Network Neutrality Bills in Congress

Media starts tattling on AT&T "data throttling" of heavy users

2012-02-13T17:22:00.000-08:00

News reports today accuse AT&T of slowing down the connection speeds of users, apparently not over their limits, to where a web page takes up to two minutes to load rather than a few seconds.

There is another website that seems dedicated to documenting telecommunications carrier behavior, called “Stop the Cap”, here.

There is an AppAdvice Daily Special Report on “The Truth Behind ATT Throttling”, YouTube report here (8 min).

It’s supplied by a site called “iClarified” which offers some additional explanation here.

Stolen cell phones should be permanently disabled to reduce muggings

2012-02-10T20:48:00.000-08:00

Stolen cell phones should be permanently disabled, according to New York state Senator Charles Schumer, in this Aug. 2011 story by NY1 news, (website url) here. He says Verizon is the only carrier that permanently disables the phones to break the market in stolen phones (from street muggings).

Other carriers just disable the SIM card to protect consumer data and end the liability for the account. In the UK, carriers must permanently disable to phone by serial number,

Lightsquared questions tests saying GPS could be compromised

2012-01-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

Lightsquared, a tech company in Reston VA planning to offer a super wireless broadband, says the tests that show interference with GPS devices were rigged, as in this story.

In theory, Lightsquared’s products could become a keystone strategy for offering reliable broadband in remote areas, or in areas exposed to storms. There is obvious advantage to homeowners if they don’t have to depend on physical wires staying up to keep their connections.

The same idea is becoming common in home security, as companies (ADT, Ackerman, etc) are now using cellular wireless connectivity to headquarters instead of landlone phone.

There was an earlier story on Lightsquared Sept. 15, 2011.

Supreme Court hearing case on legacy broadcast indecency rules with FCC

2012-01-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court is hearing a case regarding whether the FCC can regulate “indecency” among legacy television broadcasters but not on Cable, Satellite, or Internet channels. Call it the "Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson-wardrobe malfunction" case if you like (which was all over the web during the second half of the 2004 Super Bowl).

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The FCC explains its position here, saying that it believes the law applie only to signals carried through “radio communications”, which do not cover cable and satellite. It also says that voluntary paid subscription services may need less regulation, and that it does not enforce any regulations between 10 PM and 6 AM local time.

It will be interesting to compare the Supreme Court's reaction to this case to its 1997 ruling on the Communications Decency Act, which turned out extremely well for the Internet.

Engineers question whether broadband access is a "right"

2012-01-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Vinton G. Cerf, a fellow for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, in Reston VA, on p. A21 of the Jan. 5 New York Times, “Internet access is not a human right”, link here.

Internet access is a tool to getting to something else, efficient global communication, which can be used to keep “the powers that be” honest. But it’s ultimately about fairer access to “necessities”, not about the speech itself. What becomes a human right is what communication facilitates.

Cerf applies a similar argument to countering the notion that Internet Access is even a “civil right”, which can be implemented and protected by a democratic government. But the policy debates (over guaranteeing broadband access for everyone) seem to reflect the belief that it should be.

Cerf then migrates to discussing the responsibility for the Internet industry to provide a safe computing environment.

In the past, however, we’ve talked about “fundamental rights” as including self-expression for its own sake, with less clarity about the “right” to efficient distribution of the expression rather than the right to freedom from censorship of the content. Cerf seems to be concerned with the “purpose” of the communication, which can leads us down to discussions about the troubling subject of “implicit content.”

Cox makes agreement with ABC affiliate in northern VA, releasing consumers caught in middle

2011-12-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

Cox Cable, which serves Falls Church and Fairfax County VA, announced an agreement with ABC affiliate WJLA finally, link here. For a number of days, WJLA had been warning viewers that Cox customers could have an interruption in access to their station.

When consumers subscribe to cable services, they expect access to all major networks and systems. Consumers should not be caught in the middle of contractual disputes.

NTSB wants to ban all commercial electronics use by vehicle drivers

2011-12-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

The National Transportation Safety Board wants Congress or other federal regulatory agencies to ban all use of consumer electronics by drivers of motor vehicles, whether personal or commercial.

The NTSB has no authority to impose such a ban, but its recommendations carry weight. On the other hand, many conservatives are likely to say that such regulations should be left to states.

To its credit, the NTSB wants cell phones and perhaps iPad- like devices to detect whether being used in motion (over walking speed) and be able to differentiate between passenger and driver use. It would allow 911 calls and GPS devices.

The NTSB recommendations would not allow exceptions for hands-free or Bluetooth use. The NTSB says that cognitive distraction is the real problem. Other devices, like iPads and Kindles, could not be used legally, either.

Yup, the whole country should follow Oprah’s “no phone zone”. But this goes further.

Consumer Reports has a good news story here.

I would wonder if this could affect what consumer electronics are allowed in cars, especially rental cars. There are other kinds of distraction, such as eating, even sipping coffee. Would CD and DVD players be an issue?

Anderson Cooper did a report on distracted driving on AC360 last week (see TV blog Dec. 8).

I do not answer cell phone calls when driving unless I can pull over and stop. If I do not pick up on a call, it is likely that I am driving. Virginia bans cell phone use only in work zones but does ban texting. Maryland and DC ban all hand-held use.

We might see more government statements about wireless radiation exposure and health in the future.

Liberal media asks questions about cell phone towers and WiFi and health; same questions about high tension power lines

2011-12-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

There has been controversy recently about cell phone use, and people’s (especially children and teens) using them too close to the skull without a Bluetooth earpiece, or keeping them close to the body. The danger may be greater in areas of weaker coverage.

Christopher Ketcham has a long and blistering but speculative article in Earth Island Journal, reproduced on AlterNet recently, “Radiation from cell phones and WiFi are making people sick—are we all at risk?” (website url link). This called the largest human public health experiment ever, 24x7. Here’s the link. The story starts with serious problems on a farm in Ohio in 1990 after an early cell phone tower was installed nearby. I remember some concern over a cell phone tower going up near my apartment in Fairfax County VA in 1995, before there was much reliable information (either way) on any risk.

But living hear power lines – especially the high voltage transmission lines running cross country, is also said to be risky for some distance near them. Here’s a typical link, or another one called “Power Line Fact” (link), and even the EPA admits to some risk (here).

Can nearby power lines – that is, their induced magnetic fields – harm electronics like laptops or pc’s? I’ve wondered this when driving with a laptop and stuck on a two-lane road on the same side as a transmission line for miles at a time. But I’ve never really had a problem. Does anyone know?

But back in the 1960s, there were complaints that home electronics in the Pittsburgh area were damaged by devices at a nearby military base.

One would assume local zoning rules would preclude building residences in areas likely to have problems, but do we really have a handle on this?

Verizon enters cooperative deal to cross-sell with major conventional cable providers

2011-12-03T06:22:00.000-08:00

Cecilia Kang is reporting in the Washington Post Saturday morning on a cooperative deal between Verizon Wireless and conventional cable services Comcast, Bright House and Time Warner, in various cities, to cross-sell each other’s services, in a manner that recalls the insurance market. The story is here.

The companies will cooperate to offer package deals that offer Verizon for the wireless portion of their telecommunications. Some feel that this could cause Verizon to put less emphasis on its land-based optical FIOS, which some consumers feel is superior to conventional cable in reliability. Others feel that cellular wireless, as opposed to cable broadband, should be developed further because it doesn’t depend on a physical infrastructure vulnerable to storms or perhaps sabotage (which would make cellular wireless a preferable link in future home security systems -- Ackerman Securityt is already mentioning wireless monitoring in its television broadcast ads). In the workplace, I have personally found cellular wireless to be reliable and effective.

Kang said that some hope that the deal will mean that cable companies will not keep charging for unused extra channels.

Some have questioned the possibility of anti-trust issues.

I recall that in New York City, during the Verizon strike, people had trouble scheduling work or going to the major competitor, Time Warner, which news reports said could not keep up.

The New York Times has a story ("Media Decoder") about the deal by Brian Stelter, which characterizes the deal as acquisition of more wireless "spectrum" by Verizon.

FCC Announces "Connect2Compete" program of low-cost broadband access for low-income families

2011-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

The Federal Communications Commission has implemented a plan to offer low-cost broadband service ($10 a month) to families whose kids qualify for free lunches.

Tim Devaney has a story in the Washington Times Nov. 10, p. A6, (website url) here.

The program is called “Connect2Compete” (or “Connect to Compete”).

Here is an earlier story from October, link.

Connect2Compete has a website here and describes itself as a private-non profit partnership.

Apple's iTV could "revolutionize" the cable TV industry with new competition

2011-11-03T07:43:00.000-07:00

The morning after PBS aired its biography of Steve Jobs (see Movies blog today), the Washington Post published an article by Joshua Topolsky, in “The Verge” series, “How iTV, Jobs’s last project, could transform home entertainment”, link here.

Curiously, the article appeared on Google before Washington Post’s own search engine could find it. This may be related to Google’s recent effort to bring new “quality content” to the top of search engine results quickly.

The “Integrated Television Set” would access television content through apps rather than conventional channels, and of course would depend on efficient broadband (which could be wireless or depend on a home wireless router). But it would possibly make the use of broadband capacity more efficient, and force cable companies (whether xFinity, TW, or the newer Verizon FIOS) into more flexible pricing plans and to offer better customer service, especially in areas where they have monopolies.

Was iTV to become Jobs’s “one last thing”?

Broadband infrastructure needs to be able to withstand storm; not everyone has "business class" service

2011-11-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

The recent October snows in the Northeast call attention to another important, if tangential, aspect of the net neutrality debate.

The biggest concern is that large areas of mostly older or suburban neighborhoods stay without electricity and other utilities like cable broadband for days.

Older neighborhoods, with older, weaker and denser trees and weaker structures, are quite vulnerable. Newer developments usually have utilities more carefully installed. As far back as 1970, however, a “New Age” group insisted on underground utilities when building a closed community called Stelle, outside Kankakee, IL (south of Chicago).

Cable and phone companies are often not able to restore service quickly. When I lost phone service in 2005 to a fallen tree limb (from a neighborhood) after an early morning winter thunderstorm (yes, they happen), Verizon took three days to restring the line.

The problem with slow restoration is that more and more people telecommute and work from home. This is good for the environment, but not sustainable in areas with an unstable or excessively vulnerable infrastructure. People who own their own businesses in remote areas or at home in older neighborhoods can be put out of business by lack of ability of utilities to respond quickly enough. Of course, you can say, that’s partly what zoning is all about. Utilities do sometimes offer “business class service” guaranteeing quicker response (especially for broadband Internet) but one needs real profit margins and volume (a real business) to afford it.

Wireless customers will be warned about potential overages

2011-10-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

The FCC and the CTIA are reaching agreement that wireless carriers will notify consumers when they are nearing overages in voice, text, data, and international use, all separately, since major carriers no longer offer unlimited plans.

Many people are finding that work-related communications on their cell phones are causing complications, creating situations where work-related use may not always be reimbursed. This has certainly happened to me. I was not going to increase my minutes allowance just for an employer.

Verizon did warn me of a potential overage when this happened, by free text.

