Industry News

The FCC vision for the future of communications in the United States, and its proposals for getting from where we are to where we need to be are imperative to maintaining a level playing field for business in America. The limited bandwidth is running out, and the digital divide continues to grow, and businesses on the wrong side of that divide will find it very hard to keep up with the competition.

Imagine the Indy 500 race. As long as all of the drivers have vehicles capable of producing 650-plus horsepower and achieving speeds in excess of 220 miles per hour everything is fair and it comes down to the wit and skill of the driver. Now, give half of those drivers a factory-standard, street-legal Chevy Camaro and see how they fare.

Businesses located in major metropolitan areas may not even realize the growing problem exists. Major metropolitan areas not only have high-speed wired and wireless broadband available, but typically have access to multiple providers, and even multiple options--like cable mode, DSL, or satellite--to get it.

However, businesses located off the beaten path are at a disadvantage. Private sector interests are not willing to invest any significant money to build an infrastructure that reaches to rural America. The population is smaller and the return on investment is virtually impossible to achieve.

Case in point: while the major wired and wireless broadband providers are balking at FCC initiatives to drive expansion of 100mbps broadband access to 100 million American homes, Google is pursuing a pilot test to push the envelope and demonstrate 1 gbps broadband. There is a major gap between the status quo, the FCC vision, and what is really possible if the investment is made.

Is it a crisis, though? At a hearing in Washington DC today, Representative Joe Barton of Texas--the top Republican member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee--pointed out that 95 percent of Americans already have access to broadband, and that it was the private sector--not the federal government--that invested in that infrastructure.

There are multiple issues being addressed within the National Broadband Plan, though--only one of which is the aspect of expanding broadband access to more Americans. The other factors involved include ensuring that private sector broadband providers have an incentive to push the envelope and continue to invest in innovation rather than stagnating.

When business was done primarily from within the confines of the office, workers had the benefit of high speed connections via dedicated T1 lines. As the American workforce has become increasingly remote and mobile, commerce is more and more reliant on high-speed broadband connections to employees' homes, and wireless broadband access for workers on the go.

Broadband speeds of 3 mbps or so are sufficient for connecting and surfing the Web or retrieving e-mail, but are inadequate for using newer technology or evolving business practices to capitalize on what is possible. As Sprint outlines on its site promoting 4G wireless broadband, there are some business scenarios that are impractical with standard broadband, but are made possible by faster broadband speeds:

• Real estate agents can conduct virtual property tours.

• Construction teams using 4G in the field can save valuable time by sharing schematics with engineers online.

• Insurance companies can speed their claims management through real-time communication with on-site adjusters.

• Health care professionals can improve their ability to remotely monitor patients.

• Emergency first responders can rapidly assess and coordinate disaster action with real-time on-site video and audio.

• Photojournalists can instantly transfer high-resolution images to the newsroom.

Now that Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan is public, battle lines are being drawn and the fight is just beginning. Businesses across America should seek to understand the proposals laid out in the plan, and make their collective voices heard.

Whether you think the FCC vision is the right direction for America, or you agree with the private sector interests seeking to maintain the status quo, now is the time to get involved as the details of America's future infrastructure are hammered out.

Tony Bradley is co-author of Unified Communications for Dummies. He tweets as @Tony_BradleyPCW. You can follow him on his Facebook page, or contact him by email at tony_bradley@pcworld.com.

Blu-ray burners are advancing at a fast pace: Only a couple of months ago I was marveling at the speed of 8X Blu-ray burners--now here I am again with the 12X Plextor PX-B940SA ($250, price as of March 5, 2010). The write speeds make this Blu-ray drive an especially appealing option.

Even though 12X-rated media isn't available yet, judging from my tests the drive will hit 10X write speeds with 4X-rated media, and 12X speeds with 6X media (Panasonic and Sony currently sell 6X-rated media). The drive maxes out at 12X write speeds, but like most 4X or greater drives, it starts slower and gradually ramps up.

