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Cash is king, and Big Tech companies have it pouring out their ears.

A combination of cost-cutting tactics and an improving economic climate have driven tech-sector profits way up this year. In the second quarter, technology industry earnings are on track to rise 66% compared to last year, according to Thomson Reuters.

That has led to massive stockpiles of cash at some of the world's tech giants. The eight biggest companies in the industry are sitting on a collective stash of more than $194 billion.

But CEOs playing the role of Scrooge McDuck won't impress many shareholders. With cash earning next to nothing nowadays, investors want companies to put their cash to good use. The result: A tech M&A frenzy that industry analysts think is just getting started.

Companies can use excess cash to pay a dividend to shareholders, but there's only so much businesses want to give away, and tech companies are notoriously stingy with their dividend payments. Companies can also buy back their own shares, but some argue that strategy isn't a great deal for shareholders. Another path is to invest internally, ramping up spending on research, development and hiring.

Instead, tech companies have lately gone with a third option: buying up companies that catch their eye.

In August alone, Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) bought McAfee for $7.7 billion and acquired Texas Instruments' cable modem unit, IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) bought Unica for $480 million, and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) bought Slide for about $200 million. Dell (DELL, Fortune 500) bid $1.15 billion last week for storage company 3PAR, but Hewlett-Packard outbid it on Monday to the tune of $1.6 billion -- after scooping up security software company Fortify last week. more...

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered that cleanliness is next to cheapliness. They have developed a simple one-step method, based on wax and soap, that will enable researchers to develop a wide variety low-cost materials for use in lithium-ion batteries.

The high price of lithium-ion batteries is a big roadblock to mass commercialization of electric vehicles, so any success in bringing down costs at the research and development end could have a significant impact on the consumer market and help the way for introducing electric fleets into more businesses.

Wax and Soap and Electrodes

The researchers fround that paraffin is an excellent medium on which to grow materials for use in electrodes, a key component of lithium-ion batteries (paraffin is a waxy solid consisting of alkanes, which are organic compounds composed of hydrogen and carbon).   Researchers at Pacific figured out that conventional electrodes were losing capacity due to the thickness of the material, but the problem was how to grow smaller particles arranged in neat crystals.  They hit upon a method for growing crystals on melted paraffin with a form of soap called oleic acid, then slowly raising the temperature until the wax and soap boil off (for a colorful description of the way lithium-ion batteries work, check out “The Recharge Tale” in Pacific Lab’s press release).

Many Paths to Cheaper Battery

The research also lead to a a significant improvement in the storage capacity of a test battery, but only if the battery was charged over a long period of time, which means that it is not suitable for many consumer uses. However, the paraffin-and-soap growing method itself has value, as a research tool for testing and developing different low-cost metals for use in electrodes.  Other low-cost developments are on the way, too, not only in terms of the materials used but also in the manufacturing process.  For example, International Battery uses a water based method for creating the slurry of binders that coat the electrodes, which saves 85% on waste management expenses.

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden yesterday announced 94 broadband stimulus awards from both the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) and the Broadband Investment Program (BIP). The awards, representing a total investment of $1.8 billion, will fund projects across 37 states.

The U.S. Department of Commerce awarded 66 BTOP grants, while the US Department of Agriculture made 28 awards from its BIP. Notable awards from a fiber perspective included a $16.2 million BTOP middle-mile award, with more than $7.8 million in matching contributions, to the UTOPIA open-access community fiber network in Utah, as well as the following FTTH/FTTP BIP-funded projects:

• North Alabama Electric Cooperative, $19 million
• Cedar Falls Utility of Iowa, $873,000 matched by an equal amount in private contribution
• United Electric Cooperative, Inc. of Missouri, approximately $21 million
• Smithville Telephone Company, Inc. of Mississippi, $7 million for a combination of FTTP and DSL
• Sjoberg's, Inc. of Minnesota, $866,060
• Yadkin Valley Telephone Membership Corp. of North Carolina, $21,668,232
• Waitsfield-Fayston Telephone Co. of Vermont, $5,559,975

Meanwhile, Cellular Properties, Inc. received $12,264,520 from BIP for a project that augments wireless broadband with fiber to the tower. Several other wireless projects, as well as satellite-based proposals, received funding as well.

Agencies of the Commerce and Agriculture departments are in the home stretch of BTOP and BIP awards, with a September 30 deadline looming for awarding of all of the money allotted to them. The BTOP program recently was reduced by $302 million to fund a jobs program.

Scientists at the University of Southampton are developing technology that may enable people to power MP3 players and other devices through their clothes and the carpets they walk on.

Dr Steve Beeby and his team at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) aim to generate energy through people's movement, eliminating the need to change batteries on devices.

In a project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Southampton team will use rapid printing processes and active printed inks to create an energy harvesting film in textiles. This film can also be printed on carpets, enabling individuals to generate energy as they walk around the home or office.

"This project looks at generating electrical power from the way people move and then applying an energy harvesting film to the clothes they wear or the materials they have around them," says Dr Beeby. "We will generate useful levels of power which will be harvested through the films in the textiles. The two big challenges in smart textiles are supplying power and surviving washing."

The research, which begins in October and runs until 2015, will provide a toolbox of materials and processes suitable for a range of different fabrics that will enable users to develop the energy harvesting fabric best suited to their requirements.

Dr Beeby has been awarded a prestigious EPSRC Leadership Fellowship to undertake this research, providing up to five years of funding. These awards are a direct investment in Britain's most talented researchers.

Applications for the research include using the energy to power wireless health monitoring systems, as well as consumer products such as MP3 players. Applications also exist in the automotive sector.

The underlying sensor technology, which will make the energy harvesting process possible, is being developed by Dr Beeby and his team through the Microflex project, a Framework 7 European Union funded project due to finish in November 2012.

Cincinnati Bell has formed a new subsidiary, Evolve, to offer businesses of all sizes VoIP,cloud-based phone and data services.

Evolve offers service packages that combine local and long-distance phone services, high-speedInternet, MPLS access and conferencing. The company’s products fit into two buckets. One, called Emerge, is a cloud-based solution through which businesses can completely replace their existing phone systems. The other group of services, marketed under the name Evantage, interface with a customer's new or existing telephone system."With Emerge and Evantage, we have packaged the latest technology to offera flexible, reliable, and affordable set of services," says Mike Herrmann,director of product management for Evolve.

Customers can control their services via a Web portal. And the services all feature dynamic bandwidth allocation, so all of a customer’s bandwidth is made available for data or Internet traffic when the phone system is not in use.

"Our customers tell us that they need help to determine the best solution for their business - they know they need to migrate to a VoIP-based service, but want to do so at their own pace," says Greg Wheeler, sales vice president. "Customers can meet with our experts at no charge, see ademonstration of the products in action and customize the right solution to meet their business needs – all at an affordable price."Evolve offers services in Columbus, Ohio; Louisville, Ky. and Indianapolis, In., where the company is headquartered. The company plans to expansion elsewhere in the Midwest over thenext several years.

An increasing number of AT&T’s mobile data services are limited only to Wi-Fi. But then again, AT&T (NYSE:T) is also making Wi-Fi available in a lot more places these days. This month AT&T expanded its outdoor hotzone Wi-Fi pilots to two more cities, Chicago and Charlotte, and announced that its nationwide hotspot network would now include all Sam’s Club big box retail locations throughout the country.

Wi-Fi access on AT&T’s hotspot network is free to its mobile customers with data plans, though it’s hardly as ubiquitous as its high-speed packet access network in the markets AT&T has 3G. But even with intermittent coverage, the 20,000-hotspot network handled 68.1 million connections in the second quarter, a year-over-year increase of more than 350%. While AT&T doesn’t break down which of those connections are made by subscribers to its Wi-Fi service or AT&T DSL and U-verse customers — who also receive free access to the Wi-Fi network — it’s clear that those huge growth rates are being driven by the iPhone and other Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones.

That amounts to millions of data connections that would have occurred on the macro-cellular network, saving AT&T enormous amounts of capacity over its heavily loaded 3G infrastructure. AT&T recognizes an opportunity when it sees one, so it's expanding its Wi-Fi strategy from the coffee shops, restaurants, airports and stores it usually targets with hotspots and moving into the big, outdoor public spaces, where confluences of the smartphone-toting masses could drive even the most robustly built network to its knees. AT&T’s New York hotzone is in the tourist mecca of Times Square, while in Chicago the hotzone forms a broad semi-circle around Wrigley Field, where 81 times a year 41,000 Chicago Cubs fans pack themselves into a century-old stadium and tens of thousands more clog the surrounding neighborhood bars and restaurants.

AT&T is leveraging Wi-Fi in other ways, shipping more than half a million Wi-Fi routers to its residential broadband customers as well as taking advantage of millions of existing home and office wireless networks. AT&T has offered no specific numbers on how much smartphone and mobile broadband traffic is offloaded to Wi-Fi, but those numbers must be substantial. According to a new study by ABI Research, about 16% of all mobile data traffic today is diverted from the wide-area macro network to Wi-Fi, femtocells and content delivery networks. By 2015, that number will increase to 48%, ABI predicted.

ABI’s numbers show that AT&T isn’t alone in utilizing Wi-Fi for network relief, but AT&T is fairly unique in how it uses Wi-Fi to deliver different types of services. While most operators don’t really distinguish between which types of applications that can access which network, AT&T has established some pretty strict guidelines. Video streaming applications such as Slingbox, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) FaceTime two-way chat video application for the iPhone 4 and even large-file app purchases are limited to Wi-Fi network.

AT&T is drawing a clear line between high-bandwidth services and low-bandwidth services and then assigning those services to the network that can deliver that content most efficiently and cheaply. There are some odd exceptions to the rule, such as 3G downloads of Netflix movies to the iPad and soon the iPhone, but that only makes me suspect that AT&T and Netflix have some kind of revenue-sharing agreement.

This is making a lot of consumers upset, who point to the lack of restrictions on other networks and in other applications, but deeming certain apps for certain networks is a smart thing for AT&T to do. Not only does Wi-Fi permit a higher quality of experience for these high-bandwidth apps, but it allows AT&T to move forward with its tiered pricing plans for 3G smartphones, which would have been all the more difficult if it allowed unfettered video access to its devices.

Ultimately, AT&T will be drawing these network distinctions between 3G and 4G, as the latter will be able to support these services much more efficiently. But AT&T’s long-term evolution (LTE) network is still well over a year away. You could make the argument that these capacity-consuming video services are really 4G services that operators have introduced early. If that’s the case, then AT&T is using Wi-Fi as an interim substitute for LTE.

Verizon has completed a field trial in which it delivered approximately 1 gigabit-per-second bandwidth to a customer on the currently deployed gigabit passive optical network in a live production FiOS network setting.

