Uber Gets Cozy with AT&T

As reported by GigaOm: Typically we look at preloaded apps on our smartphones as carrier bloatware to be deleted or minimized, but a lot of people will have second thoughts about removing AT&T’s newest promoted app from their handsets. Starting this summer, Uber will come preloaded on all new Android phones sold by AT&T.  

That isn't the extent of Uber’s new relationship with Ma Bell, Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalankick said at the Code Conference in LA. Uber is moving its own drivers onto AT&T’s voice and data networks. The iPhones Uber distributes to all of its contractors will be configured for AT&T, which, according to Uber’s blog, will give it the coverage it needs to expand beyond its current urban city focus into the far flung corners of the U.S.:

Uber’s goal is to make sure that anyone can open the Uber app anywhere and be able to connect with a safe, reliable and seamless ride through the Uber app. We are marching toward UberEVERYWHERE, and to do it, we are moving beyond expansion to individual cities and simply toward coverage, maximizing the reach of the Uber network. Today, the Uber platform serves over 137,000,000 Americans (43% of the population in just 4 years) and AT&T will help power UberEVERYWHERE and our continued expansion.

AT&T lately has been delving deep into the connected car lately powering the 3G and 4G connections linking Tesla, GM, Audi and many other automakers’ new infotainment and telematics systems. In many ways the deal with Uber is an extension of that strategy. Most of the Uber fleet may be unconnected but the drivers in them certainly are.

Though neither Uber nor AT&T went into specific details, AT&T may be providing more than just rote 3G and 3G links. It could be providing fleet tracking and logistics services that would help Uber manage its driver operations on a national scale.

As for the preloaded app, it’s really more a marketing relationship than a technology partnership. Carriers strike these deals with app developers all the time, and even if the app icon is on the home screen, AT&T customers will still have to register and load their credit card details into the app. But this deal could definitely put Uber in front of a lot more eyeballs previously unfamiliar with the car-hailing service, especially outside the core metropolitan areas Uber has traditionally focused on.

Game of Phones: How Verizon is Gaming the FCC and Its Customers

As reported by The Verge: Tomorrow, the FCC starts deciding the future of the internet. It’s an emotional, controversial, drawn-out battle that has been building for years, pitting some of the biggest internet providers in the world against the government, American citizens, and virtually every denizen of the web.

At issue is how (or if) the FCC will protect the internet’s openness, free of special treatment and data “fast lanes” offered to the highest bidders. And while Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, and others have been clamoring to prevent heavy regulation from being considered this week, it turns out that communications providers have actually been working the system for years, using exactly this kind of regulation to their advantage. In fact, strict FCC rules have helped Verizon build a largelyunregulated network — a network that’s valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

Today New York’s Public Utility Law Project (PULP) published a report, authored by New Networks, which contains previously unseen documents. It demonstrates how Verizon deliberately moves back and forth between regulatory regimes, classifying its infrastructure either like a heavily regulated telephone network or a deregulated information service depending on its needs. The chicanery has allowed Verizon to raise telephone rates, all the while missing commitments for high-speed internet deployment.

It’s a mess — and, by all appearances, it’s completely legal.

UNBUNDLING THE RULES
Communication regulation is a century-old notion, spurred by the early 20th century’s dominance of AT&T in telephony (and RCA in radio). The concept was simple enough: in exchange for an effective monopoly over a medium that was quickly becoming vitally important, AT&T was subject to a unique level of government oversight. These regulations were eventually organized into the Communications Act of 1934 — a set of laws that dictated American communications policy virtually unchanged for over 60 years.

In submitting to regulation, AT&T was designated a "common carrier" — in broad terms, an organization that will deliver something from anyone to anyone else — under a critical section of the Communications Act called Title II. When the Communications Act was updated in 1996, it appeared that broadband internet providers might fall under the same strict rules, but after a series of hearings, the FCC ultimately ruled in 2002 that cable modems were "information services," a far less restrictive designation. In 2005, it ruled that DSL fell into the same category; today, effectively all internet connections are beyond the reach of Title II.

