “South Park,” which begins its 12th season in October and has been extended to 15 seasons, is no longer merely the crudely animated, rudely scripted tales of Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny. It is now a studio, a digital hub, a creative powerhouse in its infancy — but with the potential to become the kind of marketing monster that the boys might well find themselves fleeing from, a monster like, say, Mecha-Streisand.

EFF report slams RIAA lawsuit campaign, calls for flat-fee, unlimited P2P

By Nate Anderson | Published: August 29, 2007 – 01:01PM CT

<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070829-eff-report-slams-riaa-lawsuit-campaign-calls-for-flat-fee-unlimited-p2p.html>

Four years after the RIAA launched its first lawsuits against individual file-swappers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation takes a look back at the campaign as it has unfolded so far and concludes that “suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma.” So what is the answer? According to the EFF’s 20-page report on the topic, it’s a voluntary collective licensing regime that would let music lovers pay a few bucks a month to legally download (and keep) any songs they want.

The new report, RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later, offers an excellent overview of the recording industry’s legal tactics, beginning with several cases in the early years of the decade designed to “sue the technology.” When it became apparent that trying to stop individual file-sharing applications simply wasn’t going to stem the tide of P2P sharing, the RIAA changed gears in 2003. Lawsuits against individuals began soon after.

As anyone with even a remote interest in the topic is no doubt aware, the record labels have since filed something on the order of 20,000 lawsuits against US individuals. At first, the RIAA issued its own subpoenas directly to ISPs (in order to connect IP addresses to individuals) using a power that it believed had been granted by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But the campaign slowed down after some ISPs fought back. RIAA v. Verizon eventually went against the recording industry and forced the labels to do things the old-fashioned way: file a “John Doe” lawsuit, convince a judge of its merits, and get permission to issue a subpoena.

“This procedure was a distinct improvement over the DMCA subpoenas because it required the RIAA investigators and lawyers to follow the same rules that apply to all civil litigants,” says the EFF. It also cost the RIAA more money and time. Though the EFF doesn’t mention it, the RIAA generally makes ex parte discovery requests; that is, it seeks a subpoena without offering the accused a chance to respond. While this has generally been allowed simply in order to get user information from ISPs, some judges are now throwing up roadblocks to that strategy.

This year, as you know, the RIAA has focused particularly on college students, sending “pre-litigation letters” to colleges across the country when it finds evidence of illicit downloading. Some colleges have gone along with this, forwarding the letters to students, while others have refused to do so. Congress has even threatened to get involved if something isn’t done soon.

What to do instead

Despite all the lawsuits, P2P sharing does not appear to be down in the US. The EFF report cites research firm The NPD Group, which found that file-swapping surged 50 percent higher in 2006 than it had been in 2005. Music trade group IFPI, however, cites a Jupiter Research study showing that regular P2P downloading was decreasing slightly in Europe even as broadband penetration surged.

In any case, file-sharing remains strong in both the US and Europe, and the EFF argues that continued lawsuits against individuals will produce only diminishing returns. “As press attention fades,” says the report, “the ‘bang for the buck’ provided by suing randomly-chosen file sharers has diminished as well.” If true, then using the lawsuits as a way to educate consumers about downloading unauthorized music could become prohibitively expensive.

[snip]

Spectrum Auction: How Open Is Open? How Much Is Too Much?

By Bryan Gardiner

08.29.07 | 2:00 AM

<http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/08/farber_qa>

David Farber, professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, is also a self-described “techno-yenta.”

  

The January 2008 auction of 700-MHz spectrum has Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Google, vying with more-established telecommunications companies for one of the choicest bits of wireless real estate to come up in years.

We asked David Farber — whom Wired previously called “the Paul Revere of the digital revolution” — to weigh in on the spectrum auction, how the process will work and why he says this spectrum is so “yummy.”

