According to a news item making the rounds this morning, AT&T may well be on the hook to the tune of 6 billion bucks if the proposed merger with T-Mobile isn’t approved by the FCC. If the feds refuse to allow the $39 billion deal to go through, AT&T will pay out $3 billion in cash, $2 billion in specturm and yet another billion in the form of a roaming agreement. All of this dough will apparently be offered up as a “break up fee,” which likely enticed T-Mobile to agree to this deal in the first place. It’s a win-win situation for the company, after all. Even if they lose, they are still coming out ahead in a very big way.

This high amount proves that AT&T is pretty confident that they can convince regulators to approve the proposed deal. Companies such as Sprint, of course, are vehemently opposed to the sale. The cash portion of this deal alone is worth nearly 8% of the total deal price, and the addition of the assets and services mean that these two companies are smashing previous records when it comes to break up fees.

Your mouth is likely hanging wide open after reading these numbers. Think of it from T-Mobile’s point of view, though. The deal is not just about them making boatloads of money… their services would be drastically improved by joining with AT&T. If the sale doesn’t go through, the company stands to still languish as a lesser provider. The spectrum fee alone will pay for about 10 megahertz of spectrum. This is the absolute minimum required to offer high-speed wireless service to consumers.

That 10 megahertz would more than DOUBLE T-Mobile’s current available specturm for your high-speed services, y’all. The company would then be able to increase data speeds by about 1 1/2 times over what you are used to now. 20 megahertz would increase speeds by nearly four times. In a time when data speeds are important to all of us when choosing a provider, losing out on the chance to merge with AT&T will still allow T-Mobile to become much more competitive – without having to raise their prices in order to do so.

What are your thoughts on the entire proposal? Are you in favor of the deal, or against it? Do you believe that these extremely high break up fees are within the realm of normal these days?

Will AT&T Pay a Break Up Fee to T-Mobile?

The FCC will announce their new emergency warning system later today, which is called the Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN). This new service will let emergency officials send text messages to cellular devices in locations where something may threaten your safety and well-being. Alerts will continue on television and radio stations. However, the FCC recognizes that not all of us even utilize a tv or radio these days. We do, however, have our phones with us nearly every moment of the day. As seen with a similar service in Japan, many lives can be saved with a quick text message warning of imminent danger.

New York should have the free PLAN service in place before the end of this year, along with Washington, D.C. The four major cell providers – AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint – plan to initiate the service well before the April, 2012 deadline around the nation. Some of the phones currently in your possession (including a few iPhones and Android offerings) already have the required circuitry needed to receive the alerts. The iPhones which have the chip in place will need software updates. New AT&T phones due to arrive in October of this year will be ready for the PLAN.

You will be signed up to receive the alerts automagically. You can, however, opt out of messages warning of imminent threat and Amber Alerts if you choose. You can not opt out of the “presidential alerts.” When you think about it, you’ll realize that you likely won’t want to opt out of these types of messages, y’all. If you heard that a huge tornado was on a path to completely miss your area, would you hear a siren or television alert in time when that storm suddenly changes its path? Personally, I’d rather get the notice on my phone instantly, and be ready to take action.

During any type of emergency or terrorist threat, alerts will be initiated by government agencies. As soon as FEMA and PLAN have correctly identified a valid alert, it will be immediately forwarded to all wireless providers. These companies, in turn, will relay the message to you. This may seem like it will take a lot of time, but it is designed to happen nearly instantly. If you are in the affected area, you will receive the message. If you live in that area but are out of town – no message for you. Likewise, people visiting a targeted area will receive the message while they are there if one should be issued.

You may be groaning, thinking that this entire setup sounds like a pain in your side. I’ve heard a few people complain about it already – how “annoying” these texts will be. For one thing… I certainly hope that we aren’t having terrorist actions on a regular basis. The same goes for tornadoes or hurricanes. It’s not like you’ll receive messages every five minutes.

I don’t know about you, but an “annoying” message is not so annoying when it’s saving your life.

Will Your Cell Phone Save Your Life?

The truth? You can’t handle the truth! This quote from the movie “A Few Good Men” pretty much sums up the way I feel about the news flying around the web today regarding AT&T. I’m angry – much as many of you are. Guess what, oh darling AT&T? We already knew you couldn’t handle our iPhone traffic. We’ve known this for nearly four years now. We’ve attempted to tell you. We’ve begged and pleaded. We have whined, nagged and thrown virtual temper tantrums. FINALLY you admit there’s an actual problem. Doing this a long time ago would have gone a long way towards keeping customers happy and loyal to your company.

