AT&T's proposed WCS spectrum sale

Sprint believes it has caught to have AT&T in a ‘gotcha!’ moment. While AT&T is using the threat of a spectrum crunch as justification to buy T-Mobile, Ma Bell is trying to sell off mobile broadband airwaves it already owns. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, Sprint basically calls AT&T a hypocrite, citing AT&T’s intended sale of its 2.3 GHz spectrum as another reason for the FCC should deny AT&T and T-Mobiles’ -billion deal. While Sprint has levied plenty of dead-on criticisms against AT&T-T-Mobile deal in the past, this time the operator has overshot the mark.

Here’s an excerpt for Sprint’s letter, signed by Sprint attorney Charles Logan:

“AT&T, in fact, has more licensed spectrum than any other CMRS provider in the country. Other wireless carriers, such as Verizon, manage to serve more customers with less spectrum resources than AT&T by using their existing spectrum licenses, deploying new technologies, and investing in infrastructure. To the extent AT&T can be said to be constrained at all, therefore, any ostensible limitations are the result of years of underinvestment by AT&T in its network and AT&T’s failure to put its existing spectrum to more efficient use – or, in the case of AT&T’s WCS spectrum, to any use at all.”

Heady stuff, but it ignores the fact that the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communication Services (WCS) spectrum bands are a mess. Ever since the licenses were auctioned off in 1997, every major operator owning WCS has tried to find some use for that spectrum, but they all came up with squat. Power restrictions in the band make it useless for any kind of mobile voice and broadband service. And attempts by AT&T and BellSouth (which AT&T acquired) to use it for fixed wireless DSL-replacement technologies fell flat after numerous trials.

The specific C-block and D-block licenses AT&T is trying to sell in partnership with NextWave are even more problematic. They straddle opposite ends of the Satellite Digital Audio Radio Service (SDARS) band used by Sirius XM Radio, requiring any network to have a guard band to prevent interference with Sirius’ radio signals. That means the already small allotment of capacity in each block, 5 MHz, is cut in half.

At worst, AT&T is guilty of putting lipstick on this WCS pig — rouge and fake eyelashes as well — in attempt to find a buyer for the licenses. AT&T pointed out just how worthless these licenses are in its public policy blog after Public Knowledge made similar criticisms of hypocrisy. Yet, the little fact sheet AT&T and NextWave put together to market the spectrum paints WCS in much gentler light. In those materials, AT&T claims that the licenses can be used for all kind of nifty applications: smart grids, supplementary downlink for mobile networks, fixed wireless broadband access, backhaul and one-way broadcast services.

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Achieving increased service capacity with high service availability and low response time is mission critical for many key classes of businesses, including eCommerce, social media, gaming, finance, telecommunications, and enterprise. The business opportunities are substantial, but the demands they place on the datacenter are daunting.

Data centers can fuse together advances in database architecture and commodity server and storage technology to achieve high availability (HA) with excellent performance, scalability and cost.

For the web and application tiers, IT managers of data centers and clouds already use virtualized machine instances hosted on high density commodity servers and storage with load balancing and simple timeouts to achieve HA, better perfromance and scalability in a cost-effective manner. But achieving these goals with databases in scaled production environments presents severe challenges.

For the data access tier, the fundamental HA database approach to maintain service availability is to create and maintain a replica of the database that can be switched when the master database is down due to failure or for routine maintenance.

Traditional loosely-coupled HA database architectures are based on asynchronous replication, and they result in data inconsistency, lost data, long fail-over time (often manual), and very poor performance scalability.

Tightly-coupled database architectures utilizing  parallel synchronous replication exploiting commodity multi-core servers can achieve 99.999% availability with full data integrity; unlimited scaling with exceptional performance and high data consistency; and greatly simplified administration including instantaneous, automatic fail-over and on-line scaling and upgrades. These databases can yield major improvements in data center QOS and TCO for scaled production services.

To achieve these availability benefits with high performance, the database software implementing transaction execution and synchronous replication must be optimized for high-thread parallelism and granular concurrency control. Multi-core thread parallelism is used to concurrently communicate, replicate, and apply master update transactions on all replicas with extremely high throughput and low latency. This high degree of parallelism and concurrency control also enables effective exploitation of flash memory,  providing linear vertical scaling with the cores in modern commodity servers, thereby enabling capital expense reduction (based on consolidation) and operating expense reduction (based on reduced power and space requirements). Unlimited scaling is achieved through transparent partitioning.  Geographic scaling and disaster recovery with HA and high data integrity is achieved by using parallel aycnhronous replication that is coupled to the base synchronous cluster, eliminating WAN data loss and providing WAN automated failover.