According to a company spokesperson, this kind of capacity and versatility will enable Verizon to accommodate an array of new and emerging consumer and business services such as 3DTV, desktop virtualization, and remote storage, as well as wireless backhaul for the next generation of wireless technologies.

Verizon's GPON platform supports a total throughput of 2.4 Gbps downstream and 1.2 Gbps upstream to customers connected to the PON. This test demonstrated the ability to serve customers on the FiOS network with Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) service.

The latest field trial was conducted in June in Taunton, Mass., using an existing GPON system developed by Motorola, a current supplier of BPON (broadband passive optical network) and GPON equipment to Verizon. The trial, conducted at an existing FiOS business customer location, was intended to demonstrate in a live network setting that currently deployed FiOS equipment can support higher bandwidth services and can deliver 1 Gbps without major change to the network.

"This kind of bandwidth capacity will provide Verizon the ability to continue to meet FiOS customers' needs by offering more bandwidth to support services such as 3DTV, ultra HDTV, multiplayer gaming, and HD video conferencing," says Brian Whitton, executive director of Verizon's technology group.

The test involved bringing a new fiber connection from an existing operating GPON system at the company's Taunton call-switching office to a second optical network terminal (ONT) located at the business customer's facility. The second ONT was provisioned for the new 1 Gbps service tier, and the speed was tested to a local speed test server over an optimized route, as well as across the public Internet to a regional speed test server located more than 400 miles away.

The throughput speeds were measured at 925 Mbps (megabits per second) to a local server and more than 800 Mbps to the regional test speed servers. The customer's existing FiOS service was left in place, and showed no degradation in the voice, data, or video services during this trial.

"This trial demonstrated that the current architecture has sufficient headroom to allow for a progressive increase in capacity as needed by our residential and business customers on our current GPON platform, and validates our decision to support both residential and business services on the same platform," explains Vincent O'Byrne, director of Verizon's technology organization, who managed the trial.

Several decades ago iconoclastic Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko spent a column railing about cars. The gist of his argument was that car advertisements lie to the public by showing shiny machines running full bore as smiling drivers maneuvered cars through open slaloms of roadway fun.

The point, Royko concluded, is that no one drives under those conditions. Americans, whether they drive BMWs or Hyundais, are stuck with rush hour traffic, red lights, old ladies, old men, distracted young ladies, aggressive young men, cell phone talkers, lipstick appliers, coffee drinkers and daydreamers. There's no fun there's certainly no smiling faces (unless a tightlipped tooth-clenched grimace counts) when Americans climb into their favorite gas/diesel/electric/wind-powered vehicles and head onto the nation's highways.

When you think about it, the same thing can be said about the nation's other highway, the clichéd information superhighway, where broadband is a 2010 Dodge Challenger with a hemi and no one wants a dial-up Kia. But the thing is, like that highway Royko lampooned, there's no smooth sailing on the information superhighway no matter how fast the vehicle can go.

This isn't to say that there should be some favoritism given to some sites so they can move in the commuter lane, or whatever silly analogy is being used these days to say that net neutrality is a drag. And it isn't to say that DOCSIS 3.0 isn't faster than DOCSIS 2.0 or DSL or dial-up. It's to say that, at the end of the route and sometimes at the beginning, what you have is what you have to live with no matter what you drive.

That point was made last week by Hyman Sukiennik, VP-Cox Business, Arizona, in explaining why a superfast 12-mile network link between the Translational Genomics Laboratory and Arizona State University in Phoenix was "settling" for a 10 gigabit connection.

"It's a function of what's hanging on the ends of it and their ability to process it any faster," said Sukiennik. "We're kind of maxed out in what all the pieces can do in terms of their needs and the computing power on both ends of this equation."

The computing power is state-of-the-art. The lab is, after all, breaking down information on an entire human body and digitizing it into one humongous file that would dwarf all the information contained in the Library of Congress. Try doing that with your TRS-80. And it's transferring that information to a core supercomputer at ASU; hardly your Dell laptop there.

And it still takes eight hours to transmit the entire physicality of a human being, all 30 terabytes of information that it is. That's better than the 12 days it used to take.

When those proposing the nation's broadband network gather around the table and dice and slice the regions and what people will be getting in the ways of speeds, it might be nice to temper some expectations. A fourth generation HP computer is not going to suddenly deliver lightning speed data just because it's hooked to a next-generation DOCSIS 3.0 modem attached to a broadband fiber network. It might deliver a comfortable ride, but it's no Jack Bauer downloading the directions to the next villain's lair while weaving through the streets of New York City. For that, you need more than a supercomputer and a fast network; you need the imagination of a pitchman, the next generation of marketer spawned over time from the guys who gave us those car commercials two decades ago.

The reality of broadband is that it is a fast highway with a lot of potholes and detours. To suggest anything else to a gullible public is like suggesting you can drive a Ferrari in Chicago. You can; you just can't drive it fast.

Cox Communications Inc. and TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO) are setting out to prove that the cable and consumer electronics industries can indeed work together without having to resort to divine (or FCC) intervention.

In a deal announced early Thursday, Cox has agreed to promote and support TiVo's new broadband-ready Premiere HD-DVR at retail and to take full ownership of all the installation hassles that go with it.

Cox is also integrating its video-on-demand (VoD) service, which currently holds about 15,000 hours of titles, while also embracing the box's ability to feed in Web video from TiVo's wide range of partners, which include Netflix Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN).

This is the first US example o a retail set-top that integrates cable linear and on-demand video services with broadband video, plus a third-party interface (TiVo's, in this case). Panasonic , which just scuttled its tru2way TV products, baked in only two of those pieces -- cable linear and on-demand video.

"We like providing more choice, and being in the business of linear and on-demand video, but we also fully understand consumers like access to broadband video," Cox VP of product development Steve Necessary tells Light Reading Cable. "This is a way to basically get both in the same box in a fashion that's pretty darn fast."

Cox has committed to support the TiVo box in its "major" markets, phasing some of them in starting early next year. The MSO isn't saying which markets will offer that support first, but some candidates include Phoenix, Northern Virginia, San Diego, and Los Angeles.

Necessary says the retail arrangement supersedes earlier work that involved porting TiVo's software to Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) set-tops. That work is being mothballed in lieu of this new, retail-focused arrangement.

Jeff Klugman, TiVo's SVP and general manager of products and revenue, says the ability to combine cable VoD with OTT video will give consumers a "complete, comprehensive look across all episodic television." By way of example, Cox's VoD service can offer the current season of a given series, while Netflix provides streaming access to the past seasons.

"You're stitching together what were previously disparate [release] windows," Klugman says.

No tru2way
The Cox-TiVo relationship is bad news for tru2way.

TiVo's Premiere boxes don’t use tru2way to enable interactive cable services like VoD. Instead, TiVo uses an IP backchannel to set up the video sessions between the box and an MSO's on-demand platform and to supply metadata to the TiVo guide/search apps. TiVo has already completed that integration with SeaChange International Inc. (Nasdaq: SEAC)'s Axiom back office, though SeaChange itself has acknowledged that nothing prevents other VoD vendors from mimicking that work.

Similar to TiVo's deals with two other cable ops -- RCN Corp. (Nasdaq: RCI) and Suddenlink Communications -- Cox will also stitch its VoD system to TiVo using the IP back-channel approach. Cox expects to be fully standardized on the SeaChange back office by the end of 2010.

The big difference, Klugman says, is that Cox will be supporting and provisioning the Premiere boxes customers purchase at retail. In comparison, the RCN and Suddenlink agreements call for the operators to buy those boxes directly from TiVo while retaining the billing and subscription relationship with the subscriber.

Cox has also agreed to foot the bill on expenses tied to truckrolls and other installation requirements for TiVo Premiere boxes. That extends to special tuning adapters that Premiere boxes will need in order to view channels Cox delivers using switched digital video (SDV). For now, that requirement is limited to Cox systems serving Northern Virginia, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and a few other markets. Cox customers still have to pay Cox $2 per month to lease the CableCARD required to authorize cable TV services.

"They [Cox] won't leave the person's home until the tuning adapter is working, the VoD is working, the linear TV is working, and the CableCARD is working," Klugman says. "That is all part of the full installation experience, funded by Cox."

Although TiVo's Premiere box doesn't use tru2way, Cox has already outfitted all of its headends for tru2way. It's using a tru2way-based guide and boxes from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to back a premium video tier that includes a multi-room DVR. Cox currently has that service in front of "friendlies" in two undisclosed markets (one based on Cisco's digital cable platform, the other on Motorola's), but expects to have it rolled out "extensively" by the end of 2010, according to Necessary.

The regulatory landscape
The Cox-TiVo retail deal comes into view as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chews on some new CableCARD rules and starts up an "AllVid" inquiry aimed at figuring out how to spur the retail market for video devices, including set-tops, across the cable, telco, and satellite TV landscape.

So was this put together to show the Commission that cable and the consumer electronics industry can indeed work together without a regulatory oversight?

"To be clear, that was not a driver in this agreement," Necessary says. "But it's also fair to say… that it's a positive example of how cable and the CE industry can in fact work together… under the influence of normal, good market forces."

CHICAGO (Aug. 11, 2010) — The state of Illinois, Chicago Public Schools and Harris N.A. have made the list of the nation’s top 50 green power partners using the most renewable electricity, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.

Of the three, the state of Illinois came in highest on the list at number 23. The state purchases 176 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, about 33 percent of its purchased electricity use.

While Chicago Public Schools rank 35 on the Top 50 list, the district tops the list of K-12 schools purchasing green power. Chicago Public Schools purchase approximately 108 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, enough to meet 20 percent of the district’s purchased electricity use.

“Chicago Public Schools, as well as the other Chicago-area partners, are teaching an important lesson by changing how they purchase electricity,” said Cheryl Newton, EPA regional Air Division Director. “All of EPA’s Green Power Partners are raising the bar for clean, renewable energy use.”

Harris N.A. is ranked number 42 on the Top 50 list, purchasing approximately 91 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, enough to meet 100 percent of its purchased electricity use.

EPA’s Green Power Partnership works with more than 1,200 organizations to voluntarily purchase green power and reduce the environmental impacts of conventional electricity use.  Green power is generated from renewable resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas and low-impact hydropower.  Green power electricity generates less pollution than conventional power and produces no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
The green power purchases support the development of new, renewable generation resources nationwide.

Together, the Green Power Partnership’s top purchasers use more than 17 billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity use of more than 1.5 million average American homes. More information on EPA’s Green Power Partnership: http://www.epa.gov/greenpower. 

India may temporarily shut down BlackBerry services if security concerns are not addressed in a meeting on Thursday, sources said, in a signal the Canadian firm's tussle with authorities around the world is far from over.

The latest ultimatum for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion comes a day after the company agreed to hand over user codes that would let Saudi authorities monitor its BlackBerry Messenger, as it seeks to stop the kingdom from silencing the service, a source said on Tuesday.

