WWEEEEKKLLYY UUPPDDAATTEE WSTA would like to recognize our 2012 GOLD and SILVER Annual Partners: GOLD – Finley Engineering Company, Inc. SILVER - Interstate Telcom Consulting, Inc., Kiesling Associates LLP, and National Inform ation Solutions Cooperative, Inc. (NISC) Thank you National Information Solutions Cooperative and HickoryTech for your sponsorship of WSTA electronic publications! HAssociate members, click here to join them! Weekly Update August 17, 2012 Legislative and Political Wisconsin U.S. Senate Poll: Thompson (R) 54%, Baldwin (D) 43% After a hard-fought primary win on Tuesday, Republican Tommy Thompson now holds a double-digit lead over Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Wisconsin Voters shows Thompson with 54% of the vote to Baldwin’s 43%. One percent (1%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. Thompson wins Senate primary, advances to face Baldwin in November Tommy Thompson won a fierce Republican primary for U.S. Senate on Tuesday on the theme of electability, as voters agreed with the former governor's claim that he represented the best chance to win the seat in November and help the GOP regain control of the Senate. Thompson, 70, defeated businessman Eric Hovde, home builder and former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald in a primary that languished for months in the shadow of recall politics. He now faces U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, in a race that likely will turn on the key issues of taxes, energy and health care. The election presents voters with a sharp ideological choice that could help determine which party controls the Senate. But it could be overshadowed again by a suddenly more prominent Wisconsin narrative - the vice presidential bid of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. Stars align just right for Tommy Thompson's primary win Fondly remembered as governor but facing doubts about his age and ideology, Tommy Thompson needed a lot of things to go right for him to survive a bruising re-entry into Wisconsin politics. Obama raises Ryan stature, tears down his policies Mitt Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, gets these glowing testimonials on the campaign trail: "An articulate spokesperson for Gov. Romney's vision." "A serious guy with serious ideas." Those are the appraisals from none other than Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Not your typical partisan line of criticism. But unlike the Obama camp's initially dismissive approach toward Sarah Palin in 2008, the president's team is portraying Ryan as the picture of gravitas. It's all about building him up to better tear him and Romney down. From the moment Romney picked the Wisconsin congressman as his vice presidential candidate, Obama's campaign has redoubled its efforts to draw attention to the Republican budget plan Ryan wrote and that the GOP majority in the House passed. In Ryan, Obama's campaign team in Chicago concluded they had the perfect counterpoint to an election that had the makings of a referendum on the president's handling of the lackluster economy. The battle to define Ryan: ideologue or problem-solver? Reasonable or radical? The battle to define Paul Ryan is on, and it’s a battle that will be shaped not just by Ryan’s policies and voting record, but by his rhetoric and personality and political style. Is he a collegial numbers-cruncher or an uncompromising ideologue? There’s fodder in the public record for each of these very different portraits. Ryan has an earnest, personable and solicitous manner. He gets along with many Democrats, decries personal attacks and sees himself as someone who takes the high road in politics, invoking his mentor Jack Kemp's image as a "Happy Warrior." “Look, Barack Obama is doing what he thinks is right. I just disagree with him. I don’t think the man is evil or sinister. I just think he’s liberal. I just think that’s the wrong direction for the country,” said Ryan in a 2009 interview. Ryan says, “My favorite people in politics are the ones who fight for their beliefs,” whichever side they are on. John Nichols: If Ryan stays in race for Congress, he should debate challenger Under Wisconsin law, Paul Ryan has every right to run for vice president AND for his 1st District congressional seat. Not all states have so-called "favorite son" laws, which allow political careerists to seek multiple offices on the same day. Some force candidates to make a choice. But, like Lyndon Johnson's Texas and Joe Lieberman's Connecticut, Paul Ryan's Wisconsin allows Mitt Romney's soon-to-be running mate to hedge his bets. That does not mean, however, that voters should be satisfied with a cursory campaign. Ryan could drop his congressional candidacy and allow Republicans to name a successor candidate. If he chooses to stay in the running for the House, Ryan should agree to debate his credible Democratic