NSA 'infected' 50,000 networks with malware

25 November 2013 Last updated at 07:05 ET BBC

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The NSA and GCHQ are alleged to have installed malware on the networks of targets including the Belgian telecoms firm Belgacom

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The US National Security Agency (NSA) infected 50,000 networks with malware, Dutch newspaper NRC has reported.

The Tailored Access Operations department used it to steal sensitive information, according to a censored slide leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

NRC said 20,000 networks had been hit in 2008, with the program recently expanded to include others in Rome, Berlin, Pristina, Kinshasa, Rangoon.

The NSA declined to comment.

The malware could be put in a "sleeper" mode and activated with a click of a button, the paper said.

"Clearly, conventional criminal gangs aren't the only people interested in breaking into computer networks anymore," wrote computer security expert Graham Cluley in a blogpost.

"All organisations need to ask themselves the question of whether they could be at risk."

The reports come as Twitter introduces technology it says will help protect people's messages from unwanted scrutiny.

It has employed a system known as "forward secrecy" that makes it harder for eavesdroppers to access the keys used to encrypt data passing between Twitter's servers and users' phones, tablets and PCs.

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Techies must nip growing scorn in bud

Willie Brown
Updated 2:35 pm, Sunday, November 24, 2013  SF Gate


This photo shows the sign outside of Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, Monday, Nov. 4, 2013. As Twitter prepares to complete its initial public offering of stock this week, the San Francisco company's history of losses totaling nearly $500 million is raising questions about its ability to turn a cultural phenomenon into a sustainable business. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press

There's a war brewing in the streets of San Francisco, and a lot of people could get caught up in it if the tech world doesn't start changing its self-centered culture.

Every day in every way, from rising rents to rising prices at restaurants to its private buses, the tech world is becoming an object of scorn. It's only a matter of time before the techies' youthful lustre fades, and they're seen as just another extension of Wall Street.

And when that happens, tenant advocates, community activists, labor unions and Occupy types are going to start asking why we're giving away the city to all these white-male-dominated businesses that don't even hire locals.

At which point, the politicians will do what they always do - count votes. And by my last count, for all of their hype and money, tech types were still a decidedly small part of the vote. If they even vote at all.

What the tech world needs to do is nip this thorny plant in the bud. They need to come off their high cloud efforts to save Africa or wherever they take adventure vacations and start making things better for folks right here.

They need to start helping in Hunters Point and in Chinatown.

Most of all, they need to start hiring locals.

Otherwise, the next time it comes to a tax measure or a vote at the Planning Commission, they could find themselves getting skinned.

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Talent Shortage May Impede New Hiring by Technology Companies, Second Annual TECNA Survey Reveals

Nov 12, 2013  CompTIA

Survey of 1,700-plus executives offers national, regional views on business conditions, investment plans, policy concerns

Downers Grove, Ill., November 12, 2013 – Technology companies plan to hire new staff over the next 12 months, but are concerned about a persistent shortage of tech talent, according to the second annual National Survey of Technology, Policy and Strategic Issues released today by the Technology Councils of North America (TECNA).

The survey by TECNA, a non-profit trade association of regional technology organizations which serves as a leading voice in growing the North American technology economy, reveals that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the 1,700-plus C-level executives surveyed say they intend to hire new staff over the next 12 months. Small companies (74 percent) and medium firms (72 percent) are the most optimistic on hiring.

At the same time, 69 percent of executives perceive a shortage in the quantity and quality of tech talent available to them. One-quarter say the shortage is “significant.”

“Companies are feeling better about business conditions, but the talent shortage issue has the potential to sidetrack growth,” said Steven G. Zylstra, TECNA chairman and president and chief executive officer of the Arizona Technology Council.

The talent shortage perception is present across all regions of the country. In the Midwest and West, 72 percent of respondents say there’s a shortage. The Northeast (67 percent) and South (65 percent) were slightly lower.

“The survey substantiates our efforts to champion policies such as STEM education, tax and regulatory reform and access to capital for innovators and start-ups,” Zylstra said. “From Capitol Hill to state capitals, and from legislative committee rooms to city halls, TECNA members continue to serve as the voice calling for a technology-based, pro-growth, business-focused agenda.”

The second annual TECNA survey provides current and future technology trends locally, regionally and nationally. The survey was conducted in partnership with CompTIA, the non-profit association for the IT industry.

Other Key National Findings

• Government should act on dollars-and-cents issues and STEM education: Access to capital is the top area where government policy action should focus, according to 46 percent of executives. Two other monetary issues appear in the top five: taxation and/regulatory reform (40 percent) and access to state and local funding for innovation and startups (37 percent). Support for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education at the K-12 and higher education levels is cited as a policy priority by 41 percent of respondents.

• Lukewarm assessment of federal government representation: Asked how well the federal government is representing the interests of the tech sector, 45 percent of executives said poorly or very poorly. Another 41 percent said “just okay.” The comparable numbers for state government are 38 percent, just okay; and 25 percent, poor or very poorly.

• Business sentiment is on the upswing: The survey reveals improving sentiment about overall business conditions, with the biggest jump occurring in feelings about the overall economy. It’s at 56.4 on a 100-point scale, compared to 46.3 a year ago; and with expectations of more improvement – albeit modest – over the next six months

• Many businesses plan to increase investments: In addition to hiring plans, 59 percent of executives say they’ll invest in new products or business lines over the next six months, with small (65 percent) and medium companies (62 percent) leading the way. About half of all companies expect to boost expenditures on marketing and advertising and on technology.

• Concerns about the economy are the biggest threat: A general lack of confidence or economic paralysis is the biggest threat to business activity, according to 44 percent of executives. Government regulation is next at 42 percent. Concerns about lower margins or downward pressure on pricing took a big jump – from 22 percent in the 2012 survey to 38 percent this year, placing it third on the list of concerns. Medium (51 percent) and large companies (50 percent) are most concerned about margin and price issues.

“Efforts to increase tech sector representation with the federal government, in particular for small and medium sized businesses, are central to TechVoice, our advocacy partnership between TECNA and CompTIA,” said Bob Moore, CAE, TECNA executive director. “Tax and regulatory barriers to tech entrepreneurs, advancing a skilled and career-ready 21st century workforce, and Internet governance are the major policy topics currently being addressed throughout TechVoice advocacy efforts.”

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CompTIA: Why Are We Still Talking About Security?

by Seth Robinson on Thursday, November 14, 2013  CompTIA

Security may not be as hyped as other tech trends like cloud computing, mobility or Big Data, but several CompTIA research studies have shown that it remains a top priority for businesses among a wide range of IT initiatives. However, that may not necessarily translate into businesses having a robust security posture or knowing which steps to take as they explore new technology models. CompTIA’s Eleventh Annual Information Security Trends study examines the areas that may need closer attention in order to avoid exposure.