Writing 23GB to a single-layer 4X-rated BD-R disc at 10X with the PX-B940SA took about 11 minutes, 31 seconds (or about 7.4X), and burning 40GB to a dual-layer 2X disc took 22 minutes, 19 seconds (or about 6.6X). With 6X media, write speed improved to 7.8X. By way of comparison, the 8X-rated Pioneer BDR-203 averaged around 6X with 4X-rated BD-R.

Since Blu-ray rewrite technology is still stuck at 2X (9MB per second), backing up to BD-RE is still a somewhat time-consuming process. The unit's other speeds are 16X for writing and reading DVD+R/-R, 8X for DVD+RW, 6X for DVD-RW, 8X for DVD+/-R dual-layer, and 5X for DVD-RAM, as well as 40X with CD-R and 24X with CD-RW.

Plextor bundles CyberLink's BD Suite to take care of burning, movie authoring, video playback, and other tasks. The software is more than capable, but it also bugs you incessantly with registration notices and ads--far more than appropriate for software that the user ostensibly paid for. The program offers no option to bypass the registration, but it does give you a way to disable push advertising; even so, some annoying ads remain in PowerDVD and other modules.

CyberLink and Plextor both tout the PowerDVD 8.0.3223 playback software's TrueTheatre feature for enhancing 480p DVD video to 1080p-like quality. In my trials, it seemed to create a sharper picture than VLC, but the results were not on the level of 1080p; you sacrifice GPU assistance to use the feature, too. PowerProducer 5.0.2.2013 and PowerDirector 7.0.0.3227 are on hand for capturing and manipulating video and images for CD/DVD/AVCHD/Blu-ray movie discs, and LabelPrint 2.5.2130 is available for creating labels and jewel-case inserts. PowerBackup 2.50.5187 is installed to deal with backup chores.

Power2Go 6.1.0.3401 is included for handling some of the more pedestrian data tasks. It also rips audio CDs, converts audio between WMA and .wav, saves nonprotected DVD-movie structures to disc, and creates and burns images (in CyberLink's .p2i format as well as standard .iso).

The Plextor PX-B940SA is a great drive that suffered nary a hiccup in my testing. It's faster than anything you'll currently find on the market.

LG announced this Thursday that its upcoming LX9500 will be the worlds first HDTV set to combine a fully-LED-backlit LCD with 3D support.

Word regarding the LX9500 first surfaced last month, when a leaked document revealed LG's roadmap for the coming year. LG opted not to comment on the legitimacy of last month's leak, however the new 3D LED TV has now been confirmed.

The LX9500 will be available in two models, one coming in at 47 inches, and the other a larger model measuring 55 inches. Both of these thin 1080p LED sets come packed with a whole host of features, including USB 2.0, HDMI, integrated Skype software, and of course 3D support.

The sets, which do require you to wear USB-powered glasses, should arrive in Korea within the coming months, beating rival Samsung to market. It'll launch in Europe and the US this May. No pricing details were provided for global markets, but when the LX9500 launches in Korea it is expected to cost around 4.7million South Korean Won, which is roughly $4,000.

[Via Electronista]

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Want to know what the iPad version of your favorite magazine will cost? A report in the Wall Street Journal leaked the prices for a few publications, but we may already know more than that.

According to the report, the Wall Street Journal's iPad edition will cost $17.99 per month. An advertisement-free version of Esquire may cost $2.99, which is $2 less than the newsstand price. Men's Health will charge the same $4.99 as it does for the print version, but it will also offer a "preview issue" supported by advertising for Gillette Odor Shield.

Thing is, lots of magazines (including PCWorld) already sell digital versions for PC, Mac and iPhone through a company called Zinio, which distributes but also helps develop digital magazines. Next month, Zinio will bring its magazine library to Apple's iPad, presumably using a Zinio reader app similar to the one that's currently in the iPhone App Store.

It's not clear whether the iPad versions of these magazines will be considerably different from what's already available, but a spokeswoman told me that once you buy a magazine on Zinio's Unity platform, you can read it on any device, even the iPad. The pricing won't change when the iPad arrives, and you can look up all the current prices on Zinio's Web site.