In a matter of a few weeks the BlackBerry device -- long the darling of the world's CEOs and politicians, including U.S. President Barack Obama -- has become the target for its encrypted email and messaging services.

India, like several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, want access to encrypted Blackberry communication, which has been linked to militant activity including the Mumbai attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people.

The government would meet with telecoms operators on Thursday, India's internal security chief U.K. Bansal told Reuters on Wednesday, but it was not clear if RIM would take part in the meeting.

RIM declined to comment.

India's home (interior) ministry will press on Thursday for some deadline to be fixed for RIM to share encryption details.

"There definitely could be talk of some deadline and a proposal to take strong action on BlackBerry services during the meeting," said a government official, who declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Another senior Indian government official told Reuters that mobile phone operators could be asked to shut down RIM's Enterprise Email and Messenger services temporarily as a last alternative, if RIM does not agree to offer access to data.

"If they cannot provide a solution, we'll ask (mobile) operators to stop that specific service. The service can be resumed when they give us the solution," the source said.

The responsibility to meet Indian security requirements rests with mobile phone operators in India rather than RIM. more...

AT&T Inc. says it is scheduling job fairs this week in New Haven and Rocky Hill to fill more than 75 positions in Connecticut.

The jobs are intended to staff the telecommunications company's expansion of its U-verse TV and wireless telephone service. From 2007 through 2009, AT&T says capital investment in its Connecticut wireless and wire line networks was nearly $825 million.

Openings include U-verse technicians, door-to-door and retail sales and sales management. The job fairs are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Unemployment in Connecticut was 8.8 percent in June, the most recent month tallied, according to the state Department of Labor. That was down slightly from 8.9 percent in May and lower than the 9.5 percent nationwide.

Heavy industries like steel mills, paper mills and cement mills have by far the largest untapped potential for energy generation in the wasted heat they generate but do not tap to make electricity. It is not just heavy industries that wastes this potential.

Coal-fired power plants lose as much as 51% of their energy in conversion loss, according to the EIA. Most have made no efficiency gains since the 1950s. The typical power plant burns three units of fuel to generate just one unit of electricity, and then vents wasted potential power to the sky as steam. Nuclear plants waste 21%.

A Department of Energy study, cited by Dick Munsen, author of From Edison to Enron, found untapped potential for 135,000 Megawatts (135 Gigawatts) of cogeneration in the U.S. In addition, a Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory study identified another 64,000 Megawatts (64 Gigawatts)  that could be obtained from industrial waste energy recovery.

One example is the ArcelorMittal steel plant, retrofitted by a combined heat & Power company, RED. It is in Indiana, a state that gets 90% of its electricity from coal. A series of waste heat recovery projects turn the plant’s smokestack emissions into clean electricity and useful steam — utilizing an energy source that would otherwise simply be vented.

They actually generate as much electricity from just  their own waste heat as a 200 MW gas-fired power plant.

Not only do these technologies reduce the steel plant’s carbon dioxide emissions by 800,000 tons each year, and save the company $100 million a year in energy costs.  But for every steel plant supplying that much power, that’s one less gas-fired plant that needs to be built.

However, these vast numbers don’t tell the whole story. As a percent of energy costs to the steel plant this huge number is well under a 10% reduction in energy use. So the incentive is relatively low, from the point of view of heavy industry, itself, to reduce energy costs 10% with a large capital expenditure. There needs to be an economic incentive.

In Finland 30% of the electricity on the grid is produced by the forestry industry and paper mills, due to a law like our Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) that is near expiration, that gave an economic incentive to harness waste energy.

The PURPA law that was passed in 1978, after the oil shocks, began to create a market for non-utility-produced energy. That resulted in about 7% of the energy on the grid being produced by heavy industry as a byproduct, creating a secondary revenue stream for industries, but as subsequent laws clamped down on competition with utilities, it stalled there. But the potential is for a much higher percentage, as much as 20%, according to Sean Casten of Recycled Energy development.

But when as a nation we first started on electricity production in the 19th century, we did not waste this kind of energy. Thomas Edison began the largest district heating project in the world with the Pearl Street power station in 1882, by harvesting the waste heat in electricity production, and selling the heat to neighboring buildings.

Now in Manhattan, ConEd supplies 100,000 buildings with 350 degrees °F steam from waste heat from three of its seven gas-fired electric power stations, creating the largest district heating project in the world, with a staggering amount of power.

The city inherited the clean energy district heating system set up by Thomas Edison in the 19th century as a byproduct of the first electric power plants that made electricity using coal-fired steam.

Graphene is a two-dimensional crystalline sheet of carbon atoms -- meaning it is only one atom thick -- through which electrons can race at nearly the speed of light -- 100 times faster than they can move through silicon. This plus graphene's incredible flexibility and mechanical strength make the material a potential superstar for the electronics industry.

However, whereas the best electronic materials feature a strong signal and weak background noise, attaining this high signal-to-noise ratio has been a challenge for both single and bi-layers of graphene, especially when placed on a substrate of silica or some other dielectric. One of the problems facing device developers has been the lack of a good graphene noise model.

Working with the unique nanoscience capabilities of the Molecular Foundry at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a multi-institutional team of researchers has developed the first model of signal-to-noise-ratios for low frequency noises in graphene on silica. Their results show noise patterns that run just the opposite of noise patterns in other electronic materials.

Berkeley Lab materials scientist Yuegang Zhang led a study in which it was determined that for graphene on silica, the background signal noise is minimal near the region in the graphene where the electron density of states (the number of energy states available to each electron) is lowest. For semiconductors, such as silicon, in the region where electron density states is low the background noise is at its highest. However, there were distinct differences in the noise patterns of single and bi-layer graphene.

"In this work, we present the four-probe low frequency noise characteristics in single- and bi-layer graphene samples, using a back-gated device structure that helps simplify the physics in understanding the interactions between the graphene and the silica substrate," says Zhang. "For single-layer graphene we found that the noise was reduced either close to or far away from the lowest electron density of states, sometimes referred to as the Dirac point for graphene, forming an M-shaped pattern. For the bi-layer graphene, we found a similar noise reduction near the Dirac point but an increase away from that point, forming a V-shaped pattern. The noise data near the Dirac point correlated to spatial-charge inhomogeneity."

The results of this research are reported in the journal Nano Letters in a paper titled "Effect of Spatial Charge Inhomogeneity on 1/f Noise Behavior in Graphene." Co-authoring the paper with Zhang were Guangyu Xu, Carlos Torres Jr., Fei Liu, Emil Song, Minsheng Wang, Yi Zhou, Caifu Zeng and Kang Wang.

Lead author Guangyu Xu, a physicist with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California (UC) Los Angeles, says the spatial charge inhomogeneity responsible for the graphene's unique noise patterns was probably caused by the charge impurities near the graphene-substrate interface.

"Our experiment carefully rules out other possible extrinsic factors that might influence the result," Xu says. "We conclude the correlation between the anomalous noise feature and the spatial charge inhomogeneity, is one of the main carrier scattering mechanisms for unsuspended graphene samples."

Xu says this model of low frequency noise characteristics in graphene should be a significant help for fabricating electronic devices because biasing at the low noise regime can be designed into the device.

"This will benefit the high signal-to-noise ratio in graphene," Xu says.

This work was supported in part by DOE's Office of Science.

The Molecular Foundry is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs), national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale, supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The other NSRCs are located at DOE's Argonne, Brookhaven, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

Google and Verizon are reportedly in talks over how to manage network traffic, an agreement that could influence how U.S. regulators view Net neutrality, according to a report in Thursday's Wall Street Journal.

Verizon confirmed the talks have been ongoing with Google and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for 10 months, the paper reported.

The agreement would apparently lay out principles around network neutrality, or the belief that service providers should not slow down certain kinds of traffic on their networks. The agreement, however, would reportedly allow service providers to prioritize traffic if customers paid for that kind of service, the paper said.

Network providers have maintained that they need to restrict some kinds of Internet traffic in order to keep a consistent quality of service across their customers bases. That has happened, for example, for file-sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. But it is feared that network providers may unfairly restrict other kinds of applications and protocols for competitive purposes. Wireless networks would not be subject to the agreement, according to the report.

The FCC has been talking to large service providers about how to regulate net neutrality. That has drawn criticism from groups such as Public Knowledge, whose communications director wrote that any agreement between Google and Verizon could be short-lived as it wouldn't have the force of law.

A Google-Verizon deal "is no substitute for a legally binding, comprehensive agreement in the public interest that covers not only network management but universal service and the other issues rolled up in the larger question whether the FCC even has the authority over broadband," wrote Art Brodsky on the group's blog.

Google officials contacted in London said they had no comment.

Motorola and Verizon are working together to produce a tablet specifically for watching television content, according to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday.

The tablet is said to have a 10-inch screen and will use Google's Android operating system. The premier feature of the tablet will be the ability to access Verizon's FiOS cable service from it, according to the FT's anonymous sources. The tablet is said to be "thinner and lighter than the iPad," and will allow tethering. It will also support Adobe Flash, according to the report. There will also be two cameras, one front-facing for video conferencing, and another on the back for photos.

Though the report did not have the name of the device or a price, it could be for sale this fall in the U.S.

Verizon declined to comment.

Motorola has talked of a tablet in the past, and there was even a demonstration of a prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year. But there were several Android tablets announced at the same show, though very few have yet to hit stores shelves. Archos was the first in late 2009, and Dell introduced its Streak last week, though that's more of a phone than a tablet.

Since Apple's iPad went on sale in early April, the company has had trouble keeping up with demand for it. Apple said in late July that it has sold more than 3 million of the devices in about four months. Seeing the response from consumers to the device has led several other consumer electronics companies to talk of making competing media tablets, including Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and most recently, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion.

Motorola-Verizon's would certainly stand out in one way: being able to access pay TV service from the device directly from a provider like Verizon. Movies and TV shows can be downloaded to the iPad from Apple's iTunes desktop software and the iTunes iPad app, as well as streamed through video applications from Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu.

Though not for lack of trying, Apple has not yet been able to procure any kind of all-you-can-eat subscription plan deal from the major content owners. An Apple cloud-based streaming video service is in the works, though it's not clear how soon it will be ready.

Health and Wellness
Changes in an elder's routine and environment can indicate potential health problems, but some systems like those from Healthsense, Intel, Grand Care Systems and Wellaware Systems are able to provide evidence that's much more concrete. Optional with these systems are a wireless scale, blood pressure cuff, glucometer and other tools that can measure a person's vital signs.

Measurements taken by these various medical devices are recorded on the system's website, and the entire chart can be shared with the user's physician and family members. If the issue stems from someone forgetting to take his or her medication, the systems can be programmed to deliver friendly reminders by way of a phone call, text or email. Grand Care Systems and Intel also offer the option of having the message displayed on a TV or in-home monitoring device, respectively.