According to the study, more than 8 in 10 companies view their current level of security as satisfactory or very satisfactory. Some percentage of these companies likely do have robust security policies and up-to-date tools, especially among the 13 percent of companies that say they have experienced a drastic amount of change in their security over the past two years. Many other companies, though, show low level of concern for emerging security threats and low levels of adoption for modern security defenses.

As companies utilize new technology trends, they must begin taking a new security approach. Formal risk analysis is only performed by 41 percent of companies, and this discipline can help inform security decisions as data is stored with public cloud providers or made available to mobile devices. Fifty-five percent of the root cause for security incidents is human error, but only 1 in 5 companies view human error as a serious concern. New technology investments will have marginal return in this area; the more effective strategy is to properly educate the workforce.

In addition to these overarching changes, new technical skills and tools are needed as well. Use of cloud systems, adoption of mobile devices and reliance on digital data all require new security processes and products. Many companies may have started using these technologies without fully thinking through the security implications, so security changes may be taking place even as new systems are used in production.

The landscape is certainly becoming complicated, opening opportunity for channel firms. While 85 percent of channel firms claim some involvement in security, only 36 percent of firms offer security as a standalone product or service. In an environment where 75 percent of end-users rely on more than one firm for technology needs, there may be an opening for more firms to specialize in security and ensure that every facet of an end-user’s technology plan is secured.

It seems that the main reason we’re still talking about security is that the message is taking time to sink in. Slowly, companies are realizing that the defenses of the past are not up to the challenges presented by today’s attackers, who are able to monetize any type of data and who show little favoritism between large and small companies. There are many new technologies that enable greater productivity and allow new possibilities, but they also open the door to new threats in security and privacy. Businesses will need to rethink their overall security strategy if they want to remain safe in this new era.

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HP: 90% of Apple iOS mobile apps show security vulnerabilities

Testing of more than 2,000 mobile apps developed by corporations reveals serious flaws

By Ellen Messmer, Network World
November 18, 2013 12:12 PM ET

Network World - HP today said security testing it conducted on more than 2,000 Apple iOS mobile apps developed for commercial use by some 600 large companies in 50 countries showed that nine out of 10 had serious vulnerabilities.

Mike Armistead, HP vice president and general manager, said testing was done on apps from 22 iTunes App Store categories that are used for business-to-consumer or business-to-business purposes, such as banking or retailing. HP said 97% of these apps inappropriately accessed private information sources within a device, and 86% proved to be vulnerable to attacks such as SQL injection.


The Apple guidelines for developing iOS apps help developers but this doesn’t go far enough in terms of security, says Armistead. Mobile apps are being used to extend the corporate website to mobile devices, but companies in the process “are opening up their attack surfaces,” he says.

In its summary of the testing, HP said 86% of the apps tested lacked the means to protect themselves from common exploits, such as misuse of encrypted data, cross-site scripting and insecure transmission of data.

Businesses offer best practices for escaping CryptoLocker hell

The same number did not have optimized security built in the early part of the development process, according to HP. Three quarters “did not use proper encryption techniques when storing data on mobile devices, which leaves unencrypted data accessible to an attacker.” A large number of the apps didn’t implement SSL/HTTPS correctly.
To discover weaknesses in apps, developers need to involve practices such as app scanning for security, penetration testing and a secure coding development life-cycle approach, HP advises.

The need to develop mobile apps quickly for business purposes is one of the main contributing factors leading to weaknesses in these apps made available for public download, according to HP. And the weakness on the mobile side is impacting the server side as well.

“It is our earnest belief that the pace and cost of development in the mobile space has hampered security efforts,” HP says in its report, adding that “mobile application security is still in its infancy.”

Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security. Twitter: MessmerE.

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ITIF: A Guide to the Internet of Things

A Guide to the Internet of Things ITIF Report

The "Internet of Things" refers to the concept that the Internet now serves as a platform for devices to communicate electronically with the world around them, creating an explosion of data that is transforming how we work and live. This report provides an overview of how the devices that make up the Internet of Things are affecting nearly every aspect of society. It also highlights policy opportunities to maximize the potential economic and social benefits of these technologies. Read the report.

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Guardian: Cyber-attacks eclipsing terrorism as gravest domestic threat – FBI

Counter-terrorism chiefs urge Congress to resist altering controversial surveillance programs except 'at the margins'

Spencer Ackerman in New York

theguardian.com, Thursday 14 November 2013 13.06 EST


 

FBI director James Comey listens to Homeland Security secretary Rand Beers testify before a Senate panel. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

The threat of a major terrorist attack inside the United States is lower today than before 2001, three of the country’s most senior counter-terrorism officials testified on Thursday.

But the heads of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center urged Congress only to change controversial surveillance programs at the “margins".

A devastating, 9/11-style attack is “more likely now to be overseas than it is in the homeland”, Rand Beers, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told a Senate panel, “but that is not to say we should drop our guard in any way”.

Testifying for the first time since becoming FBI director in September, James Comey told the Senate homeland security and government affairs committee that cyber-attacks were likely to eclipse terrorism as a domestic danger over the next decade.

“That’s where the bad guys will go,” Comey said. “There are no safe neighborhoods. All of us are neighbors [online].”

Comey said the threat to online networks in the United States, to include business and government data, came from disparate actors with different motivations, from spies to “hacktivists”, which he likened to an “evil layer cake”.

Cyber-security concerns eclipsed those about terrorism in a hearing dedicated to updating the Senate on domestic threats. Beers and Comey urged Congress to pass new cyber-security legislation expanding government access to private-sector data, ostensibly to redress vulnerabilities in business and other non-governmental networks.

Senator Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the panel, sounded skeptical, arguing that private firms ought to have the opportunity to voluntarily comply before being compelled to turn over that data. But Coburn agreed with Beers that any such legislation ought to provide legal protections for companies compelled to disclose proprietary or customer data.

Beers said legislation ought to be “carefully crafted” to avoid “a total blanket liability protection”, which he said would potentially violate civil liberties.

Congress created similar protections for telecommunications and internet providers in 2008 when it expanded the government’s powers to spy on Americans’ foreign communications with non-individualized warrants.

Comey, Beers and NCTC director Matthew Olsen testified that al-Qaida’s ability to attack the US was diminished, but not eliminated. “The risk of a spectacular attack in the homeland is much smaller than it was before 2001,” Comey said.

But all three individuals said the threat of copycat attacks from self-radicalized individuals – so-called “lone wolves” – remained, and they said the agencies had difficulties in preventing them.

Self-radicalized terrorists do not necessarily “hit the trip wires”, Olsen said. Comey urged Americans to report what they considered suspicious activity: “Listen to that feeling in back of your neck.”

Even though the threat of a major domestic terrorist attack has receded, all three government officials warned Congress against rolling back the sweeping bulk surveillance authorities granted to intelligence and law enforcement agencies to prevent one.

