Free Press promotes open communications

When many people hear about something called the Free Press, if the term rings a bell at all, they tend to think of the Detroit Free Press, the venerable old-line newspaper that’s been published out of the Motor City for 178 years.

Nowadays, however freepress.net is a web 2.0 property whose mission is no less than one to “reform media [and] transform democracy.”

Dedicated to diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications, Free Press was launched in late 2002 by media scholar Robert W. McChesney, journalist John Nichols and Josh Silver, the organization’s current executive director.

Today, Free Press is the largest media reform organization in the United States, with nearly half-a-million activists and members and a full-time staff of more than 30 based in offices in Washington, D.C., and Florence, Mass.

Among Free Press’s most prominent cause celebres is the idea that people who purchase a cellular telephone should be able to use it however they choose, and that hardware manufacturers and service providers who collude with one another to limit consumer access and choice are guilty of curtailing innovation, crippling applications, and sticking users with the bill.

Free Press has gained some heavy hitting supporters in congress, among them former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who recently convened hearings in the Senate to investigate why nine of the ten most popular cell phones are locked in a deal with one of the big three wireless carriers, and are only available through one network.

Kerry has been pointedly critical of what’s known in the wireless industry as “handset exclusivity” which has the effect of relegating iPhone owners to the AT&T network, Blackberry Storm owners to the Verizon network, and customers in rural America left with whatever phones are not locked up in an exclusive contract, rather than with the newest technology.

Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps is also interested in closely examining wireless handset exclusivity arrangements and has already instructed the FCC to determine whether handset exclusivity arrangements adversely restrict consumer choice or harm the development of innovative devices.

Open communication advocates were cheered as well by President Barack Obama’s recent appointment of Julius Genachowski to chair the FCC going forward. Genachowski is on record as supporting inquiry into the possible adverse effects of handset exclusivity and has said that if confirmed to the position he would ensure the FCC takes up a petition by the Rural Cellular Association, which calls exclusive deals between wireless carriers and cell phone manufacturers anti-competitive and anti-consumer.

Free Press is currently sponsoring a petition directed toward members of congress and officials at the FCC, seeking to show public support for three clear and simple demands:

1. The freedom to choose any phone on any network.
2. The freedom to choose among many carriers in a competitive, low-cost marketplace.
3. The freedom to access any Web content, applications or services we want through our phones.

Democracy in action seems to be popping up all over the globe these days, and right here in the birthplace of the movement, Free Press looks to be well organized and web savvy about applying its fundamental principles to open communications, net neutrality and the propagation of a diverse and independent media.

Each Tuesday we comb through the Voxilla forums looking for interesting, sometimes off-beat, under-publicized and useful information brought to our attention by loyal and active Voxilla forum members.

If you’re aware of something that ought to get the wider attention of a front-page audience, be sure to let us know in comments below or send us an email to staff[at]voxilla[dot]com.

The Linksys SPA9000 is one of the more powerful, versatile home office/small business IP PBX devices you can buy.

With common voice system features such as an auto-attendant, shared line appearances, three way call conferencing, intercom, music on hold, call-forwarding and more, the SPA9000 also opens access to the benefits of VoIP, including low cost long distance service, telephone number portability, and one network for both voice and data.

Combine that with a GSM Gateway, such as the Portech MV-370, and you can even leverage the features of the SPA9000 with the features and benefits of the cellular telephone network, making for truly sophisticated global telecommunications capacity for a fraction of what such functionality would traditionally cost.

And of course, there are threads and discussion active in the Voxilla forums that will help you along with tips, advice and how-tos, such as this one that occurred over the last couple of days between members keeskoets and Walford58.

Have you ever thought it might be useful to remove the dialtone from one of the ports on an ATA? Member SirPrised tells you one way to do it on a SPA3000.

Reader janeanna updated a thread on mobile phone recycling with information about a Nokia-sponsored initiative in Malaysia, but do not forget about eCycling programs in the US, Canada and the UK as well.