Today, most manufacturers of telehealth systems market their solutions through assisted living facilities and home healthcare agencies. "We see technology as an enabler to support independent living," says Brian Bischoff, president and CEO of Healthsense. "Seniors often still need services like housekeeping, transportation and meal delivery of an assisted care facility." However, it's conceivable that these types of systems will find their way into an increasing number of private homes in the near future.

That's certainly Intel's vision. "We recognize through our studies that it's important to extend a person's care community beyond formal caregivers to include family members," says Julie Cheitlin Cherry, Intel director of professional services. "We've done a lot of research to see how the technology can be integrated into a senior's home and lifestyle to enable them to stay at home."

Communication and Engagement
As effective as ADL and telehealth systems are at helping seniors maintain their independence, they can't cure the loneliness and isolation that many feel. Grand Care tackles this issue with the same TV interface used to display visual reminders of doctor's appointments and medication schedules. Mitchell explains, "When the caregiver goes to our website to check on the parent's activity, they can also send photos, videos and emails directly to a predesignated Grand Care TV channel."

Transmission to a separate touchscreen monitor is an option as well. "The user can touch the music button on the screen, for example, to hear songs that have been downloaded and sent to them by their son, daughter, grandchildren or friends. Everything that's available on the Internet but that a senior might not know how to access, can be sent." more...

The mantra of offshore wind turbine design seems to be "Bigger! Bigger!" in order to get more power out of single turbines. But going hand in hand with making turbines bigger is that they become heavier. British engineers are hoping that a new design that mimics the way sycamore seeds spin through the air will help lighten up the weight of offshore turbines. While the challenge remains to boost efficiency and durability while making it ever lighter, the new design looks promising -- and big. Check out a video of the next wave of wind power.

Daily Mail reports, "British engineers are working on a design for the Aerogenerator which would rotate on its axis and would measure nearly 900 feet from tip to tip, generating up to 10MW."

The new Aerogenerator X was revealed by London architects Grimshaw and engineers Arup, which back the design by British company Wind Power.

The turbine has two blades that form a V-shape, with sails along their length -- much the way a sycamore seed has a "sail" attached that makes it spin in the breeze to travel farther before landing. Wind passes over the sails, generating lift which can turn the structure at around three revolutions per minute.

The engineers behind the design say that the turbine could be scaled up to produce as much as 20MW or more, but that's after perfecting the design to balance weight and efficiency -- this newest design, the Aerogenerator X, is twice the power and half the weight of Wind Power's original design. The first iterations of the new turbine design could be up and running as quickly as 2013. more...

MUMBAI, India — Vodafone Essar has unveiled a solar-powered mobile handset in India to better serve the nation's energy-starved rural masses.

India has been adding nearly 20 million mobile subscribers each month, many of them in rural areas, where electricity supply can be patchy at best.

A third of Indians don't have access to electricity, but they do get plenty of sun.

Samsung launched a solar-powered handset about a year ago, and Vodafone is now joining in the effort to bridge that infrastructure gap.

"This launch is likely to enable more people in rural India to go mobile," Vodafone Essar CEO Marten Pieters said in a statement.

The VF 247 Solar Powered phone, priced at 1,500 rupees ($32), should be available in stores next month.

It needs eight hours of direct sunlight to be fully charged and can support more than eight days of use on standby and four hours of talk time. It also comes with an electronic charger, an FM radio and a powerful torch light.

Vodafone Essar, a leading wireless provider in India, is a unit of Vodafone Group.

A new study of 45 U.S. organizations found that cyber crime -- including Web attacks, malicious code, and rogue insiders -- costs each one of them $3.8 million per year, on average, and results in about one successful attack each week.

"First Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study," conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by ArcSight, entailed seven months of research and visits to each of the 45 organizations. The participating midsize and large organizations (from 500 to more than 105,000 employees) represent a mix of industries and government agencies. Researchers talked to IT security personnel, as well as network, forensics, and management staff, to determine the costs of responding to and mitigating cyber crime attacks. The researchers spent about four weeks with each participating organization, according to Larry Ponemon, director of Ponemon Institute.

Is your city a cyber crime center?

The $3.8 million annual cyber crime tally represents an average; organizations reported from a low of $1 million to a high of $52 million per year, according to the study.

The $3.8 million average cost represents not what companies or government might routinely spend each year on say, antivirus software, but the direct cost of coping with the attacks. In the event of a Web-based application attack, such as Web-based SQL injection, "say they bought a Web Application Firewall to respond to that, we'd amortize it," Ponemon says.

Types of cyber crime reported include: stealing intellectual property, confiscating online bank accounts, distributing viruses and other malware, posting confidential business information on the Internet, and disrupting a company's infrastructure.

Researchers tallied the time spent responding to attacks, the disruption to business operations, revenue loss, and the destruction of property, plant and equipment. Sometimes cyber crime attacks came in fast waves against an organization, and financial institutions seem to be targets of the stealthiest types of cyber attacks, such as botnets, Ponemon says.

Defense, energy and financial services companies experienced higher costs than organizations in retail, services and education, according to the report.

Ponemon says those organizations that had invested in defensive technologies, including security information event management, and had a chief information security officer on board, appeared to be better prepared to respond and took less time to remediate problems. But only about 40 percent could be considered to have invested in this way, he adds.

The study found it took 14 days on average to respond to a successful cyber attack, with an average cost to an organization of $17,696 per day. Malicious insider attacks took up to 42 days or more to resolve.

While the number of companies involved in the study is only 45, and thus the data can't be considered statistically weighty enough to characterize entire industries, the "First Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study" provides a look at how cyber crime is dragging down U.S.-based companies and government.

"The eye-popping thing we found is a lot of organizations are very disorganized in even understanding the environments they're dealing with," Ponemon says. Ponemon Institute intends to do further studies of this kind in the future, he adds.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. plans to roll out sophisticated electronic ID tags to track individual pairs of jeans and underwear, the first step in a system that advocates say better controls inventory but some critics say raises privacy concerns.

Starting next month, the retailer will place removable "smart tags" on individual garments that can be read by a hand-held scanner. Wal-Mart workers will be able to quickly learn, for instance, which size of Wrangler jeans is missing, with the aim of ensuring shelves are optimally stocked and inventory tightly watched. If successful, the radio-frequency ID tags will be rolled out on other products at Wal-Mart's more than 3,750 U.S. stores.

"This ability to wave the wand and have a sense of all the products that are on the floor or in the back room in seconds is something that we feel can really transform our business," said Raul Vazquez, the executive in charge of Wal-Mart stores in the western U.S.

Before now, retailers including Wal-Mart have primarily used RFID tags, which store unique numerical identification codes that can be scanned from a distance, to track pallets of merchandise traveling through their supply chains.

Wal-Mart's broad adoption would be the largest in the world, and proponents predict it would lead other retailers to start using the electronic product codes, which remain costly. Wal-Mart has climbed to the top of the retailing world by continuously squeezing costs out of its operations and then passing on the savings to shoppers at the checkout counter. Its methods are widely adopted by its suppliers and in turn become standard practice at other retail chains.

But the company's latest attempt to use its influence—executives call it the start of a "next-generation Wal-Mart"—has privacy advocates raising questions.

While the tags can be removed from clothing and packages, they can't be turned off, and they are trackable. Some privacy advocates hypothesize that unscrupulous marketers or criminals will be able to drive by consumers' homes and scan their garbage to discover what they have recently bought.

They also worry that retailers will be able to scan customers who carry new types of personal ID cards as they walk through a store, without their knowledge. Several states, including Washington and New York, have begun issuing enhanced driver's licenses that contain radio- frequency tags with unique ID numbers, to make border crossings easier for frequent travelers. Some privacy advocates contend that retailers could theoretically scan people with such licenses as they make purchases, combine the info with their credit card data, and then know the person's identity the next time they stepped into the store. more...

Shirley Bloomfield gave Connected Planet one of her first interviews since assuming her new position as CEO of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association earlier this month. Bloomfield spent 21 years with the NTCA between 1986 and 2001, rising to vice president of government affairs and association services. She has rejoined the organization after stints as senior vice president of federal relations for Qwest and vice president of federal relations for Verizon.

Bloomfield said her return to the NTCA has "reopened her eyes" to the importance of Universal Service funding for small telcos. Unlike with Verizon, which has many revenue streams, she said Universal Service and access charges are a "lifeblood" to NTCA members.

Bloomfield addressed a gamut of issues that are top of mind for small telcos:

On the 4 Mb/s target for the proposed broadband fund and a potential urban/rural gap:

"A national goal of 100 megabits per second is a great goal. We spend about 100 billion dollars a year on the federal highway system. If you look at the high-cost portion of Universal Service, which is about four billion dollars, even if you simply doubled it with the goal of making 100 megabits per second a nationwide goal, that's a drop in the bucket in comparison. Networks are evolutionary. You have to continue to increase capacity."

On the proposal to eliminate rate of return regulation:

"Our members have very unique costs. If you go to a price cap model, you're assuming that what [applies to] a cooperative in Alaska will be the same for a cooperative in Virginia. Some areas have less density and some have hundreds of miles for backhaul. One-size-fits-all doesn't work for rural telcos. To move [away from] a system where you already have a great track record and a sector of the industry that's really committed to investing and to move to a system where the incentive is questionable is contrary to what this administration would like to achieve.

"The state of Illinois public utilities commission put rules in place that said, ‘If you want to go to price cap you can.' To allow [carriers] to make that decision based on their own circumstances would be more judicious than a flash cut."

Access charge reform:

"This has to be done as part of a complete picture. How do you do it so there are replacement mechanisms? I hope we will have everyone sitting around the table and participating in those discussions. It needs to be done holistically."

Tactics she would use to influence policymakers:

"They all need to come out to rural America. I say that only partially jokingly. You really do get a Washington bubble. People in Washington look at things very academically."

New revenue opportunities for small telcos:

"A segment of our membership provides wireless service. Some do it under their own spectrum, some through a license agreement and some as an MVNO. [There may be] opportunities in home security and different and innovative meter reading. I find the smart grid really intriguing. It's all about using the broadband network to be more energy efficient. We also have some folks that are getting into data storage."

Her biggest goals for the NTCA:

"I continue to be amazed at how hard [members] work and what they do for their community. At the end of the day I want to be sure they have the ability to continue to do what they do. They feel a very strong obligation to the survival of rural America. We have a vested interest in assuring technologies are brought to rural America.

"If 10 years from now I'm able to look and say ‘Our members continue to do great things in terms of economic stimulus and development in these communities,' I would tell you my main goal has been achieved."

Scientists from Empa and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research report how they have managed for the first time to grow graphene ribbons that are just a few nanometres wide using a simple surface-based chemical method. Graphene ribbons are considered to be "hot candidates" for future electronics applications as their properties can be adjusted through width and edge shape.

