US backing for two-tier internet
414526
The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic.
454538
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. government should launch a new program that provides grants and loans for broadband providers to extend service to rural areas, a top executive at Verizon said Monday. The U.S. should use as a model a state program called ConnectKentucky, which has provided 94 percent of Kentucky residents with broadband options, said Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president for public affairs, policy, and communications. Kentucky, a state with large rural areas and chunks of hilly terrain, expects to provide about 99 percent of its residents with a broadband carrier by the end of the year, Tauke said. The rest of the nation likely won't reach U.S. President George Bush's goal of universal broadband access by the end of 2007, Tauke said. The U.S. needs to look at broadband incentive programs "sooner rather than later," he said. Broadband access can have a large impact on local economies and services such as health care, Tauke said. The new program proposed by Verizon could use some existing funding, including redirecting some funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which had a 2006 budget of $6.1 billion, he said. The RUS now subsidizes several types of utilities, including broadband, electricity, distance learning, and telemedicine. New funds may also be needed, Tauke said, although he didn't provide specific numbers at a press briefing. Part of the problem is there's no good measure of how many U.S. residents have access to broadband, Tauke said. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission released a report Jan. 31 saying 99 percent of all U.S. postal codes had at least one broadband provider, but critics have noted that the FCC would count a postal code if a provider offered service to just a handful of residents. Tauke called for a comprehensive study of what broadband gaps exist. "We just don't know today who has broadband and who doesn't," he said. Verizon has not yet pitched the idea to most lawmakers, Tauke said. The telecom giant also called on the U.S. Congress to make changes the Universal Service Fund program, a $4 billion program that subsidizes telephone access in rural and poor areas. Instead of providing USF funds to multiple carriers, the U.S. government should cap USF at its current funding levels, and require carriers to bid to provide service in areas where subsidies are needed, Tauke said. "Reverse auctions" forcing carriers to compete to provide service would end the current system in which multiple carriers, sometimes five or more wireless voice providers, receive USF money to provide service in the same territory, Tauke said. Verizon does not currently take USF money, he said. "If you have multiple carriers offering service in a territory, that would seem to suggest you don't need Universal Service Fund support," he said. "[Carriers say] 'If somebody's going to hand out money, why not take it?'" The tax on telephone service to pay for USF has risen from about 3.2 percent in 1998 to 9.7 percent currently, Verizon noted in a proposal to the Federal-Sate Joint Board on Universal Service, filed Friday. "The level of fees is becoming staggeringly high," he said. "The system is broken, it's not working, and it's unfair." Several rural lawmakers have opposed changes to USF. Tauke didn't address net neutrality, an issue that dominated telecom debates in Congress last year, until asked about it. Verizon expects efforts that would prohibit broadband carriers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors to fail in Congress this year, partly because the FCC and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission are monitoring providers, he said. The two agencies "are watching the issue like hawks," he said.
306330
Business travelers will soon take advantage of airborne internet if two companies have their way. Boeing and software maker iPass plan to use satellite and Wi-Fi to connect high fliers to the office.
675339
In 2004, President Bush pledged that all Americans should have affordable access to high-speed Internet service by 2007. A report to be released Thursday by the administration says it has succeeded Â mostly.
304661
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c60239)  has announced the addition of 2007 Global Broadband - Broadband is  Essential Infrastructure to their offering.
44887
Internet service providers have to walk a fine line between fairness and profitability. Users want maximum service, and are entitled to honest contracts. Maybe there's a way to help everyone at once.
308162
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is taking the middle ground in the net neutrality debate.
343646
The federal government should create a wide-ranging national broadband strategy to help small businesses compete on a global level, two FCC members say.
551883
US communications regulators insisted on Thursday that the United States was making progress in rolling out high-speed Internet service, despite falling further behind other countries.
86449
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has cleared the way for Internet access over the same infrastructure that carries electricity to homes and businesses in America.
651272
By Leslie Cauley  The USA trails other industrialized nations in high-speed Internet access and may never catch up unless quick action is taken by public-policy makers, a report commissioned by the Communications Workers of America warns.    The median U.S.
123378
Washington - The United States Federal Communications Commission approved on Wednesday historic new rules potentially giving aircraft passengers in-flight access to high-speed Internet services.
177186
Sophos attributed the US&#39;s ranking to the prevalence of high-capacity broadband Internet connections there. Small offices and home users with such connections are attractive targets that increasingly
7205
For the millions of  people who cannot afford high-speed Internet access, some local officials think they've hit on the answer: Build government-owned networks to provide service at rates below what big telecommunications companies charge.