In the early years of home broadband, before the nightmare that now rests on the FCC’s desk, deregulation seemed to be a fruitful strategy: communications companies pumped billions into constructing new high-speed internet networks. Verizon negotiated an agreement to wire the entire state of New Jersey, promising every citizen in its territory would have access to high-speed internet by 2010. In New York, things were done more locally; New York City, for example, struck a deal with Verizon to get broadband to all five boroughs by this year. A similar process played out in states and cities across the US.

When Verizon talked about this broadband infrastructure with local regulators, however, it made clear it would lay the fiber for its next-generation network as a "common carrier pursuant to Title II of the Communications Act of 1934." In other words, Verizon was making a move that, at a glance, seems counterintuitive: it asked for more regulation by building its fiber network under the same tight rules as the old telephone lines.

CARRIER CHAMELEON
Why would Verizon — which, like all big telecom companies, is generally averse to government regulation — make a point of repeatedly noting that its fiber network fell under the same strict rules as the telephone system?

There are two reasons. First, Title II designation gives carriers broad power to compel other utilities — power, water, and so on — to give them access to existing infrastructure for a federally controlled price, which makes it simpler and more cost-effective for cables to be run. And that infrastructure adds up: poles, ducts, conduits running beneath roads, the list goes on. Second, Title II gave Verizon a unique opportunity to justify boosting telephone rates in discussions with regulators, arguing that these phone calls would run over the same fiber used by FiOS, Verizon’s home internet service. According to PULP’s report, Verizon raised traditional wired telephone rates in New York some 84 percent between 2006 and 2009, blessed by regulators in return for its "massive investment in fiber optics."

Of course, telephone service isn’t the real reason Verizon has spent billions on fiber: landlines have long been a dying business, expedited on their trip to the grave by the smartphone revolution of the past decade. Rather, the fiber was laid to carry data — the very data Verizon doesn’t want subject to Title II regulation. It’s for FiOS in the home and for wireless backhaul, the backbone that connects cellular towers (including Verizon Wireless’ own) to the internet.
And as landline telephones lose ground to newer, better, and faster technologies, the folks left on these copper wires disproportionately skew toward low-income populations and the elderly — the demographics least likely to be able to take advantage of broadband. Yet it was their rate increases that were being used to subsidize the investment in Verizon’s fiber network. The PULP report estimates these rate increases have generated $4.4 billion in additional revenue for Verizon in New York alone, money that’s funneled directly from a Title II service to an array of services that currently lie beyond Title II’s reach.

It’s a tactic that isn’t illegal, and Verizon itself has made no particular effort to hide it. Speaking at an investor conference in 2012, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo spelled it out: "…the fact of the matter is Wireline capital — and I won’t get the number but it’s pretty substantial — is being spent on the Wireline side of the house to support the Wireless growth. So the IP backbone, the data transmission, fiber to the cell, that is all on the Wireline books but it’s all being built for the Wireless Company."
Asked about the use of the common carrier designation, a Verizon spokesman told The Verge that for the purposes of constructing the network, it relied on the authority it had by offering Title II telephone services, but that the services it offers over that fiber — voice, cable, and high speed internet — are each legally distinct for purposes of deciding regulatory status.

HAVING IT BOTH WAYS
Still, the tactic strikes many as hypocritical. "The network has to be built as a common carrier network, because there is no way to get that infrastructure in place without it," says Earl Comstock, a lawyer at Eckert Seamans specializing in net neutrality who helped draft the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "Verizon knows it needs to offer just enough basic voice services on its fiber to claim that designation. But it doesn’t live up to those promises when it’s done building it out."
The regulatory flip-flop might be easier to justify if Verizon did indeed wire every home with fiber; in New Jersey, for instance, it had committed to delivering 45Mbps internet service to its entire territory by 2010. But numerous reports suggest Verizon hasn’t come even close to reaching its goals. In the state, which has 3.2 million households, Verizon said in March its fiber-to-the-home deployment has "passed 2.1 million premises," a number that means even less than two-thirds of homes may actually be connected. To close the gap, Verizon has leaned on its own LTE service where fiber hasn’t reached, even though it’s far slower than a wired fiber connection and is subject to data caps.