The guidelines would be in effect by early 2013.

Cecilia Kang ran the story in the Washington Post Saturday Oct. 15, link here.

Publication of FCC Net Neutrality rules in Federal Register will lead to flurry of court challenges, on both sides

2011-10-04T20:13:00.000-07:00

Abigail Phillips of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an article Oct. 3 about the flurry of legal challenges following the publication of the FCC’s new “Network Neutrality” rules in the Federal Register, with EFF (website url) here.

The Government Printing Office link for the new rules (simple text) is (website url) here.

The rules are criticized for their exceptions (allowing telecommunications carriers to intervene prospectively to stop putative copyright infringement).

The National Journal has a discussion of the various legal challenges from telecommunications carreirs, who say that the law unconstitutionally differentiates wireless carriers from traditional wired services, (website url) link for the story (Josh Smith).

The Media Access Project, like EFF, maintains that the neutrality rules could turn out to be spineless, and has a large page on the issue (website url) here.

There is a lot to sort through here.

Broadcasters feel that FCC preference for broadband will squeeze out "free" old-fashioned network service

2011-10-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Tom Devaney has an important and detailed story on p A7 of the Sept. 30 Washington Times, “Fighting for spectrum space; Broadcasters ‘extremely nervous’ FCC will favor broadband”, main link (website url) here.

The FCC and telecommunications companies presumably want to reach rural areas with broadband that is as efficient as possible, even in out-of-the-way mountain areas on remote dirt roads. But the “side effect” in some areas could be loss of broadcast channels, or inability of new conventional or even cable channels to enter the market.

Devaney has a sidebar story on that page on how the Detroit area could lose all three of its “free” broadcast channels (not dependent on cable) that depend entirely on commercial advertising spots.

Back in the 50s and 60s the government made a big push to promote UHF access for everyone. I recall that some smaller cities (like Huntsville, AL) had more UHF channels than Washington then, when I grew up, from comments made by family visitors to our home.

Maybe those old antennae and rabbit ears will indeed become obsolete, even with digital tuners. The Dish doesn't sound like fun, either.

Cell phone contracts leave consumers committed to inferior service, and some price hikes

2011-09-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

The Red Tape Chronicles on MSNBC are reporting the latest incident of telecommunications “gouging”, in a story by Bob Sullivan, “Sprint raises fee, but won’t free users from two-year contracts”, link here. There is a good question as to whether carriers can legally raise incidental fees in the middle of contracts.

Verizon offered me a new “Obamaphone” – a “new” Blackberry in mid 2010, but it has turned out to be inferior -- and will remain so for me until mid 2012. The batteries wear out, and Internet drops off and has to be reset (you turn off all your connections and turn them back on), and is generally slower than “other people’s” at discos. And it doesn’t always display Mobile sites properly. For example, it doesn’t recognize Blogger sites converted for optional mobile display (Androids do recognize it). It does recognize MLB (baseball), CNN and most newspapers in mobile mode. Verizon will let you raise your minutes allowance – that doesn’t depend on your equipment contract.

Lightsquared says it has a revolutionary approach to cutting cellular wireless costs; talks with Time Warner

2011-09-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

Here’s a Washington Times story today about LightSquared (you know, E=MC-squared), which says it is close on a global wireless network which it says would be at least 30% cheaper for cell phone and Internet users, and supply Internet (through a kind of cellular wireless already popular with business) everywhere. It claims that the network will not interfere with GPS and military devices, but that has been a major stumbling block so far.

The technology is based on an unused portion of the frequency spectrum.

The company is located in Reston VA, near Dulles Airport.

The link for TWT story is here.

There is also a story that Time Warner Cable is interested in acquiring Lightsquare.

Idaho, in mountain states, is the slowest in catching up on Internet connectivity

2011-09-14T17:18:00.000-07:00

Rural mountain areas may still be lagging behind in efficient, stable Internet access, according to a story today in the New York Times by Katherine Q. Seeyle, “For Idaho and the Internet, Life in the Slow Lane”, link here.

It’s hard for telecomm companies to invest as much in providing speed and especially reliability in areas with such low population density and natural barriers. There was a time when people in remote parts of the country experienced local self-sufficiency, with less expectation of contact from the outside world. In mountainous or other remote areas, the Internet towers or cables are subject to the elements and to large wild animals.

So, do we have “My Own Private Idaho?”

Here’s a YouTube video by Save Rural Broadband, Montana:

Wikipedia attribution link for Idaho topographical map (68 meg, very big file).

Do major service provides use "too much" electricity?

2011-09-10T07:35:00.000-07:00

James Glanz has a provocative story in the New York Times Business Day, Sept. 3, “Google details, and defends its use of electricity”, link (website url) here.

The story had a picture of a server farm in Finland (a country on my own shortlist for destinations). The company has enormous redundancy in its operations, which enable it to keep up its services even when there are local infrastructure disruptions (storms, earthquakes, etc), an important concept in efficient broadband – but here tackled at the content delivery level than the transmission itself. (We could get into an elaborate discussion of all the OSI layers that they used to teach in telecommunications courses back in the 90s.) Other large providers, like Facebook, have similar redundancies, with emphasis on expansion in areas away from susceptibility to major disasters, and low cost (maybe like interior North Carolina).

There were some rather lame rationalizations in the article: it uses less energy to do a search online than go to the library to look things up, like I used to do in the 80s (I remember desperately looking through medical journals at the Texas Health Science in Dallas back then as the AIDS epidemic unfolded; how it has changed.)

Verizon landlines strike said not to affect customers: wait and see

2011-08-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

Major media outlets report a strike by Verizon Communications, which runs the landlines, cable and FIOS Internet services, but not the cellular services. Verizon says management employees and “retirees” will fill in (as “scabs”) and that customer service will not be significantly affected, but some landline installations could be delayed.

The New York Times story by Steven Greenhouse is here.

The service area affected runs from Massachusetts to Washington DC.

Wireless (and cellular wireless) will not be affected.

Last week, I suddenly had to replace a Blackberry battery after about a year (convenient for Verizon, just out of warranty, when it wouldn’t charge) for $40 and had to visit two stores to find one in stock.

AT&T lowers access speeds to some heavy users; Fox charges for some Internet re-airing; Internet TV will cause cable rates to rise

2011-08-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ceclia Kang and Hayley Tsukayama wrote in the Washington Post today that AT&T will lower access speeds to the top 5 percent of its users who stay on unlimited plans, that are no longer available to new subscribers. The link to the story is here.

The story seems commensurate with recent decision by Verizon to no longer offer unlimited data to new customers.

All of this contradicts the rapid growth of the use of Internet TV and streaming, popular with younger customers, as reported in another story today in the “Metro” Post Express, p 12, which may cause cable rates to raise and for networks to charge for rewatching episodes of shows, which Fox already does within one week of broadcast for non subscribers of Hulu or Dish Network.

Third party "companies" get themselves onto your phone bill, probably illegally

2011-07-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Several media outlets today reported on telephone “cramming” (or “scramming”), where cell and land providers allow third party “companies” to access your records (perhaps by hacking) and put fraudulent charges for “services” that you don’t use. So you have to go online and look at your bill every month. It gets even more complicated as cable, Internet, and digital phone get combined.

Here is NBC’s report today.

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Remember, if you ditch your old landline (even if you leave the physical line in place) for digital phone, you are responsible for keeping your cable modem powered at all times, even when you’re away. And cable service is still usually not quite as reliable as old land telephone service – something to think about in conjunction with home security systems, too.

Verizon will end unlimited data plans for new customers

2011-06-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post and AOL have run a detailed story today that Verizon will be ending unlimited data plans for new customers (beginning July 7, Mahler’s Birthday). Apparently existing customers are not affected – much. Usage over about 2G a month will start to get costlier.

But Verizon may also slow down or reduce image quality for very heavy users, even now. The main Huffington link is here.

There’s another account of the story on “All Things Digital” here, which tells customers to hurry.

I mainly use the MiFi secure card, particularly on the road. The main thing that can eat up data quotas is automatic updates.

It's a little hard to see how this would affect browsing on cell phones when out and about, or even mobile blogging, or the importance of making blogs mobile-friendly.

I have not been able to get my Blackberry to show some mobile blogs and sites in proper mobile format, when these work on more modern phones.

GOP would forbid FCC from using funds to enforce net neutrality

2011-06-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

The GOP-controlled House is trying to push through a bill barring the Federal Communications Commission from using any of its funding to enforce rather weak network neutrality rules. Juliana Gruenwald reports this in the National Journal June 15, link here.

It’s not too likely the measure would get past the Senate. But if it did, it could be a big problem for companies that are “subsidized” by neutrality. We need not mention any names.

E-Commerce Times presents new Net Neutrality overview

2011-05-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

There is a recent article, dated May 11, 2011, “Net Neutrality in a Nutshell”, in the E-Commerce Times, by Peter S. Vogel, link here.

The biggest legitimate concern is that a broadband provider could allow one major content service (as in movie streaming) lower rates than another, resulting in the favoring of some content over others. On the other hand, broadband providers may need to take action against individual users who abuse the system (as with massive P2P downloads). Electronic Frontier Foundation rightfully shows concern that neutrality could be violated in trying to prevent supposed copyright infringement.

I looked at a posting on Google’s public policy blog from back in 2007 that does given an overview of the network neutrality debate – with emphasis on the fact that being a communications connection provider is a very different beast from being a content provider or moderator (or searcher). Since this three part article was written, wireless has become much more important as a player that can provide practically everything. The link is here.

FCC might play "eminent domain" with traditional broadcasters, for wireless growth

2011-04-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

Edward Wyatt has an important story in the Friday, April 22 New York Times Business Day, “A Clash Over the Airwaves: Broadcast Spectrum Is Coveted for New Wireless Use”, link here.

There’s a quasi-eminent-domain exercise going on, as the FCC approaches broadcasters to sell or auction off parts of their spectrums, unused or designed to keep interfering frequencies apart, to wireless companies to help more rural areas get effective broadband.

There are still 11 million households that use only conventional antennae for broadcast reception. There was a time when universal UHF was actually an issue, and became available earlier in some less urban communities (like Huntsville AL in the 1950s) than in major cities.

Ordinary people ditch land lines

2011-04-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

Mike Snider, of USA Today, reports that over one in four US homes, 26.6%, have only wireless or cell phones now, in a story, “More people ditching home phone for mobile”, link here.

Lower income households are more likely to do this.

This may present a problem for people who want “work from home” or telecommuting jobs, many of which require a landline.

The other trend is to use digital voice landline, with a cordless phone (from Verizon or Xfinity) with many cell-like capabilities.

But older analog phone service may gradually go away.

As the story indicates, this trend could complicate access to 911 services.

Are there good reasons to use dial-up? Is it still around?

2011-04-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me a link to a piece “10 Good Reasons to Use Dial-Up Internet”.

Back around the time of Y2K, I used AOL dialup at 56K and for most business surfing and Web1.0 it worked fine. I used it until about 2005.

But I wonder how you would handle automated Microsoft operating system updates or big anti-virus updates. McAfee updates back in 2001 could take about 8 hours in dialup, which required a second land line.

