Skip to content

Press Reports

FAA: Operator who flew drones in Bighorn Fire airspace won’t be prosecuted

By Tony Davis

Arizona Daily Star

The Federal Aviation Administration decided not to prosecute a person suspected of flying a drone illegally into Bighorn Fire-fighting airspace because it couldn’t prove he or she was the pilot, a spokesman said this week.

The decision illustrates the difficulties in proving identities of those who remotely operate unmanned drones. And the lack of prosecution frustrates both a University of Arizona official involved in studying the wildfire and a private drone operator. While not criticizing the FAA, they said that when a drone operator gets away with illegal behavior, it will embolden others to follow the same course.

“I get that it’s hard (to prove). Some effort should be put into technology to identify the individuals that are invading this airspace at critical times,” said Ben Wilder, director of UA’s Tumamoc Hill Desert Laboratory and an executive producer of a recent webinar series on the Bighorn Fire. “Because it’s proven that if the Forest Service can’t get at their assets at that moment, then the fire gets an upper hand on them. It’s all so time sensitive.”

The presence of at least two drones in the Pusch Ridge area forced firefighters to suspend aerial operations at a crucial stage in the Bighorn Fire in early June on at least two occasions, Forest Service officials said at the time. Those suspensions slowed the service’s ability to battle the blaze just as it was getting underway, authorities have said.

The fire started on about 200 acres on June 5 but spread to 2,500 acres by June 8 after two drone incursions occured, Forest Service officials said at the time. The blaze burned 120,000 acres in the Catalina Mountains by the time the Forest Service declared it fully contained on July 23.

“We conducted a thorough investigation into this incident. However, we were not able to conclusively determine that the suspected drone operator was the pilot” who violated FAA flight restrictions in the wildfire area, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said Thursday in an email to the Star.

“That said, we did counsel the drone pilot, both orally and in writing, about the importance of not flying drones near wildfires and observing any (flight restrictions) that are in place,” he said.

The agency declined to provide the person’s name or gender because it didn’t prosecute.

Gregor declined to elaborate on why the FAA couldn’t prove the drone operator it investigated and interviewed was the one involved in the airspace intrusion.

The aircraft was licensed with the FAA, as legally required, he said.

“Speaking generally, the more concrete evidence we have, the easier it is to put together an enforcement case. Concrete evidence can include photos, videos, eyewitness reports, an admission by a pilot, and data and other records,” Gregor said.

The FAA didn’t specify a date on which this drone violation occurred. But the Forest Service issued news releases saying that two such incidents occured on June 5 — the day the fire was sparked by lightning — and on June 8, a day in which the fire was spreading rapidly.

KVOA-TV reported at the time that a third illegal drone overflight occurred around then. The Forest Service seized two drone aircraft and the cases were referred to the FAA and FBI, the TV station reported.

One drone case was turned over to the Forest Service’s law enforcement office, Coronado National Forest Supervisor Kerwin Dewberry told the Star on Thursday. The service’s public information staff didn’t respond to requests from the Star for more information on that investigation. Previously, two national forest spokeswomen had said drone-related cases had been turned over to the FBI.

Brooke Brennan, an FBI spokeswoman in Phoenix, would not comment on the drone case, saying, “As a matter of course, the FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.”

Dewberry said one drone craft burned up in the wildfire but that he didn’t know what happened to the second one.

Drone intrusions were a real issue during the fire’s early days, shutting down the firefighting “airshow,” said Steve Miranda, a Forest Service aviation staff officer.

“That airshow, if it goes away, it makes it more challenging for firefighters on the ground to be successful. They need that watter. … In May, June and July it was the hottest May, June and July on record,” Miranda said in an Aug. 13 webinar sponsored by the UA’s Arizona Institute for Resilience and Arizona Public Media, among other entities.

Incidents like this “quite rightfully” create a public and press perception that is negative about drones, said Mike Overstreetm a Tucson-area TV producer who uses drones in about 10% of his productions.

“Because of these idiots who go out and do things dangerously, fly over fires, fly at night and hinder law enforcement, it gives the whole genre of drone operations a very negative tone,” Overstreet said. “Whereas, in fact, drones are a very safe way to view things that cannot be viewed in normal circumstances.”

Drones are dangerous because they can fall on people or structures and hurt them, Overstreet said.

“More importantly, they are a hazard to low-flying aircraft, and over a fire is where you have, by design, low-flying aircraft,” he said. “You put a tanker that is flying at 500 feet, and then you have some overzealous drone operator who wants to be at 500 feet. Then the drone becomes dangerous to aircraft. The consequences are unimaginable.

“We really need to find ways to prosecute more of these people who cause problems. The problem is, of course, finding them,” Overstreet said.

It’s quite frustrating but understandable that authorities would have trouble tracking down the drone operator, said Matthew Grossman, a licensed, commercial drone pilot and a private airplane pilot. He is active in issues on Mount Lemmon, where the Bighorn Fire raged.

Drone registration numbers are only required to be posted in such a way that they can be read if the drone is retrieved (usually after a crash). They’re not like a license plate or tail number on a manned aircraft which can be read with binoculars, said Grossman. He is the Mount Lemmon Business Economic Association’s treasurer and a Mount Lemmon Homeowners Association board member.

