An experiment in publicly-owned fiber to the home in Utah was on the brink of bankruptcy in April. The project was oversold and underfunded, and found itself at an impasse where it had to go back to the taxpayers for a bailout or liquidate. They built it, but nobody came. A big part of the [...]
Truth is stranger than fiction. This report in ZDNet suggests that Google may well find itself in the crosshairs of net regulators gone wild:
Google clearly wants the FCC to make sure that other private companies’ networks are open equally to all Internet services. Now, it will be interesting to see if that applies to networks [...]
As the crescendo of criticism builds against the FCC’s pending publication of its new rules for Internet access providers, the New York Times emerges as the sole source of pro-FCC coverage. They publish a bizarre Op-Ed by Free Press chairman Tim Wu equating competing carriers with OPEC and mistaking the general trend in broadband prices [...]
The Wall St. Journal joins the chorus of Bronx cheers aimed at Kevin Martin, the one-eyed federal umpire who blew a call that wasn’t even close:
Those who would use Comcast’s actions to argue for more Internet regulation have misidentified the Big Brother problem. It’s not the private sector they should be worried about. There’s no [...]
The FCC’s pending ruling against Internet Service Providers who manage their bandwidth in favor of fair access raises some questions. Here’s a list of questions rural ISP operator Brett Glass has raised.
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Andrew Orlowski has outdone himself in this admirable summary of the FCC’s expected ruling on Comcast:
The landmark decision draws together two strands of policy – one old and specific to the US, and one new and widespread.
I’ve noted before how American politics are largely fought through symbolic gestures. Think of the bitter fights over the [...]
They don’t know it yet, of course. I’ve just checked the new alternative to Google, Cuil (pronounced “cool”) and found it amazingly accurate. They show me as the number 1 Richard Bennett and the number 1 Bennett. Very sweet, even though I’m only the number 12 Richard; that gives me something to strive for.
UPDATE: Esteemed [...]
Declan McCullagh takes a good look at the legal and political issues around the FCC’s pending wrist-slap of broadband carrier Comcast in FCC probably can’t police Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling:
If FCC enforcement against Comcast is illegal, why would Chairman Martin call Friday’s meeting? Only he knows for certain, but one explanation is that if the FCC [...]
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has written one of the most sober and sensible essays on the Internet’s present technical crisis in today’s Washington Post. With so many members of the Commission willing to jump into the breach with ex post facto rules and regulations, it’s good to see that there are some on the inside [...]
Press reports on the FCC’s vote on the Vuze/Free Press petitions against Comcast suggest a peculiar outcome, where FCC orders Comcast to stop managing BitTorrent and to also tell the FCC how and when it manages BitTorrent:
The FCC would require Comcast to stop slowing or blocking access to certain online applications, mostly video file-sharing services [...]
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