Their research is published in the journal Nature

Transistors on the basis of graphene are considered to be potential successors for the silicon components currently in use. Graphene consists of two-dimensional carbon layers and possesses a number of outstanding properties: it is not only harder than diamond, extremely tear-resistant and impermeable to gases, but it is also an excellent electrical and thermal conductor. However, as graphene is a semi-metal it lacks, in contrast to silicon, an electronic band gap and therefore has no switching capability which is essential for electronics applications. Scientists from Empa, the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz (Germany), ETH Zürich and the Universities of Zürich und Bern have now developed a new method for creating graphene ribbons with band gaps.

Extremely narrow graphene ribbons

To date, graphene ribbons have been "cut" from larger graphene sheets, akin to tagliatelle being cut from pasta dough. Or carbon nanotubes were slit open lengthwise and unfurled. This gives rise to a band gap via a quantum mechanical effect -- the gap being an energy range that cannot be occupied by electrons and which determines the physical properties, such as the switching capability. The width (and edge shape) of the graphene ribbon determines the size of the band gap and thereby influences the properties of components constructed from the ribbon.

If extremely narrow graphene ribbons (well under 10 nanometres wide) that also have well-defined edges could be manufactured, so the reasoning, then they might allow for components exhibiting specific optical and electronic properties: depending on requirements, adjustment of the band gap could be used to fine-tune the switching characteristics of a transistor. This is no mean feat, as the lithographic methods that have been used until now, for example for cutting graphene layers, come up against fundamental barriers; they yield ribbons that are too wide and have diffuse edges.

Growing graphene ribbons

In the issue of Nature published on 22 July 2010, scientists led by Roman Fasel, Senior Scientist at Empa and Professor for Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bern, and Klaus Müllen, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, describe a simple surface-based chemical method for creating such narrow ribbons without the need for cutting, in a bottom-up approach, i.e. from the basic building blocks. To achieve this, they spread specifically designed halogen-substituted monomers on gold and silver surfaces under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. These are linked to form polyphenylene chains in a first reaction step.

In a second reaction step, initiated by slightly higher heating, hydrogen atoms are removed and the chains interconnected to form a planar, aromatic graphene system. This results in graphene ribbons of the thickness of a single atom that are one nanometre wide and up to 50 nm in length. The graphene ribbons are thus so narrow that they exhibit an electronic band gap and therefore, as is the case with silicon, possess switching properties -- a first and important step for the shift from silicon microelectronics to graphene nanoelectronics. And if this wasn't enough, graphene ribbons with different spatial structures (either straight lines or with zig-zag shapes) are created, depending on which molecular monomers the scientists used.

Further studies will help identify properties

As the scientists can now (almost) produce graphene ribbons at will, they want to start investigating their properties, for instance how the magnetic properties of the graphene ribbons can be influenced by different edge structures. The surface-based chemical method also opens up interesting possibilities with regard to the targeted doping of graphene ribbons: the use of monomer components with nitrogen or boron atoms in well-defined positions or the use of monomers with additional functional groups should enable the creation of positively and negatively doped graphene ribbons.

A combination of different monomers is also possible and may permit, for example, the creation of so called heterojunctions -- interfaces between different types of graphene ribbons, such as ribbons with small and large band gaps -- which could be used in solar cells or high frequency components. The scientists have already demonstrated that the underlying principle for this works: they have connected three graphene ribbons to each other at a nodal point by means of two suitable monomers.

To date, the scientists have focused on graphene ribbons on metal surfaces. However, to be usable in electronics the graphene ribbons need to be created on semi-conductor surfaces or methods must be developed to transfer the ribbons from metal to semi-conductor surfaces. And first results in this direction also give the scientists good reasons to be optimistic.

Large and small telcos are lining up on opposite sides in response to a report issued by the Federal Communications Commission yesterday that found that broadband service is not being deployed in a "reasonable and timely" manner.

The report, based on data provided by service providers for December 2008, found that between 14 million and 24 million U.S. residents (which is about 4.5% to 8% of the U.S. population) cannot get broadband where they live. The FCC is required to issue the report annually and all previous reports have found that broadband was being reasonably and timely deployed.

The FCC clearly hopes to use the report results to help advance its plans for transforming Universal Service from a voice-centric to broadband-centric program. Without substantial reforms to the agency's Universal Service programs, these areas will continue to be unserved, denied access to the transformative power of broadband," wrote FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a statement.

Both AT&T and Verizon issued comments protesting the finding. "It makes no sense that, after the National Broadband Plan concluded that 95% of Americans have access to wireline broadband, the FCC majority now suggests broadband deployment is not reasonable and timely," said Kathleen Grillo, Verizon senior vice president for federal regulatory affairs, in a statement. "The report's conclusion is hard to understand, given America's extraordinary progress in deploying broadband, fueled by hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment."

But the Rural Cellular Association President and CEO Steven K. Berry praised the report. "I am glad the FCC recognizes that broadband deployment has been slow-moving," he said in a statement. "The FCC's report correctly concludes that there is more work to be done in order to ensure that all Americans, especially those in rural and hard-to-reach areas, have the capacity to access broadband services."

The FCC's reversal of previous findings resulted, in part, from a change in how the term "broadband" is defined. In previous reports, any connection providing at least 200 kb/s bi-directionally was considered "broadband." In the new report, broadband was defined to include any connection supporting download speeds of at least 4 Mb/s and upload speeds of at least 1 Mb/s.

The two Republican FCC commissioners dissented on the report findings. "Broadband infrastructure deployment and investment are a remarkable and continuing success story, and I am troubled by giving such significant efforts a failing grade," wrote Commissioner Meredith A. Baker in a statement.

Baker also expressed concerns about methodology. The 1996 Telecom Act, which requires the FCC to issue the annual broadband report, is "not technology specific," Baker said "yet this Report limits its findings to terrestrial solutions."

The Republican commissioners, along with AT&T and Verizon, expressed concerns that the FCC might use the report findings as a justification for what Grillo called "rolling back bipartisan pro-investment policies." The FCC is seeking to expand its authority over broadband services because without the expanded authority, the commission might not be able to reform the Universal Service program to cover broadband services. But the large telcos are concerned that if the FCC expands its authority over broadband, Net Neutrality requirements also will be expanded.

Other recent FCC data suggests the number of unserved Americans is closer to the low-end of the estimate released yesterday. In May, the FCC put the number of unserved households at 7 million, representing about 14 million people.

For its $1.2 billion in cash, Nokia Siemens Networks (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) gets Motorola's (NYSE:MOT) broad range of wireless network technologies ranging from CDMA to WiMax as well as an established customer base for those products that brought in $3.7 billion in revenues last year. But while the new customers are important to NSN, just as important to the vendor are the technology decisions those same customers make in a few years' time.

While CDMA is still a big business for the CDMA vendors Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), Huawei and, if all goes as planned, soon NSN, it's one with a limited upside. While there are still new CDMA networks being built — Cox Communications being a prime example in the U.S. — the major CDMA operators have all set their sights on 4G technologies, most of them focusing in on long-term evolution (LTE). Consequently, most of the development on new CDMA technologies — and the opportunity to sell new generations of CDMA networks to existing customers — has ceased. 

The same can be said for GSM, a business in which NSN is already the No. 2 vendor but will further strengthen its position with the inheritance of Moto's 80 global contracts. GSM networks are still selling like hotcakes. Ericsson, the world's largest wireless infrastructure vendor, still counts GSM as its largest business despite its long lead in 3G technologies and its large-scale expansion into managed services. But those GSM sales are primarily occurring in developing countries, which are in the process of building their first public wireless infrastructures. As those buildouts are completed, those same operators will begin to look toward 3G technologies just as operators in North America, Europe and much of Asia are now looking toward 4G.

While NSN wants the revenue from those CDMA and GSM contracts, along with any future CDMA contracts, it's hoping to get much more than a steady cash stream, said Sue Spradley, NSN's head of the North America region, which will inherit much of Motorola's U.S. operations. NSN will have an inside track when those new customers make their future network decisions, Spradley said. "We now have an incumbent's install based among those customers as they're evolving to 4G," she said.

But NSN gets more than first crack at network trials. It also gets scale. Motorola may not have been a very big vendor, but it's big in the markets that count to NSN, specifically the U.S. and Japan. When the acquisition closes, NSN will vault from being the No. 5 telecom infrastructure vendor to the No. 3 slot, and those two rungs make a world of difference to perspective and current customers planning billion-dollar rollouts, Spradley said.

"This shows NSN's commitment to the market, not just with the scale we bring, but also our ability to put a stake in the ground," Spradley said. You could look at it as a $1.2 billion acquisition but also a $1.2 billion commitment to North America and other key regions, Spradley said. "This helps us move into a much more secure space," she said. "That's important because customers want to know that who they're buying from is fully committed to the market and their products for the duration."

Ericsson used the same strategy when it outbid NSN for Nortel's CDMA and LTE assets after the Canadian vendor declared bankruptcy. Ericsson already had made sizable gains in North America with LTE contracts wins with Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ, NYSE:VOD) and AT&T (NYSE:T) and a network outsourcing contract with Sprint, but it used Nortel's CDMA assets — and to a lesser extent its later purchase of Nortel's GSM switching business — to catapult itself into the No.2 slot behind Alcatel-Lucent. North America is now Ericsson's largest operational region outside of Europe.

NSN has similarly tried to make inroads into North America through organic means, but its attempts have been less successful. After building out good portions of AT&T's GSM network, it was left watching on the sidelines as the operator embarked on first its 3G rollout and now its LTE plans. NSN competed fiercely for Verizon's LTE contract and did score part of its IP multimedia subsystem award, but it failed to win the much bigger radio network prize. A WiMax contract with Clearwire fizzled out, resulting in Huawei being named Clearwire's third radio vendor and NSN largely exiting the WiMax market.

NSN has made some progress, though. It's now a leading optical vendor in North America and is building high-speed packet access networks for T-Mobile (NYSE:DT), Telus (NYSE:TU) and Bell Mobility (NYSE:BCE) — the last two of which could turn into 4G contracts. But on a conference call with media today, CEO Rajeev Suri was rather frank about NSN's stalled expansion efforts in the US. "We've been weak," Suri said. "This was a space we needed to cover, not just here but in Japan."

Of the mishmash of CDMA, wideband-CDMA, GSM, LTE and time-division LTE business units NSN will acquire, WiMax stands out as the oddball. Though a new technology geared toward mobile broadband's future rather than its current state, WiMax has been dismissed by much of the industry as an also-ran technology. NSN effectively did the same when it decided to pack in its WiMax portfolio, staying in only loose contact with the market through a reseller agreement with WiMax specialist Alvarion (NASDAQ:ALVR).