Comey, who in 2004 resisted a warrantless surveillance effort that collected Americans’ email data, told the Senate panel he could accept changes around the “margins” of surveillance powers, but “don’t make changes at the expense of core capabilities”.

Beers, who will soon leave the Department of Homeland Security after five years, echoed intelligence officials who have resisted surveillance reforms beyond increased transparency to Congress.

“Make sure you are comfortable with the oversight,” Beers said, “but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

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CTI: Tech Leaders Warn IT Talent Shortage Could Curb Hiring Plans

Technology companies are looking to hire more employees over the next year, but worry that there will not be enough qualified IT jobs candidates to fill the vacancies.

By Kenneth Corbin CIO
Thu, November 14, 2013

CIO — In an economy marked by conflicting indicators, technology companies are looking to hire more employees over the next year, but worry that there will not be enough qualified candidates to fill the vacancies, according to a new survey from the trade group Technology Councils of North America.

TECNA's poll of more than 1,700 technology executives highlighted the contrasting views of the business climate that have marked the shaky economic recovery. Broadly gauging sentiment about the overall business conditions today, the survey reported a score of 56.4 on a 100-point scale, up from 46.3 a year ago. At the same time, respondents cited a lack of confidence and economic paralysis as the biggest impediments to business activity.

"Mixed economic messages have been the pattern for several years now. A few indicators will show positive improvement, while a few will show weakness," says Bob Moore, TECNA's executive director.

"Consequently," Moore adds, "it can be difficult to reconcile conflicting signals."

Where Are All the Tech Pros?
Amid that tepid optimism, tech leaders fret over shortfalls in the talent pool that could stall their hiring plans. Sixty-three percent of respondents said that they intend to add staff in the next 12 months. That figure was even higher among executives at small and midsized business, segments in which more than 70 percent of respondents are looking to expand their workforce.

But 69 percent of the respondents bemoaned a "shortage in the quantity and quality" of workers with technology skills.

The results of the survey come as the latest argument advanced by tech sector groups in favor of policies to boost the labor force, including efforts to further education in the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and math, andreforms to the immigration system to bring in more skilled foreign workers.

Moore stresses his group's support for comprehensive immigration reform, "in particular the high-skilled aspects that increase H-1B visas for STEM workers."

"We strive for reform either as one large package or through piece-meal legislation that is put together down the road," he says, calling the current system "broken."
Would Immigration Reform Help?

Immigration reform appears stalled at the moment in Washington, however. The Senate has passed a comprehensive bill, but on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner said that he would not consider the legislation, saying that "we have no intention of ever going to conference on the Senate bill."

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5 Technology Jobs That Didn’t Exist 5 Years Ago

by Jamie Carpen  Robert Half Technology
November 15, 2013




Check out these 5 fresh technology jobs. 

My firstborn turned five earlier this year, and this rite of passage prompted me to think of how technology – and the world – has changed in the past five years.

There were no iPads (gasp!), smartphones had just hit the scene, and while social media was around, it wasn’t nearly the life force it is today.

Of course technology constantly changes the world we live in, but it’s also driving the creation of new technology jobs every day. Many of today’s most in-demand positions, such as mobile applications developer, were just a twinkle in someone’s motherboard five years ago. And in the past year, entry-level salaries for mobile app devs grew 7.8 percent, according to the 2014 Salary Guide by Robert Half Technology.

I recently turned to my IT recruiter colleagues to get insight on five new technology jobs that didn’t exist five years ago. (A caveat here: Some of the programming languages or technologies required for these jobs may have existed five years ago, but they weren’t scalable or reliable enough at that time to generate demand for the positions listed below.)

Here’s what we found and what’s driving demand for these skill sets:

1. DevOps Engineer / DevOps Manager – DevOps allows emerging companies to save money and headcount on engineers who can maximize system uptime and application performance, according to David Knapp, metro market manager of Robert Half Technology in San Francisco. Having a dedicated DevOps manager on staff helps ensure that applications are continually improving on the systems. Also, the emergence of Linux as an accepted enterprise technology for scalability over windows has helped drive demand for DevOps.

“The rise of DevOps reflects the continuous deployment strategy of fast-paced environments,” added Phil Gates, division director of Robert Half Technology in Seattle.

2. JavaScript Engineer – JavaScript engineers work with scripting languages that enhance the interactivity of web pages. These professionals focus on simplicity and developing cutting-edge, beautiful user interfaces and user experiences (UI/UX). “JavaScript is hot because it’s the foremost language in UI development for its simplicity, easy of use, customization and creating interactive UIs,” said Knapp. “The creation of customized JavaScript libraries (such as Bootstrap or Backbone) has heavily added to its growth potential.”

3. Ruby Developer – Ruby is a popular open-source language which lends itself especially well to object-oriented programming for the web. “Ruby provides a large open-source community to bounce ideas off of,” said Knapp. “Also, the framework of Ruby on Rails has created an ability to launch it in web apps, instead of a stand-alone, PC-based software /scripting language.

At Robert Half Technology, we’re finding increased demand for Ruby developers across the board, due to Ruby’s simple syntax and ability to run on any system, which makes it a no-brainer for most start-ups.

4. Big Data Engineer – A big data engineer combines the skills of computer science, IT, design and cognitive psychology to store, study and analyze the enormous amounts of complex data available to companies today. “It’s the result of a larger web footprint and ever-increasing amounts of data created by users via sites such as Facebook, Google and Twitter,” said Dakin Gunn, Director of Permanent Placement Services at Robert Half Technology in San Francisco. A big data engineer works with databases such as Hadoop and NoSQL to collect and store this data, and later study it to gain insights that can drive growth and revenue.

5. API Platform Engineer – The platform engineer bridges both hardware and software, writing code and ensuring the hardware is doing what it’s supposed to do. Many companies now have platforms they run their applications on, or other companies can use to run their business. “A good example is Zynga using Facebook’s platform to catapult itself towards popularity and an eventual IPO,” said Gunn. “Platform engineers are responsible for creating usable application suites that other developers can use to plug and play.

In addition, platform engineers allow companies to integrate heavily with each other, as well as share data and code.

As with any IT career, the key to landing one of these hot technology jobs is to specialize, specialize, specialize. Identify your direction and then do everything you can to become an expert in the field, including reading industry publications/blogs, attending conferences and local user groups and mastering the skill sets involved.

This is good advice for all technology jobs, in fact. As the pace of technology accelerates, IT professionals must be nimble and innovative in order to maintain a competitive edge.

For more information on technology jobs in demand, check out the 2014 Salary Guide by Robert Half Technology.