While “a token prosecution” can be useful in getting the word out to drone operators about their practice’s risks, the best outcome of catching someone violating the firefighting airspace would be to file claims against the operator’s insurance company, he said, to help offset the firefighting costs and losses suffered by businesses evacuated.

Contact reporter Tony Davis at [email protected] or 806-7746. On Twitter@tonydavis987.

Industry News & Notes

Arizona Daily Star
February 21, 2006

Tucson

Tucson-based Simply Bits, LLC has acquired the assets of AtmosNet, a Tucson wireless Internet provider. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is part of Simply Bits’ local high-speed wireless network, which is based on Motorola’s Canopy Advantage Network technology.

Also, Matthew J. Grossman, formerly general manager and network engineer for AtmosNet, has been named network engineer at Simply Bits, which has offices at 5215 N. Sabino Canyon Road.

Local Web provider purchases bigger rival

By David Wichner
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

By sheer numbers, Tucson is losing another local Internet service provider to industry consolidation with UltraSW.com’s buyout of the larger DakotaCom.net.

But the combination of the two locally owned companies will create a “bigger, better and faster” DakotaCom.net, with the planned addition of new services such as Internet-based telephone service, the company’s new owner says.

“Our vision for the future is that connectivity — getting people on the Internet — is just part of the thing,” said Bill Bosmeny, who started UltraSW.com in 1999.

The purchase of the 10-year-old DakotaCom.net by UltraSW.com, announced Wednesday, creates a new company with about 6,500 small-business and residential subscribers, including about 5,500 DakotaCom.net subscribers.

Terms of the deal between the two privately owned companies were not disclosed.

The combined company will operate as DakotaCom.net, and pricing for current customers will not change as a result of the deal, Bosmeny said.

Like many local ISPs, the company focuses on small-business services including high-speed Web access and Web hosting, though it also provides residential dial-up modem and digital subscriber line, or DSL, service.

All sales, customer service, and technical support will be handled by the existing DakotaCom.net team of 14 employees, who will be retained with UltraSW’s staff of three, he added.

DakotaCom.net provides seven-day-a-week tech support, 7 a.m.-11 p.m.

Besides Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol, or VoIP, service, Bosmeny said the company plans new security features and online backup products to lure customers away from national providers.

Pam Crim, who took over DakotaCom from her ex-husband in 1997, is not involved in the new company. Crim said she hadn’t been actively looking to sell the company, though she had gotten several buyout offers in recent years.

Bosmeny had approached her about working together in the past, Crim said, but when he came looking to buy the company last year, the deal felt right.

“I liked the fact he was a local person, and he really liked our service,” she said.

Crim, 48, said stepping away from the company will allow her to spend more time with her 12-year-old son, Christopher, but she may not sit still for long.

“I’m going to take a little time off and decide what I can do,” she said. “I think I’m too young to retire.”

DakotaCom’s sale is the latest in several changes in the local ISP industry in recent years:

In 2001, StarNet, the online service of the Arizona Daily Star – once the area’s biggest dial-up ISP – sold its 9,600 dial-up accounts to national provider EarthLink.

In 2003, DakotaCom.net bought about 1,100 DSL accounts from Tucson Newspapers’ FastTucson.net online service.

In mid-2004, locally based The River Internet Access Co. was purchased by MobilePro Corp., a wireless and broadband telecommunications company based in Bethesda, Md.

In January, local fixed-wireless Internet access provider Broadband Labs Inc. was acquired by Simply Bits LLC, a wireless ISP formed last year.

Others in the local industry said they weren’t surprised by the DakotaCom deal, and some said it makes sense.

“The thing that’s driving this is the same thing as always – economies of scale,” said Marcus Needham, vice president of operations for The River, which has about 15,000 customers in Arizona and Washington.

But consolidation need not always damage the local industry. Needham noted that since The River was acquired, local operations have remained essentially the same, and the company has added a dozen employees in its call center to handle customer service for other divisions of parent MobilePro.

Other observers said the deal was a good fit for both companies, which generally have enjoyed a good reputation in the local industry.

“We at Login are glad to see consolidation among the locals, to make them more competitive with the nationals,” said Matthew Grossman, network engineer with Login Inc., which provides high-level Internet backbone connectivity to local ISPs including DakotaCom.net.

Contact reporter David Wichner at 573-4181 or [email protected].

Thousands find Net access is slow or even impossible

By Enric Volante
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Thousands of Southern Arizona computer users found getting on the Internet was slow or impossible early Wednesday.

The problems affected government workers at the city of Tucson and University of Arizona, among other places, said Matthew Grossman, president of TeleKachina Inc., a consultant for local Internet service providers.

Internet connection provided by Internet Commerce & Communications, a Denver-based firm, failed about midnight, cutting off or reducing service by some local providers, he said.

People could not see Web pages at StarNet, the online service of the Arizona Daily Star, for about 10 hours, said David Reed, director of StarNet.

StarNet, which gets about 50,000 unique visitors on a Wednesday, was restored about 9:30 a.m. when StarNet arranged an Internet connection with a different company.

The UA, which has about 8,000 employees, told them Wednesday to expect 48 hours of slow Internet access while the university, too, finds new service, said spokeswoman Sharon Kha.

Th UA relied on its other Internet connection through Qwest, as it scrambled to replace IC&C, she said.