What happens when people convert to digital voice land service? Will dial-up work with Comcast XFinity or Verizon FIOS? (Actually, Comcast says that XFINITY should work; here is the link.)

I still think that people without reasonable broadband, at least as good as MiFi or cellular wireless, are at serious disadvantage.

Here’s the link.

GOP tries to vote away FCC net neutrality rules on red herrings

2011-04-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

At the “Public Knowledge” website, Art Brodsky has an article about a GOP-controlled House vote recently to repeal FCC “network neutrality” rules, link here. The vote was 240-179.

Apparently the GOP tried to make hay out of a red herring, claiming that faith-based sites like Koshernet wouldn’t be allowed to exist (they provide filters for religiously objectionable content). Actually, that would be like saying that the FCC rules would prohibit parental controls for child filtering (the alternative to COPA), which is ridiculous.

The article also reviews the wireless issue, saying that the telecommunications companies agreed with the FCC because the FCC agreed to leave them alone, essentially, with wireless.

Rural areas using creative wireless to catch up; wealthy exburban homeowners suddenly find out they have no Internet otherwise

2011-03-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Washington DC local state WJLA presented the disappointing slowness of rural broadband tonight. People sign contracts for homes in exurban Loudoun County communities to find no cable broadband yet. Small companies are mounting stationary devices at high points to feed off of major cellular wireless and provide reasonable connections (otherwise direct Blackberry or cell device hookup).

My own experience with cellular wireless on the job (government) is very good. For ordinary home or small business or publishing use, it’s adequate. For streaming video, you still seem to need land-based (cable or FIOS) broadband. The other night, Netflix had to reset it’s send once during a 96 minute film when Comcast slowed down a bit as more users climbed on.

GPS company, airlines concerned about the effects of LightSquare's aggressive wireless broadband

2011-03-12T21:01:00.000-08:00

Will wireless services start to threaten to disrupt other uses, or vice versa? Alan Levin has a story in USA Today, March 10, “High Speed Wireless vs. GPS; new network could disrupt car, jet navigation, trade groups say”, link here.

The high speed service would come from LightSquared, here The name of the company corresponds to Einstein’s formula for energy.

GPS companies like Gamin have said that the FCC has moved too fast.

But I can remember that back in the 1960s, people in some cities (as around Pittbsurgh) complained that signals from military bases interfered with home electronics.

NY Times clarifies the logic of Verizon's suit, and the weakness of FCC's position

2011-03-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

On March 7, the New York Times ran an editorial that explains the issue of the FCC’s “jurisdiction”: very limited over “information services” (that is, the media, whether professional or “amateur”), but considerable over telecommunications, which are seen as utilities. The link is here.

The Bush administration had regarded the Internet as a form of “media” rather than a service (and I have to admit, that is how I used it for self-publication in the early years). It’s not necessarily so much in Obama’s political interest, ultimately, to change that.

So Verizon sues the FCC, and it may well have a case.

Telecomm companies play the lobbying field heavily, in both parties

2011-03-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

Libertarians (and anti-neutrality forces) will enjoy the column by Timothy P. Carney in the Washington Examiner Friday, p. 13, Regulatory warfare ensnares the wireless world,” link here.

Carney talks about regs that kept some players up in the air, in outer space; but hedge funds dealt some deals that got around all this, something like a forerunner of “The Event”. Carney mentions Falcone, SkyTerra, and Harbringer Capital Partners. These names call to mind the mysterious cell towers in Somalia in “FlashForward”, as if the telecomm companies know “there’s going to be another blackout.”

Seriously, the point of Carney’s piece is that telecomm companies paid lobbyists to play both sides of the partisan spectrum. It doesn’t sound like the telecomm industry is a place for “intellectual honesty” about public broadband policy.

Picture: Lookout Mountain, TN

Commerce study says that rural broadband access is still lacking

2011-02-18T13:00:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a major front page story Friday, Feb. 18, by Kim Severson, “For much of rural America, broadband is a dividing line”, link here.

The Department of Commerce released a study recently showing that only 60% of households use broadband service. Adequate broadband is a transmission rate of greater than 3 megabits per second. More of the country is covered by wireless broadband that cable, since it is easier to build but slightly less effective (but it’s far more immune to disruption from severe weather). In my own experience, Verizon MiFi is about 40% as fast as Comcast cable. The lack of rural broadband may affect jobs and economic competitiveness, especially in southern and western states.

The National Telecommunications and Information Association has the press release, dated 2/17, online here. The visitor can study the broadband availability map here. It could be a useful resource before deciding to buy a home in a rural or remote area. (I’ve never heard real estate experts like Barbara Cochrane mention this issue on television when presenting homes.)

Next Digital Decade event interviews FCC Commissioner on net neutrality

2011-02-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

The “Next Digital Decade and Tech Freedom Launch Event” in Washington DC Hyatt Regency Hotel Jan. 25 is available online, here. The first interview (28 minutes) is a “Fireside Chat” with FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, interviewed by Declan McCullagh of CNET.

McDowell was asked why the FCC rules from December 2010 aren’t yet in the Federal Register. McDowell actually came out against much federal regulation, but was not specific as to the criticisms of the recent rules or of FCC’s legal authority. Andrew Keen from the audience played some devil’s advocate.

The link is here, and the relevant video (not embeddable) is the first one.

Do FCC rules apply business-to-business; Metro PCS joins Verizon in suing FCC; Cable companies fight streaming video

2011-01-25T11:31:00.000-08:00

Ceclia Kang writes in the Washington Post Tuesday that Metro PCS is following Verizon in suing the FCC over net neutrality rules. In a slightly earlier article Kang described how Metro PCS was blocking access to “freight lines” like Skype, Level 3 and Voxel, and testing the FCC as to whether its rules affected “business to business” relationships. The longer article appeared in print today in the Post on p A14, “Net-neutrality complaints pile up; ‘ Noise around the issue’ led Verizon to sue to halt FCC rules”, link here. Level 3 has complained also about Comcast after Level 3 struck a deal with Netflix, which Comcast says is now taking 20% of bandwidth during peak hours.

PC World had an article in Dec. 2010 called “Kill Your Cable, If You Dare” by Jeff Bertolucci, which is hard to find online, but is on Scribd (website url) here (you have to scroll to it). In the February 2011 print issue, James Keck has a letter (p. 9) to the effect that cable companies are already monitoring excessive bandwidth use, a trend which would reverse the convenience of Internet to watch streamed movies and most episode-based network television shows. It seems that the telecomm industry is fighting within itself, trying to keep the older model (hardwired cable) profitable as long as possible, but it may be a doomed effort.

Verizon draws criticism for "silly" suit against FCC

2011-01-21T11:18:00.000-08:00

Rob Pegoraro has a pointed blog entry today, criticizing Verizon’s lawsuit to have the FCC net neutrality rules overturned. The link for the column (Washington Post) is here.

True, the FCC might have exceeded its congressionally authorized authority to call telecomm companies “utilities” to issue ambiguous regulations.

But the columnist objects to Verizon’s using his monthly fees to file questionable suits.

Telecomm companies say that they need to keep a handle on the explosive growth in broadband use, especially through home wireless networks connected to cable. However, the telecomm companies have pushed this arrangement, rather than continuing to use hardwired multiple connections. Increased use included streaming video (as from Netflix) and increased use of “cloud” backup services from Carbonite and web security companies.

Companies could also face issues as some people mix uses, including using their own connections to work from home, which can cause provisioning issues. It’s better for employers to use cellular wireless for homework.

Economist: Real competition would promote neutrality; FCC has contest on developing apps to monitor ISPs

2011-01-20T19:35:00.000-08:00

The Economist has a major article on net neutrality which maintains that the basic problem in the US is not enough telecomm companies compete in any one market to get consumers the choice that in practice would guarantee content neutrality. The link to an abridged version online is here; the full version ("A Tangled Web" may be seen in print Dec. 29, 2010.

The Economist also is critical of the FCC’s waffling on what is unreasonable discrimination.

Readers will want to check out an Electronic Frontier Foundation by Richard Esguerra, “FCC Contest Seeks Better Data for Net Neutrality” (website url) here. EFF provides an anecdote from 2007 of the original difficulty in verifying claims of Comcast’s supposed mediation of BitTorrent traffic.

The FCC link is here and it encourages contestants to develop applications that enable consumers to monitor Internet access and effectiveness. They call it the “Open Internet Challenge”.

Consumer use of Web for conventional TV and movie streaming could affect FCC neutrality implementation, and challenge conventional cable TV business model

2011-01-05T03:55:00.000-08:00

On January 4, USA Today ran a story by David Lieberman on how the Internet is cutting into traditional cable TV. “Is it time to cut the cord on cable TV? Web, other options begin to shake up home viewing” is the front page print title, and online, “Web and other options are shaking up how we watch TV”, link here.

More networks offer most episodes of all major series “free” with Internet commercials interrupting occasionally, much as in broadcast. That will also increase broadband use and challenge the limits of wireless, especially in rural areas. It will also raise questions about how the FCC interprets its new controversial “neutrality” policy with consumers watching so much more “conventional” film and television on the Web (even 3D; “amateur” 3D video cameras are available now for about $1200!).

One thing annoying about cable companies is not always carrying important channels (the LGBT-oriented Logo had trouble getting on in some cities), or having different channel lineups, which will sometimes be different again even in motel chains.

FCC's official "Report and Order" available; some lingering uncertainty about its real intentions, according to EFF

2010-12-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation has provided a link to a pdf of the FCC’s “Net Neutrality rules” as adopted December 21, 2010, with link (website url) here. It’s titled “In the Matter of Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices”, then “Report and Order”.

The report does distinguish among a variety of companies and providers. There are ISP’s which provide cable broadband and/or wireless service to homes and small businesses (and large entities); there are web hosts which enable individuals to network and self-publish (often with shared hosting) on the web, sometimes for fee, sometimes with free services (supported by secondary advertising revenue); some companies may provide both. Because the mix of services varies so much, public policy must be flexible, too. On p 118, the report mentions the 2007 Economic Census (just recently published, according to footnote), which considers, among other things, who actually owns the broadband access channels and provides the networking services. (As I have noted on the “BillBoushka” blog, that is something that matters in determining who can register as a “Copyright Agent” for DMCA safe harbor notification purposes.)

EFF has a summary article dated Dec. 27, “2010 Trend to Watch: Net Neutrality”, link here. EFF notes that the FCC is having to rethink its “authority” given a recent federal court ruling involving the FCC’s intervention in Comcast’s handling of BitTorrent. It fears a “Trojan horse” effect where neutrality is warped to favor establishment interests, particularly in the media business.

FCC will approve net neutrality rules today, somehwhat open to GOP legal challenges; flexible billing supported

2010-12-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

The Federal Communications Commission is set to vote on network neutrality rule son Tuesday, December 21, 2010.

The expected policy is still a bit ambiguous, and could be challenged in court or by GOP lawmakers in the 112th Congress.

Liberals say there is little regulation of wireless, which poorer communities depend on, and particularly travelers. Cable companies are rapidly encouraging homes and businesses to manage their own local home wireless networks.