In today’s FCC filing, the mobile giant admits that it needs help in order to succeed. It clearly lays out the reasoning for wanting to buy out T-Mobile: it needs the additional boost to the network. The company’s mobile data volume jumped by more than 8,000% in the time period from 2007 to 2010. As a result, its network is dealing with capacity constraints far more severe than any other provider. Sure, Verizon has the iPhone now, as well… along with other smartphones. But the sheer volume of this Apple device on AT&Ts network has brought the carrier to its knees.

AT&T claims in the filing that the buyout “will thus benefit consumers by reducing the number of dropped and blocked calls, increasing data speeds, improving in-building coverage, and dramatically expanding deployment of next-generation mobile technology.” With devices such as the iPhone generating more than twenty times the amount of data a conventional smartphone does, the network is clogged on a constant basis. Calls are dropped and lost. Downloads are stalled. Connections aren’t available. It’s a nightmare, and one which AT&T hopes will end with this merger.

The company has said repeatedly that there isn’t time to beef up its network on its own. It takes years to get proper permits and things lined up in order to build even one tower. Imagine the time – and money – it would take to erect enough towers to make the network truly stable again. This merger makes sense for that reason alone – but not everyone agrees.

Sprint is vehemently opposed, for obvious reasons. The merger will undoubtedly make the company an enormous one. Sprint wants the government to put the kibosh on the entire deal, claiming that it will create a “duopoly” which will prevent other companies from being competitive. Sprint also feels that the deal will raise prices through the roof.

As an AT&T customer, I sure won’t mind having a more stable and reliable network. I don’t want to sneer when the Verizon guy asks if I can hear him now. I’d like to simply use my phone anytime – and anywhere – I wish. I can see the point of view of the competing businesses and those opposed. I don’t know… what do you think? Is this a deal that should be allowed? Keep in mind that the data demands on AT&T – and all other companies – will continue to skyrocket over the next few years. Should they be merging together in this manner, or should they be attempting to build more towers?

AT&T Admits It Cannot Handle the Traffic

Apple has asked the FCC to keep information regarding iPhone 4 under wraps for at least 45 days. In the June 4th letter to the FCC, Apple EMC and Wireless Compliance Manager Robert Steinfeld said that “”Although Apple has begun to market the device publicly, these documents reveal technical and design information that has not been publicly disclosed in such marketing and that is protected by Apple as confidential and proprietary secrets.”

Is Apple really hiding anything, or are they simply trying to protect their turf until the device has officially launched? The letter further states that “Apple firmly believes the period of confidentiality requested is necessary to protect the information until the commercial release of the device.” That doesn’t seem so odd to me… until the next paragraph.

In the very next sentence, Robert formally asks the FCC to “indefinitely” withhold several other types of documents, including antenna gain patterns, the operational description and several of the schematics. He claims that these documents “reveal detailed technical and design information that is protected by Apple as confidential and proprietary trade secrets.” Understandable… to a point. The problem with that is the fact that asking the FCC to permanently deny any access to those documents borders on unfair marketplace advantage.

What are your thoughts on this? Should Apple be allowed to have certain pieces of information about the new iPhone blocked from our eyes indefinitely?

What is Apple Hiding with the iPhone 4?

Things sure are shaking up around the Digg offices this week. On his first official day as CEO, Kevin Rose has laid out a few interesting changes which should vastly improve the popular social networking site. The DiggBar we have all come to hate is going to finally disappear in the upcoming version of the site. Additionally, all previously banned domains will have their restrictions removed – not including those sites with malicious intent.

With surprising candor, Rose admitted that the toolbar was a mistake from the beginning. “Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame. It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience.”

Both of these are positive moves for the site in my humble opinion. I have read thousands of rants regarding the toolbar, and I have a feeling that no one is going to miss it. Do you Digg? Are you looking forward to the changes? If so, you can sign up to beta-test the new version now. If you do, let us know what you think!

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Your computer will “Digg” the hottest new software and apps that we’ve placed on our software center.

Goodbye iFrame Toolbar – Hello Sites Now Unbanned on Digg.