With this approach, data centers can fuse together the benefits of architectural improvements in HA software architecture with commodity high density computing to achieve very high service availability with excellent performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness.  And they can achieve this without sacrificing existing application/data SQL compatibility.

Dr. John Busch is the founder, Chairman, and CTO of Schooner, which provides OLTP database software compatible with MySQL.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mandiberg.

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Adobe has acknowledged that there’s a war going on for developers, and it believes it has some increasingly popular weapons to win the hearts of mobile developers in Adobe Air and Flash. On the eve of the Mobile World Congress, the company shared some statistics about Air and Flash, hoping to get developers to see the value in its cross-platform tools.

Adobe said Adobe AIR applications are now able to run on more than 84 million smartphones and tablets running Android and iOS — and by the end of 2011, it expects more than 200 million smartphones and tablets will support Adobe AIR applications. Developers have built thousands of Air apps including 1,500 apps for Android Market in the first two months since Air apps became available there in October. It’s unclear how many times the apps have been downloaded but Adobe said Air has been downloaded 1 million times on Android (consumers need to download Air in order to run Air apps).

Adobe said more than 20 million of the smartphones shipped in 2010 had Flash Player 10.1 installed, with more than 6 million downloads of browser plug-in in the Android Market. This year, the company expects more than 132 million smartphones to have Flash Player installed, including 40 percent of all smartphones shipped in the first half of the year, while more than 50 tablets will ship or be able to download Flash Player. RIM’s Tablet OS and HP’s webOS platform will join Android in supporting Flash when they launch. Adobe is showcasing its newly released Flash 10.2 at the Mobile World Congress and will be highlighting Stage Video, its technology for improving video performance through hardware acceleration. Stage Video, which is supported on Android 3.0 and BlackBerry Tablet OS, offers more efficient use of the processor and memory and should improve battery life, one of the big knocks on Flash.

Anup Murarka, director of product marketing, said the demands of developers to support more platforms is growing, highlighting the need for tools that can help developers leverage their work. With an army of tablets running Android and credible iPad challengers in the BlackBerry Playbook and HP TouchPad, which will largely support Adobe runtimes, Adobe thinks it’s in a good place to benefit from the tablet boom. The company has been harping on its cross-platform tools but it now believes it’s getting enough reach and performance to really be compelling for mobile developers.

Adobe still faces a challenge in trying to evangelize its tools. While the company feels like it can help developers make apps that stand toe-to-toe with native apps, it has to overcome the perception that Air and Flash apps don’t perform as well as native apps and make as good of use of the hardware. Adobe will probably never match the performance of native apps but with new platforms emerging and the market for apps expected to hit  billion this year, it makes sense for Adobe to continue to play up its cross-platform potential and hope eager developers short on time and cash respond.

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Capable of printing out 45 pages per minute, this is one fast machine. Its 533-megahertz processor ensures that your first page is printed in less than 8 seconds. This saves you a lot of time and that equals saving money. It also turns out incredible quality black and white prints.

If you want to print pamphlets or save paper, an optional feature lets you condense 4 pages into one. Even this prints nice and clean for great readability. Text sheets are bold and sharp, with no blurriness. Images print quite well and much better than on a lot of other machines.

This machine can also be purchased with duplex printing. So, using both sides of the paper has never been easier. The 1200 X 1200 DPI resolution ensures great quality printouts, every time. You can create pamphlets with ease. If you need to print private documents, you can set up a pin service. You will never have to worry about someone gaining access to private information.

This machine also makes efficient use of toner, which saves you money. You can even turn on a toner saving feature. The printing comes out a little lighter, but remains fully readable. You will not have to change the Okidata B Series printer cartridge as often as you do with other laser printers. The standard cartridges can print up to 6,000 pages, before needing to be changed, which is almost twice as many as some comparable models. It also comes with a toner cartridge. That means it is ready to use, as soon as you open the box. A convenient top panel makes it easy to change the toner or drum when necessary. It also has a time delay, so you can tell it when you want it to start a job.

With two different sized feed trays, it is easy to use. If you have a big print job, you can use both and do 700 sheets at once. For a tinier job, use the smaller multi-purpose tray that holds 150 sheets of media. The larger one holds up to 550. This means it is convenient for printing envelopes or newsletters. For companies that regularly do much bigger tasks, you can purchase additional trays. You can add up to two more. Each of which holds another 550 sheets.

If you are worried about it being compatible with your computer operating system, there is no need. It comes ready to use with Linux, Windows or Macintosh computers. If you use Vista, you can also get the drivers for compatibility. It is Ethernet ready and use with TCP/IP or LPR/LPD protocols. You can easily network it with your whole office. The Okidata B6500N printer toner cartridge is definitely up to whatever task you need it to perform.