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Opinion: The Case for Citywide Broadband in LA

Local Governments - Exclusive — 15 November 2013 Public CEO


By LA City Councilman Bob Blumenfield

Last week, Los Angeles marked 100 years since the Los Angeles Aqueduct, one of the greatest infrastructure achievements of the 20th Century, brought water to Los Angeles and set the stage for our City’s growth to become the metropolis it is today.

That same day, the Los Angeles City Council took an important step towards making a critical investment in our City’s virtual infrastructure that will ensure Los Angeles’s competitiveness in the 21st Century. The Council voted unanimously to move my proposal to bring community broadband, with potential for fiber and wireless capability forward by authorizing the City to draft a “request for proposals” (RFP).

Citywide broadband presents an enormous opportunity for Los Angeles to bridge the digital divide, create economic opportunity and attract new tourism dollars. It has the potential to truly transform our City, create jobs and make us economically competitive.



Other cities, from Chattanooga to Philadelphia, and from Corpus Christi to Riverside, CA are already experimenting with their own versions of wireless community broadband. LA would be by far the biggest City to do this and we would set the standard.

Los Angeles flirted with but abandoned an effort in 2007 to provide free WiFi but much has changed since then. First, technology has advanced exponentially, lowering costs while increasing functionality. At the same time the opportunity costs of not being online, for everyone from students to seniors, has grown exponentially. A recent study by the Public Policy Institute of California suggested that 46% of Angelenos do not have broadband in their home – the highest of any major metropolitan area in the State.

Another key difference from the City’s 2007 approach is the way I intend to go about it. Where previous efforts have focused on the City building out proprietary networks using general fund or bond dollars, I have proposed pursuing solutions that would not rely on new City investments. The request for proposals currently being drafted by the City is intended to create a public-private partnership that would leverage the City’s tremendous infrastructural assets, everything from street lights to parking meters, to fiber networks, VOiP and other contracts. The goal is to encourage creative solutions from the marketplace. Ultimately I envision free and universal basic access to the internet from San Pedro to Sylmar, with a premium portable service offered by providers which, due to the partnership with the City, would be vastly superior and cheaper to anything available today.

During my years representing the West San Fernando Valley in the California State Assembly, I was a passionate advocate for both technology improvements and infrastructure investment. I still believe that the first call for our limited dollars must be on traditional infrastructure; streets and sewers as well as services such as police and fire. However, we can “walk and chew gum” at the same time; we can partner with the private sector to build out our virtual infrastructure without harming our basic mission one iota.

In fact, if we plan properly, the two missions can complement each other, by, for instance, using street resurfacing opportunities as a window for laying down fiber-optics.

Now it is time to renew our commitment to a Los Angeles that sets the standard, not just in our physical infrastructure, but in our virtual infrastructure as well. William Mulholland didn’t think small when he envisioned the aqueduct, an engineering marvel that 100 years later supports a City of more than four million. And we must follow his example.

So what’s next? Following the Council’s vote, the RFP is currently being drafted and will be released for initial comment later this month. During the comment period we hope to hear from the public, experts and potential bidders on what they would like to see in our RFP before putting it out later this year. Once the technical and creative marketplace responds with their best ideas for making it happen, we will have a better idea of what ubiquitous broadband in Los Angeles will look like and how to get there.

I hope to one day echo the words of Mulholland and say, “There it is, use it,” to millions of City residents who will be able to access information via a citywide high-speed broadband network.

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New broadband report reveals £20 return on every £1 spent

Written by BUSINESS DESK Cambridge News

For every £1 the Government is investing in broadband, the UK economy will benefit by £20, an expert report published today reveals.

UK Broadband Impact Study – Impact Report, by analysts SQW (with Cambridge Econometrics) says the Government’s investment in superfast broadband will deliver a major boost to the UK economy.

The report also shows that in addition to offering outstanding value for taxpayer money the roll-out of superfast broadband nationwide will also make a real impact on the way we live - from working at home to watching TV online.

The study is the most in-depth and rigorous examination of the impact of broadband in the UK, and looks at the economic, environmental and social benefits of superfast broadband.

As well as the return on every £1, key findings include: significant short-term boost to the UK economy as the network construction adds around £1.5 billion to the economy; adding £0.5 billion and about 11,000 jobs in 2014 alone; long-term growth to the UK economy with public investment increasing annual GVA by £6.3 billion and causing a net increase of 20,000 jobs in the UK by 2024; household savings of £45 million a year by 2024 made through people being able to work from home more.

Also, benefits to be shared across the UK, helping the rebalancing of our economy. Approximately 89 per cent of the benefits will be in areas outside London and the South East of England with rural areas set to benefit most; and around 0.4 million tonnes a year of CO2e savings through reduced commuting, business travel and firms shifting to more energy-efficient cloud computing.

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Maria Miller said: “What this report shows us is that as well as superfast broadband being good for economic growth it will make even more of a positive impact on the way we live, helping us work more productively and get online faster.

“Our broadband rollout is one of the best in Europe with almost three quarters of the UK able to access superfast speeds. This is making a real difference to people in communities across the UK from small businesses able to expand, school children being able to log on to do their homework or people being able to work from home. This investment in technology is vital for our future and will help Britain continue to compete in the global race and improve the way we live and work.”

Dr Pantelis Koutroumpis, advisor of the Broadband Impact Report said: “Looking at the evolution of broadband speeds in different geographies, and the on-going network deployments across the UK, this study brings new insights into the impact of improved broadband access on the national and local economies.

“Notably, the added capacity particularly affects small and medium businesses across industries, while the intervention helps address a growing digital divide. This motivates further research in the future as more empirical data become available - for example, in the relationship between business speed increases and productivity growth.”
Read more: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Business/Business-News/New-broadband-report-reveals-20-return-on-every-1-spent-20131114113934.htm#ixzz2kkYygjC3

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IT budgets, headcount set to grow in 2014: study

Companies are increasing IT spending, yet economic uncertainty remains a concern, SIM reports.

By Ann Bednarz, Network World
November 12, 2013 08:13 AM ET

A majority of IT leaders are reporting modest growth in budgets, salaries and headcount, according to the latest survey data from the Society for Information Management (SIM).

Companies are still concerned about the economy, but that hasn’t stopped them from funneling more of their revenue to the IT department this year than they did in recent years, SIM reports. In 2013, the average IT budget was 4.95% of corporate revenue. That’s only a marginal increase from 4.94% in 2012, but it’s a full percentage point higher than the average rate of 3.96% measured over the past nine years.
SIM, which counts 4,500 CIOs and IT executives among its ranks, is hosting its SIMposium conference in Boston this week. The organization’s annual IT survey includes these highlights:

Most IT leaders expect budget increases. Looking ahead to 2014, 65% of survey respondents say IT budgets will increase, 23% expect to see a decline, and 12% are forecasting no change. The average increase is projected to be 1.48%.