I read an excellent article a few moments ago. Julien Genestoux talks about how the Internet is a vast, never-evaporating ocean. All of the content that is constantly pouring into that ocean are raindrops. In the article, he states that “When you’re a search engine, you obviously have an exhaustivity requirement. You can’t really skip on indexing the Indian Ocean. Google sends its bo(a)ts all over the ocean where it’s raining to update its index. However, the ocean is growing so fast that it will eventually become harder and harder to stay exhaustive.”

This has become a real problem for search engines, especially Google. They are trying to solve the problem by changing the way that they crawl and index websites in order to try and keep up with the constantly-changing websites. However, there’s going to come a point when that becomes impossible to do. Genestoux goes on to talk about how Twitter is better than Google when it comes to contextualization. When you search Google, you’re looking for facts. When you search Twitter, you want the context… you need to know what is happening (and being said about that subject) right now!

What are your thoughts? Is there any possible easy answer for search engine companies to attempt to keep on top of all of the data in the ocean?

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Don’t forget to stop by the software center to see what’s new today!

Fact or Context: The Ocean That is the Internet

Startup video site Vevo was created by three of the largest record companies – Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI Music. Warner Music Group is in negotiations to join as well. They chose to start their site based on the huge following that music videos attract on YouTube. YouTube owner Google helped to create the site, believe it or not. In January, the site posted approximately 35 million unique visitors. That’s not too shabby for a site that only launched a few short months ago.

Lady Gaga has emerged over the past year as a music phenom. Whether or not you approve of how she dresses, you have to admit the woman can sing her face off. Her videos account for over a quarter of all views on Vevo! Additionally, if you click an official video of hers on YouTube, you’ll be redirected to Vevo to actually watch the content. That is the kind of partnership I like to see happening.

Vevo may not yet be profitable, but I have no doubt that it won’t take long. They are seeing billions of page views according to the website. Reactions to the site around our community have been very positive from what I’ve seen, and I admit to using it quite often myself! What are your thoughts on Vevo? Have you used the site yet? If you haven’t checked it out yet, I think you’re silly for waiting!

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Don’t forget to stop by our software center to see what great new deals we have in store for you today!

Lady Gaga Tops Vevo

I came across a very interesting post a little while ago, over on Geeks. The author, Will, is asking our opinions as to what place social media should play in our educational systems. Will mentioned that his high school principal has asked students for ideas as to how social media could be incorporated into education in general. He then asks for your input and ideas. I’d love to see a high rate of responses to this thread, which is why I chose to highlight it here.

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter isn’t a fad that will fade away any time soon. It’s important, it’s real, and it’s here to stay. I do have to point out something that Will said at the end of his post. He stated that he is all for social media in the schools, but that he doesn’t want to allow them access to his privacy. That is a common misconception amongst many people today. You need to remember that anything you put online is public. There is no privacy when it comes to places such as Twitter. Once something is online, it’s there for the World to see. Even at a young age, you always need to be cognizant of that fact when posting anything in any place. Things you say and do online can – and WILL – come back to bite you in the proverbial ass someday if you aren’t careful.

What are your thoughts? Instead of posting them here on the blog, please post them over on Geeks as a response to Will’s questions. Let’s see how much community participation we can get on this, and show his principal a thing or two! Will’s post wasn’t the only thought-provoking thing going on in our community today. Hopefully, you haven’t missed out on any of the action!

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Be sure to check out all of the new Windows and mobile software we have today in our downloads center!

What Place Does Social Media Have in our Schools?

Religion is a touchy subject for many, and Google apparently knows that. If you Google the words Christianity is, you’ll see some interesting results. The second one asks “Is Christianity Absurd?”, while a few results down, you’ll see a proclamation of “Christianity is Stupid”. This holds true for many different religions when you Google the same types of phrases.

However, you won’t see sites or results like this when you search for things related to Islam. Google is apparently blocking all search suggestions like this for Islam, but why? Are they removing any chances of someone being offended by a search suggestion? Are they covering their proverbial rear ends?

Have we really reached a stage where search results have to be filtered, due to the fear that someone might be offended enough to start a war? Do we need to censor virtually everything we say and do in order to keep the peace in this World? What are your thoughts?

What else have you read online today that is interesting or intriguing?

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Be sure to check out all of the newest and hottest pieces of software available today in our downloads center.

