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Self-Driving Cars On Ramp As Feds Tax Oil In New Obama Budget

Autonomous cars, self-driving cars, robot cars — not only are they far along in development, now they can read dollar signs. A $98.1 billion federal transportation budget proposal came out Tuesday as the White House announced President Barrack Obama’s final $4.1 trillion budget proposal, which would slap a $10.25-a-barrel tax on oil. The transportation budget plan allocates $3.9 billion over 10 years for “large-scale deployment pilots” to develop a framework for how connected cars and autonomous vehicles will inter-operate across states. Regulators had penciled in the autonomy figure in an announcement at last month’s Detroit auto show, after President Obama alluded to plans for a “21st century transportation system” in his State of the Union speech. The president’s overall budget proposal is sure to fire up controversy and roadblocks when considered by the Republican-controlled Congress. “To speed our transition to an affordable, reliable, clean energy system, my budget funds Mission Innovation, our landmark commitment to double clean energy research and development funding,” Obama said in his budget message . “It also calls for a 21st Century Clean Transportation initiative ,” he said, “that would help to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work modernizing our infrastructure to ease congestion and make it easier for businesses to bring goods to market through new technologies such as autonomous vehicles and high-speed rail, funded through a fee paid by oil companies.” The Department of Transportation plans to test autonomous cars in “corridors throughout the country” to accelerate development and adoption of “safe vehicle automation through real-world pilot projects.” “We are on the cusp of a new era in automotive technology with enormous potential to save lives, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transform mobility for the American people,” DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said in the auto show announcement, speaking alongside executives from General Motors ( GM ), Tesla Motors ( TSLA ), Alphabet ( GOOGL )-unit Google, Ford Motor ( F ) and others. “Today’s actions and those we will pursue in the coming months will provide the foundation and the path forward for manufacturers, state officials, and consumers to use new technologies and achieve their full safety potential.” Electric car maker Tesla and several mainstream automakers have been developing autonomous vehicles. So have Alphabet’s Google and, reportedly, Apple ( AAPL ). Monday, Tesla expounded in a blog post on the safety aspects of the new Summon feature , in its Autopilot software, that lets the Model S and Model X come pick up their owners in a driveway and park themselves in a garage at night. “Summon lays important groundwork for an increasingly autonomous world. One where the convenience and safety of transport vastly exceed what we are used to today,” Tesla said in summing up Summon. It added that semi-autonomous features like Summon can reduce the occurrence of accidents relative to conventional driving. From @POTUS , @WhiteHouse a #budget that moves #transportation forward https://t.co/MOlt0ZPK8D pic.twitter.com/kY09OE1nww — Anthony Foxx (@SecretaryFoxx) February 9, 2016 The overall budget proposal unveiled by Foxx on Tuesday, for fiscal year 2017, outlines the department’s 30-year vision for how automation and other changes can better cope with traffic as the U.S. population grows by an expected 70 million people. It covers everything from autonomous vehicles to unmanned aircraft systems, or drones. It prioritizes “clean, 21st Century surface transportation options”; public-private sector collaboration to accelerate low-carbon technologies and intelligent transportation systems; transportation safety enhancements; and what it calls 21st Century government and project delivery — meaning things like modernized permitting. It also allocates $15 million toward cybersecurity. In a December presentation, Foxx announced a “smart city” transportation contest with a $50 million prize, saying the DOT is “imagining connected and autonomous vehicles that can practically eliminate crashes and interact with wired infrastructure to eliminate traffic jams.” Loading the player… RELATED: Obama Will Speed Self-Driving Car As Google Partners Tesla Adds ‘Summon’ Self-Driving To Cars: A Big Deal?  

As Apple Ad Blocking Spreads, Wired Curbs Access To Ad-Block Users

Five months after Apple ( AAPL ) opened the door to ad blocking on mobile devices, news site Wired has become the latest publication to charge users who have installed ad-blocking tools. “We know that you come to our site primarily to read our content, but it’s important to be clear that advertising is how we keep Wired going: paying the writers, editors, designers, engineers and all the other staff that works so hard to create the stories you read and watch here,” Wired told its readers in a post Monday. The publication said 20% of its traffic comes from readers who are blocking its website ads. Wired said visitors using ad blockers will not have full access to articles on its site. It said website visitors can either agree to see ads or pay about $1 a week for an ad-free subscription. Some media firms, including Comcast ( CMCSA )-owned NBC, will not allow people using ad blockers to watch videos on their sites, while the Guardian and the Washington Post are among media sites that are prodding people who use ad blockers to pay for subscriptions instead. Support for ad blocking built into Apple iOS 9 means that iPhone and iPad users can install ad-blocking services from the Apple App store. Those products give people the power to pull the plug on Web advertising, including banner ads, pop-up ads and auto-play videos. About 16% of the U.S. online population blocked Web ads during Q2 2015, according to a September study by Adobe Systems ( ADBE ) and PageFair. Ad blocking could could cost publishers $41.4 billion globally this year, up from $21.8 billion in 2015, according to that study. There Is No ‘Free’ Internet “There has never been any such thing as free Internet, as users either pay with cash or with personal data/advertising. The experience is ‘free,’ but a return is earned by using users’ personal data to generate advertising or relevant marketing,” wrote Edison Investment Research analyst Richard Windsor in an industry note Tuesday. “The problem is that virtually all users who are paying with personal data do not realize that they are actually paying for the services that they consume.” For consumers, Windsor said, being expected to pay for services they’d been getting for free “is seen as a huge price increase, rather than paying for the service in a different way. Because paying with personal data has been almost invisible to many users for many years, it has perpetuated the myth that the Internet is free,” he wrote. Windsor added that “with many legitimate and well-respected businesses that depend on advertising to make a living, the threat of having it cut off could put them out of business.” He says users will likely turn off their ad blockers without much fuss. He also said he sees “no threat to the revenues of Alphabet ( GOOGL )-owned Google, Facebook ( FB ), Twitter ( TWTR ) and so on.” On those “walled garden” sites, ads are already fashioned to look like other content on the site and are embedded in news feeds and blog pages, and they aren’t blocked. Some other analysts, though, say the rise of ad blocking could shift more ad spending to apps rather than traditional online ads, where Google dominates. Google is facing increasing search-ad competition from Microsoft ‘s ( MSFT ) Web portal Bing, Internet search engine Yahoo ( YHOO ) and e-commerce king Amazon.com ( AMZN ), which has boosted its own direct search offerings as Google moves forward with its search-based Google Shopping service. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Verizon Talks Up 5G Wireless, AT&T Less Vocal