Attempts to reach IC&C officials in Denver and Tucson were unsuccessful.

Grossman said the problem began when IC&C, which in July filed for bankruptcy reorganization, sent a team Monday from Denver to Tucson to access its computer system. When the team tried to access a network router to retrieve passwords, the attempt failed and service crumbled.

“It was like trying to break into a building with a torch and you actually burn the building down,” he said.

He said service was reduced or knocked out for several local Internet providers, affecting customers as far as southern Pinal and Santa Cruz counties.

Contact Enric Volante at 573-4129 or at
[email protected].

Making a Mint on Wallstreet.com

by Craig Bicknell

3:00 a.m. 23.Apr.99.PDT

A Venezuelan online casino doled out more than US$1 million to buy Wall Street — dot com.

Players Sportsbook and Casino, based on tiny Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela, had the US$1.03-million winning bid in an auction for the rights to the wallstreet.com domain.

“I’m shocked that this kind of value exists for a domain name, but I’m overjoyed, too,” said Ehud Gavron, owner of the flashy Web address since 1994. Gavron, the 32-year-old president of a Tucson, Arizona-based Internet service provider, will split the loot with two other co-owners.

Players Sportsbook outbid a slew of competitors, including several financial firms, in a blind auction run by broker New Commerce Communications. The bidding started at $300,000, moved slowly up to $500,000, then made a sudden leap to seven figures, according to Tom Millitzer, president of New Commerce.

“That’s a pretty aggressive price to pay for 13 letters of the alphabet,” he said. “$97,000 a letter is a damn good bid.”

The piece of prime Net real estate was worth the price and more, said Players Sportsbook.

“We plan on making a return on this investment in six months,” said Patrick Carter, a manager at Simpson Day Limited, the corporate owner of the casino.

The plan is to set up a Web site that lets people place wagers on stock movements without actually investing in stocks themselves.

“We’ll say, where do you think the stock will close at the end of the day, where do you think it will close at the end of the month?” said Carter. “You’ll be able to bet on stocks, options, futures. It’s already been done with great success in the UK. Now we’ll bring it to America.”

In this market, that’s a bit like gambling squared. Whether it proves popular remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the sellers have some winnings to spend.

“I think I’ll fix up the kitchen and put a Jacuzzi in the back yard,” said Gavron.

“I’m planning on reinvesting it in the stock market,” said co-owner Matt Grossman, a 24-year-old Unix administrator who followed his parents to Tucson from Albany, New York, five years ago. “I’ll be blunt — I came out here for free rent.”

For its part, New Commerce Communications will have some hot new domains to auction off.

“We’re getting lots of calls from people looking for our services,” said Millitzer.

That has Net industry experts a touch concerned.

“I’m sorry to see domains go for these prices,” said Ellen Rony, author of the Domain Name Handbook. “It really fuels the domain name-speculation fire.”

Copyright 1994-99 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.

Million-dollar name — Wallstreet.com purchased by online casino

“Breaking a million dollars for thirteen letters and one dot – that’s a pretty good value.”

Tom Millitzer, owner of New Commerce Communications

By Joe Salkowski
StarNet Dispatches
Wed Apr 21 15:24:18 1999

An online casino is betting $1.03 million that the Internet address www.wallstreet.com will attract new customers to its web site.

Players Sportsbook and Casino purchased the name at an online auction Tuesday from three men, including one who claimed the address nearly five years ago. The casino hopes to use the name to offer wagers on the stock market’s performance, said Tom Millitzer, owner of the company that auctioned off the name.

“We’re pleased it sold close to where we thought the market value was,” said Millitzer, owner of New Commerce Communications, a company that usually brokers purchases of Internet service providers. “Breaking a million dollars for thirteen letters and one dot – that’s a pretty good value.”

The name was registe red in September 1994 by Ehud Gavron, part-owner of Tucson-based Internet service provider Aces Research. Gavron used the name to provide an easy-to-remember e-mail address for Eric Wade, his high school buddy and a stock broker at the time. Wade now work s as vice president of marketing for Really Easy Internet in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Matt Grossman, a project director for StarNet, purchased a share of the name from both men in 1996 by trading them the rights to www.tucson.net, an address Gavron i ntended to develop. Neither StarNet, The Arizona Daily Star nor Tucson Newspapers has any stake in www.wallstreet.com.

The three men will split the proceeds of the sale, which will be finalized either today or tomorrow.

“I’m happy with how it t urned out,” Grossman said. Though Millitzer had speculated the sale might break the record $3.35 million that Compaq paid for the rights to the address www.altavista.com, Grossman says he didn’t know what to expect.

“I didn’t walk into this with any preconceived values,” he said, “because nobody’s every really sold a name in quite the same way before.”

Players Sportsbook and Casino is run by Players Only, a company based on Margarita Island in Venezuela, according to information submitted to Net work Solutions, the Internet’s domain name registrar. The site’s owners refused to comment on the sale.

Grossman and his partners turned down an offer of $100,000 cash plus $900,000 worth of stock in a company that would have sold e-mail addresses e nding “@wallstreet.com.” The company, which Grossman declined to name, would have required them to hold their shares for 180 days after its initial public offering.

No serious bids materialized from brokerage houses, investment banks or other Wall St reet businesses, perhaps because the auction was held online, Grossman said.