On its face, the rules will prevent ISP’s from slowing delivery of certain online services, but not prevent deals for faster access or billing by volume of bandwidth use. Flexible billing and tiered pricing seems essential for business profitability and growth. It’s likely that eventually a company like Comcast or Time Warner could provide its own Internet movie streaming and charge more for access to competitors like Netflix. That makes business sense because Comcast and TW are, after all, media and cable movie companies. (Time Warner is also connected to the movie studio Warner Brothers, which could raise more legal questions. In the past, movie distributors have been prohibited from owning theaters by anti-trust laws.)

Cecilia Kang’s front page Washington Post story (“FCC set to enact new rules affecting Internet access”) is here.

Doug Gross has a similar story on CNN here. There is a picture of Julius Genachowski advocating an “open Internet”.

Update: Dec. 22

The FCC board 3-2 to adopt new rules, with a story by David Lieberman here reporting that ISP's have some leeway to control unusual broadwidth hogging if they announce their rules in advance or gave certain kinds of customers "preferential treatment."

FCC wants to prevent broadcasters from imposing blackouts on consumers during disputes

2010-12-09T19:39:00.000-08:00

Todd Shields reported on p A19 of The Washington Post and on Bloomberg News on Thursday that the FCC is looking for ways to protect consumers from channel blockage during fee disputes. Broadcasters have been asking for cable and satellite companies to pay for content that would be free over the Internet (although not always, as most MLB and NFL content in my experience is not free online). The Post story is here.

Bloomberg has a longer version of the story here.

Many of the blackouts have involved sports events, like the World Series.

But the FCC may have limited powers without more legislation.

FCC would accept billing based on usage from telecommunications providers

2010-12-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

The FCC’s chairman Julius Genachowski says that the agency is open to the idea that telecommunications companies can bill consumers for usage (or at least for high volumes of usage) as long as they don’t interfere with traffic that actually reaches end users (or arbitrarily cut off users).

That’s the gist of the story by Cecilia Kang in the Dec. 8, 2010 Washington Post, “FCC’s pay-as-you-go raises video, access questions,” here, p A15, also on the “Post Tech” blog.

The measure could be problematic for companies like Netflix (and I guess Blockbuster) that plan to expand Internet streaming of movies, and in a manner that recalls the “do not track” debate, Logo, which offers free streaming with heavy ads. It could also affect new artists (including classicaL) who promote themselves with high definition videos of their performances, often free with ads.

The link for the story is here.

Wireless companies typically offered tiered pricing plans (as does Verizon for connecting through the Blackberry), and AT&T no longer offers unlimited access.

But it’s really a billing policy issue, not a neutrality issue. It's like normal electric utility billing, or even an apartment's complex decision to withdraw "bills paid" rental plans (which used to be common in high rises in some cities, but not NYC) because some tenants are heavy electricity users.

It reminds me of the “debate” some years back on unlimited mileage car rentals.

Network neutrality components: blocking, attachment, priority (the tale of the old router that still works): comments by a Columbia law professor

2010-12-05T19:15:00.000-08:00

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu gives an interview to Ezra Klein in the Washington Post on network neutrality, printed in the Business Section Sunday Dec. 5, with link here.

He makes the point that if a telecommunications provider bills you more for higher bandwidth usage, that’s a billing issue, not a neutrality issue, just as it would be a pricing issue with electricity use.

However, he analyzes the idea that some consumers will want to be able to use their own choice of brand of network router at home (or an already owned router) with a different ISP.

He says FCC has it right on banning blocking, OK on attachment, and may be lacking in controlling paid priortization, but it may be weak on potential legal challenges in court.

He says that the FCC is "right in the middle", like Obama himself.

I wonder if there could be any cross issues with “tracking”, which the FTC is addressing.

Comcast has a major outage Sunday night, maybe a DNS hack?

2010-12-01T07:01:00.000-08:00

At a time when Comcast is getting heat over net neutrality issues and the dispute with Level3, it had a major outage Sunday night, for over three hours, for many areas from northern Virginia to New England. The Boston Globe has a story by D.C. Denison and Erin Ailworth, “Comcast outage leaves Internet customers adrift,” link here.

The problem appears to have occurred in Comcast’s domain name resolution system. Some savvy users got around by using their routers to connect to Google’s DNS service. There is some suggestion that this could have been caused by hacking, linking back to a DNS security hole discussed on my “ID theft” blog in August 2008.

I’ll hunt around on this later, but here is an article on how to use a Cisco router as a DNS server (link).

I have sometimes had trouble reaching specific sites from Comcast (like AOL mail) and find that it works when I switch to Verizon Wireless broadband.

Comcast fees for Level 3 and Netflix set up the net neutrality ballteground

2010-11-30T07:20:00.000-08:00

Cecilia Kang has an important story on p A17 of the November 30, 2010 Washington Post, “Firm calls Comcast fees for Netflix feeds unfair: Level 3’s complaint speaks to fears about NBC Universal deal”, link (website url) here.

The focus is on additional fees charged by Comcast on feeds through Level 3 Communications (link) whose main client seems to be Netflix. Apparently these fees apply when consumers watch movies in Instant Play on their computers on high speed Internet or pipe it through Web or Internet TV (which I am not doing yet but plan to do in 2011). Netflix recently raised subscription rates for 2011, possibly in part as a result of these fees.

As the W3C chairman noted (last post), there is legitimate fear that Comcast and other telecommunications providers will charge a premium for transmit other people’s content.

But Comcast also fears that Netflix’s Instant Play service can propel cable subscription losses. To some extent, cable channels like HBO have tried to offset these losses by offering their movies on demand at any time. Another technique is for companies like HBO to work more closely with major motion picture companies and distributors (and theater chains like Landmark) to achieve some theatrical presence even for films originally intended for cable. This is of interest to me because I want to get my “Do Ask Do Tell” project going soon. The segmentation of movies into “theater” and “cable” and “instant play” is no longer a viable business practice.

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Nat Worden have an account in the Nov. 30 Wall Street Journal "Comcast disputes Level3's accusations" here.

Scientific American presents case by W3C head for network neutrality

2010-11-27T17:22:00.000-08:00

Scientific American, December 2010, has an important article on p 80, “Long live the web, a call for continued open standards and neutrality: The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity – and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending,” by Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium W3C, link here.

Berners-Lee distinguishes between the Internet, with is like the electric grid, and the Web, which is like a plug-in appliance. He makes a number of points about neutrality. First, he says that cable companies that offer web tv might want to limit the content on their connection to the content they control. Later, he notes that even major political proponents of net neutrality like Google don’t always support it in a wireless environment, which is all some rural areas have. And he still fears that without net neutrality some ISP’s might slow down access to politically incorrect content. He also covers the controversy over Comcast’s slowing BitTorrent traffic, which a federal court in April 2010 ruled the FCC could not stop Comcast from doing. (Comcast has also pushed more responsibility onto home users by encouraging wireless rather than hardwired multiple routers.)

He also covers several bills or laws in both Europe and the US that would allow ISP’s or governments to pull the plug on infringing users or websites without due process (including COICA).

If you go to the Technology link at Scientific American, you’ll see a series of essays “The Web Turns 20”.

How stable are Cox, Comcast, Verizon? Response to a Cox TV ad.

2010-11-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

I saw a television broadcast ad on ABC this morning for Cox high speed cable, in some areas of northern Virginia (Falls Church and much of Fairfax). A customer said that in twenty years he had only one Internet outage, and that since he worked at home, stable Internet was important to keeping his job.

In other areas in northern Virginia, Comcast is available. It’s hard for me to believe that any provider could achieve the stability claimed. When exposed to the elements, outdoor splitters tend to weaken, leading to stalls in the connection, which go away when the splitters are replaced by technicians (typically after 2-3 years outdoors). Cable modems and routers sometimes drop because of household voltage fluctuations, but these be controlled by plugging modems and routers as well as computers themselves into UPS’s.

Some people around have gotten Verion FIOS, and the word on the street for stability has been favorable. I welcome comments on the stability of various cable and FIOS providers.

Cablevision says News Corp may cause widespread World Series blackout

2010-10-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. A consumer advocacy group says that News Corp (Fox) has pulled 67 professional sports teams off the air, when it snubbed a negotiation arranged by the FCC with Cablevision (which Cablevision agreed to). There is a full page ad on p A14 of the Thursday Oct. 21 Washington Post (“News Corp’s ugly October surprise”), and the website for the petition is here. According to Cablevision, 20 million people could have the World Series blocked.

News Corporation also owns 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. The news business is known for its conservative viewpoints, but those don't seem to extend to the movie studio or programming tastes of its stations.

Hotels vary in how good the WiFi is for business travelers; university-owned may be the best

2010-10-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

Here’s an article from New Years Day this year (2010) to the effect that cheaper chain motels are better at offering WiFi than a lot of five star hotels around the world. The TechCrunch article (by Sarah Lacty: “Hotel WiFi should be a right, not a luxury”) is here.

But of course, the quality of the WiFi is also an issue. If you pay for it, some hotels will give you a more secure, encrypted connection (although you should have a good firewall on our travel laptop anyway, and always use https for business transactions). Generally, you get a logon id and password, and the first time you may be prompted to install a secure-connect application. (Whether you need it may depend on your operating system and what security updates XP or Vista may have already sent you.) Hotels owned by universities or colleges typically use the campus system, which is typically of high quality but may be stricter as to acceptable usage policies.

Verizon will refund to millions for "accidental Internet use" charges

2010-10-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

Verizon Wireless is going to refund up to $90 million (up from $50 million) to about 15 million customers who were incorrectly charged for “Internet use” without having data access plans. There are many accounts, such as one from Mashable yesterday, here.

Apparently these were customers who had not signed up for Internet use plans.

Typically, sophisticated cell phone or Blackberry users do sign up for Internet access (which they can also use on their PC’s, especially when cable access fails, as a backup, as during power failures with laptops). But typically these are restricted to about 5 gig a month, althouh newere MiFi plans from several companies (especially Virgin Mobile) will offer much more usage, especially for travelers.

FCC approaches "put up" time on its own plan for net neutrality

2010-10-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

Rob Pegoraro has an interesting perspective in the Washington Post on Sunday, Oct. 3, Business, p G5, “It’s put up or shut-up time for FCC’s net neutrality advocates”, link here.

Pegoraro argues that while startups might rightfully fear the effect of communications providers charging more for the “passing lane” (or HOV lane), in practice no providers seem to want to do this for legitimate uses, although they may want dedicated lines for medicine or very limited prime services, and they may want the ability to charge for really excessive use, especially P2P.

The FCC has indeed proposed that it can impose net neutrality by reversing a 2005 decision that had put telecomm companies under looser regulation than phone companies. This is called a “Title II Reclassification” related to the Telecommunications Act of 1934.

Chattanooga TN will have fastest broadband in US but it is pricey; FCC will licensed unused airwave wireless frequencies for MiFi

2010-09-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Chattanooga TN’s city owned utility EPB has announced the nation’s fastest broadband Internet service, at 1 gigabit per second, 200 times faster than the average broadband in the US, with news story from the utility here. The plan is pricey, about $170 a month. In the meantime, Google is pledging to supply similar service to about 500000 people among communities that apply. Other companies like Verizon are planning to offer services 30 to 50 times what is available now on average. Only a few places on Earth, like some of Hong Kong, have 1 gigabit per second.