T-Mobile will unveil the company’s second attempt to make an Android smartphone matter in the North American market come August, according to a report Monday at TechCrunch, and while the phone appears to have some worthy features its eventual success remains an open question.

To be called the myTouch and sell for $199, according to the report, T-Mobile’s Android 2.0 is apparently a modified HTC Magic, which has been available in Europe for a couple of months and went on sale more recently in Canada.

The myTouch will lose the Android G1’s physical keyboard and sport a more robust battery than T- Mobile’s initial open source Android product, but offers little to distinguish it from the latest version of Apple’s iPhone or the putative new kid on the smartphone block, Palm’s Pre.

The major drawback for the myTouch will undoubtedly be its lack of multi-touch screen functionality that sets the iPhone and Pre above others in the smartphone class. An improved battery and Android’s ability to run third party applications in the background (which the iPhone famously prohibits, based mainly on concerns for battery life) could draw some curiosity seekers; and widespread dislike for AT&T’s network — the only one iPhone presently runs on in the US — could attract those who find T-Mobile a more palatable carrier than AT&T or the Pre’s Sprint Network.

T-Mobile’s marketing for the myTouch and TechCrunch’s initial review on the device both tout “a deep level of customization” as the biggest thing going for it, however, and that does not bode well for a gadget in a category with performance specs that improve markedly with each new release.

The myTouch will come in a choice of three hardware colors (black, white and a shade of purple the company calls “distinctive merlot”) and feature an array of themes and skins to customize menus, wallpapers, icons and a range of other things, which doesn’t sound like the kind of $200 device that’s likely to sell a million units its first weekend on the market.

Perhaps disaffection with Apple’s tight control of the third party application market will continue to grow; perhaps applications developed for the Pre will fail to materialize. And perhaps millions of people will be attracted to the idea of spending time setting up and customizing their phone instead of using it.

Perhaps, but not likely.

Google has reserved at least 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) that is probably the world’s largest provider of VoIP backbone services, indicating that the company best known for its Internet search engine is preparing for a significant uptick in business related to Google Voice.

Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned, according to a report at NetworkWorld, but Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google may be close to adding a significant number of users.

Google Voice has been in Beta since being announced in March, and after a rocky start on the security front, appears ready to finally go live with its interesting mix of features and services.

“I’ve only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it’s completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate, just in general,” said Kevin Dando, director of digital and education communications for PBS, who was quoted in the NetworkWorld report.

The service offers a number of interesting features, includding call transfer between a user’s devices, multi-party conferencing, conversion of voice calls to text messages, low-cost international calling, and call transcription.

Google also has integrated the Voice service with Gmail contact lists.

The primary sell with Google Voice allows a user to have one phone number people can dial to reach them regardless of where they are located, whether at home or mobile. Google Voice uses VoIP to link users’ collections of phone numbers.

Other recent reports have indicated Google might be enabling number portability, which would allow users to keep an existing phone number as their Google Voice number.

Calls to Google Voice director Craig Walker were unreturned at press time.

AT&T announced changes to its WiFi connection process Wednesday that should improve the user experience for the company’s iPhone-using customers and may relieve the strain on its 3G network that some believe has been a result of the iPhone’s unprecedented popularity.

The press release Wednesday coincided with Apple’s release of 3.0 firmware for its family of mobile phones and said AT&T will support “auto-authentication” for customers with qualifying data plans.

Previously, iPhone users gained “free” access to AT&T’s 20,000 nationwide WiFi Hot Spots through a cumbersome process involving the keying-in of an account number and responding to an AT&T generated text message with an authentication key. Now iPhone users running 3.0 will be joined to available AT&T WiFi signals automatically after they have connected to the network for the first time.