Marketing for 5G is revving up fast — well ahead of applicable wireless technology, which is moving from lab demos to field trials, with wide-scale commercialization years off. And 5G marketing is moving a lot faster at Verizon Communications ( VZ ) than at AT&T ( T ). Verizon in September declared its intention to be a global leader, and the first in the U.S., in rolling out a 5G wireless network. In September, Verizon said that its 5G wireless technology would be 50 times faster than its current 4G network, which is engineered to provide average data speeds in a range of 8 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) during peak usage in urban markets. In January, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam raised the bar. He touted 5G networks’ one-gigabit-per-second speed. That’s roughly 100 times faster than Verizon’s average 4G speed of 10 Mbps. It’s not clear, analysts say, whether McAdam was referring to peak or average 5G speeds. On Verizon’s Q4 earnings call, CFO Fran Shammo brought up its commitment to 5G numerous times. But on AT&T’s 4Q earnings call Jan. 26, not a word about 5G was heard. Said Shammo: “We are currently at the forefront globally talking about standards. We will be the first company to roll 5G out in the U.S., and we are currently preparing for (2016) field trials.” AT&T management’s latest public comment on 5G came at a Citigroup conference in early January. John Donovan, AT&T’s senior executive vice president of technology and operations, said that 4G networks still seem fast enough for most customers. “Speed has not been a big, successful marketing program recently,” he said, perhaps alluding to a wireless industry price war spurred by T-Mobile US ( TMUS ) and Sprint ( S ). AT&T has filed with regulators to test 5G services in Austin, Texas. Donovan indicated that AT&T may prefer waiting until the cost of 5G network equipment goes down as global manufacturing ramps up. First, standards need to be set, perhaps around 2018-19, analysts say. “We haven’t been overly public because what we want to do is — we want to keep the optionality of being early, mid- or on the back end (of deployment), depending on whether we’re going to optimize to (network) speed, capacity or cost,” Donovan said. While speed matters, analysts say that 5G will also be defined by new capabilities, such as streaming data to and from self-driving cars or to high-flying civilian drones. Verizon has touted plans to roll out 5G commercially in 2017, though its reach could be very limited. By being an early player in 5G, Verizon aims to influence industry standards. Many wireless firms — network gear makers such as Nokia ( NOK ) and Ericsson ( ERIC ), and chipmakers like Qualcomm ( QCOM ), Intel ( INTC ) and Samsung — have the same goal. Europe, South Korea, Japan and China all have 5G initiatives under way. S. Korea plans large-scale 5G testing around the 2018 Winter Olympics. In Japan, NTT DoCoMo ( DCM ) is gearing up for 2020. 5G will be a hot topic at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 22 to 25. The arrival of 5G networks is important to gear makers because global capital spending on wireless networks is expected to be flat or down until deployment picks up. “Small-cell” radio antennas, which increase network capacity in urban areas, and software-defined network (SDN) technology are expected to be at the core of 5G deployments. Verizon has been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to allocate airwaves in very high radio frequency bands, above 24 GHz and around 37 GHz, to help jump-start 5G deployment. The U.S. regulatory process to dole out 5G spectrum could take a few years. The next World Radiocommunication Conference, where 5G spectrum allocation is expected to be discussed, isn’t until 2019. While many countries are looking at high frequencies, one view is that 5G services could surface earlier in bands below 6GHz. In that case, networks could continue using interfaces designed for LTE gear. The industry in late 2015 approved an interim “4.5” standard that carries the marketing term “LTE-Advanced Pro.” 5G deployment could take two tracks, says Tristan Gerra, an analyst at R.W. Baird, in a report. He says that a version of LTE could be marked as 5G early on, until higher-bandwidth “real” 5G is ready commercially. What’s clear is that  4G networks aren’t going away anytime soon. Research firm Ovum forecasts that by 2020, 3.62 million people will subscribe to services delivered via 4G LTE networks, up from 1.05 billion in 2015.  Ericsson predicts 150 million 5G subscriptions worldwide by 2021. Verizon says that it does not expect 5G networks to replace the existing 4G ones. Consumers will still be viewing Netflix ( NFLX ) on Apple ( AAPL ) iPhones and other devices for a long time. Verizon plans to overlay 5G capabilities in markets, most likely urban areas, to provide ubiquitous street coverage for self-driving cars and other emerging uses. Verizon’s partners include Alcatel-Lucent ( ALU ), Ericsson, Cisco Systems ( CSCO ), Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung. Verizon has been working with carriers in Japan and South Korea as well. “(Verizon believes that) one of the primary reasons why Japanese carriers are at the forefront of 5G is because cities like Tokyo and Seoul benefit from high levels of densification,” said Amir Rozwadowski, a Barclays analyst in a report. While speed matters, wireless firms are also providing service for applications that require always-on, low-data-rate connections. The apps involve data-gathering industrial sensors, home appliances and other devices oft referred to as parts of the Internet of Things. Image provided by Shutterstock .