I last visited Chattanooga myself in 2004, and drove up Lookout Mountain. There's an interesting underpass-tunnel on US 441; I don't have a picture.

And Edward Wyatt, in the Business Section of the Sept 13 New York Times, reports that the F.C.C. is considering offering unlicensed wireless frequencies to entrepreneurs. They’re actually used, for example, for baby monitors (also used in eldercare). These could develop more mid-level MIFI hotspot services (like Virgin’s) with improving security, and essentially guarantee “reasonable” service almost everywhere. The link is here. I talked about MiFi on my IT blog Sept. 2.

"The Economist" gives us a course in net neutrality concepts; but the issues are bigger, still; Check "Free Press" notes

2010-09-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

The British mass-market periodical “Economist”, in the Sept. 4-10 issue (I could call it “The September Issue”) has a critical op-ed on p. 11, “The Web’s New Walls: How the threat to the Internet’s openness can be averted”, link here.

The editorial is developed in several detailed stories in the issue. “Untangling the social web” (p. 16), “The Virtual Curmudgeon” (p. 25, about music composer and existential social critic Jaron Lanier – I reviewed his “You Are Not a Gadget” on my books blog Feb. 10, 2010) and, most important, “A Cyber-House Divided” on p 61.

The general concern focuses on two or three areas. One is foreign governments intercepting and censoring content that their citizens see – most of all, China – and the “technology” of getting around these efforts. (These may include Tor Bridges, explained by EFF, as I discussed on my International Issues blog Aug 13, 2009.) But the biggest concern is their spin on the network neutrality debate: the idea that companies want to wall off certain areas and charge more for it, a process that economically seems natural and part of innovation.

Personally, I disagree that there is a lot of practical threat that the average user is going to find the Internet of the future a mishmash of “walled gardens” (the analogy to AOL, Prodigy and Compuserv is a bit misplaced; the Internet in early days wasn’t developed enough to get beyond proprietary content models; I remember back in 1994 how people watched for news about corporate merger negotiations on CompuServ while waiting for employee meetings.) Some walling off (to protect a smart energy grid or health care information and real time diagnosis and treatment grid) really is appropriate. And some consumer technologies (high def video) require special attention when used in great bulk (if we really are going to go to the movies on the Internet). I think that largely market incentives work. A bigger issue is the idea of “Natural Law”, the idea that citizens need to follow some principles of “common good” that will limit what they can do on their own. That gets back to the debate on media perils insurance (could it become mandatory some day), and whether ISPs and content forum hosts (or advertising hosts like Craigslist) should continue to enjoy Section 230 (and DMCA Safe Harbor) protections.

The Sept. 6, 2010 issue of Time Magazine, p 68, has an article ("The awesome column") by Joel Stein, "Net wit: Forget neutrality. Here's why we should make the Internet less fair and less balanced", link for article abstract here (subscription). Stein is "volunteering" for a lobbying association, the CTIA, the "wireless association." He thinks lobbyists are legit and "call back fast". He also thinks that unlimited consumer broadband for low-quality stuff interferes with stability for everyone and for more essential aps like medicine and smart energy. (I would say that Internet modem stability can be affected by something as simple as the stability of your household's electricity voltage.)

Here is a video from the Berkman Center where Chris Riley, Policy Counsel of Free Press (link) the non-profit org, not the book publisher), discusses Comcast, BitTorrent and Network Neutrality, Feb 2009.

"Separate Peace" among telecomms would leave wireless unregulated

2010-09-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

The “separate peace” strategy among some major Internet and telecomm companies, allowing some kinds of specialized premium services to be offered for extra fees, would also include leaving wireless largely exempt from network neutrality regulation, a story in the New York Times business section today Sept 3, “F.C.C. seeks more input on wireless Internet rules,” by Edward Wyatt says, with link (website url) here.

The concept is significant as wireless may become a more important part of rural access broadband strategy. For example, the innovation of portable “MiFi” devices may make portable Internet access available to all, but not of as good a quality for some applications (see IT blog today).

The FCC plans no action during a comment period, which would last until the November elections.

"Free response" final exam for net neutrality policy makers

2010-09-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

Selena Frye, in the Network Administrator blog for Tech Republic, has a post “Seven questions for the new Internet rule makers,” link (website url) here.

It reads like a college essay exam, or maybe an AP “free response” problem set. Teachers and professors should love this piece.

The biggest overall question seems to be whether average end users can really tell what is going on in matters that can affect them. For example, Cisco is claiming we can make the environment rich enough for everybody so the issue goes away. But what about rural areas? Will greater dependency on wireless (because it is cheaper in the long run) mean bigger security problems for average users, especially in rural areas?

Network neutrality, Section 230 and DMCA safe harbor: ISP's want to have it all ways

2010-08-26T15:46:00.000-07:00

A blog called “Public Knowledge”, with a lot of primer material on network neutrality, has a posting Aug. 20 by Anne Hasley, “ISP’s want to have their First Amendment cake and eat it to,” link here. The article mentions "H.R. 3817: Investor Protection Act of 2009", Dan Kanjorski (D-PA), govtrack link here.

As we noted, ISP’s have resisted FCC suggestions to treat them just like telephone companies, because then they would not have the ability to tweek access speeds where they say there is a generally publicly valid reason, such as better speed for showing surgical procedures.

ISP’s have, with limited success, said that they need to monitor facilities like BotTorrrent, which by their very nature invite consumer abuse (excessive bandwidth and sometimes piracy or copyright infringement). Courts have disagreed with this contention.

But Halsey is one of the few bloggers to talk about the “downstream liability” protections to ISP’s from both Section 230 (the 1996 Telecommunications Act) and the DMCA Safe Harbor. Few articles discuss both, and few articles link these to network neutrality as a legal issue.

FCC meltdown led to "a separate peace" between Internet giants

2010-08-18T05:55:00.000-07:00

Sam Gustin has a piece in Daily Finance, “How FCC Bungling Led to the Google-Verizon Deal”, link here (provided by AOL Aug. 19). The two companies “bailed out” of the talks (it sounds like a project getting canceled – I experienced that with a consortium back in the early 80s) and struck their own deal. That is to say, for really premium content, it’s OK for telecommunications providers like Verizon to set up premium connections and charge more. This would be OK for real-time health care information, or remote participation in surgery, or for a revamped aviation traffic control system or for a smart energy grid. “Ordinary content”, like my blogs, or Daily Finance, or Yahoo!, or Salon or the Huffington Post, (or YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace) could be treated in a neutral fashion on the regular Internet.

The article leads to another link with this embedded video where Sam Gustin explains the private deal to Amy Stone.

Companies divided on "cable-ization" plans that challenge net neutrality

2010-08-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

The philosophical underpinnings and conceptual meaning of “network neutrality” are experiencing even more perturbations these days, as companies want to offer specialized “supra-Internet” services on faster channels for which speed and robustness or storm-proof reliability would have to be paid for separately. A good example would be health care and eldercare remote monitoring, and another would be the smart energy grid. All of these ideas also pose security issues, since they potentially place major pieces of national infrastructure within the reach of hackers. The general term for this is “cable-ization” of the Internet, borrowing on the concept of paying more for premium channels.

The story “Web Plan Dividing Companies” appears in the Business Day section of the August 12 New York Times, is by Claire Cain Miller and Brian Stelter, and has this link.

FCC criticized for 1-on-1 talks with big telecom, content companies

2010-08-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Ceclia Kang has a story “FCC draws fire over talks with Internet, telecom giants on ‘net neutrality” on p A13, Economy and Business, of the Washington Post on Thursday, Aug. 5.

Companies like Verizon, AT&T, Google and Comcast are discussing neutrality with the FCC in “1:1” meetings, from a “best practices” perspective, which would, for example, allow corporate content providers higher video resolution and bandwidth when they pay more for certain infrastructure facilities and robustness. They would also allow companies to make legal agreements regarding preferred pricing plans for using one another’s facilities.

The companies insist that there is no censorship of content or preference based on subject matter (gay rights, immigration, tea parties, and the like).

The FCC is backing away from its strategy of classifying broadband access providers as telecommuniucations services, which it says it could do, however awkwardly, without Congress.

The link for the story is here.

CED Magazine plays devil's advocate on net neutrality precepts

2010-08-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Patrick Hunter has an interesting, if detailed perspective, about network neutrality in CED Magazine, dated Aug. 1, called “Network Neutrality: Overgovernance in a Digital Age”, link here. A subtitle of the article is "Moving forward, the debate should keep focus on the relevant issues". CED calls itself "The Greening of Cable".

Hunter makes the interesting point, that telecommunications companies have to practice “ethical” technical “discrimination” all the time in giving different kinds of traffic (technically, such as text when compared to voice or video) different patterns of resources so that the consumer experience is optimized. Modern routers are very good at determining the appropriate level of resources to give traffic of different character (James Martin’s textbooks on telecommunications back in the 1990s went over this in detail).

The practical problems come in assessing the behavior or ISP’s in the last link of their delivery of data (or receipt from) the end users, whether corporate, government or home.

He is somewhat critical of the views of Tim Wu, Vinton Cerf, and Paul Misener.

Generally, large companies have tried to be “neutral’ when it comes to free speech issues, but often there are controversies over some speech that are hard to resolve in an ethically neutral manner.

AT&T and network neutrality (and wireless TOS)

2010-07-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

I noticed some news stories and blog entries about AT&T’s claim that network neutrality doesn’t work for wireless. Back around April 1, 2009 there had been a spat about AT&T’s TOS for wireless that forbad downloading movies or video by P2P or some other forms of customer initiation (maybe Netlfix or Logo or even YouTube rentals) unless authorized specifically by AT&T.

Rob Topolsk had written this explanation on the “Public Knowledge” blog here.

and NewTeeVee had a story “AT&T Changes TOS to limit mobile video”, link here.

Of course, generally speaking, national wireless plans don’t provide the same robust high volume transfer capacity that landbased broadband cable or FIOS can. Just look at the typical rates for a national Verizon Wireless plan for your Blackberry, if you want to use it when your cable broadband is down or when you’re on the road. It works, but it is slower, and not very suitable for movies. To me, this says, that a really effective broadband policy needs to bring land-based cable to all areas, or very robust wireless or satellite. (Verizon now says it can serve 92% of the country with its national wireless subscription.)

AT&T issued a statement in September 2009 on Net Neutrality, and talks about “common carriage” and says that ignoring it is an “intellectual contradiction” and that content providers and facilitators must play by the same rules as trunk telecommunications providers. The line is fuzzy indeed

Use Universal Service Fund for wireless broadband, FCC and telecomms say

2010-07-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

FCC and telecomunnications companies are simultaneously calling for reforms in the Universal Service Fund, which pays for landline phone service in remote areas. Recently, in interior (“inland empire”) Washington State, over $17000 a piece was spent on each of 17 people for conventional service.