“If a major auction house had held an in-person auction in New York City, we might have had more large financial companies getting involved,” he said. “But there’s no way I can be disappointed with this outcome.”

Links

www.wallstreet.com
Players Sportsbook and Casino

www.wallstreet.com is paved with gold

By Joe Salkowsky
StarNet Dispatches

Matthew Grossman’s domain name speculation has netted him a free vacuum, several six-packs of soda and a case of ice cream packed in dry ice and shipped to his Arizona home in the dead of summer.

But those prizes, collected in return for surrendering the rights to dirtdevil.com, 7up.com and Breyers.com, pale in comparison to the bounty Grossman could collect from the auction of his most valuable Net name: www.wallstreet.com.

The name, owned by Grossman and two other men, will be auctioned off Tuesday by New Commerce Communications, a company that usually brokers purchases of Internet Service providers. The minimum bid: $300,000.

“It’s the most recognizable and memorable ftnancial domaln out there,” said Grossman, who works as a project director at StarNet. “The financial industry is obviously our target market, and they generally have marketing dollars to spend.”‘

Grossman shares ownership of the name with Ehud Gavron, part owner of Tucson-based Internet service provider Aces Research; and Erlc Wade, vice president of marketing for Really Easy Internet, an Albuquerque ISP.

Neither StarNet, The Arizona Daily Star nor Tucson Newspapers has any stake in the name.

Gavron registered the name in September 1994 on behalf of Wade, his high school buddy. He did it to provide a memorable e-mail address for his friend, who was working as a stockbroker at the time.

“I thought that sounded pretty good – [email protected] – and it was still available,” Gavron said. Gavron signed up for the domain under the name “Wall Street Consultants Group” because Network Solutions, the company that issues most Web addresses, wouldn’t give .com domains to individuals.

Though the company never really existed, Gavron and Wade entertained thoughts of launching some sort of financial service site under their catchy domain name.

“We just never put any real effort into it,” Gavron sald. The pair gave Grossman one-third ownership of the name in 1996 in exchange for the rights to www.tucson.net, an address Gavron wanted but has not yet developed.

At the time, Grossman said. he figured he could help them run whatever site they planned to locate at wallstreet.com.

Later, though, Grossman began planning for the possible sale of the name. He made a few calls to ad agencies and financial services companies, but concluded it would be best to auction off the name.

He also began logging how many people tried to visit ‘www.wallstreet.com’ by typing the address lnto their Web browsers; the number ranged from 1,000 to 3,000 or more each day.

An unsolicited offer is made

Gavron and Wade say they didn’t seriously consider selling the domain name until December, when the operator of a porn site offered them $250,000 for it.

“I wish I could say I had that kind of forethought (about the name’s value),” Gavron said.

“But it wasn’t until someone offered us $250,000 that I thought it could be worth even more.”

Tom Millitzer, owner of the company auctioning off the name, says he’s already rejected pre-auction bids for more than $300,000. He believes the final bid could exceed the record $3.35 million Compaq paid for the rights to www.altavista.com.

“What you need in today’s society is something that is known, something you can remember as you’re driving down the road. When you hear it on the radio, you don’t have to get out a piece of paper to write it down,” Millitzer said.

“I don”t know how you can have a name better than that if you’re on Wallstreet.”

Indeed, the name might be the most valuable domain name still held by private individuals looking to sell. While domain name squatters have snatched up thousands of names that might be marketable, none is likely to be quite so appealing to so many companies that have so much money.

The name www.wallstreet.com also is safe from the copyright and trademark enforcement lawsuits that invariably surface when some joker registers an address like www.pepsi.net. Nobody owns Wall Street but the taxpayers of New York City, and so far they haven’t decided to sue.

“I challenge anybody out there to find a name as versatile and that has as much instant meaning to everyone in America that’s still available,” Wade said.

“We waited long enough; if this is a gold rush, then we’re the tortoises instead of the hare.”

Wade says he’ll contribute some proceeds of the sale of www.wallstreet.com to a charity – run by his wife – that provides birthday parties for homeless children.

Gavron, meanwhile, plans to remodel his kitchen and install a hot tub in his back yard.

Grossman may have the most appropriate plans for his money: “It’s probably going to end up in the stock market.”

StarNet Dispatches is the online magazine of StarNet.

Bullish on wallstreet.com — Domain name owners bought low, hoping to sell high

“I challenge anybody out there to find a name as versatile and that has as much instant meaning to everyone in America that’s still available.”

Eric Wade, co-owner of wallstreet.com

By Joe Salkowski
StarNet Dispatches
Tue Apr 13 00:31:22 1999

Matthew Grossman’s domain name speculation has netted him a free vacuum, several six-packs of soda and a case of ice cream packed in dry ice and shipped to his Arizona home in the dead of summer.

But those prizes, collected in return for surrendering the rights to dirtdevil.com, 7up.com and Breyers.com, pale in comparison to the bounty Grossman could collect from the upcoming auction of his most valuable Net name: www.wallstreet.com.

The name, owned by Grossman and two other men, will be auctioned off April 20 by New Commerce Communications, a company that usually brokers purchases of Internet service providers. The minimum bid: $300,000.

“It’s the most recognizable and memorable financial domain out there,” said Grossman, who works as a project director at StarNet. “The financial industry is obviously our target market, and they generally have marketing dollars to spend.”

