DSL Prime News Briefs

DSL news from North America and around the world.

by Dave Burstein of DSL Prime and Future of TV [June 29, 2005]

e-mail

• We don't have Mike Powell to kick around anymore, now that he's left the FCC. A reader takes me to task reporting news now past "Isn't it time to let him go? It's fascinating how telecom fills people with the urge to continue demonizing people, even after they've left the stage. It is an indication of how closed the environment is—much like a schoolyard. Surprising to see that not even you are immune from this effect. Your effort is better spent pushing the current Chair and Commission into making net neutrality a regulatory reality, than venting your spleen on what you view as past shortcomings."

Briefs

• "This notion that the U.S. is 16th in the world is a disservice, disingenuous and just not true," Mike Gallagher tells Drew Clark. The OECD data he's questioning is reliable, the penetration data above correspond (even including cable), and there's just no way to spin the data other than that the U.S. has fallen behind badly. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
  
  

• Google presents its home page in your choice of over 120 languages (Basque, Gujarati, Sesotho, etc.) including Klingon, Elmer Fudd, hacker, and pig Latin.
  
  

• For job ads, visit the DSL Prime website.

Press

• Hollywood Reporter writes, "Comcast Corp. is negotiating with the recently merged Sprint-Nextel Communications and with T-Mobile USA Inc. on its own behalf and as part of a consortium to secure a wireless partnership." That corresponds to Yuki Noguchi's WP story "Sprint, along with cable companies, would market a megabundle of entertainment and communications services."
  
  
• Mary Flood, covering the Enron trial for the Houston Chronicle, reports, "Prosecutors have presented witnesses who said that neither the operating software nor the media products used on it were developed as publicly touted by the defendants." Enron's competitors were claiming the same at the time, and telling me Enron was making increasingly desperate offers to buy related technology. The amazing part of this story is how SBC and Bell Atlantic were hoodwinked into strongly and publicly supporting the deal.

• El Pais in Madrid reports Huawei's 40 million euro deal with Jazztel was not the cheapest offer. Fernando Barciela quotes Jazztel's Alberto Hurtado, "We based our decision on the quality of its broadband products, [which] are more advanced than those produced in Europe and the United States. What's more, they offered us technical backup and software that was simply unbeatable."
  
  
• Karl Bode's forthright reporting is closer to the truth than the typical mealy mouth coverage of the same story. The secret USF and ICF funds are a perpetual scandal, as Bode makes clear "The FCC Finally Looks at the USF. A decade of fraud and billions in misdirected funds later... A significant portion of your monthly DSL and landline bill goes to the Universal Service Fund (USF). Critics across ideologies have long charged the system is corrupt, dysfunctional, poorly managed, and/or a slush fund for the bells. After years of debate, the FCC has announced they'll finally take a look." DSL Prime's position is the best way to protect universal service is to start by eliminating the massive waste in the program. Right-winger Thomas Sowell is right to criticize the press for forgetting the job is to get the facts, and sometimes one side is lying. "Objectivity refers to an honest seeking of the truth, whatever that truth may turn out to be and regardless of what its implications might be. Neutrality refers to a preconceived 'balance,' which subordinates the truth to this preconception."

People

• Verizon retiree Bruce Gordon will lead the NAACP, WP reports. A second Verizon retiree, ex-CFO Fred Salerno, is a key director leading the Viacom split-up, as well as co-chair of New York State's Emergency Recovery planning. Salerno is also on six other boards—imagine how many boring if well-appointed meetings he has to sit through. (First draft said "sleep through" but I'm sure he doesn't.)

• Susan Crawford, law professor and superior policy wonk, took a break to play viola in Osvaldas Balakauskas' Concerto for Oboe, Harpsicord and Strings conducted by David Alan Miller. Balakauskas is a serialist influenced by Webern and Boulez, whose music Crawford finds "baroquely contemporary—Vivaldi plus Hindemith." She adds, "George Plimpton used to do this kind of thing, and I highly recommend it. I had an absolutely great time playing with some of the best musicians in New York. This was a wonderful night of new music from Australia and Lithuania, and the best part was that the composers were right there to come bounding up on stage to be congratulated. Hard to do that with Vivaldi or Hindemith these days."

Wall Street

• Steve Kamman of CIBC sends fewer notes than most analysts, but they are always important information and hence among the most valuable I get.
  
  
• A Merrill chart noted their "Economic Value calculation includes Other Long Term Liabilities, such as Deferred Taxes and Pension Liabilities, which are very meaningful for Verizon, SBC and BellSouth."

Copyright 2005 Dave Burstein.
The DSL Prime Newsletter is reprinted with permission.

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