Famous for his “Farberisms” (the Yogi Berra of the internet?), the Carnegie Mellon professor remains a pivotal figure in the communications industry. In addition to his varied positions in academia, Farber served a brief stint as chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission in 2000. He also co-founded Caine, Farber & Gordon, a leading supplier of software-design methodology, and is on a number of industrial advisory and management boards, including NTT DoCoMo, Boingo, Rainmaker and E-tenna.

Wired News: We now have an official date for the 700-MHz spectrum auction — January 16, 2008. What’s really at stake here? Do companies actually own the spectrum when they win a bid, or is it more like a lease?

David Farber: I’m not a regulatory lawyer, so I can give you a casual view of it, which is probably pretty accurate — but there are a lot of things that are tricky in this case.

First of all, when you get spectrum from the FCC, technically you don’t own it. You get a license to use it in the public’s interest. Past history has shown that it’s almost impossible to get that spectrum back. The FCC has tried sometimes, (when) the companies that used it when bankrupt or something, and it’s been relatively impossible to get it back.

Now, most spectrum is given to you for a specific use. For instance — and there are some exceptions now — but if they give you spectrum for AM broadcasting, you can’t turn around and use it for data. So there are specific use requirements. But there are some exceptions for that now, where the FCC has loosened (the requirements) to say you can use it in this domain as opposed to a specific use.

The reason 700 MHz is so important right now is it’s a big block of spectrum that has been made available, and the spectrum is yummy. It penetrates walls nicely — it has some very, very nice properties.

Most of the spectrum that’s been available for new use has been up in the gigahertz spectrum. It’s not very easy to use it in urban environments — a whole bunch of problems with it. So this is … new spectrum, and there’s been at least a perceived shortage of spectrum. And so everybody and their brother-in-law wants it.

WN: Google says it will “likely” be entering the bidding process this January. What effect will that have on auction as a whole? Apparently, the FCC requirements address the spirit of the company’s previous requests, and Google has been hammering home this idea of “open access.”

Farber: Yeah, some form of open access. They’re not going to buy spectrum and say anybody who wants it can use it. To my knowledge, they’re not being that generous. What they’re saying is that potentially they would be willing to allow people to use that spectrum on a hopefully non-discriminatory basis for a fee. If I were their shareholders, I would kill them if they gave it away. It’s not exactly a penny a hertz, you know. It’s expensive stuff.

Farber: Now what Google would use it for is still a little open to question but, again, it’s not very hard to find a profitable use for it. They could compete with the cellular companies, they could use it exclusively for data — right now there’s a shortage of that type of spectrum, especially licensed spectrum. They could build businesses around reliable data communications, affordable prices, etc. — there’s a lot of things they could do.

They’ve seemed to backtrack a little on just how open they intend to be, but still in principle they’ll be a hell of a lot more open than the current wireless companies.

WN: And if Google did win the spectrum (or a portion of it) and continued to adhere to its current definition of open access, what could that mean in terms of competition?

Farber: Well, if they use it in certain ways, it could be very competitive with the current wireless companies, cellular companies. It’s major business. So they would be in a position where they could be competitive with it, they could do all the things that the competition is supposed to do. (Or) they may decide they’re not going to do everything, but they’ll lease out to companies or make it available to companies that would be compatibly competitive. A lot of things they could do with it.

WN: The FCC also recently outlined how the bidding procedure will work. We’re talking a lot of money here. How does that play out?

Farber: In the past it’s always been an expensive proposition — but they also had things like small-business pieces, and minority priorities, etc. But it always ended up, in general, being a big-business thing, because it takes big money to get national coverage. Without national coverage, it’s not very useful. So, yeah, big money. And in this particular (auction), since solo companies see this as a place where competition can arise, I assume they will up the ante quite a bit.

WN: Could you clarify for me the difference between Google-style open access and Carterphone-style open access. I’m not sure people understand that.

Farber: Well, Carterphone says you can attach any device you want to the telephone line that doesn’t do harm to the telephone system. That particular little allowance caused a lot of pain for (telecommunications) companies for a long time.

In the spectrum case, (an open spectrum requirement) would say you can use that spectrum with any device and any business you choose to use it for. The Carterphone thing says you can fundamentally attach any telephone to the telephone line. It’s a little bit different.

