Is the AT&T-DIRECTV Deal a Precursor to Increased FCC Control of the Internet?

On July 28, 2015, the FCC granted permission for AT&T to acquire DIRECTV and merge the two companies into one combined entity (see FCC Memorandum Opinion and Order in Docket 14-90, released July 28, 2015). We will leave it to others to discuss the merits of the deal. However, there are certain aspects that could have significant implications for broadband Internet service providers specifically and Internet regulation in general. That is the issue of whether the Commission, now that it has seized Title II authority over the Internet, will begin to control the pricing of Internet services and, in fact, all Internet behavior?

In its Open Internet Order that became effective on June 12, 2015, the Commission asserted that it would forebear from using its Title II pricing authority and would not mandate specific Internet prices. Critics of the Order did not buy this and argued that it was just a matter of time before the Commission would use its section 201 and 202 regulatory authority (which it refused to forebear from) to prescribe “just and reasonable” prices as a backdoor way to control Internet prices.

Unfortunately for those who were hoping that the Commission would stay out of Internet pricing, the AT&T-DIRECTV merger includes a requirement that will be in effect for four years that is a clear instance of the FCC prescribing ISP pricing. Here is the relevant condition imposed by the FCC:

Read more here...

Living and working in paradise: the rise of the 'digital nomad'

Fed up with spending the 9 to 5 in a stuffy office? Anna Hart packs her Mac and follows the trend for extreme remote working - in Bali 

Typing these words, my forefinger sticks sweatily to the trackpad. When I glance up from the screen, I see steam rising from the neighbouring paddy field. As with all workplaces, there’s a steady hum of white noise: coffee being brewed, group meetings peppered with jargon such as “touch base”, “reach out”, “loop back” and “incentivise”.

 

 

• Five reasons why everyone should live abroad at least once
 

This is one of a rapidly increasing number of co-working spaces, where freelancers, sole traders and small companies rent desks and share printers and coffee machines. But even within that hip, fast-evolving realm, Hubud is an outlier – and its 250-strong community believes that this highly covetable office environment is the workplace of the future. The diversity of this group also signals another change: that more and more jobs are becoming portable, possible to do at a digital distance – not just web designers and freelance writers but fashion designers, photographers, models, marketers and even a remote-working GP.

As a freelance journalist, I have long been a convert to co-working spaces. I work from Netil House in Hackney, east London, where I share a studio with a jewellery designer, an arts curator and a photographer. Cycling to work, choosing my working hours and studio mates, I feel like I have got it pretty good, particularly compared to the years I spent working long, inflexible hours in a staff job. Or I felt good until I heard about Hubud. Because if going it alone in a co-working space is the first step towards freedom for the growing number of frustrated, ambitious young professionals, phase two is complete “location independence”; also known as “digital nomadism”.

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Laugh at the Cold!

It was quite a winter in much of the US. A record number of storms rolled across the south and pumped up though New England. Boston had no place to put all the snow. We have had our share of cold and snow in the northern part of New York.

I’m going to tell you about the weekend of Feb. 13-16 (including Friday the 13^th) and how proper planning, monitoring, understanding logistics, and resources can help you confidently manage the challenges of the weather and even enjoy it! In this story (all true), I offer examples of some fairly basic practices for personal comfort and protection that relate to our discipline.

I have written before about our family hunting lodge in the Adirondack Mountains. Many cousins and friends gather there each fall to enjoy the woods; share some great foods and drink; and repair, enhance, and maintain the facilities. We also make a trip or two up there in the winter to snowshoe, cross country, and downhill ski.

http://www.drj.com/articles/online-exclusive/laugh-at-the-cold.html

CDR-Data Corporation adds even more features to provide call data.

For Immediate Release

2015

Pasadena, CA 

 

CDR-Data Corporation adds even more features to provide call data.

CDR-Data, the oldest SaaS call accounting solution, is announcing yet another new enhancement for eCDR®. This exciting new feature allows organizations to receive the analytics and call center tools needed to govern personnel resources and allocate expense more effectively.

These enhances are more of the CDR-Data’s promises to their client’s in providing improvements to reduce resources and increase revenue. 

This version now provides their clients with the ability to give their users the tools to extract data, create reports and update extension or cost center information.

The updated system user will provide a pop-up of the Cost Center that will allow the super user to assign multiple cost centers to a user.  

Reports may be printed, emailed or down-loaded to an Excel file.

About CDR-Data Corporation

CDR-Data Corporation, based in Pasadena CA, www.cdrdata.com consists of a group of professionals with decades of experience in the telemanagement, call accounting and IT industry. By using an ASP environment, this team has consistently delivered proven products and services that provide answers to management's questions of telecommunications usage and billing. CDR-Data has gained its market share by consistently delivering high quality and flexible solutions to each and every CDR-Data client.

For More information:

CDR-Data Corporation               Kevin Young                626-791-9700

CDR-Data Corporation add feature in Security

For Immediate Release

2015

Pasadena, CA

CDR-Data Corporation add feature in Security

CDR-Data is announcing the new enhancements for eCDR© from the oldest call accounting ASP company. Security is critical for organizations and businesses. There are hundreds and thousands web attacks daily. To fight against this CDR-Data has developed new features in the username and password login. Here is a white paper from the FCC’s standards for security and login protection. 

http://transition.fcc.gov/cyber/cyberplanner.pdf

These attacks can make a successful business go out of business in days. 

Here are some of the enhancements developed that our clients requested and/or needed. 

• An account will be locked out if more the six failed logon attempts.
• User session expires after fifteen minutes of inactivity.
• Contain at least 3/4: Upper, lower case, alphanumeric, and special characters
• Password will expire after ninety days, if not used.
• The system/application prevents the last 6 passwords to be reused.