But with Motorola's 4G business the equation changes. NSN will become one of the two dominant mobile WiMax equipment vendors along with Samsung. But perhaps most significantly NSN will have a foot in the door with WiMax operators that are weighing the switch to LTE. Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) CEO Bill Morrow has held out the possibility on several occasions that Clearwire will adopt LTE in the future or pursue a merged LTE-WiMax standard. Other global WiMax operators like Yota have already announced their intentions to move to LTE.

Spradley said NSN is remaining neutral in the LTE vs. WiMax debate. Ultimately, NSN wants to be a dominant 4G vendor and views WiMax as an alternative technology that some, if not many, of its customers will pursue, Spradley said. If Clearwire chooses to stay on the WiMax path, she added, NSN will be more than eager to support them. "When Clearwire makes the decision to go beyond its [current WiMax deployment], we would definitely like to be a part of their plans, but we're not prodding them in one direction or another," she said.

AWEA expressed support for legislation unveiled this week by U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) that includes a renewable electricity standard (RES) requiring 25% of the nation's electricity to be generated from renewable resources by 2025.

The "Securing America's Future with Energy and Sustainable Technologies Act," dubbed SAFEST, also would establish an energy efficiency resource standard of 1% per year, a long-term extension of ethanol and biodiesel tax credits, incentives for biofuel infrastructure and deployment, and targets for the availability of advanced vehicle technologies.

"The strength of our nation is tied to the strength of our energy economy," Klobuchar said. "Not only are we still dependent on foreign oil, other countries are making great strides in developing clean energy technologies. With the ingenuity of American farmers and manufacturers, we have the ability to be the global leader in energy. This bill will provide incentives that can boost our economy and help us secure our energy future."

The legislation comes as pressure builds for the Senate to act on clean energy legislation before it leaves for August recess.

Johnson added, "This bill will boost the economy by replacing imported oil with homegrown biofuels and renewable energy. Jobs will be created across the entire economy to produce parts and components for wind farms and by manufacturing vehicles that can run on higher blends of renewable fuels. It's a win for energy security and economic security."

AWEA, which has urged Congress to pass a strong RES so that the nation can reap the economic benefits of wind energy—benefits that studies have shown include thousands of jobs created—was clear in its support for the bill. "The provisions of this bill are essential to getting America on the road to a clean energy future and to creating American jobs," AWEA CEO Denise Bode said in a statement. "AWEA supports the proposed legislation, which may be combined with other legislation expected to be introduced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"We applaud Senator Klobuchar for her leadership and diligence in proposing this bill: it would establish a renewable electricity standard (RES) of 25% by 2025 which sends a strong global signal that the U.S. is committed to new domestic manufacturing. The legislation also extends eligibility for the Recovery Act's 1603 program, which has been very successful.

"As Senator Klobuchar knows, now is the time to act on energy policy. We call on her colleagues in the Senate to seize this moment to set America on the right course toward energy independence, increased national security, reducing carbon, and the creation of thousands of clean energy jobs."

The FCC took two more steps toward its broadband deployment goals, voting at its public meeting to free up mobile satellite spectrum for wireless broadband and boosting deployment and speeds to health care facilities.

The votes on both those proposals were 5-0.

FCC staffers had previously outlined for reporters its proposal to free up 90 MHz of mobile satellite spectrum for terrestrial broadband through more flexible use policies. That is part of the FCC's effort to reclaim 500 Mhz over the next 10 years, including from broadcasters.

The MSS spectrum is the second biggest chunk after broadcasters' 120 MHz that will be put toward the commission's goal of freeing up 300 MHz as part of the National Broadband Plan within the next five years.

To help meet that goal, the FCC is opening up the DBS band to mobile terrestrial service, as well as secondary market leasing rules for other parts of the mobile satellite band, including the Big LEO (low earth orbiting) portion. That will allow that spectrum to be sub-leased for terrestrial. It is also seeking comment on other suggestions for expanding the use of that spectrum.

Those changes will make that spectrum a lot more valuable in the private market, but the FCC says it will try to make sure that as much of that new value as possible "inures to the public-interest."

The healthcare initiative boosts investment in connectivity and speed to help give patients in rural areas access to diagnostic tools. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski used as an example a worker with cancer who might be able to keep a job by getting remote oncologist visits that would allow them to stay closer to home.

Remote health monitoring and diagnoses is one of the major national purposes goals of the National Broadband Plan, both as a way to improve and save lives, and to help reduce health care costs.

Saying that almost a third of federally funded rural clinics can't afford "safe and reliable broadband," the FCC voted to invest $400 million annually from the Universal Service Fund to fund connectivity. That will include teaming with non-profit health care providers on statewide broadband nets where it is currently "unavailable or insufficient"; paying half the monthly network costs for hospitals, clinics and others, and extending broadband's health care reach to nursing facilities, administrative offices and data centers.

There's more to do in a pool house than swim. The owners of these two all-season structures can watch movies, listen to music, or just float around the fountains and waterfalls that spill into their heated pools.

There's no need to carry in a disc or boombox. Each pool house is tied to an audio and video distribution system, which can be accessed and controlled from a single Control4 touchpanel. The panel also lets the owners operate the lights, water features, heating and cooling and security.

For the project pictured most prominently (click here to view additional photos), the custom electronics pros (CE pros) at simpleHome in Westborough, Mass., designed a separate control page for each system. From the main menu on the natatorium screen, the family simply picks a page, like POOL AND SPA, and the appropriate control options appear.

Other pages provide access to two Sony ES 400-disc DVD changers located in the main house and a local iPod docking station. The family can choose a different movie for each of the pool house's 50-inch plasma TVs or have the same show play on both. Each TV is attached to an articulating wall mount at opposite ends of the building, and is viewable from either the pool or the sitting area.

Hearing music involves sliding an iPod touch or iPhone into a tabletop docking station. Or the family can go to the touchpanel to choose FM, XM or Rhapsody. The tunes are piped to numerous loudspeakers by the swimming pool, in the atrium, and the courtyard between the original house and newly built structure.

The owners of the pool house pictured in the last two slides of the slideshow have plenty of audio/video choices, too, but they took video to the next level by incorporating a projector into the space. There's no screen; instead, images from the BenQ projector are displayed on a wall. According to CE pro Mike Fallert from The Sound Shop in Colorado Springs, Colo., the cream-colored wall serves well.

"It's a big enough area to accommodate a 130-inch picture and doesn't interfere with the interior design like a standalone screen could have."

An automated pool cover contributes to the viewing experience. The owners only open it to swim—by pressing a button on a Control4 remote, keypad or touchpanel. It usually remains closed to prevent the room from becoming too humid and the projector lens from fogging up.

For online video to become a legitimate living room TV experience — the kind that consumers have come to expect from other content coming out of their boob tubes — the industry needs to do more than come up with hybrid branding and packaging. The technical polishing of the online video experience to a level of quality at which it fully leverages the typical consumer's shrine of home theater equipment also must continue.

With that in mind, video optimization platform vendor Widevine has added support for Dolby Digital Plus surround-sound audio, which the company argues can bring "movie theater–like experience directly to the living room via the Internet."

The announcement comes as YouTube is making efforts to improve video quality, with the understanding that more residential consumers will be seeing YouTube content through their TVs. Improving the end-user experience for viewing hybrid video content was also much on the mind of YouTube parent company Google when it announced its much-anticipated Google TV plans in May. Audio, of course, is the other part of the consumer experience equation, and Dolby Digital Plus is the premiere audio coding technology, supporting up to 7.1 channels of surround sound, a wide range of bit rates to optimized sound quality according to available bandwidth, and advanced applications such as multiple-program support and audio stream mixing.

Getting a real home theater–style experience may still be a bit of a stretch for most people watching Web video on their home PC, unless it's tricked out with a vibrant wide-screen monitor and some high-end speakers to make the most of the high-quality efforts. But Widevine's offering should not be lost on service providers aiming to support hybrid content environments on a variety of devices.

"Service providers know that in order to have a successful hybrid service, they have to replicate the cable experience," said Brian Baker, CEO of Widevine. "This includes not only high-quality video but high-quality audio as well."

Still, improving the Web video experience ultimately increases the value of online offerings from YouTube, Hulu and others. Could that better experience actually lead to video cord-cutting, a scary prospect for those service providers?

"As always, you have those who will adopt this and those who won't for quite some time," Baker said "Cable still provides more content. There are many programs that can only be accessed on cable. Watching content on the Internet needs to mirror a cable-like environment before adoption really takes off."

Widevine said the Dolby-enhanced platform will be used by BigPond, the ISP unit of Australian telco Telstra, as well as by Samsung, which is looking to integrate it into devices.

A few weeks ago I attended the World Innovation Forum in NYC.

My big insight? Thought leaders will soon be a thing of the past.

In their place? Feeling leaders -- business savants who have made the journey from head to heart and aren't afraid to let the rest of us know what they've learned along the way.

I'm not talking warm and fuzzy. Nor am I diminishing the thoughtfulness of the presenters at the World Innovation Forum. They were. Thoughtful, that is. Very.

But it wasn't so much their thinking that moved me -- as it was the feeling behind their thinking.

No matter what business you're in, the engine of innovation is really about being moved. That's what movements are made of -- the heartfelt, intrinsically motivated effort to get off of dead center and accomplish something meaningful.

This is the crossroads all of us are standing at these days -- the intersection between this and that. What the newspaper industry is going through. And the music industry. And the television industry -- just to name a few.

My heroes, these days, are the people who don't just stand at the crossroads, but dance -- inspired individuals who find great delight in the paradoxes, get juiced by the challenges, and realize that "innovation" is not a program, initiative, or model, but a way of life.

That's the main reason why I enjoyed the World Innovation Forum so much.

Because that was precisely the mindset of the presenters -- and the people who attended -- no matter what industry, pedigree, or astrological sign.

As I watched the WIF presenters do their conference thang, I got some unexpected insights into the art and science of delivering a memorable presentation to a global audience of innovation-hungry patrons.

So, for all of you conference keynote wannabees out there, take note. Here's part 1 of your tutorial.

1. Be in tune with your purpose: If you're going to hold an audience's attention for more than 10 minutes, you've got to begin by holding firm to your purpose... your calling... what gets you out of bed in the morning. If it's missing, all you could ever hope to deliver is a speech -- which is NOT what people want to hear.

If your purpose is clear, you're home free and won't need a single note card.

Mark Twain said it best: "If you speak the truth, you don't need to remember a thing."

2. Be passionate: Realize you are on the stage to let it rip. Completely. People are sitting in the audience because they want an experience, not just information. They want to feel something, not just hear something.

So play full out. Pull the rip cord. Jump!

3. Connect with the audience: You may know a lot of stuff. You may have a double Ph.D, but unless you know how to connect with the audience, your knowledge ain't worth squat.

If you were a tree falling in a conference room, no one would hear it.

So tune in! Establish rapport! Connect! And that begins by respecting your audience and realizing you are there to serve, not preach.