Here's where things get tricky: Zinio's digital version of Esquire costs $4.99, which is more than the price reported by the Wall Street Journal, and Zinio doesn't sell the U.S. edition of Men's Health. It seems like those two publications are working on their own iPad editions, free from Zinio or any other general reader app. If that's the case, the question is how many other publishers will do the same, and how many will take the easy route with a ready-made solution from Zinio.

If publishers chart their own course, then we're really in the dark on pricing. The Journal notes that Esquire hasn't finalized its iPad plans, and no publisher is ready to start offering subscriptions. Zinio's offerings, by comparison, are a lot like print: A single magazine costs around $2 to $5, and a full year is much cheaper, maybe $10 to $20. I hope that's the model iPad magazines go with, no matter who's creating them.

If you're looking for a free program to handle your notes from meetings or classes, or a real-time receipt tracker that you can connect to via PC or phone, or a free online photo editor that displays the different adjustments you make as you make them, read on.

Springpad: Note Taker

I've used Evernote for a while to keep records of meetings and plans. But Springpad is a worthy, free competitor that brings some cool new tricks to notetaking. For instance, you can import a recipe from a cooking site, and Springpad will automatically parse out the ingredients you need. Click a link, and it will add those ingredients to a shopping list. Type in the name of a movie, and not only will the service add a note with a description and image, but it will give you local showtimes or add it to your Netflix queue. A companion iPhone app lets you add and access notes on the go. You can even add a product by scanning its barcode with your iPhone's camera.

Xpenser: Receipt Help

Even if your business trip goes off without a hitch, you'll have to deal with all those receipts afterward. And who can remember a week afterward what the taxi ride cost or why the bottle of single-malt scotch seemed deductible? With Xpenser, you can keep track of your expenses in real time, using any PC or phone. You can add an expense through the free service's site, by e-mail, IM, text message, or voice call. You can even keep track of your costs by sending direct messages on Twitter. Send in a photo of the receipt to prove that a cheeseburger really can cost $20.

Citrify: Snappy Photo Editing

Online photo editors have existed for years, but early versions were often slow to show the changes you made to your images. Citrify displays the effects of your work as you do it, enabling you to see just how your picture will look as you pump up the contrast or sharpness. This free service includes most of the tools amateur photographers will need-in addition to adjusting brightness and hue, you can eliminate red-eye, smooth over wrinkles, and more. You can even "Obamify" your images, making the subjects look as though they're in the iconic campaign poster.

A number of people have decided, or been compelled, to move from the security of a CIO position to the less secure, but more flexible life of a freelance consultant or part-time CIO-for-hire.

Peter Jameson was CIO at Redeal, the back-office support organisation for electronics distributor Rexel, until May last year, when the role was disestablished. "I had been thinking about a move of this kind before the economic climate forced it on me," he says, "and I knew the reorganisation was coming." So he was to some extent forewarned. He saw the change as offering a more flexible lifestyle, with better work-life balance.

Networking skills

The life of a CIO, with its management of several concurrent projects, can be frustrating, though it is also stimulating and rewarding, he says. "I also looked for the mental stimulation of working for different organisations and doing different types of work."

A successful consultant has to sell him/herself on the open market, "you have to become a different kind of person, a self-marketer who gives a lot of time to networking -- a communicator," says Jameson.

Attention should be paid to marketing materials; such as a set of documents that will quickly give a potential client an idea of the consultant's strengths. "You need to have something you can show clients." Preparation of such materials is, naturally, unpaid work, part of the "cost of sale".

However, a CIO is hardly a stranger to communication, networking and selling one's ideas and usefulness; it's just selling to a different audience, Jameson says. "The key positive skill-set I bring from my CIO experience is to look at the problems of the business, rather than technology." Some who have built a career in the consultancy market might be comparatively technical in their approach and this gives him a possible advantage in bidding for work.

Contracting and CIO work may, of course, overlap. With New Zealand's large proportion of small organisations, unable to justify the budget for a full-timer to look after ICT, there is an opportunity in the market for a part-time CIO. A person who can work with a business long enough to translate their ideas into a fully defined ICT project and oversee its implementation, says Jameson.