Grossman shares ownership of the name with Ehud Gavron, part owner of Tucson-based Internet service provider Aces Research, and Eric Wade, vice president of marketing for Really Easy Internet, an Albuquerque ISP. Neither StarNet, The Arizona Daily Star or Tucson Newspapers has any stake in the name.

Gavron registered the name in September 1994 on behalf of Wade, his high school buddy. He did it to provide a memorable e-mail address for his friend, who was working as a stock broker at the time.

“I thought that sounded pretty good – [email protected] – and it was still available,” Gavron said.

Gavron signed up for the domain under the name “Wall Street Consultants Group” because Network Solutions, the company that issues most Web addresses, wouldn’t give .com domains to individuals. Though the company never really existed, Gavron and Wade entertained thoughts of launching some sort of financial services site under their catchy domain name.

“We just never put any real effort into it,” Gavron said.

The pair gave Grossman one-third ownership of the name in 1996 in exchange for the rights to www.tucson.net, an address Gavron wanted but has not yet developed. At the time, Grossman said, he figured he could help them run whatever site they planned to locate at wallstreet.com

Later, though, Grossman began planning for the possible sale of the name. He made a few calls to ad agencies and financial services companies, but concluded it would be best to auction off the name. He also began logging how many people tried to visit “www.wallstreet.com” by typing the address into their Web browsers; the number ranged from 1,000 to 3,000 or more each day.

Gavron and Wade say they didn’t seriously consider selling the domain name until December, when the operator of a porn site offered them $250,000 for it.

“I wish I could say I had that kind of forethought (about the name’s value),” Gavron said. “But it wasn’t until someone offered us $250,000 that I thought it could be worth even more.”

Tom Millitzer, owner of the company auctioning off the name, says he’s already rejected pre-auction bids for more than $300,000. He believes the final bid could exceed the record $3.35 million Compaq paid for the rights to www.altavista.com.

“What you need in today’s society is something that is known, something you can remember as you’re driving down the road; when you hear it on the radio, you don’t have to get out a piece of paper to write it down,” Millitzer said. “I don’t know how you can have a name better than that if you’re on Wall Street.”

Indeed, the name might be the most valuable domain name still held by private individuals looking to sell. While domain name squatters have snatched up thousands of names that might be marketable, none of them is likely to be quite so appealing to so many companies that have so much money.

The name www.wallstreet.com also is safe from the copyright and trademark enforcement lawsuits that invariably surface when some joker registers an address like www.pepsi.net. Nobody owns Wall Street but the taxpayers of New York City, and so far they haven’t decided to sue.

“I challenge anybody out there to find a name as versatile and that has as much instant meaning to everyone in America that’s still available,” Wade said. “We waited long enough; if this is a gold rush, then we’re the tortoises instead of the hare.”

Wade says he’ll contribute some proceeds of the sale of www.wallstreet.com to a charity – run by his wife – that provides birthday parties for homeless children. Gavron, meanwhile, plans to remodel his kitchen and install a hot tub in his backyard.

Grossman may have the most appropriate plans for his money: “It’s probably going to end up in the stock market.”

Links

wallstreet.com
New Commerce Communications

Speeding up modems – Phone connection can be hindrance

Monday, 12 October 1998
STAR TECH 6E
By David Wichner
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

When folks in the Research Triangle Park area near Raleigh, N.C., found themselves plodding along on the Internet at subpar speeds with their 56K modems, John Powell heard their complaints.

Powell, a network systems engineer for 3Com Corp., flew in from his Rolling Meadows, Ill., office to get a bead on the glitch afflicting people using the company’s US Robotics 56K modems.

“If people are having problems, I hear about it,” said Powell, who fixed the problem after narrowing it down to a certain type of phone-company switch.

Web surfers across the nation are enjoying faster connection speeds thanks to the advent of 56K modems, which can reach speeds of 53 kilobits per second.

But even after nearly two years on the market and the recent rollout of modems supporting a standard (called V.90) that unified two competing 56K formats, 56K is far from ubiquitous.

Internet newsgroups are aflame with complaints over poor 56K performance.

Makers of 56K modems last year had to defend themselves against a lawsuit claiming that 56K modems were systematically misrepresented as to the speeds they can achieve.

And in Tucson, a recent newspaper column on 56K modem problems evoked several hundred responses from area residents stuck with speeds as low as 19 kilobits per second on their much-vaunted 56K rigs.

The problem, in many cases, is the local telephone lines.

Modem makers have squeezed about as much bandwidth, or carrying capacity, as they can out of standard telephone lines.

But for 56K technology to work, phone lines have to support robust, low-noise connections.

Trouble comes in two flavors: old and new.

In some areas of the country, older lines create poor connections, said Kerry Verbanic, a business-development manager with modem-maker Diamond Multimedia Systems of Vancouver, Wash.

“In pocketed areas, there are lots of people who can’t get higher than 19 baud (1.9 kilobits per second),” Verbanic said. “Back East, it’s tough because the phone lines are old.”

Neighborhood phone systems in most cases were built only for voice transmissions, which require relatively low bandwidth, or carrying capacity.

U S West is required by state regulations to provide bandwidth of just 2.4 kbps on its standard phone lines.