There is a legitimate debate as to using the fund to set up wireless and/or satellite networks that could provide complete phone and broadband service much more cheaply, but would have to be carefully vetted as to the number of companies and amount of competition involved.

The story appears on p A17 of the July 20 Washington Post, “Reforms urged in federal funding for phone lines”, by Cecilia Kang, here.

Videos on FCC meetings on NN, and Wash. Post interviews former FCC officials

2010-07-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has an interview with Reed Hundt and Michael K. Powell, former chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission, 20 minutes, in a debate about Network Neutrality and whether this is necessary to provide broadband reasonably for everyone and keep the playing field level for all speakers. Here is the (web url) link.

The post has an “Embed link” tag here that does not seem to work.

There is the sentiment that where you have competition, you don’t need regulation. But that is seen to be a uniquely “American” view.

Here is a YouTube video (1 hour 29 minutes) of the FCC Open Agenda Meeting at Troy University Oct. 22, 2009

Will metered broadband prevent Internet "brownouts"? 2012 can come too soon

2010-07-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

Time Warner Cable has been saying that metered broadband Internet use will prevent “Internet brownouts” that will start to occur by 2012, if there are not some action taken to charge for unreasonable use.

Brownouts would probably cause intermittent loss of connectivity that would cause video loads to stall repeatedly.

On the other hand, some businesses like Netflix (and YouTube) feel that their business model of streaming new indepndent films legally over the Internet for rental could be affected.

The article by Martin Bosworth appeared in Consumer Affairs in April 2009, link here.

How good is customer service for land lines (Verizon especially?)

2010-07-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Recently I got a notice in the mail that the area had been wired for Verizon FIOS, but that I was still “unactivated” – as if it were that simple. I have Comcast for cable and Internet, and it keeps getting more expensive, and yes the new deal for Verizon looks attractive.

About four years ago, in the winter, after a minor ice storm a tree limb fell on a Friday morning and knocked out the landline phone and not the cable. The local service was with AT&T but the lines belonged to Verizon. It took until Monday afternoon to get the line restored. But maybe that was inter-company (and intra-company) red tape.

Practically all local phone service contracts come with maintenance provisions, which allow the company to bill for labor and materials for repairs. Most apartment buildings and neighborhoods have residents with a mix of local services, so an outage from a storm doesn’t always affect everyone consistently. There are reports of Verizon and some other companies taking unreasonably long to provide repairs for land service.

Some of the stories are at this site.

In its defense, it must be admitted that Verizon says it connects billions of calls a day without incident.

---

I must add something else. AOL went to free email a few years ago, but I still get a $25 bill from them on my card. I'm not sure what for unless its for their web content. It's OK, but Yahoo!, MSN, CNN, etc. is "free"!

Freepress accuses telecomm companies of manipuating FCC and net neutrality regs to their benefit

2010-06-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

An advocacy group called “Freepress” has been warning that industry giants—specifically Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T – are manipulating the FCC and the network neutrality in order to gain control of broadband regulation. On Wednesday, June 23, they took out a full page ad (on p A11) in The Washington Post.

They have their own story on this on their site, here.

FCC invents a "Title 1.5" concept to start classifying ISP's so that it can implement "net neutrality"

2010-06-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Martinez of the McClatchy News Service wrote on June 20 that the Federal Communications Commission voted on June 17 to start classifying Internet Service Providers as instrumentalities of a “highly regulated telecommunications service” like the (former) Bell System companies. The regulatory framework will be called “The Third Way”. The link is here.

Scott M. Fulton III has a “Policy & Law News” article on May 6, 2010 called “The Third Way: FCC attempts strange ‘Title 1.5’ broadband reclassification,” link here. One problem is that its network neutrality ideas based on the 1996 formulation of information services doesn’t fly under “Title I”. The opposite pole has been the “Title II” formulation of an ISP as a “real communications service”.

Comcast (and maybe other telecomms) check MAC addresses on Ethernet cards, "force" wireless router use to help manage bandwidth abuse "transparently"

2010-06-09T18:14:00.000-07:00

Here’s some scuttlebutt on how Comcast (and maybe some other vendors) are handling the “controversy” of overage by a few customers (the surcharges or cutoffs discussed earlier).

Recently, after I had some instability problems in the high speed Internet, they told me that my land Netgear router from early 2006 was at “end of life.” True, an outdoor splitter had deteriorated in February’s snowstorms and needed to be replaced. But the company ships you the new Cisco cable modem and Netgear wireless router, with some instructions that leave some holes unanswered. I covered this last week on my “IT Jobs” blog (it was a job).

I found that after connecting the cable modem (which as I wrote there requires a call to tech support for the account to be reset), other computers would no longer connect to the Internet on the wired modem connection. That seems to be because Comcast cable modems (made by Cisco) now check (or, have Comcast’s servers check) the MAC address (Media Access Control Address) on your Ethernet card. They only allow you to use one computer this way. If you don’t want to use wireless and your computer breaks and you get another one (even temporarily, as during a warranty repair) you have to call the company’s tech support to “re-provision” your connection. That’s what Geek Squad told me today at a Best Buy store visit.

So you follow the directions for Netgear and set up the wireless home network (another post today on the IT blog).

What’s the point? I think it helps Comcast (or any similar competitor) manage excessive use by a few customers. Say you have a fraternity house with land connections and multiple kids running BitTorrent (maybe illegally) and chewing up bandwidth from more “casual” consumers, leading to slowdowns in service. Wireless is good, but the responsibility for correct and heavy use shifts to the consumer.

It is true, that even with the router on, the “wired” connection to the “original” computer is about 50% faster than it was before, and is much less prone to slowdowns during heavy usage periods on business days.

The fact is, even average consumers have to become more tech savvy to keep good service, even for ordinary use. The Kids (“Our Kids”, who some of us taught and raised) have taken over.

AT&T will no longer allow new smart phone and iPad users unlimited bandwidth at one price

2010-06-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

AT&T will stop letting new consumers sign up for unlimited data bandwidth plans for smart phones and iPads, and charge for excessive bandwidth use, according to an AP story by Peter Svensson. AT&T says it will help ease data congestion from heavy users. The link for the story is here.

I'm pretty used to bandwidth limits myself, as with a regular website. But these limits have gotten very large, although maybe a DOS attack would exceed them. With my own Blackberry, there are minutes and bandwidth limits with Verizon, but these have not been an issue so far.

Unlimited anything can get to be unsustainable. I can recall a time when people predicted that car rental companies would stop allowing unlimited mileage.

The controversy is similar to that of cable Internet providers starting to warn users of really excessive use, as with P2P users.

FCC: consumers are unaware of their broadband speeds

2010-06-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

Cecilia Kang has an important but brief blog posting in her “Post Tech” column, printed Wednesday June 2 on p A10 (Economy & Business) of the Washington Post, “4 out of 5: Broadband users don’t know their connection speed,” link here.

The Federal Communications Commission performed a study or survey that determined that the actual speeds provided by service providers where sometimes less than half of what was advertised.

The survey was conducted by ABT Associates (link) and SRBI (link).

FCC wants to have a survey where consumers install hardware in their homes that will tell them how well their connections work.

The survey seemed to focus on wireless. In my experience, wired broadband (through cable) is slightly faster generally than Verizon wireless connections through a Blackberry. However, sometimes in my experience Comcast has brief network problems where some sites will not connect for a while whereas they will contact through Verizon (this has happened particularly with AOL mail).

On the other hand, I’ve found that with wired land broadband (Comcast in my case, but Cox and Time Warner are probably similar), the quality of splitter connections exposed to the elements outside can affect speed. Generally, if (home) outdoor splitters are replaced after two or three years, speed and stability (absence of slowdowns and stalls) seem to improve. That was particularly true at the February snowstorms on the East Coast that covered outdoor splitters in my case. Freezing and melting seems to cause the connection stability to degrade. I haven’t seen this commented on with broadband discussions.

FCC needs a "fourth way" for net neutrality: "back to Congress" (Back to the Bay!)

2010-05-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post is appropriately critical of Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Monday morning (May 24), with the editorial, “Why broadband regulation needs help from Congress,” link here.

The Post is underwhelmed by the FCC’s idea that a broadband backbone provider is a quasi-telephone company. (I remember all those interviews with the Bell system – including Bellcomm and Bell Labs, as I was getting out of the Army in 1970; I got one offer; those were the days, my friend.)

The editorial argues for a “fourth way” as if suggesting we need access to unused dimensions in string theory. It writes “The agency, industry, consumer groups and other interested parties should work with Congress to craft clear but limited rules tailored to broadband.”

Libertarians, of course, will choke on the idea that Congress will get involved again in the net neutrality debate. But it was already engaged a few years ago, around 2006, when it drafted the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act”, described here on the original June 22, 2006 posting.

"Back to Congress" is like the Army saying "Back to the Bay". Or, back to Statism.

NY Times explains the significance of "broadband classification" with respect to authority of FCC to regulate it

2010-05-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has an important editorial today (Monday May 17), “Broadband and the F.C.C.”, link here.

The editorial maintains that the Bush administration had classified broadband as an “information channel” for the “purpose of freeing it from regulation.” That means that broadband is conceived of as involved in delivering actual content and therefore should not be regulated (or censored) by government but should adhere to the free market.

However, the FCC wants to claim that broadband service is more like a plug-in utility, like telephone. The Times advertises that the real broadband backbone is controlled by only a few corporations, reducing the effect of competition in many less populated parts of the U.S., and that Americans pay more for broadband than do many in Europe or many parts of Asia (such as Japan and South Korea).

The Times also questions the wisdom of Comcast’s questioning the authority of the FCC to regulate broadband under its previous definition.

Satellite damaged by solar storm could interfere with much of US cable television service soon

2010-05-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

There is a possibility that damage to a satellite owned by Intelsat Corporation could cause it to interfere with another satellite used by US cable television companies, starting May 23, if it approaches close enough.

The story was reported by Newsroom Solutions in Arkansas Matters, (web url) here. Intelsat would not say which cable companies or areas of the US could be most affected.
It’s not clear if it could affect broadband Internet also.

Michael Weissenstein has a more detailed story (“Drifting satellite threatens US cable programming”) for WJLA Channel 7 (ABC) in Arlington VA, link here. There is no danger of collision with the Galaxy 15 satellite, and engineers have several strategies for keeping the Intelsat satellite from being close to the Galaxy satellite and causing prolonged outages.

In October 2003 there were solar flares that caused little disruption in the US (ironically, an episode of “Smallville” was based on a solar flare’s affecting the teen Clark Kent, and it was aired the same day as the real flare even though it must have been filmed months before). There is always a possibility that solar storms can disrupt terrestrial communications.

Wikipedia attribution link for picture of solar prominence.

FCC will still try to regulate broadband by "redefining it"

2010-05-06T12:19:00.000-07:00

Edward Wyatt has a Business Day story in The New York Times “FCC Push to Regulate Broadband Is Expected”, link here.

Julius Genachowski is expected to announce a finding that broadband service is a “hybrid” between “information service” and a “utility” and that the FCC has the legal authority to stop telecomm backbone companies from charging more to content provider companies like Google, even though telecomm companies like AT&T and Comcast say they have no intention to do so.