[snip]

P2P-2-ISP Peace Pipe Could Ease Bandwidth Crunch

By Michael Calore

08.30.07 | 2:00 AM

<http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/08/p2p>

Peer-to-peer is under the gun again.

Faced with a surge in network usage, internet service providers are grumbling about rising traffic levels. The increase is driven so far mostly by internet video from YouTube and similar services, which don’t actually employ P2P technologies.

But ISPs say the looming growth of true peer-to-peer applications threatens to overwhelm them. Some ISPs have even started sniffing out P2P traffic on their networks and curbing it, either slowing file sharing to a trickle or bringing it to a halt.

Responding to this adversarial relationship, some P2P companies are adopting a posture of engagement with ISPs, and have formed a new industry working group to help broker relationships that, they say, will enable ISPs to better manage and distribute traffic loads on their networks.

The P4P working group consists of content-distribution-technology providers like BitTorrent, Pando Networks, LimeWire and VeriSign’s Kontiki, as well as broadband companies like Verizon and AT&T, and hardware makers like Cisco Systems. There are close to a dozen members so far. The P4P operates under the guidance of the Distributed Computing Industry Association, a group that wants to foster legal peer-to-peer content distribution.

P4P’s plan: Get ISPs and P2P-technology providers working together, to ensure that P2P traffic continues to flow and that users of P2P technologies don’t overload ISPs’ networks with too much sharing.

P2P companies’ fears are justified. Last week, users suspected that Comcast, the second-largest U.S. ISP, was limiting subscribers’ use of BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing application, and was penalizing heavy downloaders by suspending their internet service. Comcast declined to comment on its download-capping or traffic-shaping practices. However, the websites Broadband Reports and TorrentFreak have uncovered evidence of the practices.

Earlier this month, two British ISPs stated their reluctance to carry traffic from iPlayer, a P2P application the BBC uses to distribute audio and video programs. And in June, Time Warner Cable announced it would begin slowing down bandwidth-intensive P2P traffic during peak hours on its Road Runner network.

“P2P is the biggest pain point for ISPs right now,” says Laird Popkin, CTO of Pando and co-chair of the P4P working group. “On one hand, it’s the main reason people buy broadband, but on the other hand, it’s costing (ISPs) a fortune because they’re providing a flat-rate service, and this one application is consuming a huge chunk of their infrastructure.”

In theory, the P4P group’s idea is simple: Show us your secrets, and we’ll show you ours. By better understanding how a network is laid out and who’s using it, P2P-technology providers can use that network much more effectively and minimize strain on the ISP infrastructure.

It’s an invitation the group hopes will result in a cultural shift, a new era of collaboration between industries long at loggerheads.

P2P’s original killer app was Napster, the software application that introduced millions to file sharing a decade ago. But while Napster was illicit and underground, peer-to-peer technologies these days are being adopted by corporations and used for legitimate purposes.

“Because of where it started, P2P had this absence of input from the carrier world,” says Verizon’s Doug Pasko, who co-founded the P4P working group with Popkin. “Now it’s a full-fledged internet application platform that’s operating in an information vacuum. We want to give guidance to the technology, so it works better in the same environment, rather than in opposition.”

Evidence of that opposition is clear. For example, most P2P technologies pay little attention to geographical considerations: The clients connect to peers regardless of how far away they are or how many hops are required to reach them. This increases the distance over which content is distributed, which has side effects of maximizing the hit to the network infrastructure and driving up ISPs’ operating costs.

The P4P’s Laird Popkin says that by encouraging P2P companies to drop such poor practices and by getting ISPs to share some of their topographical information, many of the headaches ISPs and their users now suffer would be alleviated.

“We’ve been talking to both ISPs and P2P companies, and everyone is excited to work together,” says Popkin. “They see it as an obvious win-win.”

One thing that may motivate ISPs is that a growing user demand for content — especially video — means the bandwidth crunch is only going to get worse.