4. Tell stories: That's how great teachers have communicated since the beginning of time. Storytelling is the most effective way to disarm the skeptic and deliver meaning in a memorable way.

"The world is not made of atoms," explained poet, Muriel Rukyser. "It's made of stories."

No bull. Parable!

5. Have a sense of humor: There's a reason why HAHA and AHA are almost spelled the same. Both are about the experience of breakthrough. And both are sparked when the known is replaced by the unknown, when continuity is replaced by discontinuity.

Hey, admit it. At the end of the day, if you can't find the humor in business, you're screwed. So, why wait for the end of the day. Find the humor now.

6. Get visual: It's become a corporate sport to make fun of power point, but power point can be a thrill if done right. A picture really is worth a thousand words.

If you want to spark people's imagination, use images more than words. The root of the word imagination is image.

7. Have confidence: Do you know what the root of the word "confidence" is? It comes from the Latin "con-fide" -- meaning "to have faith." Have faith in what? Yourself.

That's not ego. It's the natural expression of a human being coming from the place of being called.

So, if you're about to walk out on stage and are feeling the impostor syndrome coming on, stop and get in touch with what is calling you.

Let that guy/gal speak.

8. Trim the Fat: When Michelangelo was asked how he made the David, he said it was simple -- that he merely took away "everything that wasn't."

The same holds for you, oh aspiring-keynote-presenter-at-some-future high-profile-conference (or, at the very least, pep-talk-giver to your kid's Junior High School soccer team).

Keep it simple. Or, as Patti LaBarre, the delightful MC at the World Innovation Forum put it, "Minimize your jargon footprint."

9. Celebrate what works: If you want to raise healthy kids, reinforce their positive behaviors -- don't obsess on the negative. The same holds true for conference keynotes.

If you want to raise a healthy audience, give them examples of what's working out there in the marketplace. Feature the "bright spots," as Chip Heath likes to say. Share victories, best practices, and lessons learned.

Save the bitching and moaning for your therapist.

10. Walk the Talk: Good presenters are genuinely moved. Being genuinely moved, it's natural for them come out from behind the podium and actually move around the stage -- as in, walking the talk.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, crippled the District's communication channels, the city moved to create a network that would give it uninterrupted communication should tragedy strike again.

Nearly a decade later, a broadband program called DC-Net carries fiber-optic Internet cables across 200 miles of the city and connects more than 200 government agencies and other organizations.

But the network, which was designed primarily for government and public safety communication, is proving to have commercial and philanthropic uses as well.

Microsoft is tapping the network to bring wireless and broadband Internet to five venues associated with this week's Worldwide Partner Conference, including the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and the Verizon Center.

"We are able to, relatively cheaply in most cases, drop fiber from one location to a new location," said Bryan Sivak, the city's chief technology officer.

The city was also able to light up free wireless Internet hotspots between the venues, which will remain active even after the conference comes to an end Thursday.

Tegene Baharu, the director of DC-Net, said the project took about two weeks and cost $5,000, a bill that the city agreed to pay because it expects to profit off of the conference and future events. Major telecommunication companies that competed for the contract estimated that it would cost them as much as $150,000 to provide similar service, said Chinyere Hubbard, a spokesperson for the Washington Convention and Sports Authority.

Dennis Angilletta, a technical program manager at Microsoft, helped determine the software company's technology needs during its search for a host city. He wrote in an e-mail: "Technology is just one piece of a complicated mix that we look for in a wide variety of elements in any city and venue selection ... For DC, technology was one of the many high points which led to its selection."

Destination D.C., a marketing and tourism agency for the city, estimated Microsoft's conference could generate $16 million for the city -- a number based on a standard formula for the economic benefits of an average conference.

Meanwhile, the city learned last week that it would receive a $17.5 million federal stimulus grant to build a public access ring off of DC-Net in parts of wards 5, 7 and 8, where access to the Internet is either not offered or is financially out of reach for many residents, Sivak said. The access ring would enable Internet providers to reduce their rates, Sivak said.

The city is expected to request bids from area companies for six or seven fiber installation crews in September.

A secondary grant, worth more than $1.5 million, will allow the city to install more library computers in underserved neighborhoods and expand the amount of technology training available to people in the area.

You may have heard that Intel has developed a home energy management system (HEMS), and a Home Dashboard energy monitor. And a Smart TV technology. And sensors that can be placed in the house to measure line voltage and detect problems.

And if Intel has its way, it will all be used together—or at least as a system for its embedded processing chips.

Although you may never see an Intel-branded energy management system—Intel's technology will likely be sold under other brands using its processors—the company said it designed the system with consumers in mind.

The "Home Dashboard" itself is a friendly looking, on-wall panel sporting a clock. Users can access their home's energy use information and perform other functions, such as video messaging with a built-in camera. The dashboard can also be set to enter a low-power "sleep" mode.

"We didn't want to design an energy-saving device that wasn't energy-efficient," says Ryan Parker, director of marketing for Intel's embedded and communications group.

In addition, Intel has developed sensors that plug into outlets at each end of the house to measure line voltage and detect appliances and other heavy energy users by their electrical signatures—then infer if there is a problem.

According to Parker, Intel's sensors are unique and look for fluctuations in the line voltage. Temperature and humidity sensors, too, could detect if it's the dryer doing something, and that, says Parker, makes the energy data a user is receiving richer, better and more relevant.

"To do that, a home needs to have a couple of elements: sensing, and provide recommendations. and analytics—or how to translate that data into something people understand. And after you do there needs to be some kind of control," Parker adds.

As for Intel's Smart TV technology? That could perhaps display energy information as you sit back on the sofa.

Intel's HEMS will use ZigBee's Smart Energy Profile 2.0 IP-based protocol and will send signals over ZigBee, WiFi and Powerline.

Mary Murphy-Hoye, the senior principal Engineer of Intel's embedded computing group, recently installed sensors throughout her home, built a home-energy monitoring system, and demoed the data and interface to monitor temperature, humidity, light and energy sensors.

"She found out how energy inefficient her dryer was, and she could see how long her son plays Xbox. With temperature sensors in every room, she could tell that her son's room ran 8 degrees hotter with his computers and everything else running, and as a result he was cooling the house too much," says Parker. "There's a lot of interesting little things that people find out from monitoring their energy."

Intel will seek to sell its HEMS through utilities initiating smart grid trials or services, and to service providers such as ADT, Comcast and Verizon that plan to sell low-cost energy monitoring services to their customers.

Indianapolis, Ind. -- Lt. Governor Becky Skillman has announced the opening of the Indiana Solar Thermal (IST) grant program that will make $150,000 available to help offset the cost of installing large Solar Thermal water systems. The program is designed to introduce alternative and renewable energy technologies to specific sectors of hot water users. Hoosier businesses, not-for-profit organizations, municipalities and schools are all eligible to apply for these grants. Applications will be accepted beginning August 1, 2010. The program is designed for high volume water users, where more than 100,000 gallons of hot water are needed each year.

"For large users, the cost of heating water is significanta, said Lt. Governor Becky Skillman. "This program will not only help reduce costs and energy usage, but also show other large hot water consumers that renewable energy systems are an option for them."

The program is administered by the Indiana Office of Energy Development (OED). The grants are funded through the U.S. Department of Energy and the State Energy Program, but are not part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funding.

Each grant is a maximum of $25,000 and will be awarded through a competitive system. Applicants are required to provide 75 percent of the project cost through private funding. Applications must be submitted by September 1, 2010. Grant awards will be announced in September.

"This is the first grant incentive to be made available for Solar Thermal at this scale" said Brandon Seitz, OED Director. "The impact on these businesses and agencies should be dramatic. "

Program guidelines are available at www.Energy.IN.gov. Applications are submitted online.

ETA Member and committee member Bill Woodward, FOT was recently featured in the June issue of Inside GNSS magazine. They have graciously allowed ETA to post the article to share with it's members:

GNSS June Article

In SGN's Tech Take articles, power engineer and architect Erich W. Gunther evaluates actual products and services against the SGN Smart Grid Scorecard. Unless disclosed explicitly at the beginning of the article, neither SGN nor Erich Gunther has received any compensation from the vendor nor do they own stock in the company.

After a short hiatus, I am pleased to begin a new series of Smart Grid technology reviews. I have been working to start up a new company called Smart Grid Labs (SGL) which will perform more formal evaluations of Smart Grid technologies than the informal reviews I do for these articles. In the future, I will be relying more on the SGL team to support these reviews.

Today's article looks at a home energy monitor - The TED 5000 from The Energy Detective. Having accurate energy usage information - both real time and historical - is critical for a consumer to understand and manage their energy usage and cost. I have an extensive home automation system based on the HomeSeer system and I have been looking for an energy monitor to directly measure how well that system is helping with managing my energy use. After some research, I discovered the TED 5000 which looked like it would support my requirements based on the information on their web site.

The Impact of Customer Facing Systems and User Experience on the Smart Grid

The utility's traditional residential customer interface has been through monthly billings and the register value displayed on the outside of the electricity meter. Using only a bill and a meter register value, it is hard for residential electricity customers to make informed decisions about how products, services, and behaviors impact their monthly bill. Inevitably, emerging non flat rate structures lead to even more uncertainty by the account holder about when electricity was consumed, by whom, and using what device. Uncertainty about electricity consumption makes it harder for residential customers to modify their energy consumption behaviors under growing need for conservation and peak demand reduction.

As Internet-style convergence happens across the Smart Grid, the opportunity to upgrade the residential customer's user experience has arisen. In the future, Smart Grid applications may leverage any of two-way meter communications connections, resident-connected Internet connections, cell phone Internet connections or any other data access means to:

• Communicate and control utility assets such as the meter
• Communicate with the customer about their bill
• Communicate with the customer about how energy consumption impacts their bill
• Provide signals to customer-owned automation to act on utility need
• Engage the customer to take 'next steps' towards being greener or meeting utility need
• Help the customer find the small change in lifestyle with big positive impact on the grid
• Involve customers in the process of energy efficiency

Where the Smart Grid meets the residential customer, several things are needed. The first is a set of ubiquitous modalities for communication with the customer. TV screens, web browsers, thermostat displays, special purpose displays, and cell phone interfaces are currently considered. Next, customer facing applications need to find a way to help residents meet energy awareness and conservation goals across the various points of interaction. Such systems also need a back end system that offer persistence of service across the residential customer's various presence and location oriented user interface requirements.  Together, these form a scalable, coherent, user experience that offers more access and impact than any single means. 

The Energy Detective Product Lineup

The Energy Detective (TED) has several devices that permit consumers to monitor their own energy consumption in real time, provide historical usage reports, and even provide a link to Google's Power Meter energy portal.  Further, my home automation system advertises support for TED. I selected the TED 5000 because unlike earlier versions, it did not require a separate software application running on a PC to operate. Instead it uses a hardware-based gateway that receives signals from the voltage and current sensors and makes the data available through a built-in web interface. Connection to the web interface is provided via a standard 10BaseT RJ-45 Ethernet connector. In addition, the TED 5000 gateway can establish a link to Google's Power Meter portal web site to archive my data.

