Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on October 22, 2010 at 12:56 pm
By Charlene Lake, AT&T SVP, Public Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer
Here is one four letter word we want kids to embrace: STEM. At a time of great difficulty for our public education system, a diverse set of stakeholders including the government, educators, companies and nonprofits can agree that STEM —science, technology, engineering and math – is key to improving the country’s global competitiveness.
A new report by the President’s Council of Advisers in Science and Technology finds that the U.S. has extraordinary STEM assets that could be leveraged to revitalize student interest and increase proficiency in these subjects and, ultimately, promote jobs and economic renewal. Now if we can just use this information to get kids to jump on the bandwagon with us.
One of the best ways to motivate kids to take interest in STEM subjects is through hands-on activities. We’re not shying away from the opportunity. AT&T is particularly proud to be sponsoring the USA Science and Engineering Festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Taking place this weekend, the festival aims to expose children and families to new technologies that are strengthening communities, building the careers of tomorrow, and stimulating economic growth. The effort is also supported by a Department of Energy grant designed to promote sustainability as an overarching theme of the festival.
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Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on October 21, 2010 at 2:20 pm
(BACKGROUND: Today, the FCC released a technical analysis of the benefits from the reallocation of additional spectrum to commercial mobile broadband use. The FCC’s new analysis finds, using conservative projections and assumptions, that the spectrum deficit will approach 300 MHz by 2014, and that making additional spectrum available for mobile broadband use will add substantial economic value in the next five years.)
The following statement may be attributed to Robert Quinn, AT&T Senior Vice President, Federal Regulatory.
“The FCC’s forecast and the supporting analysis are fully borne out by what we see daily on our wireless broadband networks. Faster, more intelligent networks, coupled with increasingly more sophisticated connected devices and prolific application development has led to accelerated growth across the mobile broadband ecosystem. New wireless broadband devices are emerging at an unprecedented rate as are connected machine-to-machine devices. Consider that 57% of AT&T’s postpaid subscriber base now has an integrated device. All of this means that mobile broadband traffic is surging on the trajectories predicted in the FCC’s analysis.”
“We commend FCC Chairman Genachowski for understanding the urgency in making more spectrum available for mobile broadband, and for moving quickly to solve this major problem. Additional spectrum is not only essential for the wireless industry, it is vital in meeting the needs of hundreds of millions of wireless customers. More wireless spectrum will also support economic growth and job creation at an important time. We look forward to working with the FCC and Chairman Genachowski so that we can unleash the value of new mobile broadband spectrum.”
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Posted by: Hank Hultquist on October 19, 2010 at 11:01 pm
Day three of “House” Held Hostage.
While many (ok, just a few) folks are focused on the fate of “House,” the medical TV drama on Fox, we here in Tech/Telecom Policy Land are watching a sea change in what the Fox/Cablevision drama is telling us about the net neutrality debate.
Earlier this year, we filed comments in the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding, explaining, at great length, exactly why the “terminating monopoly” theory of net neutrality regulation (one of the policy justifications used for imposing rules on ISPs), just didn’t make sense in the Internet ecosystem.
Well, in a semi-controlled experiment still underway, Fox and Cablevision are doing a pretty good job proving that point. Some would even say the (ISP) King is dead. Long live the (Content) King. Fox and Cablevision are embroiled in a dispute over retransmission consent that has resulted in Cablevision customers losing access to Fox channels. Over the weekend, the dispute briefly escalated to the point where Fox was allegedly blocking Cablevision’s Internet customers from accessing Fox content on Hulu and Fox.com.
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