challenger, Rob Zerban. Regulatory and Industry PSC Seeks Public Input on Draft Broadband Playbook The LinkWISCONSIN Alliance is requesting public comments on a state plan to enhance the availability, adoption and applications related to high-speed Internet, or broadband, throughout Wisconsin. The LinkWISCONSIN Alliance, composed of community leaders from around the state, began developing the Wisconsin Broadband Playbook early this spring and held focus groups in early May. In addition to the input already collected and presented in the draft Playbook, the PSC is currently seeking comments on how to best address challenges and opportunities for improving broadband availability, adoption rates and applications. FCC Has $185 Million Unclaimed for Rural Broadband The FCC instituted Phase I of the Connect America Fund earlier this year, which offered $300 million to select ‘price- cap’ carriers for rural broadband construction. It was viewed as an initial ‘shot–in-the-arm’ for rural broadband, while the broader Connect America Fund process gets worked out. This first phase is dwarfed in comparison to Phase II, which is expected to allocate over $1.8 billion for rural broadband. As we’ve previously reported, only $115 million of the $300 million was claimed by companies like Frontier, FairPoint, CenturyLink, Windstream, and a few others. Verizon and AT&T rejected the funding. Both CenturyLink and Windstream are asking for some waivers regarding some of the rules for Phase I, which may lead to them accepting additional funding. But as of right now, $185 million has been left on the table. So where should it go? DDoS: AT&T isn't the only carrier at risk of attack While AT&T's issue with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Wednesday appears to have affected only one or two regions and has been fixed, a DNS expert warns that carriers like AT&T need to better guard their networks against such attacks. "Carriers in general have to worry about DDoS attacks on their infrastructure and the infrastructure of their customers," Rob Fleischman, CTO of Xerocole and a noted expert on Domain Name Systems, told FierceTelecom. "That's a generic problem that must be addressed and must be handled in the front eyes of security of everyone who runs a large carrier." Broadband and Internet Indianola, Iowa debuts municipal FTTP network Despite continuing failures of other muni-telcos, Indianola Municipal Utilities (IMU), the local utility for the city of Indianola, Iowa, plans to launch its own municipal Fiber to the Premises (FTTP) system on Oct. 1. Delivered under the Mahaska Communication Group (MCG) banner, the FTTP services will be available first to customers in Indianola's East Side Electric Underground Conversion area. Two of the obvious attractions of IMU's new FTTP data service are price and speed. XO Communications goes live with nationwide 100G network XO Communications made its 100G optical network plans public on Tuesday, revealing that it has deployed Nokia Siemens Networks' (NSN) technology on a nationwide basis across its long haul fiber network. By deploying NSN's hiT7300 platform across its coast-to-coast routes on its long haul optical network, XO said its long haul network will be able to simultaneously transmit up to 96 wavelengths, each carrying data at 100G and a total data transfer speed of 9.6 Tbps. Walking the walk on Internet regulation: Why increased government oversight imperils the Internet Even though games like Angry Birds and Words with Friends might swallow more hours in a week than some would like to admit, investment in broadband technology has hugely improved Americans' productivity and quality of life. The Internet is one of the most remarkable American innovations of the 20th century--but recent international efforts to expand governmental regulation over the Internet put future investment, innovation and societal progress at risk. Cellular and Wireless Verizon LTE Roll Out Now Reaches 75 Percent of U.S. Population The pace seems as fast as the technology. Verizon continues its aggressive 4G LTE roll out by adding 34 new markets, the company announced today. Verizon now claims they can reach 75% of the U.S. population across 371 markets. They have a commanding 4G LTE lead over other national carriers. AT&T is in about 50 markets and Sprint is in less than 20. Verizon is on record as saying all existing Verizon 3G markets will be upgraded to 4G LTE. It looks like they are well on their way. “”We are ahead of schedule with our 4G LTE market roll out and will provide 4G LTE network coverage to more than 400 markets in the near future,” said Nicola Palmer, chief technical officer of Verizon Wireless. Report: Over One Third of Mobile Device Owners Have Installed a VoIP App Findings from a Rebtel survey, one of the world’s largest mobile VoIP (second behind only Skype) providers, reports that 35% of U.S.