Asked what "fields" he is involved in now, he jokes, "mostly green ones". He is spending a lot of time on his small farming property, as fulfilment of that more flexible lifestyle he was seeking. In the ICT-related field, he is currently involved in a project to help companies implement the requirements of the Financial Advisors Act, passed in 2008 to improve disclosure and assurance of integrity in the financial advice industry. "That's less a technical job and more about business process," he says.

Before starting business as a consultant, it makes sense to talk to those already in the field about their experiences and their ways of working, Jameson says. There are elements of both co-operation and competition in the consultancy community, he says. "People are quite free with advice, but I do find that in recent economic conditions, they hold their key contacts close."

The relationship dynamics of working with the ICT team in a client company will be different from those of a full-time CIO post. "I don't think your commitment changes," he says. "I have to have a belief that I'm delivering the best I can for an organisation, even though there is a visible limit to my time there."

There will, inevitably, be periods without work, Jameson says and these should be seen as opportunities to gain knowledge. "Whether you're finding work or not, you must be continuously exposing yourself to new learning."

The freelancer

Neil Andrew has worked for both corporate users and ICT vendors. His most recent full-time post was more than two years ago as head of resources and technology for TVNZ. He was responsible for cameras and other equipment that was a daily part of producing and transmitting television as well as the ICT systems. As part of a TVNZ reorganisation, the role was to be split into two and at nearly 60 years of age, he decided a complete change might be no more difficult.

He describes himself as a "freelancer", a term, he notes, with an honourable tradition in the media business. He has worked in that style before, between fulltime jobs, so it was not an unfamiliar world. "While I do consult, I don't take on any permanent roles [and] I believe this is the way more and more people will work in the future."

He does not perceive a problem of "not belonging" in a client organisation. "If I have been appointed, I have sponsorship from the CIO or the business owner. Teams recognise I have that support and they don't mess me around."

To some extent, he says, permanent staff see a consultant's retention as a valuable chance for information exchange. "We have him for this long, they'll say 'let's take the chance to pick his brains'."

The skills-set for freelance and permanent CIO roles in Andrew's view does not differ significantly. "You're still giving people a lot of advice and working strategically with the business." A freelancer's job is inevitably more task-focused as, "there is a lot more clarity about what you're there to achieve and about the value you're providing".

During uncertain economic times, "there's no doubt about it, a permanent role is a lot more comfortable," he concedes. The problem has been not so much the recession itself, as the accompanying sense of uncertainty and drive to cost-containment that means projects get put on hold. The situation is changing for the better now, he says, "as people realise the sky isn't going to fall in".

The most important need for the freelance life is to cultivate one's networks, he says and, in New Zealand's small business community especially, "not to crap in your own nest. Don't bad-mouth people or take them down. You're going to need their goodwill."

Andrew finds the freelance consulting community "very co-operative. A lot of the people in my network are fellow freelancers. I'll put teams together for projects from people I trust."

The virtual CIO

Murray Wills, director of consultancy Maxsys, spends a good proportion of his working life acting as a "virtual CIO" -- for organisations that either cannot justify a full-time CIO or IT manager, or who face a temporary lack of such a person through vacation or delay to a reappointment after the IT chief has left.

A virtual CIO can also be requested to supply for a time high-level skills for a major development or strategic evaluation of IT opportunities, where the regular IT manager is adequate to the day-to-day operational aspects of the business, but lacking in skills for those longer term aims.

The brief must be tightly defined and understood, says Wills. A contract that expects the contractor to make a difference to the ICT system is very different from a holiday stop-gap role, where it would be unfair to the permanent incumbent to make material changes.

A virtual CIO needs to come to grips quickly with both the technical infrastructure and the nature of the business and its corporate objectives, says Wills. He has the business experience to supply this need, he says, with a past career in consultancy and sales having given him the necessary expertise in building and maintaining relationships.

"I've also had an IT governance background", he says. Lack of governance in Wills' view is a major shortcoming of ICT in local companies. It has to be fully integrated with the governance of the business as a whole. "I've been known to get quite vocal about the lack of IT governance skills on boards of directors and among CEOs," he says. Not only does this risk an ICT capability unsatisfactorily integrated with business needs, it often manifests in a poor choice of CIO or IT manager "because the CEO lacks understanding of the CIO position and the talents that such a person should have.