All Search Terms Should be Treated Equally

This is Matt Bebich’s submission for the HP Magic Giveaway. Feel free to leave comments for this article as you see fit – your feedback is certainly welcomed! If you’d like to submit your own how-to, what-is, or top-five list, you can send it to me. Views and opinions of this writer are not necessarily my own:

The FCC wants to give “free Internet” to everyone, so you can connect from anywhere. It would be transmitted just like cell phone companies transmit their Internet service. The download speeds would go up to 700kbs, which is considered high-speed Internet. There will be no porn or illegal torrents and software like Limewire. Cell phone companies do not want this to happen because they would rather have people pay for their way over priced slow Internet. Places like Starbucks will also suffer from this, you see all the people at Starbucks using their Internet, which is overpriced [opinion].

Internet should be a free service – a lot of good comes from the Internet. People wouldn’t have to go all the way to the local bookstore to get a book. A lot of people don’t have Internet service. If they want Internet, they get dial-up (which no one could do anything with dial-up). You can’t even load a webpage with dial-up without waiting 50 minutes. Don’t even try to watch a video – you will have to pause it and wait ’til it finishes 20 minutes later… then watch it. That’s why I think the majority of people don’t have Internet, and why it should be free. Why should a hand full of companies control the Internet the companies don’t make the Internet the Internet – we do. We deserve to have a option for free Internet. I would really like to see this happen with two conditions:

1. They need to have good security for it. They need to encrypt the data. If they don’t have really good encryption for it, I would be very scared to use it.
2. I don’t want the government seeing everything we are looking at on the Internet. Not saying I’m doing anything illegal, I just don’t think it would be right for them to intrude on my privacy.

It might happen, but major companies will hate this. They want to overcharge for their Internet service – and they don’t even give what they promise. They say you have unlimited service, then right when your downloading something: “Oh, Dang – throttled!” Even if the free Internet isn’t as fast, at least you can connect to it from anywhere – we all want that. At least it will be better then dial-up and a lot other paid services that just rip you off.

This plan would get Internet to rural areas, so everybody could be on the Internet. It would benefit schools that can’t get wireless Internet access. People wouldn’t have to pay for the cell phone companies’ Internet service (that gets “okay” service and okay speeds). For the price that we pay for it, we should get great speeds and great service. Free Internet is the way of the future and it is going to happen sooner then later. It’s just the matter of time and money.

What is The FCC’s Free Internet Plan?

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – The idea of Network Neutrality is very good… in theory. Some companies, however, don’t want Net Neutrality

Network Neutrality refers to a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. When you hear the word neutral, you tend to think of equal opportunities for everyone, right? Not so in the case of many companies. They WANT to favor certain customers, and be able to allocate more bandwidth to them.

Net Neutrality is anti-consumer. It promotes the best interest of sellers by lowering their cost of distribution. Broadband service providers would be the ones to gain the most from ending Net Neutrality because they could collect fees from content providers.

Google has gone to the FCC in favor of Net Neutrality. “The Federal Communications Commission must be given power to prevent broadband providers from doing things like charging content providers extra for the privilege of faster delivery or other preferential treatment.”, according to a CNET article on the Senate decision to veto this bill.

Other than this, consumers have really no special interest groups fighting for Net Neutrality. I do… in my own boisterous, opinionated way. I firmly believe that each and every person should have equal opportunities when surfing the Internet. Why should it always come down to large companies, and those with deep pockets?

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What is Net Neutrality?

New rules could rock wireless world, literally:

Coming soon could be a wireless broadband world in which consumers get to pick any smartphone or other device and load any software on it – not have to take what the wireless carrier wants to sell.

Dude. DUDE?! This can’t be true. I simply can’t believe that this is actually (possibly) happening. Of course, I’d imagine that Apple’s lobby won’t let it fly – but if they really, truly cared about users – as they claim – they won’t have a problem in opening up a little bit more and playing along with the rest of the consumer electronics world. The carriers and phone manufacturers must become more interoperable.

Under Martin’s proposal, to be circulated in the agency as early as Tuesday, mobile services in these airwaves would have to allow consumer choice.

They’re not going to like it. Then again, we’ve never liked them… so turnabout is fair play.

Some handset makers actually strip out Wi-Fi features at the request of U.S.-based carriers loath to allow any feature that could let users sidestep their fee-based services and applications. “I am concerned that we are seeing some innovations being rolled out more slowly here than we are in other parts of the world,” Martin said.

What?! They actually harm consumers, while at the same time claiming to help them?! Are you serious!? They would rather gouge us with needless services and taxes than provide us with stellar service and support?! They would rather lock us into contracts than let us flow freely throughout the galaxy?! You’re serious!? Where the hell is my interrobang key!?

The Best FCC Regulation, Ever