As parts of the New West grew at a breakneck pace in the past two decades, U S West in many cases installed devices called digital loop carriers that allowed the phone company to split off more individual phone lines from each line leading from a central-office switch.

“The carrier is the quickest way to get the most out of additional lines,” said Bill Stack, Arizona general manager for U S West.

To accomplish that multiplication, the carriers take analog phone signals and covert them to digital. Closer to the customer, the signal is converted back to analog to be piped into the home.

Unfortunately, creating more than one conversion from analog to digital or vice versa usually pinches off the bandwidth available to modems to 28.8 kbps or less.

“They (U S West engineers) never anticipated the invention of the 56K modem,” U S West senior product developer Glenn Lebrun said.

No one knows for sure how many households can’t get 56K.

Research conducted by 3Com/US Robotics in conjunction with Bellcore, the regional phone companies’ research arm, showed that about 5 percent of U.S. phone lines would never get 56K, Powell said.

In many cases, digital loop carriers are to blame. Devices called load coils, used to clean up voice transmissions where neighborhood lines are stretched long distances, also can nix 56K connections.

But other line problems that wouldn’t affect voice communications can cut modem speeds.

George Feathers, a retired radar engineer, has never been able to get 56K speeds out of his US Robotics modem at his home near Golf Links and Harrison roads.

After spending hours on the phone to his modem maker and his Internet provider, America Online, Feathers had just about resigned himself to the 24- to 26-kbps speeds he had been getting.

But after noticing a noisy connection while in voice mode, Feathers finally called U S West to check his lines last month.

A phone company technician found two bad connections in the line leading to his house from the alley – including a spliced line lying on the ground.

With a temporary line in place, Feathers is now getting between 32 and 36 kbps, and he hopes he will be able to reach into the 40-kbps range when his permanent line is installed.

That would be a welcome step toward the 50-kbps-plus speeds Feathers has experienced on his son’s home computer in Orange County, Calif.

“The screens just about come up instantly,” he said of his son’s connection.

U S West’s Stack said the company does not send a technician to service a phone line unless there is evidence that voice quality is degraded, noting that phone customers are paying for only a “voice grade” line.

Often, wiring inside the home is to blame, 3Com’s Powell said.

In some homes, poor quality wire and wiring schemes that place data line at the end of a lineup of outlets can seriously degrade modem speeds, he said. Problems with Caller ID and touch-tone dialing can often signal wiring problems.

Powell recommends using a line test available through 3Com’s Web site (http://www.3com.com/56k/need4_56k/linetest.html) to test if a line will support 56K.

High-speed options

For those who can’t get 56K connections, options are limited but improving:

* So-called “dual analog” or “bonded” modems, which combine two regular phone lines to double connection speeds, debuted late last year.

Diamond Multimedia offers its “Shotgun” dual-line technology in its SupraSonic modems.

The modems require an extra phone line (another $10 per month from U S West), and Internet Service providers charge for an extra connection.

But a dual-analog modem can be a viable alternative where 56K won’t work and emerging high-speed lines aren’t available or are cost-prohibitive, Diamond’s Verbanik said.

However, many ISPs – including StarNet, Tucson’s biggest provider – don’t support dual-analog modems.

Matthew Grossman, StarNet network operations project leader, said the cost of the extra dial-up connections don’t support dual-analog service.

But Verbanic said the dual-line technology can be cost-effective because the modems use the second line only when needed for added bandwidth.

* Digital Subscriber Line service, which offers basic connections of 256 kbps for $40 per month, is offered by U S West and through StarNet and The River in Tucson. Due to equipment limitations, it is currently available to about 20 percent of Tucson-area households.

But U S West is upgrading the area’s 18 central-office switches and adding other equipment that may push the qualification rate up to 60 percent within a couple of years, Stack said.

DSL also is relatively costly – about $110 for activation and $149 for optional home installation, and $40 per month in addition to Internet access fees. U S West currently is offering free DSL modems (regularly $300) through Oct. 31.

* DirecPC, a product of Hughes Network systems, employs mini-satellite dishes to reach connection speeds of 400 kbps (downstream; a regular phone line is used for sending data to the Internet).

* Cable-TV provider Cox Communications offers cable-modem service, providing connections of up to 1 megabits (about 1,000 kilobits) per second, in Phoenix. The service isn’t expected to be rolled out in the Tucson area for at least a year.

Internet’s great-grandfather – radio – finds online audience in Webcasting

Monday, 20 July 1998
STAR TECH 6E
By Timothy Gassen
THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

The irony must evoke laughter from even the most advanced technocrats: A creaky, antiquated form of mass communication – radio – is the hottest “new” media on the Internet.

Need to hear a Cubs baseball game that’s only broadcast in Chicago? Want to listen to an online station of your favorite ’60s British Invasion hits? No problem – dial it up on the Web.

Local over-the-airwaves radio is now suddenly doubling as global Internet radio. Internet-only Webcasts also offer reams of specialized programming choices.

Setting up a Web radio station is affordable and easy, says Matthew Grossman, project leader for network operations for Starnet, the online service of The Arizona Daily Star.

All one needs, Grossman says, is a fast, continuous Internet hook-up and the necessary media posting server software, which can be downloaded from a place like RealAudio.

“A live, analog signal (such as a radio broadcast) can be digitized by your computer, then sent through the server to the Web,” he says. (Another, more costly, option is hiring a commercial Internet media service that specializes in hosting audio programs.)