"Given the amount of money that is spent on ICT," he says, "I think there should be more expertise at the top level."

Assignments can last anything from six weeks to eight to nine months. "If I am acting CIO, I will work for that one client, but as a virtual CIO, I will typically have a number of clients concurrently."

Wills has worked with a wide variety of organisations in government and the private sector. He has acted as CIO or IT manager for organisations such The Ministry of Transport, Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Alcohol Advisory Council, and the State Services Commission. In government especially, there is value in taking the experience gained in one agency and transferring it to another that faces similar challenges, he says.

Although a virtual CIO must become involved to a large extent in the business and interpersonal communication of a client organisation, he or she can stay clear of the deeper aspects of office politics. This can mean an ability to make necessary decisions that a full-time CIO or IT manager might have trouble pushing through.

As for the perceived problem of "not belonging", as long as your expertise is evident and your mandate is clearly defined there should be no problem, Wills says. As a capsule demonstration of his knowledge and competence, he can now point to his formal IT Certified Professional qualification, a mark of assured professionalism recently instituted by the NZ Computer Society.

It also helps that Maxsys stays scrupulously neutral in its relationships with vendors. "We don't sell hardware or software," he notes.

Wills expects to see the virtual CIO idea grow as small companies in particular face more ICT challenges and the value of the concept becomes evident.

Republican members of a U.S. House of Representatives committee objected Thursday to parts of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's new national broadband plan, saying it leaves broadband carriers open to new regulation.

Republicans, and one senior Democrat, on the House Energy and Commerce Committee complained that the plan doesn't shut the door on the FCC reclassifying broadband as a common carrier, much like highly regulated telephone service.

While Chapter 4 of the broadband plan doesn't talk specifically about reclassifying broadband as a common-carrier service, committee Republicans said the chapter addressing broadband competition policy recommends a number of new rules that could potentially create new regulations for broadband providers.

"The worst idea I've heard in years is reclassification," Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, said during a subcommittee hearing. "I don't want to regulate broadband like we regulated telephone service in the 1930s."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told subcommittee members he's not planning to reclassify broadband as a common-carrier service, but the FCC will look at some "discrete" areas where it sees problems with competition, including the wholesale broadband market and the so-called special access rates paid to large telecom carriers for large-pipe connections between buildings and central switching facilities.

Genachowski said he understood fears about new regulations. "The goals of the commission very clear are to develop policies that promote investment, promote innovation, promote competition, and protect and empower consumers," he said.

Some Republicans and other observers have raised concerns about the FCC requiring broadband providers to share their fiber networks with competitors, as they were required to do with their copper networks in the late '90s and early '00s, since Cbeyond, a broadband and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) provider, filed a petition in January for the FCC to return to network-sharing rules.

But the broadband plan says only that the petition "deserves attention."

Among the broadband plan's goals: Universal broadband availability and 100 million U.S. homes with 100M bps (bits per second) service by 2020.

Several Republican committee members praised parts of the broadband plan, but Barton, the committee's senior Republican, questioned whether a huge national broadband program was needed, when wired broadband is available to more than 90 percent of U.S. homes.

"Ninety-five percent of America has broadband, and the federal government hasn't had to spend a dime," he said. "This isn't a have/have not program, this is a find-something-for-the-FCC-to-do-that-makes-sense-in-the-21st-century program."

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, questioned how Genachowski could talk about encouraging private investment in broadband and also propose new net neutrality rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet content. The broadband plan has sent a "shiver of cold" across the investment community, he said.

While Democrats generally praised the plan, Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, questioned whether the plan would open up "old policy fights" by leaving open the possibility that broadband providers share their networks. Dingell also said he was concerned about the broadband plan's proposal to take up to 120MHz of wireless spectrum from television broadcasters in exchange for a portion of the auction revenues.

TV stations gave up nearly a third of their spectrum in the transition to all-digital broadcasts that happened in June, Dingell said. "The further loss of [broadcasting] spectrum can have a very serious adverse effect on the public by limiting consumer choice," he said.

