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• Comcast Tangled in Discrimination Suit [BET] — “Several of the company’s black employees in Chicago say that they were required to install defective and insect-infested equipment in customers’ homes. ” More from the Chicago Tribune here. Officially, the company denies the allegations.
• Key NBC executive Marc Graboff to leave the network [Company Town: LA Times] — “Marc Graboff, president of NBC’s West Coast business operations and the TV network’s longtime consigliere, is leaving the company” after diminishing role, following Comcast’s takeover.
• Q&A: How Comcast is adjusting to our changing TV habits [GeekWire] — “Interview with Tom Blaxland, senior director of product management for Comcast Interactive Media” says Philly Tech News
• Comcast gives CFO Angelakis new contract, title [Philadelphia Business Journal] — “Michael J. Angelakis that promotes him from executive vice president and chief financial officer to vice chairman and CFO.”

• Comcast goes full-footprint with Dory gateway [CED Magazine]
• NBC News announces changes to technology, social media staff [Poynter]
• Please Turn On Your Cell Phone: Comcast’s Fandango Embraces Mobile Movie Tickets [Mashable]
• ‘Tis The Season for Another Comcast Rate Hike
  Comcast Rings in New Year With Significant Increases [Broadband Reports]
• Comcast Gets Ready for CCAP [Light Reading Cable] — H/T Philly Tech News
• Comcast’s metro E service easy as 1, 2, 3 [CED Magazine]
• In the Know: Is weather radar broken promise from Comcast?  [NaplesNews.com] — People in Southwest Florida want their weather channel back
• Watch a Sneak Preview of “The Comcast Holiday Spectacular 2011″ [Comcast blog] — Video below

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscri ption for our Comcast news updates.

• FCC’s Meredith Baker goes on the defensive [Post Tech: Washington Post] — “Federal Communications commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker defended her decision to join Comcast NBC Universal just months after voting in favor of the company’s joint venture.”
• The Fastest Growing Industry in the Country? It’s Digital Voice [The Atlantic] — Comcast is leading the charge with ‘cable VoIP,’ which, with ‘peer-to-peer’ like Skype and ‘virtual VoIP’ like Vonage, is marking ‘the death of the land line.”
• Hulu, Networks Close To New Deal [Media Memo: All Things Digital] — “Hulu and its network TV owners are close to a new deal that will keep programs from NBC, Fox and ABC on the Web video site.”
• Ron Meyer offered contract extension as head of Universal Studios [Company Town: LA Times] — “Comcast Corp. has made an offer to renew the contract of longtime Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer “
• Comcast Donates $250K To Alabama Charities For Tornado Relief [Multichannel News] — “MSO Contributes to Governor’s Relief Fund, Local and National Red Cross”
• Comcast OK’s its proposals, nixes those of shareholders [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Including shareholder nominees to board of directors

Refurbished computers in a technology recycling warehouse in Fairmount.

How at least one School District of Philadelphia computer monitor ended up in a massive e-waste landfill in Ghana remains unclear.

But, after a PBS Frontline documentary camera spotted the hardware and Technically Philly made repeated followup inquiries, the district has announced it will launch an investigation, according to a written statement given by district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

“The School District of Philadelphia does not encourage or condone the illegal dumping of any school district property anywhere in the world,” read the statement, given first to Technically Philly. “As a result… [we are] currently investigating the source and disposal record of the equipment found in Ghana.”

The computer monitor, which had a district sticker on it, was just a brief moment in the explosive PBS Frontline report on e-waste that was released last month. Likewise, the monitor is just a small part of the hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste that flood the West African country and other developing nations each year.

When old technologies from Western nations, like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, are “recycled,” they are increasingly finding their way to places like the Ghanaian urban fringe of Agbogbloshie, which Frontline reports has become one of the world’s largest digital dumping grounds.

Watch the first half of the documentary below, where you’ll find the district computer in at roughly 3:40. Find the second portion here.

SCHOOL DISTRICT POLICY

What hasn’t yet been made clear is how a Philadelphia school district computer made it there, and whether it’s an isolated piece or suggestive of the hundreds of pounds of old technologies that the district is forced to discard annually.

Since 2006, the district’s Educational Technology Office has maintained a “green” policy for the disposal of computers and technology equipment, the statement says.

Schools and offices are asked to identify obsolete equipment, file asset removal paperwork and contact the district’s technology help desk. The help desk, in turn, contacts Clifton, N.J.-based computer recycling vendor Regentech, which is contracted to pick up the equipment — at no charge to the district. They then can refurbish, redistribute and resell any equipment as they see fit, as long as they meet U.S. Department of Environmental Protection standards, which the PBS documentary characterize as lax.

A Regentech spokesman did not return repeated calls for comment.

“This process has worked very well, and we are pleased with the performance of Regentech, Inc. Computer Recycling,” the district statement continued.

OTHERS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS

Like the district, most other large education institutions in the city do not ultimately handle the final destination of their recycled technologies.

“We rely on the third party vendors to do the responsible thing,” says Mark Aseltine, the executive director of the Technology Support Services at the University of Pennsylvania. “If we had any indication that they were not, we would stop using them right away.”

Penn offers tutorials on wiping memory clean and disposal options, but in the end, their junk gets carted away by an independent company, which is ultimately part of an industry that the PBS documentary suggests is “shadowy” and under legislated.

Yet, even those who are particularly active in the removal of unwanted technologies often use these outside contractors.

A program initiated at Temple University won the praise of a small feature in the June issue of University Business. The university has its own department to handle obsolete equipment, which is then stripped, updated, reused or otherwise redistributed. Putting some 1,800 old computers back into service is estimated to have saved the school nearly $1 million in the program’s six years of operation, but still models are eventually in need of recycling.

That’s the part of the tale that the PBS documentary suggests gets hairy, despite some federal intervention.

“There are alternatives to dumping old technology on the first person who will take it, and we are one of them,” says Steven Feldman the hardware manager of Fairmount-based Nonprofit Technology Resources, which boasts it is the largest computer refurbishment operation in Philadelphia.

Limiting the e-waste output can happen locally, too, Feldman says of NTR, which refurbishes and redistributes much of the hardware it receives at low or no cost to low-income Philadelphians. The school district has donated computers to NTR in the past, Feldman says.

While the nonprofit also uses an outside company to recycle some of the most outdated equipment it receives, Feldman says, “we remain vigilant, take tours of their facilities and methods.”

He declined to speculate on why the district would primarily use a vendor from outside the region for a no-cost solution. Regentech, like NTR and the third-party recycling companies used by Temple and Penn, is certified by the EPA.

The certification requires Regentech to maintain EPA disposal manifests for all equipment that is removed from the district. Those manifests were not yet obtained by Technically Philly, however, according to EPA documentation, Regentech (EPA ID # NJD 048351043, for those interested in further researc) has no significant violations alleged against them. They are also compliant with EPA inspection guidelines.

The details of the district’s announced investigation were not immediately available. Technically Philly will continue its coverage. As always, contact us with any insight or leads.

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Below watch a short report from Good magazine on e-waste

[Full disclosure: The author of this story is a graduate of Temple University]

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.