Headcount increases outnumber reductions. Nearly half of companies (47%) reported an increase in internal IT employees in 2013, while 23% said staff numbers declined. The average increase was 1.10% in 2013. Next year, 55% of respondents anticipate growing headcount; 18% expect reductions.

Raises are the norm. A decisive 89% of respondents said average IT salaries climbed in 2013, while only 4% reported decreases. The average pay increase was 2.24% in 2013. Next year, 90% expect to boost salaries by an average of 2.45%; 4% expect reductions in pay.

Staff turnover is accelerating. After stalling for a few years, staff turnover increased among IT pros this year. The rate of turnover hit 6.58%, up from 5.23% in 2012, 5.51% in 2011, and 5.5% in 2010.

Training budgets are rebounding. In 2013, companies allocated 4.68% of their IT budgets for education and training -- a sizable increase from 2012, when 2.87% of budgets went to training.

Most IT monies are spent internally, domestically. IT leaders allocated 73.2% of their 2013 budgets to in-house, domestic spending. Another 22.9% was outsourced (17.2% outsourced to domestic providers, 5.7% outsourced offshore). The remaining 3.9% was allocated to in-house offshore spending.

On-time delivery matters. IT leaders ranked the most-used metrics for measuring IT success, and on-time project delivery placed first, followed by: projects delivered on budget; increased customer or client satisfaction; SLA targets; and productivity improvements.

Analytics rule... Survey respondents were asked to rank their largest or most significant IT investments in 2013, and analytics/business intelligence was the clear standout, cited by 42% of respondents. Other popular priorities include: CRM (19.5%), cloud computing (18.6%), and ERP (16.6%).

… yet analytics are worrisome. IT pros were also asked about their greatest concerns, and analytics/business intelligence topped the list of worries. Security ranked second among IT concerns, followed by disaster recovery, cloud computing, and BYOD.

The forecast is cloudy. SIM’s survey found that 81% of organizations use the cloud. On average, 26.5% of all IT services are cloud‐based. Among those, 54% are provided by a public or external cloud, and 46% are provided by a private or internal cloud.

Business alignment remains an imperative. When asked about the most important IT management concerns for the organization, the most pressing issue cited is a familiar one: alignment of IT with the business. IT pros also said the organization is concerned about business agility, business productivity, business cost reduction/controls, and IT cost reduction/controls.

Similarly, when IT pros were asked about their own IT management concerns, IT/business alignment also ranked first. But priorities shifted after that. The next most worrisome issues for IT pros are security, followed by talent shortages and business continuity/disaster recovery.

Economic uncertainty is still taking a toll. While the majority of respondents reported positive gains in IT spending and personnel, not everyone did. To recap, 27% of respondents cut IT budgets this year, 23% trimmed IT headcount, and 4% saw reductions in average salaries.

Ann Bednarz covers IT careers, outsourcing and Internet culture for Network World. Follow Ann on Twitter at @annbednarz and reach her via email at abednarz@nww.com.

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IBM to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet

 
Bob Goldberg/Feature Photo Service for IBM

Watson, which played “Jeopardy,” is now more accessible.

By QUENTIN HARDY  New York Times

Published: November 13, 2013
LAS VEGAS — Welcome to the age of supercomputing for everyone.

Jon Simon/Feature Photo Service for IBM

IBM’s Stephen Gold said, “This is the start of a shift in the way people interact with computers.”

On Thursday IBM will announce that Watson, the computing system that beat all the humans on “Jeopardy!” two years ago, will be available in a form more than twice as powerful via the Internet.

Companies, academics and individual software developers will be able to use it at a small fraction of the previous cost, drawing on IBM’s specialists in fields like computational linguistics to build machines that can interpret complex data and better interact with humans.

IBM’s move to make its marquee technology more widely available is the latest effort among big technology companies to make the world’s most powerful computers as accessible as the Angry Birds video game.

It is also an indication of how quickly the technology industry is changing, from complex systems that cost millions to install to pay-as-you-go deals that provide small companies and even individuals access to technology that just a few years ago only the largest companies could afford.

“The next generation will look back and see 2013 as a year of monumental change,” said Stephen Gold, vice president of the Watson project at IBM.

“This is the start of a shift in the way people interact with computers.”

IBM is wielding Watson in a fight to control the world of cloud computing — huge collections of computer servers connected over the Internet — with other big technology companies like Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft. It is no coincidence that IBM discussed its Watson news the same week Amazon was hosting clients at a conference here to pitch its own computing cloud, called Amazon Web Services or A.W.S.

The competition is still young, but its impact will be significant.

“Companies, governments and people will struggle to figure out what to do with all this,” said Jamie Popkin, an analyst with the research company Gartner. “It means there is going to be a new pace and velocity, making people rethink when humans make decisions, while machines make other decisions.”

Watson, a project on which IBM spent 14 years, is an artificial learning system that digests large volumes of information to find hidden meanings. Initial uses — besides besting humans on game shows — include examining medical patients and records to find an unexpected diagnosis, a bit like the genius portrayed in the television show “House.” Other uses include an online personal shopper and a virtual health aide that tailors exercises by asking questions.

IBM is opening Watson to more people in part to see what additional businesses might be created.

Watson is prominent, but similar projects are being run by other companies. On Tuesday, a company appearing at the Amazon conference said it had run in 18 hours a project on Amazon’s cloud of computer servers that would have taken 264 years on a single server.

The project, related to finding better materials for solar panels, cost $33,000, compared with an estimated $68 million to build and run a similar computer just a few years ago. Akin more to conventional supercomputing than Watson’s question-and-answer cognitive computing, the project was the first of several announced at the Amazon conference.

“It’s now $90 an hour to rent 10,000 computers,” the equivalent of a giant machine that would cost $4.4 million, said Jason Stowe, the chief executive of Cycle Computing, the company that did the Amazon supercomputing exercise, and whose clients include The Hartford, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson. “Soon smart people will be renting a conference room to do some supercomputing.”

While revenues of Amazon’s cloud business are still small enough that the company does not have to disclose them, Amazon officials say Jeff Bezos, the company’s chief executive, believes A.W.S. could eventually dwarf Amazon’s businesses in books and merchandise, enterprises with $51 billion in revenue. This year, Gartner calculated that A.W.S. had five times the computing power of 14 other cloud computing companies, including IBM, combined.

Since then, IBM has spent an estimated $2 billion to acquire a cloud company called SoftLayer and has reconfigured Watson as a cloud product. It also hired buses that drove around the A.W.S. conference in Las Vegas, sporting ads that said they showed its superiority in cloud computing.

Besides gaining bragging rights and a much bigger customer base, IBM may be accelerating the growth of Watson’s power by putting it in the cloud. Mr. Gold said that Watson would retain learning from each customer interaction, gaining the ability to do things like interacting in different languages or identifying human preferences. IBM has taken steps to keep these improvements for its own benefit, by retaining rights in user agreements that customers are required to sign.