But other Democrats called the broadband plan "superb" and necessary for the U.S. to compete with other nations.

"The national broadband plan is the most significant and ambitious infrastructure program for America since the interstate highway system," said Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat and committee chairman. "Our competitiveness and prosperity depend on meeting its core objectives."

The falling cost of text messaging is making mobile-phone users a more attractive target for spammers, according to the GSM Association. To counter this, it wants its mobile-network-operator members to "crowd-source" spam reports from their customers to help them identify and cut off spammers abusing SMS (Short Message Service).

As much as 90 percent of Internet e-mail traffic is spam, according to some reports, up from just 20 percent a decade ago. The proportion of spam in mobile text messages is far lower, under 10 percent in the U.S. and the U.K., rising to 20 percent in some Asian countries, according to Brad Greene, vice president of business development at the GSMA.

One thing that has slowed the spread of SMS spam is the cost of text messaging compared to e-mail: Internet spam is profitable even at very low response rates because millions of e-mail messages can be sent for just a few dollars. Now, though, low-cost or unlimited texting plans, and the rising use of high-speed wireless modems, have changed the economics of SMS spam, Greene said in an e-mail response to questions. The GSMA is taking action now to make sure that the Internet spam situation "is not replicated in the mobile world," he said.

In France, operators have been encouraging subscribers to report SMS spam since October 2008. Phone users there can forward offending messages to the Stop-Spam service via the short code 33700. An initial response prompts them to reply with the spammer's phone number, with a final SMS acknowledging the completed spam report. The service has received almost half a million spam reports in this way. This has resulted in the disconnection of only 300 phone numbers for spamming, although many more have received cease-and-desist orders.

The operators can't just block offending SMS messages or shuffle them into a spam folder as many e-mail service providers do. For one thing, the senders have paid for the messages, so the operators are contractually obliged to deliver them unless they can prove that the sender has breached their terms of service, according to a spokeswoman for the Fédération Française des Télécoms. Also, creating an SMS spam folder would mean updating the firmware on millions of phones.

The SMS spam reporting systems in place so far, in France and South Korea, for example, stop at national boundaries, but spam is a global problem requiring a global response, according to the GSMA. In a GSMA study last year, "68 percent of the global mobile network operators surveyed reported receipt of mobile spam originating from senders outside their networks," Greene said.

The GSMA is promoting a system developed by e-mail spam-filtering specialist Cloudmark, which will allow mobile-network operators around the world to pool spam reports from their customers, enabling analysis of the data to determine the sources of attacks and their volumes, said Greene. Armed with that information, they will be able to "curb abuse, pursue enforcement of acceptable use policies and support law enforcement," he said.

AT&T Mobility, Korea Telecom and French operator SFR will be the first operators to contribute data to the new system, the GSMA said. Unlike Cloudmark's e-mail service, the GSMA SMS reporting service won't automatically block offending text messages, but it will give participating mobile operators useful data for their own operational processes and automated systems, Greene said.

Cisco Systems has been scouting for major plays in the Smart Grid infrastructure arena for about a year — some analysts even speculated that it would buy wireless networking provider Silver Spring Networks. But today, it announced its decision to go with Grid Net, one of the first and only companies to trumpet WiMAX as the ultimate solution for transmitting data between utilities and smart meters.

Most utilities and meter makers rely on cellular networks or proprietary broadband networks to get the job done, arguing that WiMAX is still too expensive for broad deployment. But Grid Net says price won’t be an issue for long. Not only does WiMAX offer higher speeds and more bandwidth, but it will be extremely cheap in the future because it’s an open standard, says Grid Net CEO Ray Bell.

So far, it’s unclear exactly what Cisco wants with the company’s WiMAX expertise. It’s made a lot of noise about being a major force in the Smart Grid market, appointing Laura Ipsen to head up a dedicated program, and announcing that it would dedicate unlimited budget to the cause.

But so far, the company has little to show for it. At VentureBeat’s GreenBeat conference in November, Ipsen said Cisco would be rolling out its first Smart Grid networking products in the first half of 2010, but this remains to be seen.