The FCC Chairman apparently believes that he can deal with recent court opinions by redefining the legal definition of broadband service provider.

To put all this in context, look at Dan Woods, “Designing the Future Internet: It’s time for the technology equivalent of urban planning” in Forbes, May 4, here.

Broadband for America promotes libertarian position on Discovery Channel breaks

2010-05-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

The organization “Broadband for America” (link ) has been advertising on the Discovery Channel (during Hawking's documentary) with the typical “libertarian” position on network neutrality, to the effect that free market innovation will effectively provide consumer neutrality on its own. There are maps delving into the broadband development situation in each state.

The group provides a link to a Wall Street Journal report (link here ) by Laura Landro, April 13, 2010, “Breaking Down the Barriers: When health-care providers exchange electronic medical records, costs go down and patient care goes up”. True, but the limiting factor for medical records is not telecommunications capability (although there is an issue of format compatibility in some health care record transmissions), but a culture of medical specialists who feel that manual records help protect their turf.

Do garden apartments with heavy satellite use lack conventional broadband?

2010-04-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

While driving around some old haunts near the location of the first job of my career, I noticed something about two adjacent garden apartment complexes, one of which I had lived in from 1970-1971 (my first apartment). I won’t name them here, other than to say they are in New Jersey in a reasonably prosperous and gradually exurbanizing area.

One of the complexes had satellite dishes all over the place. The one I had lived in did not. The logical conclusion might have been that land-line broadband had not yet arrived to the other complex.

I don’t know how well most garden complexes are doing now in offering cable and broadband, but it’s an interesting consideration.

It’s even more critical in high rises, as broadcast signals often don’t work too well, even with master antennas (they never have in my experience; I had cable in New York City as early as 1975).

Washington Post favors telecomm disclosure, but not formal net neutrality regulation

2010-04-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has a moderate to Cato-like editorial on the overturning of FCC rules for the Internet on Saturday April 17, “Internet oversight is needed, but not in the form of FCC regulation”, link here.

The editorial discusses a possible unintended consequence of the recent court ruling: that the FCC could take the track of treating ISP’s and telecoms as like phone companies and common carriers and actually set rates (remember the collectivist 1970s?) The Post favors a public policy of expected public disclosure. For example, “ISPs … should be required to disclose information about how they manage their networks to ensure that these decisions are legitimate and not meant to interfere with applications that compete with the ISPs' offerings.

Update: April 19

The New York Times has an editorial today, "The F.C.C. and the Internet", link here. The Times characterizes broadband Internet as a world with many service and content providers competing for room with relatively few physical communications providers. It writes "broadband access is probably the most important communication service of our time. One that needs a robust regulator."

Libertarian views on network neutrality get published following appeals court ruling

2010-04-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Robert M. McDowell (probably no relation to the American composer!) has a great piece on the court’s FCC ruling, along Cato-like, libertarian lines, “Hands off the Internet, please”, today, Friday, April 9, link here.

His writing is blunt. He maintains that the appeals court ruled that Congress never gave the FCC the power to implement “network management” rules. He also argues that the FCC might find legal work around by analogy to old “Ma Bell” and railroad rules. An image flashes into my mind: a day in the fall of 1972, when I was working as a site rep for Sperry Univac, and I made a visit to AT&T in lower Manhattan, in the days of telephony innocence. It even reminds me of my opening job interviews with the Bell system (there were several) as I was getting out of the Army around the beginning of 1970.

McDowell warns that allowing the government to micromanage telecommunication provider policy could be a stepping stone for greater government intervention with content, aka China, although the COPA trial that I have written about places that concept into question.

Like other libertarian comments, the piece points out that a large portion of American households have effective land-based broadband, and that wireless broadband is rapidly improving in quality and reliability – and hopefully, security.

Cecilia Kang has a comment board on his article here.

Appeals court sides with Comcast, guts FCC network neutrality policy

2010-04-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

A federal appeals court ruled today that Comcast can slow down the delivery of some video or streaming content to high-volume users in order to deliver consistent service to all customers.

Zdnet has a comprehensive story with links to Comcast’s statement, “Court sides with Comcast, sides with FCC’s Net Neutrality Efforts”, link here.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From the Opinion:

“The Commission may exercise this “ancillary” authority only if it demonstrates that its action—here barring Comcast from interfering with its customers’ use of peer-to-peer networking applications—is “reasonably ancillary to the . . . effective performance of its statutorily mandated responsibilities…”

“The Commission has failed to make that showing. It relies principally on several Congressional statements of policy, but under Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit case law statements of policy, by themselves, do not create “statutorily mandated responsibilities.” The Commission also relies on various provisions of the Communications Act that do create such responsibilities, but for a variety of substantive and procedural reasons those provisions cannot support its exercise of ancillary authority over Comcast’s network management practices. We therefore grant Comcast’s petition for review and vacate the challenged order.”

Update: April 7:

The Washington Post has a front page story "Court limits FCC clout over Web; Ruling for Comcast is blow to 'net neutrality' and White House goals", by Cecilia Kang. Comcast had apparently been targeting BitTorrent use. As a Comcast user myself, I've noticed that once in a while there are slowdowns in weekdays; this may be related to keeping all customers connected without any disruption. There is a concern, however, that the ruling could hinder Obama administration plans to use telephony funds for rural broadband extension. The link is here.

The New York Times story is "U.S. Court curbs F.C.C, authority on web traffic; oversight role defined; Internet companies can control the speed of specific sites," by Edward Wyatt. Internet companies could charge more for services like YouTube or movie streaming later, even though it does not appear that they intend to do so now (outside of BitTorrent and P2P). The link is here.

Washington Times presents "opposing viewpoints" on Obama-FCC broadband policy initiative

2010-04-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times, on Maudy Thursday April 1, has a good “opposing viewpoints” or “point-counterpoint” on the FCC-Obama plan to make broadband a basic utility for all Americans, even in the most remote areas.

Andrew Moylan, of the National Taxpaers Union (link), writes “Spare us the broadband plan: everything is working just fine without the Obama meddling”. Moylan gives statistics apparently showing that most Americans already have access to broadband or at least wireless, and that for those who do not, satellite providers (“the dish”) can offer speeds 18 times faster than dialup. I don’t know whether Tea Party site (Fox) Searchlight Nevada has broadband, but it’s pretty remote. I think Sarah Palin has broadband. The link here.

Larissa Herda (CEO of small telecomm companies in Colorado, Everwood-style) has a counterargument “New broadband policy s good start: FCC needs to rapidly improve its business focus”, link (web url) here. Her arguments are more familiar.

Some webmasters till have to use dialup still

2010-03-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

CNN has a story this morning (March 16) “A webmaster without the high-speed web, about Kelli Fields, who still runs a website from a rural home in Oklahoma with dialup. High-speed fiber-optic cables have not yet reached her residence, although she could get high speed access through a relatively expensive satellite connection. She does use broadband at work. It's dangerous to run a website now with dialup only because automatic security updates are so difficult.

Lack of broadband access would also make it difficult for some people to apply for jobs, especially at major companies, or start small businesses.

The story by John D. Sutter is “A webmaster without the high-speed web” here.

Ceclia Kang has a story on the front page of the Washington Post Tuesday March 16, “FCC plan would greatly expand Internet connections,” link here. This follows on to a similar New York Times story documented here Saturday, March 13.

Mid-size telecomm providers might benefit the most from the FCC plans, which involve using funds originally intended for rural telephone service to be directed to broadband. Congress, especially GOP members, want the FCC to stay focused on brining broadband to everyone. This seems to be a bipsartisan priority.

FCC wants broadband to become a comprehensive utility nationwide for all

2010-03-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an important front page story Saturday March 13 by Brian Stelter and Jenna Wortham, “Effort to widen Internet access sets up battle: A 10 Year Plan by the FCC; Industries at odds over making broadband the top medium”, link here.

This approach would make broadband an essential utility, and move it away from being viewed as a disposable luxury in “Suze Orman” financial smackdowns. It could affect the business models of network television and movie studios. But it also depends on stable infrastructure, being hardened to storms. It also raises security and privacy concerns (as with the issue of smart power grids, as recently discussed by EFF), as tightly integrated utilities could be vulnerable to a variety of attacks.

Broadband becomes more essential as security updates from computer operating system vendors (Microsoft and anti-virus packages) require it to work well.

It’s not clear how dependent the broadband would be on landlines, or whether wireless would fit in more (using previous laws for providing telephone service). Some telecommuting jobs require landlines, as companies trust wireless less (for dependability and security).

The Obama administration is pushing making broadband like a “right” (like “health insurance”) but is waffling in the approach to protecting speakers from unreasonable “turf-oriented” behavior by legacy music and movie industries regarding possible copyright and trademark issues, which could affect network neutrality policies.

NY cable dispute seems to pull plug on Oscars for cable viewers

2010-03-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

NBC Washington is reporting that three million cable customers in New York will not be able to access the Oscars through cable because of a dispute between Disney and Cablevision, which had to pull the plug last night on Disney programs. Maybe it will get settled Sunday. In apartment buildings, rabbit ears, even digita,l don’t work. This is shameful corporate behavior. Why can't Disney (owning ABC) serve its customers and take legal action later to demand payment from NY Cablevision?

Story on Cinemaretro here.

This is the second such dispute in recent memory.

Update: Service was restored 14 minutes into the Oscar broadcast (various reports).

EFF petitions to close loophole in FCC net neutrality rules regarding alleged copyright infringement enforcement

2010-03-05T19:04:00.000-08:00

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco has submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission on the proposed rules for network neutrality.

The EFF believes that the FCC should not make copyright infringement or any issue related to the content of speech (when challenged by third parties) as a form of “reasonable network management”. The EFF believes that lawful, non-infringing speech will get caught in the crosshairs; supposed infringement or pending DMCA takedowns should not be related to bandwidth access.

Here is a link to a PDF of EFF’s comments.

EFF says it has accumulated more than 7000 signatures on its petition demanding that the FCC close this loophole in proposed net neutrality regulations.

"Peering" competes with centralized Internet routing, complicated net neutrality debate

2010-03-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

The Science Times section of The New York Times has an interesting long article by John Markoff, “Striving to Map the Shape-Shifting Net” today March 2, link here.

The article discusses a neo-novel technique called “peering” , linking different businesses or entities in a “meet-me” environment without depending on centralized server routing to big players like ATT, Comcast, Mae-East and West, and the like. On the other hand, the huge centralized servers have become necessary to handle the enormous increase in video traffic and on-demand movies (as from Netflix). The newspaper page is well illustrated with drawings of blobs ("it crawled out of the woodwork" from "The Outer Limits") that resembled depictions of "branes" used to theorize parallel universes.

The complexity of the environment is going to challenge the very meaning of “network neutrality” rules as recently developed by the FCC.

A new experimental network 100 times faster than now

2010-02-11T05:28:00.000-08:00

We often hear that the United States lags behind other countries (especially South Korea) in broadband speed. So now Google has announced plans to build and beta test an experimental broadband network with speeds up to 100 times faster than normal. Up to 500000 people may be able to use it in the test. The company link is here. The company says it will follow strict neutrality policies in managing the experimental network.

