Telecom

Et Tu, NPR?

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by publius I'm pretty sure I have never — before today — yelled at NPR's Robert Siegel in my car.  But his intro to the segment on the FCC ruling left me no choice (audio): The Internet has gone largely unregulated since it came into being more than 30 years ago[.]  But today the Chairman … Read more

Kudos to the FCC

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by publius I've only scanned the speech, but on first glance, it looks pretty solid.  It hits the right notes on the value of open networks — it expands substantive protections.  It's good.  Also, one particularly nice and unexpected touch — very Obama/Genachowski-ish — is that the FCC launched a new website today called openinternet.gov.  … Read more

An FCC Win — Probably

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by publius In further evidence that elections matter, the FCC is taking an aggressive step tomorrow toward protecting open networks (a more accurate term than "net neutrality").  The WSJ reported on Saturday: The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally[.] The FCC … Read more

The Need for Speed

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by publius I mentioned earlier that expanding bandwidth capacity (i.e., speed) should be one of our primary communications policy goals, and that requiring open networks furthers those goals.  Many people don't realize, though, just how much societal value faster broadband would create.  It's about a lot more than simply downloading stuff faster.  Greater speeds will … Read more

Why Open Networks Matter

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by publius A while back, Julian Sanchez expressed skepticism about net neutrality regulation.  Essentially, he made two key arguments: (1) the problems are "largely hypothetical"; and (2) the threat of regulation might be better than actual regulation.  I'm going to take a stab at both, though I think the second point is more interesting. To … Read more

The FCC’s Wretched Website

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by publius It's ironic, but fitting perhaps, that the agency in charge of broadband policy has a website from the Flintstones era.  It's truly the worst.  Q-Bert arcade games from the 1980s are more advanced than today's FCC website.  Retro cool is fine, but it's not very functional. For instance, I'm currently researching for filed … Read more

“Unfair” Competition

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by publius I've been doing a lot of research lately on municipal fiber broadband networks.  As city projects go, fiber is infinitely better than wireless — but that's a post for another day. Anyway, one common theme I've seen is that municipalities that pursue fiber networks inevitably face intense legal and regulatory challenges from incumbent … Read more

The New Net Neutrality Bill

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by publius

I just finished reading the net neutrality bill that Markey and Eshoo introduced last week — the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009 (H.R. 3458) (pdf).  And it's really good stuff.  The leadership should move on it.

The bill covers all the more well-known problems.  For instance, it prevents Internet providers from blocking sites, and from entering into agreements to deliver certain sites at higher speeds.  That's all to the good.

But the bill has several important provisions that you may not be as familiar with.  Below the fold, I've listed a few that stood out to me:

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The Limits of Twitter

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by publius Twitter is obviously one of the big stories to come out of the Iranian election.  And it's been a remarkable development — no argument there.  The tweets have been inspiring and courageous.  And there's an aesthetic dimension to them that's hard to resist. But understand… the tweets could be stopped (more on that … Read more

The Origins of Our Broadband Failures

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by publius For those interested in telecom policy, I have some recommended reading for you. Free Press (the best media reform public interest organization in the country) has just released a comprehensive white paper on national broadband policy (pdf here).  It’s the single best summary I’ve seen of the history and failures of deregulatory telecom … Read more