The deal makes sense, considering that Bell formerly worked on networking solutions at Cisco. One can assume that he giant will be integrating WiMAX into its own Smart Grid products when they do hit the market. Even being involved in WiMAX development puts Cisco on the cutting edge of the Smart Grid industry.

I reported yesterday on the scuffle between companies promoting public network communications (SmartSynch) and those endorsing private networks (Trilliant, Silver Spring). If WiMAX comes along as fast as Grid Net says it will, it could immediately trump both of those options.

Some Smart Grid players have dismissed WiMAX out of hand, but it looks like that’s the direction the whole industry might move. In addition to Cisco buying into WiMAX, General Electric also announced today that it’s launching its own Smart Grid pilot project that will test WiMAX in tandem with Consumers Energy, a utility based in Michigan.

This is also the second big recent win for Grid Net, which just snagged Austin Energy Chief Information Officer Andres Carvallo to sell the idea of WiMAX to utilities. Carvallo is credited with spearheading the country’s first Smart Grid deployment in Texas.

Tags: Smart Grid, WiMax

Companies: Cisco Systems, Grid Net, Silver Spring Networks

As his parents and sister silently wept, hacker mastermind Albert Gonzalez was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court to two concurrent 20-year stints in prison for his role in what prosecutors called the "unparalleled" theft of millions of credit and debit card numbers from major U.S. retailers.

U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris announced the concurrent sentences in two 2008 cases against Gonzalez, 28, a Cuban-American born in Miami, where he lived when the crimes were committed. According to binding terms of a plea agreement Gonzalez forged with the U.S. Department of Justice, he could have received between 15 years and 25 years for the crimes.

"I stand before you humbled by these past 24 months," Gonzalez said in court, slightly expanding the time he has been incarcerated since his arrest in May 2008. "I'm guilty not only of exploiting complicated networks, but also of exploiting personal relationships," he said. He added that he had exploited a relationship with a "government agency," a reference to a previous deal he had related to a separate criminal case in which he agreed to be an informant for the U.S. Secret Service, but provided information from that agency to one of his co-conspirators in the credit-card theft cases.

"I've impacted the lives of millions of individuals and I violated the sanctity of my parents' home," said Gonzalez, who was wearing khaki-colored jail garb and a stylish, closely shorn haircut -- quite different from the long locks he sported when he was arrested. Gonzalez stashed more than a million dollars in a hole in the backyard of his parents' Miami home, although he drew a map for investigators to find the hidden loot and forfeited it and other ill-gotten material goods after he was arrested. He urged Judge Saris to sentence him on the low end of the agreed-to spectrum, saying he hopes to some day prove to his parents that he loves them as much as they love him and that he wants upon his release to turn his life around.

Gonzalez and co-conspirators hacked into computer systems and stole credit card information from TJX, Office Max, DSW and Dave and Buster's, among other online retail outlets, in one of the largest -- if not the largest -- cybercrime operations targeting that sort of data thus far. They used some of the stolen numbers to remove cash from ATM machines and sold many of the other numbers to other criminals, including those in Eastern Europe. Gonzalez pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in two cases related to those thefts last December and the following day entered a guilty plea in a third case involving hacking into computer networks of Heartland Payment Systems and the Hannaford Supermarkets and 7-Eleven chains, also to steal credit and debit card numbers. The Heartland hacking was particularly damaging because the company processes transactions for major credit and debit card companies Visa and American Express.

He is scheduled to be sentenced in the third case Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Gonzalez was indicted in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, with the cases eventually moved to the same federal court.

After reviewing the cases following established sentencing guidelines that take into account various factors, including the effects of the crimes, the DOJ sought the maximum agreed to under the plea deal in two cases and 20 years in the other. Without that agreement in place, sentencing guidelines that consider previous crimes and the severity of these crimes would call for a maximum of life in prison. However, Judge Saris said that with respect to the two cases in her court, she believes the 20-year sentences are "sufficient" to suit the crimes and also will send a message to would-be cybercriminals, who tend to be young adults, that they could spend much of their youth in prison if they are caught.