What is not yet clear is IBM’s plan to make money from taking Watson to the computing cloud. The company is experimenting with charging for data storage, or selling computing on a metered basis, like water or electricity. “There is no question the model will change,” Mr. Gold said. “You have to have flexibility to handle the breadth of cases we expect to see.”

It is likely that the competition among advanced computing systems will increase, lowering prices and delivering more capabilities to whatever use companies make of them.

This year, Google and a corporation associated with NASA acquired for study an experimental computer that appears to make use of quantum properties to deliver results sometimes 3,600 times faster than traditional supercomputers. The maker of the quantum computer, D-Wave Systems of Burnaby, British Columbia, counts Mr. Bezos as an investor.

A version of this article appears in print on November 14, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: IBM to Announce More Powerful Watson via the Internet.

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Here Come the WiFi Drones

Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, 11/11/2013, LightReading
By the fall of 2015, nonmilitary unmanned aircraft (drones) are set to be flying in US airspace, and at least some will be equipped with WiFi and other communications equipment. This scenario could stir up new issues around security and privacy on terra firma.

Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration sent its plan for the "safe acceleration of the integration of civil UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] into the National Airspace System" (NAS) to several government transportation committees. The plan calls for commercial drones to be flying "not later than September 30, 2015" and earlier if possible.

The agency says drones could be used for anything from crime scene investigations to border patrol and search and rescue missions. The New York Police Department has already expressed interest in using unmanned aircraft as a surveillance tool. The FAA is also expecting drones to be used in agricultural applications.

At least 81 public organizations in the US have applied for special certification from the FAA to fly drones in domestic airspace, according to a list obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation . These include universities and local police and fire departments.

The FAA is defining -- and refining -- a plan for the safe integration of drones into US airspace. Operator training and collision sensors are seen as crucial, given the many types and sizes of drones expected to arrive in US airspace.

Such measures are important for flight safety. CNN reported this spring that a mysterious drone came within 200 feet of a commercial jetliner above John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Drones could damage or down commercial aircraft by crashing into them or being sucked into a jet engine of the plane, depending on the unmanned craft's size.

The privacy issues around the use of drones are cloudier. The FAA states in the report:

Although there is no Federal law that specifically addresses privacy concerns with respect to civil UAS operations, many states have laws that protect individuals from invasions of privacy which could be applied to intrusions committed by using a UAS.
Integrating public and civil UAS into the NAS carries certain national security implications, including cyber and communications security, domestic framework for US government operations, national airspace and defense, airman vetting/general aviation, and privacy concerns. In coordination with the National Security Staff at the White House, the FAA is working in conjunction with relevant agency partners on an Interagency Policy Committee to address these issues.

This could lead to some interesting concerns about WiFi snooping and other communications surveillance using drones, particularly in the current climate. The burgeoning hobbyist industry for small drones has already shown how easy it is to install WiFi as a control mechanism on remote controlled aircraft. Hobbyist drones can already be flown in the US at 400 feet and below and within sight of the operator. Companies such as Parrot SA make WiFi-equipped quadricopters for drone fanciers.

Adam Conway, vice president of product management at Aerohive Networks Inc. , told us his company has already been experimenting with a WiFi access point in a drone. It flew a drone a few hundred feet above Sunnyvale, Calif., with a hotspot with a 4G module on board and got connected. Such temporary WiFi could obviously provide connectivity in disaster recovery situations and remote areas. However, there are many ways to use WiFi for snooping on other 802.11 users.

Brendan O'Connor, a law student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a researcher at the consulting firm Malice Afterthought, recently demonstrated the capabilities of CreepyDOL, a tiny and cheap WiFi sensor that can gather information about iPhone users as they walk around their neighborhood. Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) is battling a class action after it collected unencrypted WiFi data when its Google Maps cars took more than just snaps of areas around the world.

With ever-quieter drones being developed, it's possible to see how unmanned aircraft could be used as a surveillance and data collection tool in US airspace in the coming years. And it's hard to imagine that the topic of spying and snooping won't still be high on the public agenda come September 2015. (See: Another Day, Another Domestic Spying Revelation.)

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading

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Netflix, YouTube Account for 50% of North American Data Traffic

 

by Karl Bode 10:43AM Monday Nov 11 2013  DSLReports

According to Sandvine’s latest Global Internet Phenomena Report, Netflix and YouTube alone account for more than 50% of all Internet traffic across North America. The study, which compiles data from more than 250 ISPs, also noted that P2P's share of overall network data continues to plummet, with peer-to-peer filesharing falling below 10% of total North American traffic (down from 60% 11 years ago). Some additional bullet-pointed statistics from the latest report:

•iOS updates accounted for 20% of North America Internet traffic on release day.

•In North America, the top 1% of subscribers who make the heaviest use of the network’s upstream resources account for 39.8 percent of total upstream traffic.

•Average monthly mobile usage in Asia-Pacific now exceeds 1 gigabyte, driven by video, which accounts for 50% of peak downstream traffic. This is more than double the 443 megabyte monthly average in North America.

•In Europe, Netflix, less than two years since launch, now accounts for over 20% of downstream traffic on certain fixed networks in the British Isles. It took almost four years for Netflix to achieve 20% of data traffic in the United States.

•Instagram and Dropbox are now top-ranked applications in mobile networks in many regions across the globe. Instagram, due to the recent addition of video, is now in Latin America the 7th top ranked downstream application on the mobile network, making it a prime candidate for inclusion in tiered data plans which are popular in the region.

•Netflix (31.6%) holds its ground as the leading downstream application in North America and together with YouTube (18.6%) accounts for over 50% of downstream traffic on fixed networks.

•P2P Filesharing now accounts for less than 10% of total daily traffic in North America. Five years ago it accounted for over 31%.

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Los Angeles Citywide Gigabit Fiber RFP: Is This the Future of Broadband in Urban America?

November 07, 2013  TechZone360

By Peter Bernstein , Senior Editor

There is an old saying in the U.S. that if you want to know what the future is going to look like, technologically as well as culturally, start with what is going on in California. And, while the Twitter IPO has captured the imagination of investors and content creators, and tech pubs constantly focus on the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and their Silicon Valley neighbors, it might behoove everyone to take a hard and sustained look at what is going on in Southern California – Los Angeles to be precise.

In case you missed it, and my colleague Steve Anderson has done a nice job covering it, this week the Los Angeles City Council decided by a unanimous vote to set in motion the creation of a Request For Proposals (RFP), whose end game is the selection of a vendor to deploy a citywide fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network to bring gigabit high-speed broadband service all 3.5 million residents and business within the city proper.

The RFP is expected to be issued in December. Responses, for the network whose initial cost for deployment is pegged at $3 billion to $5 billion, would be due back in March 2014.