By Evan Ackerman

Bicycle helmets are a useless inconvenience every single moment of their existence except for that one super important one when they protect you from death (or such less punishment). Part of the problem is their shape, which (while a predefined inevitability) is not an efficient use of space. The Tatoo helmet (that comes from the french ‘tatou’ which means armadillo) is made out of flexible (and recyclable!) interconnected polypropylene that unsnaps from itself and packs flat for storage.

The problem here is that the convenience of having a bendy helmet kinda means that the helmet is, uh, bendy. As in not rigid. And last time I checked, rigidity was a rather important part of the whole “protecting your brain from impacts” thing. Good thing it looks like it’s still a concept at this stage.

[ Abitare ] VIA [ Fast Company ]

The main idea is to use a special material that reacts to UV radiation. The liquid crystal molecules align in accordance with the direction of the radiation so that the screen can display dark blacks. Sharp says the the contrast ratio is enhanced by 60% to 5,000:1, compared with conventional LCD screens. The response time is even doubled, according to the company. The new technology also leads to a more efficient use of the backlight, which means you can save up to 20% energy when you watch TV.

Sharp says production of LCDs making use of the new system will begin in a Japanese plant as early as next month.

IT support that addresses your specialized needs is vital to the success of your company. Technology has become an important component to running any efficient Australian business. But then, getting the correct system is just the start. You should ensure that you also hire a company committed to maintaining the efficient use of your machines. As you read on, you will learn how to find an IT company that will assist you in the selection of your IT system. You will also be able to contact one of the best firms offering IT support at the end of this article.

Expert resources on IT support are located on that site.

Is Systems Training Included? However, establishing IT solutions is not the only thing you need to do to run a well-oiled business. Right after the installation of the new systems, staff should be made aware of how to use them to take advantage of this new add-on to the company. Before signing on the bottom line, check the company’s training policy. Find out too if the firm can give you a mentor who can train your people on the execution and maintenance of the new technology. Most of the time, this is more efficient than getting another team to train your staff.

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Managing Maintenance 101. Regular systems maintenance is vital to guaranteeing the smooth operations of your business. A company with a credible background is surely going to offer ongoing maintenance for your new system. This may mean regular visits from a consultant to monitor your needs and system or a maintenance checklist that will help you to make sure your systems continue to run at peak efficiency. Find out the maintenance details incorporated in the IT package you want to get.

When you would like to get more information on IT support Sydney check out this site.

How are Customer Support Levels? Even the best kind of technology systems will have some loopholes, so it is necessary to have IT support that is ready to solve possible problems as they crop. Ask the prospective IT consulting about response times and whether you will get their response times guaranteed in writing. Be sure you work with a company with help desks that will not only listen but will facilitate solutions to your problems. You want a company that provides great support as this helps to lower downtimes. A great IT help desk is one factor that will help you to run operations smoothly.

The right remote IT support will make all the difference in maintaining a well run, efficient company. By asking the right questions up front, you can make a good choice in a firm that will meet your unique needs. Just by using the tips above to your maximum advantage, you will be able to tie up with a firm that can solve your problems now and in the future as your needs change.

Will There Be a Workshop for Staff on How to Use the System? However, establishing IT solutions is not the only thing you need to do to run a well-oiled business. Once the systems are in place, it is important to ensure that your entire workforce knows how to make the most of the technology available. Training is something to ask an IT company about before signing on the bottom line. Is the company going to make a consultant available for training your people? Most of the time, this is more efficient than getting another team to train your staff.

How Scalable are the Systems Provided? Verify too if your managed IT services can be scaled easily if and when necessary. This means finding a company that will be willing to grow in services as your company expands in needs. Be sure to ask the company you are eyeing about IT support you will be getting as your requirements change over time. To this end, some IT companies will offer periodic system checks to ensure that the technology is still working efficiently, or if changes are required.

How is Maintenance Conducted? Machine maintenance is important to keep your systems in good running condition. A good IT company will provide this much-needed maintenance. It can mean periodic visits from a consultant or a checklist that will enable you to check that your systems are running at its best. Find out the maintenance policy included in the package you’re thinking of getting. When you would like to get more information on IT management Sydney check out this site.

Customer Support 101 Even if you have installed the most efficient kind of technology, you will be met with problems that need to be dealt with by your IT support in a rapid and efficient way. Ask the prospective IT consulting about response times and whether you will get their response times guaranteed in writing. What’s the response level of their help desk? You want to find a firm that will provide ongoing support and solutions so your downtime is kept to a complete minimum. A great IT help desk is one factor that will help you to run operations smoothly.

The key is to have just the right remote IT support. You can make good choices if you ask them fitting questions regarding IT the services they offer. With the tips mentioned, you can find the IT firm that can meet all your needs now and in the future.