Casting the Web

“Streaming audio” is the crux of a Web radio broadcast. Audio is streamed – sent and collected a portion at a time – to a listener’s computer. The computer then plays the collected (“buffered”) audio, downloading more of it as the “Webcast” continues.

StarNet is currently using this system to feed a streaming program of National Weather Service audio through KVOA-TV’s Web site (www.KVOA.com).

“The free (Webcasting) software allows up to 60 simultaneous users to access the streaming audio. If you need more access for more than that, then RealAudio licenses commercial software,” Grossman says. RealAudio is one of the most popular streaming audio programs – for both Webcasters and listeners – but several others are also commercially available.

Thousands of radio stations have used the technology to jump on the Webcast bandwagon, including Tucson’s KLPX-FM.

Larry Miles, operations manager for KFMA-FM and KTKT-AM, and program director for KLPX-FM, says, “We’re Webcasting KLPX 24 hours a day (http://monoxide.com), and we’ll continue to explore Webcasting.

“The ratings benefit for being on the Web is virtually zero for us – Webcasting for us is being hip and forward-moving in the world of technology. We want to be on that cutting edge,” he says.

Miles has seen positive response from KLPX’s online service. “We get e-mail all the time from Tucsonans who travel and who listen to KLPX from out of town,” he says.

Scratching the surface

Putting an exact commercial value on such a new technology, though, is difficult.

“At this moment, Webcasting of local radio fits in for national advertisers like McDonalds, Jiffy Lube or Coca-Cola,” he says, “but it doesn’t do much for local advertisers like car dealerships.

“The benefit locally is for people who use a PC at their work desk – that’s a key for the growth of Web radio. Stations that have a broadcast signal deficiency for part of a city will also benefit by having people listen through their PC.

“But we’re just scratching the surface of what Webcasting can do for the radio industry,” Miles says.”

So, what’s next in the evolution of the Net and its great-grandfather, radio? “Internet technology continues to change almost daily, and what I see coming is Web radio finding a place on the `active desktop’ from Windows 98,” Miles says. “I think you’ll see more usage for Web radio when a radio station comes up automatically when you boot up your computer.”

Web radio might become an accepted norm, but Miles doesn’t think it will threaten traditional over-the-air broadcasts.

“Computers are becoming common and popular, but they’re still not very mobile. One of the benefits of radio is that it’s mobile, it’s on all the time and it’s free. As long as radio is free, a Webcast’s value will probably be to expand a station’s potential workplace listenership,” Miles says.

Not royalty-free

Record companies smell the boatloads of cash that could be on the Internet audio horizon and are preparing to extract extra dollars from radio stations.

Miles, however, wasn’t aware of the separate royalties that record companies plan to collect from radio stations for their online music use. These performance fees will be in addition to the royalties that music publishers currently collect. (See accompanying story.)

“I think I’d pull the plug on our Webcast before paying record companies a performance royalty,” Miles says, after hearing about the upcoming fees.

Miles admitted, though, that he’d reconsider his position if local competitors developed their online audio presence and appeared to gain an audience edge.

Non-commercial radio stations worry less about competitors and more about scraping up the cash to pay their electric bills.

Stony Brook University’s WUSB-FM claims to be “Long Island’s largest non-commercial, free-form radio station.” It has embraced the Net with its own 24-hour-a-day Webcast (http://www.wusb.org/hear_us.shtml).

Disc jockey Spiney Norman has produced and hosted the weekly “Psychadelicatessen” radio show (10 p.m. to midnight each Saturday) on WUSB for the past eight years. “I play the best in hard-to-find garage, psychedelia and whacky R&B;,” Norman says with zeal.

The New York station’s Webcasts have suddenly thrust the underground DJ into the global spotlight.

“I’m getting response from all over the world,” he says. “I did a show on psychedelic music from Denmark, and the next day I checked my e-mail to find people from Denmark who listened to the show, offering advice about my pronunciation of Danish names.”

Global radio approach

The sudden change from local broadcaster to international garage DJ has also altered Norman’s approach to his show.

“It changes your mind-set a bit, so I drop some of my local on-air references,” he says. “But first and foremost this is a local radio station.

“Still, when you make a mistake now, millions of people could hear it,” Norman adds with a laugh.

“I announce the WUSB Web site address on the air, and I tell listeners about other Web sites for artists I’m playing. Sometimes I’ll ask, `If anyone listening in Seattle knows about this band I’m playing next, then give a call,’ ” he says, “and someone listening over the Web will call me up.”

The only problem Norman sees with Web radio is its eventual popularity. “If commercial radio clogs it up, then you could have to dig through the bland muck to find good stuff, just like over-the-air.

“Webcasting could become `McRadio,’ ” Norman laments.

For now, Webcasting is an effective fund-raising tool for WUSB. “Since we have to beg for money to stay on the air, it’s opened up new ways for us to raise cash,” he says, adding that a recent Internet reggae festival brought in donations from around the globe.

Norman hopes to host his own Internet music festival next summer, when he’s planning to Webcast the performances of 100 garage and psychedelic bands live from the WUSB studios.

“When a band plays online, they’re suddenly playing to people all over the world,” Norman says.