With broadband internet’s anemic competitive landscape, this lack of regulatory accountability becomes even more troubling. According to a 2012 FCC report, roughly 27 percent of US households had only one choice to get a wired connection of 6Mbps or greater. Uncompetitive markets are the ripest for regulation; the dominant players in those markets, of course, would disagree. And while we wait to see whether the FCC will move to bring the internet under Title II to codify it as the public utility that is has become, Verizon and others are playing a regulatory shell game, spinning in and out of Title II rules at their leisure.

"The last 15 years have been pretty much great for everyone; it is AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast who want to break from current patterns and impose a de-facto tax on the rest of the internet economy, starting with internet video," says Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia specializing in communication networks, in a conversation with The Verge. "To do that, the FCC needs the authority to ban degradation, fast lanes, and other ways of imposing a tax on the internet economy; the clearest source of such authority is Title II of the Telecom Act. It shows how obvious it is that broadband has become a utility, when, if your reporting is correct, Verizon itself sees it that way."

This comes to a head on Thursday, when the FCC is set to unveil the draft of its proposal for new rules that govern regulation (or non-regulation) of the internet. "If the FCC fails, and allows the [fast lane] tax to be imposed, every business on the internet will pay more to the carriers, ultimately raising the costs to consumers, and making it harder to start something new," says Wu. "Nothing about that world is good for anyone."

Among other options, a full-on move to Title II regulation for the internet will be on the FCC’s menu this week. Considering how Verizon has leaned on Title II to build and finance its broadband network, the right move seems clear to some. "To expect that you can come in and use public infrastructure and funds to build a network and then be free of any regulation is absurd," says John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at advocacy group Public Knowledge. "When Verizon itself is describing these activities as a Title II common carrier, how can the FCC look at broadband internet and continue acting as though it's not a telecommunication network?"

Roger Easton, GPS Developer for Satellite Navigation, Dies at 93

As reported by Bloomberg: Roger Easton, one of the lead inventors of the Global Positioning System, the satellite-based navigation technology used by everything from mobile phones to guided missiles, has died. He was 93.  

He died May 8 at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, according to a statement by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, where he worked for 37 years.

Easton helped create some of the most significant space systems, including Project Vanguard, which in 1958 launched the first solar-powered satellite, and the U.S. Naval Space Surveillance System, which tracked thousands of man-made objects orbiting Earth through a nationwide network of detectors.

His contributions to the Global Positioning System, or GPS, grew out of his earlier work and were the source of his greatest fame. The system today involves two dozen orbiting satellites, called Navstar, that send out precisely timed signals. The transmissions are detected by mobile phones, aircraft, cars and ships at sea to enable accurate navigation.

Originally deployed for the military, GPS has come to encompass entire industries involving navigation, surveying, communication and time-keeping. Services related to the technology generate annual revenue of $150 billion to $270 billion globally, according to a 2013 study by Oxford, U.K.- based Oxera Consulting Ltd.

At the Navy lab starting in 1964, Easton developed the Timation system (named for time-navigation) which featured satellites carrying highly accurate clocks in orbit.

Other Contributors
Easton isn't the only scientist credited for the development of GPS. Ivan Getting, a Raytheon Manufacturing Co. scientist who envisioned a version of GPS in the 1950s, and Bradford Parkinson, an Air Force colonel who developed it in the 1970s, were both inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for their contributions to satellite-based navigation.

Easton held 11 U.S. patents including patent 3,789,409 for “navigation systems using satellites and passive ranging techniques” for timation, according to the Navy lab statement.

Roger Lee Easton was born on April 30, 1921, in Craftsbury, Vermont, to Frank Birch Easton, a physician, and Della Donnocker Easton, a homemaker. He graduated from the Craftsbury Academy in 1939 and Middlebury College in Vermont in 1943. Later that year, after one semester at the University of Michigan, he joined the Navy lab.

His initial work was on radar beacons and instrument landing systems. In the 1950s, at Whites Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico, he was involved in rocket experiments, according to the Navy lab’s statement. He also helped coordinate tracking of Sputnik after the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite in 1957.

Lab Retirement
In 1980, Easton retired as head of the Space Applications Branch at the lab.

He moved to Canaan, New Hampshire, and served two terms in the state legislature. In 1986, he ran in the Republican gubernatorial primary, focusing on his opposition to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant, then under construction.

“The only thing worse than losing would be winning,” he told his family, according to the statement.