One of the biggest uses will be medical, with the ability of surgeons to supervise operations thousands of miles away, or for supervision of emergency medicine in the field. The military could obviously make use of it.

Obviously, the technology could deliver movies and music much more efficiently, and could change business models in Hollywood and in the music industry. The management of licenses and copyright would of course have to be addressed.

Device Mag has a similar story, here.

I have to say that Comcast broadband speed is adequate. Netflix movies play OK. But it does slow and sometimes stall during busy times, and then start working correctly when Comcast restarts the connections.

"Bundles of Cable": Streaming video may be more the issue than unbundling (remember the same debate for mainframe computers?)

2010-02-08T06:49:00.000-08:00

The media has come out with some interesting perspectives on whether cable pricing ought to be unbundled. The biggest one is by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker, “Bundles of Cable: Why cable companies bundle their channels,” link here.

It’s true, in my case, since I am an “old” customer, My Comcast bill has tended to creep up (by all of 54 cents next month), but it’s true that gradually more channels have been added, such as (finally) the LGBT-oriented Logo channel – an important source of the Reel Affirmations films that I missed. There’s a lesson in that: Logo offers a lot of movies free for a while, just as networks and many cable stations offer many of their series episodes “free” on the web (you have to watch the commercials). In fact, the trend toward (copyright legal) web archives of most shows might do more to break the cable model than anything. In fact, networks and individual cable channels may be more responsive to consumers than Hollywood, or especially the RIAA.

The New Yorker article makes the case that unbundled channels would not be cheaper, as prices could soar on individual channels.
Ezra Klein, a technology and political blogger for The Washington Post, summarizes all this today here on Monday Feb. 8. with a short piece called “The Future of Cable” with a referback to the New Yorker.

Somehow, this reminds me of all the arguments regarding bundling that went on with mainframe computer systems twenty years ago.

President Obama supports Network Neutrality on YouTube

2010-02-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

A British website is pointing out that President Obama recently discussed network neutrality on YouTube, with the story here.

Curiously, I couldn’t find the YouTube link in the story.
Obama’s recent statement “I’m a big believer in Net Neutrality”, interview shortly after State of Union Speech.

Here is a brief video from Obama’s 2008 campaign on Net Neutrality, from BarackObama.com

Network Neutrality rules already would exlude "protection" of copyright infringement

2010-01-21T11:32:00.001-08:00

Fed von Lohman of Electronic Frontier Foundation has an important piece Jan. 20 about the MPAA and RIAA proposals to incorporate “exceptions” to network neutrality rules so that ISP’s could police copyright infringers. The link for the story is here.

Network neutrality rules would not apply “neutrality” provisions to illegal content, including copyright infringement. Therefore what the MPAA and RIAA want is a broader net that would allow them to interfere with lawful user behavior in order to catch a few more infringers. To some extent we see this already with the way the DMCA safe harbor provision works in practice: non-infringing content is often mistakenly taken down first, and the speaker has the responsibility to prove that his content does not infringe. As the article says, it’s hard to catch fish without catching whales and dolphins.

Isn't some of this a ploy by the RIAA and MPAA to protect "old business models" from upstart, low budget, "do it yourself" competition?

See my main blog for a coordinated post today.

Visit "Broadband for America"

2010-01-17T14:33:00.000-08:00

There is an advocacy group called “Broadband for America” (not to be confused with “Broadband America” ) which promotes the extension of broadband to all of the United States as a fundamental utility like electricity and phone. The website is here. The site encourages visitors to tell their broadband stories in Twitter fashion (130 characters or less) and provides material to show that improved broadband can provide jobs and reduce unemployment.

One job “opportunity” sticks in my mind back from about 2002, when I was still in Minneapolis. Time Warner was looking for people to go door-to-door to sell cable service, probably in new exurban developments (this was long before the housing “bust”, which seems to be easing anyway now).

A technical oddity about a Cable TV remote

2010-01-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Here’s just a mini story about Cable. In 2007, I bought a Dynex flat screen TV for the basement at Best Buy, and took home a demonstration unit and Remote Control Panel.

The unit never had the ability to set the channel to “3” with the controls without remote control. The available channels are “4”, “65.3” and “65.1”. With effort, the “3” gets set up by pressing the channel only on the Remote.

The unit gets hosed if you press the wrong button in haste. And eventually the Remote, always touchy, stopped working. And it appears that the Remote supplied by the store may not be the correct one for the unit (look here). AAA battery replacement made no difference.

But here was a trick. Hold the remote right in front of the screen, turn the unit off with the remote, and turn it back on with the remote. Then, all the sudden, it starts responding again to the Channel 3 from the remote. Don’t know why it works this way.

Obama wants wireless to get more attention, says it can force more competition among all of broadband and reach remote areas more cheaply

2010-01-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

Cecilia Kang ran an important story on p A10 of the Washington Post Tuesday Sept 5, “White House urges more wireless Internet access; Plan would increase competition, broaden service, proponents say,” link here.

Ironically, I saw this yesterday while in a hospital waiting room about to undergo outpatient surgery (see my main blog). Obama believes that wireless should get more “spectrum” because ultimately it is probably cheaper than land line service.

One problem is that cable and even FIOS providers tend to lock in home customers at high rates, upped by special taxes and fees, after introductory offers. Another is that many companies will not allow associates to work from home with wireless; they insist on land line arrangements (especially catalogue companies that hire home-based customer service agents). But wireless is becoming more robust and can be made more secure, so these policies could change. There is an impression that wireless security is a liability for drive by attacks, especially with the Windows Firewall alone; but some (such as Geek Squad) say these concerns are overblown, as long as a subscription service (which has security) is paid for, rather than depending on free local service.

There's plenty of free digital TV available, through antennas!

2010-01-05T16:40:00.000-08:00

Here’s a secret hiding in the open – free digital TV by antenna, becoming more conspicuous since the June 2009 mandatory conversion. Cable TV at one time offered many more stations without commercials (particularly for movies) but that trend is reversing. There are about 60 “free” channels, many of which used to be on UHF. If cable companies were forced to identity their “free” channels, their business model would be hit.

There’s a website c alled “Denny’s antenna service that goes into this, here.

Where does DOCSIS3.0 fit into broadband growth

2010-01-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Can traditional cable Internet compete with FIOS with technologies like DOCSIS3.0? Internet magazine CED has a piece by Mike Roebuck from May 2008 describing how some cable companies, including Comcast, had implemented it in some areas to improve downstream speeds for home and small business operators, but the cost sounds high. The article is here.

More current is an article by Laura Hamilton in “Broadband Gear” dated Dec. 10, 2009, “Cable Engineering Outlet 2010 Part I”, that indicates DOCSIS3.0 is moving ahead, link here.

DOCSIS refers to the acronym “Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification”, Wki article here.

But how does this relate to the problem of extending broadband to remote areas?

Here's an older FTC Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy, Staff Report, link here.

Fox, Time Warner Cable dispute could pull plug on some bowl games New Years Day

2009-12-31T15:51:00.000-08:00

So, Fox and Time Warner Cable are in a dispute that, if not settled by midnight New Years Eve, could lead to TW customers not getting Fox programming, including many bowl games and American Idol, New Years Day and into 2010.

Fox wants Time Warner to pay (more) for programming. Where have we heard that before. And it will be passed on to consumers. The FCC is jawboning the two parties into trying to settle before midnight.

The AP story is by Ryan Nakashima, with link here. It was also run on Yahoo!

So some customers who went out and converted old rabbit ears boxes, or who use "The Dish", may be better off.

I had Time Warner in Minneapolis.

Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner holding company earlier in 2009.

Update: Jan. 1 2010

The negotiations continue, but TW is allowing Fox to be broadcast New Years Day.

Update: Jan 5

There is a similar dispute between Scripps and Cablevision over Food Network and HGTV taht may not get resolved at all. AOL covered the story here.

Here are the remarks by Guy Fieri from "I Love Food Network" on YouTube.

AT&T finds it hard to keep up with iPhone demands in Manhattan

2009-12-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

AT&T stopped selling Apple’s iPhone to Manhattan residents over the weekend, directing to pick another phone, because of difficulties in satisfying the data volume demands of typical urban iPhone customers, whose behavior on popular shows like CWTV’s “Gossip Girl” probably exaggerates the problem at bit. Niraj Sheth has a subscription article on the Wall Street Journal here; the article appears in print on p B1, Marketplace, on Tuesday December 29.

Cell phone companies in some large cities have difficulties supplying good service everywhere when there are many skyscrapers over a large area, as in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, or many Asian cities in China, Japan, Malaysia, etc. In other cities, like Washington DC (or many European cities) where there are many fewer tall buildings their task is much easier. It is probably easier in cities where downtowns are relatively concentrated. In some cities like Dallas there are many tall buildings but they tend to be spread out in urban development centers in various areas of the city. These cities are easier to design service for.

FCC wants to guarantee every home broadband, use other rural telephone resources if necessary

2009-12-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

The Federal Communications Commission says it is dead serious about the aim of making high speed broadband utility available to every household in the United States, no matter how rural or poor. The Washington Post story Thursday Dec. 17 is “FCC issues proposals to met national broadband plan”, link here.

One proposal is to use money from the Universal Service Fund, normally used now to subsidize rural phone service, an idea that sounds like playing Robin Hood to some. The agency is also considering jawboning cable operators into supplying everyone with set-top devices (similar to stripped-down PC’s, usually running on proprietary, Linux-like operating systems) to integrate cable and video services. Of course, there would have to be attention to security for these devices.

Gigi Sohn, director of Public Knowledge, has suggested that smaller telecomm companies should have access to lines owned by bigger companies.

Public Knowledge has a page on Network Neutrality, here. The page includes a quote of a Network Neutrality provision required of AT&T by the FCC when AT&T bought back Bell South at the end of 2006.

Would net neutrality violate "corporate" free speech?

2009-12-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Randolph J. May has an op-ed on p A15 of the Dec. 15 Washington Times, “Voiding the Constitution: FCC Rules Could Counter Freedom of Speech”, link here.

The argument more or less makes ISP’s into virtual people and asserts their First Amendment rights to discriminate, in various “innocent” hypothetical situations (content involving gay marriage, etc). But ISP’s are not content producers or publishers; they are more like utilities or perhaps distributors. (Okay, you could say that a motion picture distributor is engaging in speech in practice.)

But this is one more piece on the “con side” of the network neutrality debate.

Small-town Vermont struggles to get broadband during credit crisis

2009-12-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Tunbridge, Vermont struggles to find funding for high speed Internet service, with the latest proposal a $100 million fiber-optic project. Ordinary cable companies find land lines too costly to build in this mountainous, less populated area, and some politicians look at broadband as a “luxury”. But small businesses say that broadband is now an essential utility for survival, and the question becomes existential. One of the small businesses in the report is a sheep farm.

Funding for the fiber-optic project would have been a cinch two years ago, before the credit crisis that unraveled in 2008. How’s that for social justice, Suze Orman?

The report is in a WSJ video link here.

Wikipedia link for Vermont Population density. Tunbridge is half way up, near the NH border.