Los Angeles says it has no intention of paying for the project, but has promised the winning bidder/bidders (a consortium appears to be acceptable) that the city will get rid of the red tape in the permitting and inspections processes. In return, the city will require the winning entity to open up wholesale access to the network to multiple providers so they can compete in provider value-added services. In addition, part of the plan would include free Wi-Fi access between 2 Mbps and 5 Mbps in certain public areas. Residents and businesses will have to pay for their own broadband subscriptions, which may include phone and TV service. There is also the expectations that the winning bidder will be expected to make donations of home broadband equipment to nonprofits to distribute to those who might not be able to afford it.


Image via Shutterstock

To put all of this is lay terms, LA understands that it economic vitality going forward is directly (pardon the play words) linked to the city having universally accessible and affordable broadband. In short, it is a modern version of the Communications Act of 1934, which created the FCC with a mission to do exactly what is envisioned here. And, as with the history of communications under the 1934 Act as amended and interpreted over time, the goal is to in essence make broadband access a right rather than a privilege under a regime where a franchise is granted in exchange for the regulatory jurisdiction have a major say in pricing and on the terms and conditions for encouraging competition.

On the latter front, as has been widely quoted in various news outlets, Los Angeles Information Technology Agency GM Steve Reneker told Arstechnica, “We're not looking at trying to be monopolistic and try to force anybody out of the market.”

Reaction thus far has ranged from this is the future to it is a boondoggle in the making. My own opinion is that while it certainly is going to be a wake-up call to current network service providers in Los Angeles—including Time-Warner, Cox, Charter, and AT&T—I am hopeful of a modified outcome which the RFP has a chance of setting in motion. Let me explain.

Ever since the breakup of the old AT&T in the mid-1980s I have been on record as saying that if the physical landline network operators were smart they would divest themselves of their outside plant and concentrate on becoming what we now call Over-the-Top (OTT) value-added service providers. Why communities of all sizes need two or more entities digging up streets has always escaped me on a host of fronts not the least of which is economic efficiencies. The deregulation of the electric utility business in the U.S. is a good example of this, and the physical plant that delivers communications services should be viewed as originally intended as a true utility service.

The nice thing about awarding provisioning of fiber as a utility service by a single entity, including the expansion of what would be free basic Wi-Fi services, is that regulators would have a less arduous task on a multitude of fronts. So long as there is equal access and equal interconnection (something the FCC and states have struggled with for decades) provided to qualified competitors the local entity would be in a position as overseer to assure the outside plant utility was not price gauging end users or value-added service providers and was meeting all public safety and operational metrics it proscribed.

There are a few things to highlight under such a scenario.

First, the single physical fiber network provider should be precluded from offering value-added services. It is asking for trouble. The challenge for regulators going back to the beginning of competition in the communications industry in the early 1970s has been figuring out how to let the monopoly regulated entities compete in unregulated markets on a fair basis. To be kind, they have done less than a wonderful job as technology innovation and the markets have moved a lot faster than the rules.

Second, a single entity under strict terms and conditions for deploying fiber to everyone everywhere, would be able to use the divested assets of current providers. The idea of reinventing the wheel seems counter-intuitive, especially in urban areas where broadband competition has caused fiber to be deployed to most if not all areas albeit not necessarily to residential customer premises.

I know this is going to come as a shock to my friends who are providing VDSL2 solutions that extend the life of copper by offering what are today broadband speeds, but having a single fiber utility with the responsibility universally fiber to the home and business for cities looking to gain competitive advantage long-term is less attractive than getting fiber in faster. Indeed, whether it is in Europe or Asia Pacific, counties and entire regions recognize the importance of accelerating the deployment of next-generation speeds and feeds, and the U.S. already lags several countries in terms of the average speeds we provide the average citizen and small business.

What the Internet revolution has spawned was a radical shift in value. It used to be that value in communications was a direct function of owning the network connection because it meant you owned the customer. What the Internet has done is said that owning the servers, applications and content that customers want is where premium value is to be extracted.

A good argument can be made that just being in the “dumb pipe” business is actually a good business. In fact, Google’s fiber efforts may prove this out assuming there is a watchful eye on Google using its myriad of online services in untoward ways. The fact is that Google may just be testing the waters to force others to accelerate fiber deployment. It is hard to imagine they have ambitions of fibering all of the top SMSA in the U.S.

Finally, for years the attraction of U.S. municipalities being service providers has been tantalizing. The problem, including Los Angeles interest in providing its own free Wi-Fi service, has been intense pushback from incumbent suppliers who see value in their franchises and the correct assumption that this is not an activity that government can and should be engaged in. That said, really good oversight, including protections for consumers and those who wish to use facilities to provide value-added services is a role government can play.

The reason to pay attention to what is going on in LA thus is not whether there is an RFP or whether the envisioned network under it gets built. We have entered a watershed period in the history of the converging broadly defined communications and adjacent industries, and industry restructuring is picking up speed in accordance with the roiling changes being driven by technology and consumer expectations. It is why I am hopeful the unintended consequence of the RFP lead to a future whose goal is the same as the intended consequences, but that the road taken is a cost-effective and more efficient short-cut as to how to get from here to there.

Is Los Angeles the future of urban broadband services delivery? It very well could be, and the next several months will be telling.


Edited by Alisen Downey

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How Much Media? 2013

Report on American Consumers  USC Marshall School of Business

James E. Short
Executive Summary

By 2015, it is estimated that Americans will consume both traditional and digital media for over 1.7 trillion hours, an average of approximately 15 and a half hours per person per day. The amount of media delivered will exceed 8.75 zettabytes annually, or 74 gigabytes - 9 DVDs worth - of data sent to the average consumer on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 raised to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 30 different sources of media data, ranging from traditional media (TV, Radio, Voice telephony) to new digital sources (tablet computers, mobile gaming devices, smartphones, mobile video). Media consumed while at work is not included.

We define media consumed as flows of data delivered to households and to people, and we measured the time of consumption and the byte throughput of the data delivered. Video sources dominate bytes, with 3.8 zettabytes coming from television and 2.46 zettabytes from computer gaming. If hours are used as the measurement, media delivered is much more widely distributed, with substantial amounts from radio, Internet applications such as social media, browsing and search, and others including messaging and email communications. All of our results are estimates, based on publicly released data from data providers including Neilsen and ComScore, media company disclosures, and analysts.

Hours of consumption grew at just over 5% a year from 2008-2013, due to a combination of increasing viewer hours per capita, from 11 hours per day to an average of over 14 hours per day, and population growth. Averaged across all media sources, media delivered in bytes is growing at a rate of 18% per year. This is less than the capacity to process data, driven by Moore’s Law, rising at least 30 percent a year, but is still impressive.