In 2004, President George W. Bush presented him with the National Medal of Technology. In 2010, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia.

Survivors include his wife of 68 years, the former Barbara Coulter; a daughter, Ruth Easton; two sons, Roger Easton Jr. and Richard Easton, and five grandchildren, according to the Navy lab statement.

Solar Roadways Project Blows Past $1M Crowdfunding Goal

As reported by ComputerWorld: A project to develop solar power-generating panels that can snap together and form roadways and other surfaces has far exceeded its $1 million crowdsourcing goal.

With three days left to go, Solar Roadways has attracted more than 35.000 donors who've shelled out more than $1.5 million toward the project.

Hexagonal solar panels being laid into place to form a parking lot (Image: Solar Roadways)

The Solar Roadways Indiegogo crowdfunding project even surpassed the previous record holder for the most Indiegogo contributors; that record had been held by Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal), whose project was to create a museum for Nikola Tesla (33,000 funders).

The Sagle, Idaho-based Solar Roadways company founders, Scott and Julie Brusaw, believe that if deployed on most roadways their technology has the potential to generate three times more electricity than is now used in the U.S.

The hexagonal panels can melt snow and ice to keep road surfaces safe and have LED lights embedded in them that can be used to reconfigure traffic patterns and issue warnings to drivers.

The Solar Roadway panels are made up of four layers. There's a half-inch thick glass surface, followed by a layer of LED lights, an electronic support structure (circuit board) and a base layer made of recyclable materials.

Solar Roadways prototypes have already received federal funding, and the Brusaws now hope to use the crowdsourcing money to ramp up production.

German Scientists Successfully Test Brain-Controlled Aircraft

As reported by Aerospace Technology: Scientists from the Institute for Flight System Dynamics at Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany have demonstrated the feasibility of flying a brain-controlled aircraft.

Led by professor Florian Holzapfel, the team is researching ways that brain-controlled flight works in the EU-funded project 'Brainflight'.

TUM project head Tim Fricke said a long-term vision of the project is to make flying accessible to more people.

"With brain control, flying, in itself, could become easier," Fricke said. "This would reduce the workload of pilots and thereby increase safety.

"In addition, pilots would have more freedom of movement to manage other manual tasks in the cockpit."

To facilitate humans and machines communication, brain waves of the pilots are measured with the help of electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes connected to a cap.

An algorithm developed by Team Physiological Parameters for Adaptation (PhyPA) of the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) allows the program to decipher electrical potentials and converts them to useful control commands.

However, the brain-computer interface recognizes only the very clearly defined electrical brain impulses required for control.

"With brain control, flying could become easier. This would reduce the workload of pilots and increase safety."

The German researchers conducted flight simulator tests on seven subjects with varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience.

"One of the subjects was able to follow eight out of ten target headings with a deviation of only 10°," Fricke added.

Several of the pilots who participated in the tests managed the landing approach under poor visibility, while one test pilot even landed within only few meters of the center-line.

Following the tests, scientists are now studying how the requirements for the control system and flight dynamics have to be altered to accommodate the new control method.

During general flights, pilots feel resistance in steering and must apply significant force when the loads induced on the aircraft become too large.

As this feedback is missing in brain control, researchers are looking for alternative methods of feedback to signal when the envelope is pushed too hard.

NASA's New Mega-Rocket, Orion Capsule on Track for Future Test Flights

As reported by Space.com: A new era of space exploration — supported by a history-making new mega-rocket and a spacecraft designed to deliver humans into deep space — could be on the horizon for NASA.  

The space agency is gearing up to build the largest and most powerful rocket in history. The huge launcher, called the Space Launch System (SLS), will move a new spacecraft dubbed Orion, designed to send up to four astronauts farther into the solar system than ever before. A short list of destinations includes the moon, nearby asteroids and, eventually, Mars.

Everyone is looking forward to 2021, the year when the first manned launch will occur. But before that happens, the rocket and spacecraft will have to pass a number of tests. [NASA's Space Launch System Rocket in Pictures]

SpaceX Unveils Manned Dragon ‘Space Taxi’

As reported by Universe Today: SpaceX CEO, founder and chief designer Elon Musk is set to unveil the manned version of his firms commercial Dragon spaceship later this week, setting in motion an effort that he hopes will soon restore America’s capability to launch US astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017.