When I received the package, I found it easy to install the hardware. The instructions were concise and easy to follow (yes, although an engineer, I actually read the directions). I have two 200 amp electrical panels in my home so I purchased two sets of current/voltage sensor modules - one for each panel. The TED 5000 supports up to four such modules.  Each module comes with two clamp-on CTs and leads to directly connect to each leg of my split phase, 120/240 volt service. The instructions were clear to ensure that I oriented the CTs correctly and make sure that power readings had the correct direction and sign (positive values for load).

The modules communicate with the gateway using a proprietary power line carrier (PLC) communications scheme.  The modules inject the PLC signal using the voltage sensing connection at the panel and the gateway picks it up by being plugged into a wall outlet in the house.  Using a proprietary approach breaks one of our core principles and is reflected in my score.  The more significant practical problem, however, is that the PLC technology interferes with other PLC-based technology I have in my home and is also affected by the noise filters found in surge-protected electrical outlet strips and UPS systems - of which I have many in my home. Because of this, I was unable to get the system to work using my preferred placement of the gateway.  After hours of experimenting with disconnecting outlet strips, moving the gateway from outlet to outlet, I finally found a combination that allowed the gateway to receive the PLC signal.  After some measurements, I found that the major issue was associated with my outlet strips filtering out the PLC signal. I finally had to plug in the gateway in an outlet nearest the breaker panel.  The problem with that is this location was nowhere near my home network.  I solved this by using a HomePlug based PLC network connection device from NetGear plugged into the same outlet. It turns out that the HomePlug device does not interfere with my other home automation gear or the TED 5000 - network connection problem solved!

The next challenge was configuring the system.  After fussing around a bit I figured out the IP address the gateway was assigned by my DHCP server. The actual setup was relatively simple using the embedded web interface on the gateway - I specified the serial numbers of the two sensor modules and the serial number of the separate LCD-based display device. I also had to tell it that I was using two modules in load mode.  Getting this right allows me to select a NET mode on most displays that summed the module channels to give me total house power and energy. more...

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected today to announce 66 new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act broadband projects, kicking off the second round of broadband stimulus awards. Once again, many of these awards will go to projects based on fiber-optic communications technology.

The projects involve last-mile, middle-mile, and public computing center applications. The $795 million in grants and loans through the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture to be announced today have been matched by more than $200 million in outside investment, for a total public-private investment of more than $1 billion, according to a White House statement.

The largest grant/loan combination, worth $48.1 million, will go to Wilkes Telephone & Electric Co. of Georgia. The money will fund a PON-based FTTH rollout throughout Lincoln, Taliaferro, and Wilkes counties in the state. Another major award will deliver $44.5 million to the University of New Hampshire System to make broadband service more readily available to New Hampshire's households and businesses. Almost 1 million people and approximately 12,000 local businesses and 700 community institutions stand to benefit from up to 10 Gbps as well as dark fiber IRUs as a result of the project.

Other FTTH/FTTP grant/loan recipients will include:

• Northern Arkansas Telephone Co. of Arkansas ($3.7 million)
• San Carlos Apache Telecommunications Utility Inc. of Arizona ($10.5 million)
• Nunn Telephone Co. of Colorado ($5.2 million)
• The Darien Telephone Co., Inc. of Georgia ($448,000)
• The Farmers' Telephone Co. of Riceville, Iowa ($18.7 million)
• Grand River Mutual Telephone Corp. of Iowa ($9.3 million for a project in Iowa, another $20.3 million for a second project in Iowa and Missouri, and $11 million for a third project in Missouri)
• Ellsworth Cooperative Telephone Association of Iowa ($5.3 million)
• Breda Telephone Corp. of Iowa ($2.6 million grant/loan project coupled with $2.6 million in outside capital)
• Thacker‐Grigsby Telephone Co., Inc. ($7.4 million)
• Shawnee Telephone Co. of Illinois ($7.4 million grant/loan project coupled with $1 million in outside capital)
• H & B Communications Inc. of Kansas ($6.6 million grant/loan combined with $1.6 million in outside capital)
• J.B.N. Telephone Co., Inc. of Kansas ($3.3 million)
• South Central Wireless Inc. of Kansas ($1.1 million grant/loan combined with $576,000 in outside capital)
• Federated Telephone Cooperative of Minnesota ($1.3 million)
• Northeast Missouri Rural Telephone Co. ($7.2 million)
• Project Telephone Co. of Montana ($15.5 million)
• Skyline Telephone Membership Corporation of North Carolina ($29 million)
• Consolidated Enterprises, Inc. of North Dakota ($11.6 million)
• S R T Communications Inc. of North Dakota ($4.4 million grant/loan project combined with $2.2 million in outside capital)
• Pine Telephone Co. Inc. of Oklahoma ($30.2 million)
• TrioTel Communications, Inc. of South Dakota ($12.3 million)
• Venture Communications Cooperative of South Dakota ($5.2 million grant/loan combined with $1.7 million in outside capital)
• Twin Lakes Telephone Cooperative Corp. of Tennessee ($32.2 million)
• Marquette‐Adams Telephone Cooperative, Inc. of Wisconsin ($20 million)
• Reedsburg Utility Commission, Inc of Wisconsin ($5.2 million grant combined with $2.3 million in outside capital)
• Hardy Telecommunications, Inc. of West Virginia ($31.6 million)

Fiber-based middle-mile grant/loan combinations include:

• Hopi Telecommunications Inc. of Arizona ($3.6 million)
• Iowa Communications Network ($16.2 million grant with an additional $7.6 million applicant-provided match)
• Massachusetts Technology Park ($45.4 million)
• Zayo Bandwidth in Minnesota ($13.4 million grant with an additional $5.7 million applicant-provided match)
• Contact Network, Inc. of Mississippi ($20.7 million grant with an additional $5.2 million applicant-provided match)
• Project Telephone Co. of Montana ($3.9 million)
• French Broad Electric Membership Corp of North Carolina ($1.8 million)
• ComNet, Inc. of Ohio ($30 million grant with an additional $12.9 million applicant-provided match)
• Bend Cable Communications, LLC of Oregon ($4.4 million grant with an additional $1.9 million applicant-provided match)
• Blossom Telephone Co. of Texas ($2.8 million)
• Valley Telephone Cooperative, Inc. of Texas ($15.7 million)
• Central Utah Telephone, Inc. ($2.5 million)
• Vermont Telecommunications Authority ($33.4 million grant)
• Vermont Telephone Co. for a project that touches Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York ($12.3 million)
• Bristol Virginia Utilities Board ($22.7 million grant with an additional $13.5 million applicant-provided match)
• Silver Star Telephone Co. ($5.6 million grant with an additional $1.6 million applicant-provided match for a project I Wyoming and another $5 million grant with an additional $1.3 applicant-provided match for a second project in Wyoming and Idaho)

The grants and loans are part of an overall $7.2 billion investment the Recovery Act makes in expanding broadband access nationwide – $4.7 billion through the Commerce Department and $2.5 billion funded through the Department of Agriculture. With these awards, more than $2.7 billion in Recovery Act broadband grants and loans will have been awarded to more than 260 projects across the country since December 2009.

As the President and congressional leaders met at the White House on energy policy (see top story), GE Energy and AWEA delivered a petition from Americans across the country in the form of a 131-foot wind turbine blade.

The blade, which stopped in Dallas for the WINDPOWER 2010 Conference & Exhibition in May, traveled more than 4,000 miles through 10 states gathering signatures from Americans who support a clean energy future. It arrived in Washington, D.C., this week and was parked in front of the main gate at Nationals Park for the 2010 Congressional Baseball Game so that it could be viewed by spectators and take on yet more signatures. The blade symbolizes how renewable energy creates U.S. manufacturing jobs and provides clean power to America's homes and factories.

More than 6,000 Americans across the country—including people from all walks of life such as factory workers, managers, engineers, service and transportation workers, public officials and the general public—signed the blade, which carries the message, "I'm helping to build America's energy future," and calls on Congress to create jobs by enacting clean energy legislation this year.

IDG News Service - President Obama's administration will announce nearly $795 million in grants and loans for broadband deployment projects across the nation today, officials with two federal agencies said.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) will officially announce awards for 66 new broadband projects that will touch all 50 states, Obama administration officials said. The money, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed by the U.S. Congress in early 2009, is expected to create or save about 5,000 jobs, officials said.

The top goal for the grants and loans "is to put Americans back to work immediately, managing projects, digging the trenches, laying fiber-optic cable, and stringing up those utility poles," said Gary Locke, secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the parent agency of the NTIA.

Another goal is to give an economic boost to parts of the country by providing new broadband service, Locke said during a prebriefing with reporters Thursday evening. The new broadband subsidies will bring service to 685,000 businesses, 900 health-care facilities, and 2,400 schools, he said.

Broadband deployments made possible by the new awards will help farmers to better track crop prices, enable rural health centers to offer telemedicine services, and allow schools to provide distance learning programs, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "It will also allow us to keep the United States at the center of innovation, and keep the companies that are located in rural America competitive, creating more opportunity and new jobs," he said.

In the Recovery Act, Congress allocated $7.2 billion to the NTIA and the RUS for broadband grants and loans. The NTIA will award $404 million to 29 projects on Friday, and the grants will finance 6,000 miles of new fiber-optic lines, Locke said. Most of the money will finance middle-mile broadband network projects.

The NTIA has previously awarded $1.6 billion in broadband grants.

The RUS will award $390.9 million on Friday, with $163 million in loans and the rest in grants. The RUS has previously awarded $1.4 billion in Recovery Act funds to broadband projects. Most of the RUS money is focused on last-mile broadband projects.

Private investment of more than $200 million will help fund the projects announced Friday, the officials said.

The new awards include the following:

• University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development: A $62.5 million grant, with a $34.3 million match from the applicant, will connect more than 30 existing research and educational networks, creating a nationwide high-capacity network that will support advanced networking features for more than 100,000 community anchor institutions, such as hospitals and schools. The project will span all 50 states.
• Hardy Telecommunications: $31.6 million in grants and loans will help build a fiber network in Hardy County, W.Va., to serve more than 14,000 people, 200 business and 100 community institutions.
• Wilkes Telephone & Electric: $48.1 million in grants and loans will help build a fiber network in Georgia's Lincoln, Taliaferro and Wilkes counties. The project will bring broadband to more than 20,000 people.
• Massachusetts Technology Park: This $45.4 million grant, with an additional $26.2 million from the applicant, will lay 1,300 miles of fiber in western Massachusetts. The project will bring broadband to more than 1 million people and 44,000 businesses.

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