183494
Two lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing Web content from competitors.Reps. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, introduced the Internet Freedom Preservation Act Wednesday. The bill says it is U.S. policy to &quot;guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoritism for, or degredation of, content by network operators based upon its source, ownership, or destination on the Internet.&quot;The bill would also require the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to open a proceeding on broadband services and consumer rights. The FCC would be required to investigate whether broadband providers have adhered to its August 2005 policy that providers should refrain from blocking or interfering with Web content.&quot;The open architecture nature of the Internet ... has ensured the Internet&#39;s place as the greatest level playing field ever created,&quot; Markey said as he introduced the bill. &quot;The goal of this bipartisan legislation is to assure consumers, content providers, and high-tech innovators that the historic, open architecture nature of the Internet will be preserved and fostered. [The bill] is designed to assess and promote Internet freedom for consumers and content providers.&quot;A group of advocacy groups, as well as Google and Amazon.com, praised the bill, saying it is needed as recent news report have suggested Comcast is slowing its customer access to high-bandwidth applications such as BitTorrent. Comcast on Tuesday filed a document with the FCC defending&#160;its practice of engaging in &quot;network management.&quot;Petitions by advocacy group Free Press and online video distributor Vuze to have the FCC prohibit Comcast&#39;s traffic throttling &quot;raise important issues about the ability of broadband network operators to engage in reasonable network management to ensure that their customers can enjoy a positive broadband experience,&quot; Comcast said in its FCC filing. &quot;Network management is best left to the sound, good-faith judgment of the engineers and proprietors who run and own the networks and who are best able to remedy customer service issues promptly, rather than to regulation.&quot;The FCC has no prohibitions against Comcast&#39;s behavior, the company argued. &quot;Free Press mistakenly relies on the [2005 FCC] Internet Policy Statement as creating rules the commission can enforce,&quot; Comcast said.But representatives of the Open Internet Coalition, including Free Press and Public Knowledge, praised the new Markey legislation, saying it would remove doubt about U.S. policy on blocking or slowing Web content.In the last six months, Comcast and other broadband and mobile-phone providers have repeatedly tried to block content on their networks, said Markham Erickson, the Open Internet Coalition&#39;s executive director. Erickson called Comcast&#39;s Tuesday FCC filing &quot;remarkable.&quot;&quot;It appears to declare war on Internet users, policy makers, and even the FCC,&quot; he said. &quot;It essentially says that the FCC has no legal ability to protect consumers from discriminatory behavior.&quot;The Comcast filing called Free Press&#39; complaints about its network management &quot;inflammatory hyperbole.&quot; Asked about Erickson&#39;s comments on the filing, Comcast spokeswoman Sean Fitzmaurice denied that the company was saying the FCC had no authority to regulate net neutrality.The Markey bill is not as specific as past net neutrality bills that failed in a Republican-controlled Congress in 2006, but it would set a standard in federal law, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. &quot;It&#39;s the right bill at the right time,&quot; she said.Without prohibitions against blocking or slowing Web content, broadband providers could sign deals with some content providers and shut out new Internet-based companies, added Richard Whitt, Google&#39;s Washington telecom and media counsel.&quot;Keeping the on-ramps to the Web free of undue discrimination is not about Google, it&#39;s about the next Google,&quot; Whitt said.Comcast declined to comment on the Markey bill. But Hands Off the Internet, an advocacy group with members including broadband providers AT&amp;T and Qwest, said it could support an FCC study of net neutrality.&quot;There&#39;s no question that a reasoned examination of the facts will demonstrate the folly of net neutrality,&quot; the group said in a statement, &quot;However, we are concerned that an effort to seek public input is intended to be a stalking horse for federal Internet regulation. The continued push by special interests to regulate Internet neutrality undercuts the best hope Net users have for faster, more affordable broadband.&quot;
178189
The Story: Some technologies always seem to be ?just around the corner.? Seven years ago, there was a big flurry of interest in end-to-end Ethernet (aka metro Ethernet) as a brace of new ventures promised to cut through the complexities of wide area networking.[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    They didn?t deliver. One big reason: building a new network that will reach into offices and homes costs beaucoup bucks. As IDC analyst Boyd Chastant puts it, ?Digging a whole in the ground never gets cheaper.?Laying fiber is still expensive, but now telcos ? including AT&amp;T, Verizon, and Qwest ? plus cable companies such as Optimum LightPath, Cox, and Time Warner that already have fiber in the ground are offering Ethernet services. LightPath, for example, boasts of 2,500 miles of fiber in the ground and says it has lit more than 2,000 buildings in its service area in the northeast.End-to-end Ethernet offers a very affordable way to connect LANs to a wide area network. After all, every router has an Ethernet interface, you don?t need much special hardware, and the technology is very familiar. So most IT staffers will have little trouble adapting, says Burton Group analyst Jeff Young. That is, if you can get it: Pricing depends on your need for speed, and not all of the providers offer it throughout their service areas.Raw bandwidth isn?t Ethernet?s big advantage. It?s not necessarily much faster than private lines. However, says Chastant, it is more scalable. Conventional private-line services offer speeds near the bottom (around 10Mbps) and the near top (around 10Gbps), but not much in the middle. End-to-end Ethernet solves that. And it can be tied to Internet access, bumping up access speeds appreciably.Availability is on the upswing too, says Boyd. In the past, carriers worried that end-to-end Ethernet service would cannibalize other data services. But now that demand has reached critical mass, that concern appears to have faded. Meanwhile, providers and equipment manufacturers are ironing out incompatibles and clarifying service definitions in the Metro Ethernet Forum, Chastant says.It looks like we?ve turned the corner and end-to-end Ethernet is right in front of us.The Bottom Line: If your carrier doesn?t provide end-to-end Ethernet, another provider likely does. It?s worth the trouble to look: End-to-end Ethernet will give you the performance you need and because it?s a familiar technology you won?t have to retrain or replace your IT staff.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
485936
Russia seems to be looking to create a controllable internet independent from the wider web