Traditional media continues to dominate our daily media consumption, with TV and Radio contributing 60% of the hours. New digital sources, however, are having major effects on most forms of media consumption. Over half of all media bytes are now received by computers, with mobile computers the most rapidly growing segment. In 2008, mobile computers accounted for approximately 3% of all bytes, by 2013 it is almost 10%, representing a year over year growth rate of 27 percent.

While in the past media consumption was overwhelmingly passive - we sat and watched TV or listened to radio - new media consumption is increasingly interactive, with time-delayed, multi-tasking and interrupted viewership fast becoming the typical consumptive behavior.

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Microsoft creates new cert to make VMware admins 'bi-lingual'

Parlez-vous Hyper-V? Non? Redmond has free training to 'future-proof your career'

By Simon Sharwood, 30th October 2013 The Register
Microsoft has found another way to grab some market share from VMware's: a new certification it says is designed “to help IT pros who are VMware experts build their expertise in Microsoft virtualization.”

Redmond's pitch is that IT professionals need to be “bi-lingual” when it comes to virtualisation, because while VMware does a very fine job “Over the last few years, Hyper-V has been going from strength to strength, leading to more and more organizations adopting this platform”

The Reg has encountered plenty of opinion to back that up: multi-hypervisor strategies got a fair bit of airtime once Windows Server 2012 all-but-matched the most-used bits of Vmware's flagship vSphere. Microsoft itself cites this Enterprise Strategy Group blog post that says 65 per cent of organisations run multiple-hypervisor-strategies. Author Mark Bowker offers the following opinion on such strategies:

“While there are a few examples I can point to where IT organizations are making a wholesale switch from one hypervisor to another, the majority of scenarios I see are IT maintaining their investment in its primary platform for the time being and starting to onboard an additional hypervisor for different application workloads, licensing/ cost reduction--by phasing out legacy products--or for the advanced technology capabilities of one solution over the other.”

That analysis provides a decent rational for Microsoft's “bi-lingual” argument and means Redmond's offer of a free online course and free exam for the new and prosaically-named “Microsoft Virtualization Certification” looks rather generous. Those who take up the course will get a grounding in Hyper-V and the System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager.

There is a sting in the tail: the pages spruiking the education and certification also mention virtual machine migration tools. The Reg can't say if those tools will be mentioned in the training or exam, but expects Microsoft isn't arranging the certification entirely out of kindness. ®

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Study: U.S. Cities Pay More Money For Less Broadband

by Karl Bode 09:40AM Monday Oct 28 2013 DSLReports

 

A new study by the New America Foundation has found that United States fixed and wireless urban broadband customers pay significantly more for less bandwidth than their overseas counterparts. The report compared fixed and wireless broadband pricing in most of the largest United States cities to international cities such as London, Berlin, Bucharest and Zurich.

Though the United States is ranked near the bottom on price in most categories (with little to no movement year to year), the comparisons are particularly stark when it comes to triple play pricing, with no United States city even in the rankings until Bristol, Virginia shows up at 32.

"....In larger US cities, we continue to observe higher prices for slower speeds," notes the study. "In the US for example, the best deal for a 150Mbps home broadband connection from cable and phone companies is $130/month, offered by Verizon FiOS in limited parts of New York City. By contrast, the international cities we surveyed offer comparable speeds for $77 or less per month, with most coming in at about $50/month."

Things don't get much prettier when it comes to wireless pricing, notes the report.

"When it comes to mobile broadband, the cheapest price for around 2GB of data in the US ($30/month from T-Mobile) is twice as much as what users in London pay ($15/month from T-Mobile). It costs more to purchase 2GB of data in a US city than it does in any of the cities surveyed in Europe."

The report's solution shouldn't be surprising if you've been paying attention (or if you recall Google is a major funder).

"Rather than allowing American cities to fall behind, policymakers should reassess current policy approaches and implement strategies to increase competition, in turn fostering faster speeds and more affordable access."

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Protesters Call for an End to NSA Mass Surveillance

About 5,000 people attend a rally in Washington to protest NSA programs

 By Grant Gross
Sat, October 26, 2013 CIO

IDG News Service (Washington, D.C., Bureau) — A crowd of about 5,000 people, chanting "stop spying, stop lying" and "hey, ho, mass surveillance has got to go," marched through Washington, D.C., Saturday to protest the U.S. National Security Agency's mass surveillance programs unveiled in press reports this year.

Protesters, from a seemingly wide range of political beliefs, called on the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to end mass data collection and surveillance by the NSA.

"The government has granted itself power that it does not have," said former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the 2012 Libertarian Party candidate for U.S. president. "We have to stand against this."

Hundreds in the crowd held signs or wore stickers thanking Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor whose leaks to news organizations exposed mass surveillance and data collection programs at the spy agency. Others held signs with the text of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protests residents against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Another popular sticker, from antiwar group Code Pink, featured lipstick marks and the message, "Make out, not war."

During the rally, members of the groups Fight for the Future and Restore the Fourth delivered a petition, with more than 575,000 signatures, calling on Congress to investigate NSA surveillance programs, to Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican an outspoken critic of the NSA surveillance programs.

Many politicians want people to believe that a small group of people can't make a difference in the U.S. government, said Craig Aaron, president and CEO of digital rights group Free Press. "It's not such a small group," he told the crowd. "There are millions of people siding with us."

The rally, organized by the StopWatching.us coalition, was held on the 12th anniversary of the date former U.S. President George W. Bush signed the controversial Patriot Act into law. The NSA has used portions of the Patriot Act as the foundation for its mass surveillance programs. Protests were also scheduled in a handful of other cities in the U.S. and Germany.

The NSA and members of the Obama administration have defended the data collection and surveillance programs as necessary to protect the U.S. against terrorism. While the NSA collects phone records in bulk, the agency only obtains content for phone calls when it suspects criminal activity, Obama administration officials have said.

Rally attendees said it was important for them to be at the event, although some were unsure if it would make a difference.

Showing up at the rally was a way of "doing something" instead of just complaining about the NSA, said Lauren Schreiber, community outreach and event coordinator at the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.

The Muslim community in the U.S. has long been the target of surveillance, she noted. "I feel like if the government doesn't respect the very basic right of privacy, then all of our other rights are going to be trampled," she said.

Paul Charnetzki IV traveled to Washington from Chicago to attend the rally. He's opposed to the increased surveillance in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., he said.

Asked if the rally would make a difference, Charnetzki said, "Who knows?" He talked to a staffer at his congressman's office before the rally, and the staffer questioned if he was an extremist, he said.

"It got a little tense in there," he added.

The U.S. government needs to return to the protections of the Fourth Amendment, added John Lambert, from central Virginia. The U.S. government also needs to stop its surveillance on foreign leaders, he said, noting news reports this week.

"Spying on Americans without warrants is illegal," he said. "Spying on allies is just stupid."

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's email address is grant_gross@idg.com.

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