It appears that the FCC will set the 700MHz auction rules tomorrow, July 31, according to the Washington Post. Perhaps in anticipation of significant changes, the article is heavy on Google's entry into the politics of Capitol Hill.
Median download speeds vary between the states and vary widely between the
United States and the rest of the world, according to information reported in ars technica. Government Technology has more
on the report from speedmatters.org.
Wayne
Government Technology: Beginning in 2009, Minnesota will equire electronic submission of health transactions. "The new requirements, signed into law by Governor Tim Pawlenty as part of the 2007 Omnibus Health and Human Services funding bill, apply to all health care providers and affects virtually anyone who bills for or buys health care services on behalf of a group of people," including "auto insurers, chiropractors, dentists, pharmacists, workers compensation insurers and others."
On the cover of the most recent BusinessWeek: Telecom, Back from the Dead. Describing the telecom bust earlier this decade, the article goes on to say:
Over the past year, however, the telecom industry has roared back to life. Credit a steady rise in appetite for broadband Internet connections, which enable easy consumption of watch-my-cat video clips, iPod music files, and such Web-inspired services as free Internet phoning. Indeed, this year broadband adoption among U.S. adults is expected to cross the important threshold of 50%. Capital spending is on the rise as companies invest to build high-speed networks. Private equity players are placing enormous bets on the industry, such as the $8.2 billion that Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group agreed to pay for networking gearmaker Avaya on June 5. And the glut in broadband communications capacity is all but gone.
About half of the Internet's transmission capacity was going unused in 2002. Today that pipeline has almost doubled in size, and yet the unused portion is down to about 30%.
Speaking at the Wireless Communications Association annual Washington show, Benjamin Wolff, chief executive officer of Clearwire Corp., expressed optimism about the progress of WiMax in general, and his company's progress in particular.
Clearwire has 258,000 subscribers and is within reach of 10 million people. Wolff suggested that PC data cards would be coming later this year "and embedded WiMAX chipsets for laptops and other mobile devices will be out next year," according to the June 13 issue of Telecommunications Reports Daily.
For his part, Om Malik has been skeptical of the case for WiMax, suggesting a couple years ago, for example, that the technology would be great for carrier backhaul. Today he notes that Sprint could be thinking of a different WiMax direction that could include working with the cablecos.
A search for "WiMax" on his site turned up these stories.
MuniWireless has posted an updated list of municipal wireless initiatives.
NASCIO has just published a new document on digital records: "Electronic Records Management and Digital Preservation: Protecting the Knowledge Assets of the State Government Enterprise." The paper is at the top of this page.