The improved ease of connecting to WiFi will be welcome to many from a customer service standpoint, but AT&T’s motivations behind the policy change may not be entirely altruistic. In the wake of many complaints about its 3G network being unable to meet the service demands of iPhone users, enabling automatic handoff between 3G and WiFi should reduce demands on the 3G network at a time when AT&T claims it is dancing as fast as it can to ensure robust connectivity for its customers.

There has been some speculation that AT&T may be using the 802.21 protocol to accomplish the handoffs. 802.21 is an IEEE emerging standard that supports algorithms enabling seamless handover between networks of the same type as well as handover between different network types.

If such is indeed the case, the implications for developers of mobile VoIP applications may be profound since the primary limitation of mobile VoIP has been one of overcoming the handoff problem.

Which is not to suggest that AT&T might unwittingly be assisting its VoIP competitors, only that solutions to the handoff issue could center around wider support for 802.21 by service providers and hardware manufacturers in the future.

Every Tuesday find interesting links and discussions culled from the Voxilla reader forums right here on the cover. If you’ve got a topic or discussion you feel needs wider distribution, be sure and comment, with a link in the comments to the Tuesday forum post as well.

With that, on to this week’s highlights:

Mobile VoIP is all the rage on iPhone, and with the impending release of its 3.0 operating firmware with push notification support, many are anxious to find out whether incoming calls might be a viable reality on Apple’s popular smartphone.

But what about that other brand of popular mobile phones, Blackberry? Here’s a robust discussion thread with some interesting information about VoIP on Blackberry, which, at the moment appears to be largely unsupported, unfortunately.

SIP dialing on the Windows mobile platform gets a boost, on the other hand, from portSIP, a free SIP dialer for Windows Mobile 6. See the discussion thread here.

Here’s a great example of the wonderful kinds of help and information Voxilla community members have been extending to one another since 2003: sinboo50 had an issue with incoming calls disconnecting the audio channel of a current call on a Polycom IP650 and ended up posting the solution he got from Polycom support, which led to further interesting discussion among a trio of other members. And so it goes…

Voxilla forums are broken down into several different categories and moderated by representatives of many of the major manufacturers and service providers out there. One forum that’s seen a pretty big increase in traffic of late and could bear investigating is the sipX forum. Look to sipXecs, an open source Enterprise Communications Server that could one day soon give Digium and its popular Asterisk PBX a run for its money.

Cisco published this week an update to its Visual Networking Index Forecast, an ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications on Global IP traffic that predicts a near future with compound annual growth rates (CAGR) exceeding 30% in many categories, and a world in which Zetabytes of traffic will soon pass among the globally plugged-in population.

Some highlights from the paper, which covers the period from 2008 - 2013 include:

• CAGR of 40% for Global IP traffic, with the total quintupling over the next 4 years to exceed 667 exabytes by 2013;
• the equivalent of 10 billion DVDs crossing the Internet each month by 2013;
• all forms of video (TV, video on demand, Internet, and P2P) will account for over 91 percent of global consumer traffic by 2013;
• video communications traffic (instant messaging and video calling) will increase tenfold from 2008 to 2013;
• mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131% between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013;
• almost 64% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2013, growing at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013;
• mobile broadband handsets with higher than 3G speeds and laptop aircards will drive over 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013;

Those who are paid to think about, track and model predictive assessments of the future of communications see business IP traffic growing at a more modest rate of 33% CAGR, but detect a shift in business video communications from the Internet to the WAN, with the fastest growth occurring in Latin America and the heaviest volume, by far, generated in Asia.

In the consumer market, fastest growth is occurring today in the Middle East and Africa, followed closely by Latin America, with Asia generating nearly double the amount of traffic of any other continent.

A single high-end mobile phone (such as an iPhone or Blackberry) generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.

In all, the paper is a fascinating — if unsurprising — look at how our world is growing and changing and a titillating glimpse into the possibilities of the near future.

Access the full paper here and see its companion report, Hyperconnectivity and the Approaching Zettabyte Era.