The paisley-punk DJ is excited that more people can hear his show, but hopes the potential global audience of Web radio doesn’t change the fun attitude of local broadcasting.

“There used to be a sign in our studio that said, `Don’t panic, it’s only radio,’ ” he says. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

Web audio sites

You’ve loaded up a streaming audio player program, plugged in your desktop speakers and are ready to kick out the Web radio jams. Here are some starting points and links to Web radio and audio sites:

Broadcast.com (http://www.broadcast.com)

Formerly AudioNet, this is one of the most visited audio-resource sites on the Net, hosting a wide variety of content. Live Radio, Music, News and Sports links are plentiful, making this a useful, mainstream place to start the search for Web audio.

BRS Web Radio (http://www.web-radio.com)

BRS has a plethora of helpful and detailed links to Web radio, cross-cataloged by genre and location. Links to various audio player sites makes downloading of free software a snap, and BRS also designates which player-program is needed to decode each Web radio site’s signal.

MPEG.ORG (http://www.mpeg.org/~tristan/MPEG/mp3.html)

Here’a a clearinghouse of information about the high-quality MPEG3 audio compression method. There are links to search engines containing MPEG3 sites – and information about the RIAA’s legal crackdown on sites using MPEG3 technology to illegally transmit audio over the Web.

KFI-AM 640 (http://www.kfi640.com/programming/listenlive.html)

This leading Los Angeles talk-radio station uses its occasional out-of-control on-air moments as motivation for listening on the Web. Their site states, “When you listen to KFI on your radio, there’s a 10-second delay so we can `dump’ (bleep-out) forbidden words. But over the Internet, you can hear KFI’s pre-delay audio broadcast – live and uncensored!”

That extra 10 seconds can make the Phil Hendrie Show even more exhilarating than usual. Hendrie is the hottest media blabbermouth in LA’s current pit of media overdose. He poses as a talk show host, the call-in guests, and often the other irate callers who complain about what his other characters say.

It’s all done live, in real time, and it’s easy to understand why thousands of suckers get caught up in his schtick every day, calling in to heap their complaints onto the manufactured furor.

Hendrie’s show is Webcast live Monday-Friday from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., and online fans can get extra doses of his insanity through archived audio files of his past exploits.

Audio Related Internet WWW & FTP Sites (http://www.qnx.com/~danh/info.html)

Exactly what the page’s title indicates, this is a wide-ranging list of audio sites. It’s maintained by an individual as a friendly service to the public, so don’t expect all the links to be functional or up-to-date.

The Free Radio Network (http://http://www.frn.net)

Here’s the place to go for reams of information about the global pirate radio movement. the emphasis is on over-the-air stations, but there are plenty of links to sites with streaming audio or music archive files. The FRN even makes cassettes of pirate radio programming for fans of the genre.

Timecast (http://www.timecast.com/stations/index.html)

Timecast’s site holds an extremely easy-to-use collection of links for a wide variety of Web radio (and TV) stations.

Live Radio on the Internet (http://www.frodo.u-net.com/radio.htm)

This is an amazingly exhaustive collection of links for online radio. Sections for Europe are especially helpful for tracking down international programming – That’s not surprising, since this page generates from London.

Pirate Radio (http://www.pirate-radio.co.uk)

Also UK-based, this is a cool place to find the latest European house, techno, trance and garage sounds, spun by a variety of online DJs. This Web site and its sound mix are so slick that it’s open to question exactly how “pirated” these transmissions really are.

Tucson `Web radio’

A few Tucson-area Webcasts and music archive sites to whet your Web whistle:

KAMP-AM 1570 (http://kamp.arizona.edu)

The UA’s low-power student station can reach a much wider audience over the Web, and their site features some danceable RealAudio files from “DJ Gringo.”

MIXfm 94.9 FM (http://www.theriver.com/mixfm)

Like most Tucson radio, MIXfm’s on-air signal isn’t simulcast on the Web, but you can download an audio file with comic Sean Morey’s song “The Man Song.”

UA Sports (http://www.fansonly.com/cgi-bin/cframe.cgi?/ariz/audio/ariz- audio.html)

The Fans Only Network hosts simulcasts of KNST-radio’s broadcasts of UA football, basketball and baseball. The site also archives some previous games, so proud alumni scattered throughout the globe can catch up on their athletic heroes’ past exploits. Perhaps you missed Brian Jeffries’ play-by-play of last December’s Insight.com Bowl, so you can get out the popcorn and hang on every archived streaming-audio word. Hint, though: The Wildcats won the game.

Pueblo High Magnet School (http://phs.tusd.k12.az.us)

Pueblo students produce digital audio and radio programming in the RealAudio streaming format as part of their multimedia classes. The school plans to broadcast with its own low-power AM radio station this fall, and continue to feature selected audio segments as archived files, teacher Doug Potter said.

Shoebomb (http://www.primenet.com/~shoebomb/)

The site for this popular Tucson alternative-pop band features a selection of 20-second samples from their CD.

High Desert Bluegrass Band (http://www.azstarnet.com/public/nonprofit/bluegrass/hidesert.htm)

The cyber-home for this local traditional bluegrass band includes a short audio clip in the QuickTime format.

KUAT-FM 90.5 (http://w3.arizona.edu/~kuat/audio.htm)

The PBS station provides weekly selected news features as downloadable files.