According to Fred Sammartino, a vice president with traffic-analysis equipment-maker Ellacoya, internet traffic has been doubling steadily for the past several years, but has recently spiked upward, nearly tripling in the past 12 months.

“That’s clearly due to the growth of video streaming, meaning YouTube,” says Sammartino.

Most of the recent growth in video traffic has been based on the web protocol HTTP, rather than on P2P technologies. That’s because streaming-video sites like YouTube use HTTP to deliver their video to users’ browsers — through a process known as progressive downloading. The result is that P2P traffic has shrunk from 65 percent of internet traffic in 2002 to just 35 percent today, while HTTP traffic has grown from less than 30 percent in 2002 to 40 percent of overall traffic today, according to Ellacoya’s analyses.

But experts believe that peer-to-peer data traffic will soon start to grow again, particularly as P2P video applications like Joost begin delivering high-definition content to large audiences.

Despite the increase in overall traffic, P2P companies say they can mitigate the load on ISPs by delivering traffic more intelligently. For instance, Pando — like VeriSign’s peer-to-peer Kontiki technology — automatically detects peers on the same network, such as employees of the same company, or residents of the same neighborhood who share the same DSL loop. Content distributors call this strategy “edge-of-network distribution” because it uses the “edges,” or low-traffic back roads of the internet, rather than the crowded backbones.

[snip]

[Note:  This comment comes from reader Scott Berry.  DLH]

From: “Scott J. Berry” <Scott.Berry@smhcapital.com>

Date: August 30, 2007 10:05:56 AM PDT

To: “Dewayne Hendricks” <dewayne@warpspeed.com>

Subject: RE: [Dewayne-Net] The Coming Virtual Web

Brrrrr.  I’ve read “The Naked Sun” by Asimov, and shudder at the

potential of a life lived online.  Virtuality has its…er…virtues,

but I sincerely hope society doesn’t take it too far.

Scott

The Death of Municipal Wi-Fi?

By Brad Smith, Wireless Week Technology Editor

There’s no doubt that Wi-Fi as a technology has been a huge success. Just look at all the laptops with embedded Wi-Fi. But one place it hasn’t been a success, at least the kind of success some believed, has been in providing municipal networks.

The latest example of that is the city of Chicago, which has halted plans it announced 18 months ago to build a Wi-Fi network. EarthLink and AT&T couldn’t agree to terms with the city, which wanted to have an operator pay all of the costs of building out the network while using city infrastructure. The deal-breaker, according to the Chicago Tribune, was that the city refused to agree to use the network for its employees, which would have guaranteed the operator some revenue.

There also have been stories about other high-profile municipal Wi-Fi networks that are still in limbo. One of those is San Francisco, where Google and EarthLink have partnered. San Francisco is stalled because of political sniping and has been placed on the November ballot for the voters to decide.

Meanwhile, EarthLink has given the heave-ho to Don Berryman, who ran its municipal wireless program. Berryman’s job was axed in a recent round of 900 job cuts at EarthLink.

But nearly 100 municipal networks are up and running, so muni Wi-Fi isn’t a total failure. Analysts continue to forecast sizeable growth in the area, with In-Stat recently forecasting 90% growth in the Wi-Fi mesh networking equipment market this year.

“Cities will continue to deploy municipal mesh networks, but the rate of new deployments after 2008 will slow, due to concerns over the business model,” says In-Stat’s Daryl Schoolar.

I haven’t seen many statistics from cities that have deployed Wi-Fi networks, which would tell us how they are being used, or who is using them. EarthLink has said that about 4,000 people have subscribed, at $20 a month, to networks it has built in Philadelphia; Anaheim, Calif.; and Corpus Christi, Texas. That’s not the kind of demand city officials were expecting.

Wi-Fi as a technology hasn’t failed in municipal network deployments. Its use may wind up having minor successes, although some politicians and advocates thought muni Wi-Fi would bridge the digital divide. It doesn’t look like that will happen now.

What do you think? Let me know at brad.smith@advantagemedia.com