Not every employee needs access to all of your information. Keep your login information to yourself.

About CDR-Data Corporation

CDR-Data Corporation, based in Pasadena CA, www.cdrdata.com consists of a group of professionals with decades of experience in the telemanagement, call accounting and IT industry. By using an ASP environment, this team has consistently delivered proven products and services that provide answers to management's questions of telecommunications usage and billing. CDR-Data has gained its market share by consistently delivering high quality and flexible solutions to each and every CDR-Data client.

For More information:

CDR-Data Corporation              Judith Lopez                         626-791-7900

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Small business optimism at 8-year high as wages rise

 

Small business sector adds to upbeat employment data in painting a bullish picture of the economy even as dark clouds settle over the global economy.

U.S. small business optimism jumped in December to its highest level in more than eight years, underscoring the economy’s strengthening fundamentals despite slowing global growth.
The National Federation of Independent Business said on Tuesday its Small Business Optimism Index increased 2.3 points to 100.4 last month, the highest reading since October 2006.

The index, which crossed the 100 mark for the first time in eight years, is now back at its prerecession average. It was bolstered by a surge in sales expectations as well as hiring, capital outlays and business expansion plans.

“This is probably why the gross domestic product numbers have been looking better because the small business sector has actually started to contribute to growth,” William Dunkelberg, NFIB chief economist, told Reuters.

The small business sector, which is estimated to account for about half of the country’s overall GDP, added to upbeat employment data in painting a bullish picture of the economy even as dark clouds settle over the global economy.

The economy grew at a 5.0 percent annualized rate in the third quarter, the fastest in 11 years, and is expected to have maintained a solid growth pace in the October-December quarter.

More small business owners view their current inventory of goods as insufficient to meet the anticipated increase in sales, according to the NFIB survey.

This is consistent with recent government data showing an increase in stocks at wholesalers, which last week led economists to sharply raise their fourth-quarter GDP growth estimates to as high as a 3.7 percent rate.

Even more encouraging, small businesses are raising wages for workers, with a quarter of respondents in December reporting higher compensation — the largest share since January 2008.

That finding is at odds with a surprise drop in average hourly earnings in December’s employment report.

The NFIB compensation measure correlates closely with the government’s quarterly employment cost index, which is widely regarded as a better gauge of wage growth.
About 17 percent of businesses in the NFIB survey plan to raise compensation in the coming months.

“The reported gains in compensation are still in the range typical of an economy with reasonable growth, and labor market conditions are suggestive of a tightening, which will put further upward pressure on compensation,” said Dunkelberg.

Why on Earth Is IBM Still Making Mainframes?

IBM quit making PCs in 2005, and it quit making servers last year. But it looks like Big Blue will keep pumping out its mainframes forever.

On Tuesday, IBM launched the z13, which it bills as the first mainframe specifically designed to accommodate the booming mobile app economy. Mainframes—the refrigerator-sized, pre-PC computers beloved of government, corporations, and Tron—were long synonymous with IBM, which introduced its first mainframe in 1952. The company has long since reinvented itself as a provider of business services rather than hardware. But it turns out the old standby is still around.

The first mainframes were designed to serve Cold War clients like the US Department of Defense. (Its first mainframe, the IBM 701, was known as the Defense Calculator while under development.) The mainframe of today is designed to serve a very different world—and economy.

 This 1954 photo provided by IBM shows a 700-series Electronic Data Processing Machine.

IBM claims the z13 mainframe is the first system able to process 2.5 billion transactions a day (or the equivalent of 100 Cyber Mondays every day, according to the company). It can encrypt mobile transactions in real-time and provide on-the-fly insights on all transactions that pass through it. This will help companies and governments improve fraud detection, IBM says, and it give them a live view of a client’s purchasing habits so they can push related promotions to consumers right when they’re in-store.

“We’re driving toward a world where more and more people are using mobile devices, or embedded devices, to interact with systems,” John Birtles, director of IBM z Systems, tells WIRED. “We need to make sure that those devices are secure, that the transaction’s secure, and that our clients get the level of analytics that gives them opportunities to improve their businesses.”

The concept of a “mobile transaction” is a bit of marketing-speak. Tons of transactions take place via mobile devices, and the mainframe is good at transaction processing. Put them together, and voila: a computer the size of a backyard shed becomes a mobile product.

Across so many industries—retailers, financial institutions, telecommunications services, insurance companies, airlines, and governments, to name just a few—transactions are going increasingly mobile. If you think about how much banking you do on your tablet or phone, or even how you might check in to your next a flight, this growth starts to make sense. And that’s not even counting the myriad payment processing schemes you might have tried, from PayPal to Square to Intuit.

IBM’s z13 mainframe is supposed to help with all of these tasks—along with any other business that gets done on a mobile platform. In order to get the job done, IBM says it has equipped the z13 with a processor that contains 300 percent more memory than found on most servers and 100 percent more bandwidth for speedier mobile transactions. The z13 also does analytics natively, rather than requiring data to be moved off the mainframe to other computing systems.

As developers of new applications come to rely on the ease and power of the cloud, the mainframe remains a powerhouse for tasks computers have performed for decades, such as transactions. IBM has realized it can no longer make money selling traditional hardware, and as of late, the company has been focusing its efforts on software and data analytics, including a recently announced partnership with Twitter. But investing in industrial-grade hardware still aligns with IBM’s focus on serving as an engine for business. Business is more mobile than ever. Yet however lightweight those mobile devices feel in your pocket, they can still make good use of a big, powerful machine chugging away in a back room, not going anywhere.