Musk will personally introduce SpaceX’s ‘Space Taxi’ dubbed ‘Dragon V2’ at what amounts to sort of a world premiere event on May 29 at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, CA, according to an official announcement this evening (May 27) from SpaceX.

“SpaceX’s new Dragon V2 spacecraft is a next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space,” according to the SpaceX statement.

The manned Dragon will launch atop the powerful SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket from a SpaceX pad on the Florida Space Coast.

Dragon was initially developed as a commercial unmanned resupply freighter to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 pounds) of supplies and science experiments to the ISS under a $1.6 Billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA during a dozen Dragon cargo spacecraft flights through 2016.

Musk is making good on a recent comment he posted to twitter on April 29, with respect to the continuing fallout from the deadly crisis in Ukraine which has resulted in some US economic sanctions imposed against Russia, that now potentially threaten US access to the ISS in a boomerang action from the Russian government:

“Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on with @NASA. No trampoline needed,” Musk tweeted.

“Cover drops on May 29. Actual flight design hardware of crew Dragon, not a mockup,” Musk added.

The ‘Dragon V2’ is an upgraded, man rated version of the unmanned spaceship that can carry a mix of cargo and up to a seven crewmembers to the ISS.

NASA astronauts and industry experts check out the crew accommodations in the Dragon spacecraft under development by SpaceX. The evaluation in Hawthorne, Calif., on Jan. 30, 2012, was part of SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Development Round 2 agreement with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Credit: NASA

Dragon is among a trio of US private sector manned spaceships being developed with seed money from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in a public/private partnership to develop a next-generation crew transportation vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017 – a capability totally lost following the space shuttle’s forced retirement in 2011.

Since that day, US astronauts have been totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsules for ferry rides to orbit and back.

The Boeing CST-100 and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser ‘space taxis’ are also vying for funding in the next round of contracts to be awarded by NASA around late summer 2014.

All three company’s have been making excellent progress in meeting their NASA mandated milestones in the current contract period known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability initiative (CCiCAP) under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

However, US progress getting the space taxis actually built and flying has been repeatedly stifled by the US Congress who have severely cut NASA’s budget request for the Commercial Crew Program by about half each year. Thus forcing NASA to delay the first manned orbital test flights by at least 18 months from 2015 to 2017.

The situation with regard to US dependency on Russian rocketry to reach the ISS has always been awkward.

But it finally took on new found importance and urgency from politicos in Washington, DC, since the ongoing crisis in Ukraine this year exposed US vulnerability in a wide range of space endeavors affecting not just astronaut rides to the ISS but also the launch of the most critical US national security surveillance satellites essential to US defense.

US space vulnerability became obvious to everyone when Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin. who is in charge of space and defense industries, said that US sanctions could “boomerang” against the US space program and that perhaps NASA should “deliver their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Dragon cargo capsule bound for the ISS launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, FL. File photo. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

Rogozin also threatened to cut off exports of the Russian made RD-180 rocket engines which power the first stage of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket used to launch numerous US National Security spy satellites.

“Moscow is banning Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines, which the US has used to deliver its military satellites into orbit,” Rogozin said at a media briefing held on May 13.

NASA is also a hefty user of the Atlas V for many of the agency’s science and communication satellites like the Curiosity Mars rover, MAVEN Mars orbiter, MMS, Juno Jupiter orbiter and TDRS.

Musk and SpaceX have also filed lawsuits against the US Air Force to legally block the importation of the RD-180 engines by ULA for the Atlas V as a violation of the US economic sanctions.

So overall, US space policy is in a murky and uncertain situation and Musk clearly aims for SpaceX to be a central and significant player in a wide range of US space activities, both manned and unmanned.

Read my earlier articles about the Atlas V controversy, Rogozin’s statements, Musk’s suit and more about the effects of economic sanctions imposed by the US and Western nations in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea; here, here,here, here and here.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk briefs reporters including Universe Today in Cocoa Beach, FL prior to SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blastoff with SES-8 communications satellite on Dec 3, 2013 from Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The 3rd operational Dragon cargo resupply mission completed the 30 day SpaceX-3 flight to the ISS with a successful Pacific Ocean splashdown on May 18.