Thousands Petition Feds on Net Neutrality
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More than 11,000 people sound off, giving the FCC ample food for thought as it ponders possible new rules for internet access.
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The latest victory for people's paralysis The government has responded to more than 9,000 people who signed a petition against misleading "unlimited" broadband advertising by bouncing them back to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which has already repeatedly refused to act.â¦
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A coalition of technology vendors, consumer groups, and think tanks has launched a campaign to persuade the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve wireless devices that would operate in unused television spectrum.The Wireless Innovation Alliance, which launched a Web site Wednesday, is an expansion of the tech-centric White Spaces Coalition that has been pushing so-called white-space spectrum as a possible new broadband network. At Wednesday&#39;s alliance launch, several other groups, including Free Press, the Media Access Project, TechNet, the Computing Technology Industry Association, and Educause, joined the tech companies pushing for the FCC to approve broadcast white spaces for broadband use.U.S. Representatives Jay Inslee, a Washington state Democrat, and Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, also lent their support.Inslee called white space one of the &quot;greatest untapped&quot; sources for innovation in the U.S. &quot;We&#39;re just waiting for government to do its job, to set the rules of the road, so the geniuses in America can really use this tremendous resource,&quot; he said.The white spaces can help bring broadband to areas of the U.S. that have limited or no choices right now, Inslee added. The lack of broadband in many areas is &quot;really a sad comment on our failure to move ahead as a nation,&quot; he said. &quot;This is one of my continuing frustrations -- that we have not made adequate progress -- and the availability of white spaces is one tool to attack that.&quot;Inslee and Blackburn were among six lawmakers who signed a letter, dated Tuesday, to the FCC, calling on the agency to wrap up its ongoing inquiry into white spaces.Advocates of white-space technology have run into significant opposition and some technical problems this year.The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), representing U.S. television stations, has raised concerns that white-space devices will interfere with TV signals. And more than 55 U.S. lawmakers have raised their own concerns about interference. &quot;Placing these devices in the television band is believed to cause unacceptable interference to television reception for all Americans and impair coverage of news and sporting events by interfering with wireless microphones,&quot; wrote Senator Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, in an Oct. 9 letter to the FCC.In addition,&#160;the FCC rejected a device built by Microsoft and other members of the White Spaces Coalition in July, saying it interfered with TV signals. Microsoft later said the device was damaged and &quot;operated at a severely degraded level.&quot;In September,&#160;Microsoft and Philips Electronics North America submitted new tests from a functioning device to the FCC. The group is awaiting FCC action on the new device.NAB still has concerns, said Dennis Wharton, the group&#39;s executive vice president for media relations. White spaces supporters are &quot;playing Russian Roulette&quot; with TV signals, he said. &quot;It is unfortunate that Microsoft and Google continue to try to muscle their way through Washington in support of a technology that simply does not work.&quot;Blackburn urged the FCC not to &quot;pick winners and losers,&quot; but to base its decision on objective tests of the white spaces devices. A lot of areas in rural west Tennessee have no broadband, she said. &quot;It is essential for economic development,&quot; she said.Asked if any other countries are using white-space spectrum for broadband devices, alliance members said they aren&#39;t aware of any formal projects.Other countries are looking to the U.S., said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. &quot;The United States has led the world on unlicensed technologies from the get-go, and if we don&#39;t want to lose that leadership, we need to keep moving forward,&quot; he said.
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As Congress debates disputed Internet neutrality laws, supporters and defenders of the concept of equal pricing for all on the Web faced off yesterday at the VON (Voice Over the Net) trade show in Boston.
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After proposing lifting the ban on use of mobile phones during commercial flights, the Federal Communications Commission is flooded with hundreds of e-mails from travelers who want to keep the ban in place and preserve their peace and quiet.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook.com, a fast-growing U S social network website has sparked a privacy backlash that has quickly become one of the broadest cyber-protests ever with more than 600,000 members signing an online petition by midday yesterday.
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In a filing before the US Federal Communications Commission this morning, the Dept. of Justice's Antitrust Division argued that proponents of "net neutrality" would stifle the natural course of free market innovation in Internet technologies.
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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.
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Two key sponsors of legislation that would effectively codify the meaning of "net neutrality" asked the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee to hold public hearings into the motivations of Comcast and other broadband service providers in filtering certain categories of traffic.
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(InfoWorld) - Debate over upcoming auctions of wireless spectrum in the U.S. has reached new heights -- the U.S. presidential campaign. This week, John Edwards, a leading Democratic candidate for president and former U.S. senator, called on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to ensure that small companies and wholesalers can bid on pieces of the 700MHz band when theÂ spectrum goes to auctionÂ by early next year. Winners of the spectrumÂ should not be able to "discriminate"Â against competing Web content and services, Edwards added in a letter sent Wednesday to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin. Edwards'Â call for nondiscriminationÂ of Web content echoes requests by net neutrality advocates, who argue that the FCC or the U.S. Congress should prohibit broadband carriers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Edwards' proposal is similar to one advanced by Frontline Wireless, which has called for part of the spectrum to be made available to wholesalers. By taking the steps Edwards suggested, the FCC would ensure that all U.S. residents have access to inexpensive broadband, the presidential candidate wrote. The Internet "improves our democracy by making quiet voices loud, improves our economy by making small markets big, and improves opportunity by making unlikely dreams possible," Edwards wrote. "By setting bid and service rules that unleash the potential of smaller new entrants, you can transform the information opportunity for people across America -- rural and urban, wealthy and not." The spectrum will become available by February 2009. That's the date by which Congress voted last year to require U.S. TV stations to switch to digital broadcasts and abandon channels 51 to 69. Tech and telecom companies are eyeing the new spectrum for a variety of wireless broadband services. Each tower transmitting in the upper 700MHz spectrum band can cover up to four times the large geographic area as towers in higher bands, experts say. Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group that backs net neutrality rules, applauded Edwards' involvement in the 700MHz debate. Public Knowledge is part of a coalition also calling for "open access" for parts of the 700MHz band. Edwards' involvement can help raise the spectrum debate to another level, said Art Brodsky, spokesman for Public Knowledge. "That's a welcome development because this subject matter is important to our economy and to consumers," Brodsky said. Public Knowledge has suggested that the 700MHz auction represents the best chance for broadband competition to cable and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) providers in the near future. Major broadband providers haveÂ opposed calls for open accessÂ to the auctioned spectrum. A representative of Verizon Communications declined to comment on the Edwards letter, and an AT&T representative wasn't immediately available. But the Frontline proposal for open access and wholesale providers creates heavy regulations for the spectrum use, said Randolph J. May, president of conservative think tank The Free State Foundation. May called on the FCC to reject the Frontline proposal in an e-mail sent out Wednesday. "The managed competition vision rests on an assumption, rarely stated this bluntly, of course, that the regulators, through their supervision and control of unbundling decisions, can do better than the marketplace in promoting consumer welfare," May wrote.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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More than half of U.S. residents want the government to regulate Internet video in some way, according to a poll released Wednesday.
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Blog: Media conglomerate had asked federal regulators to require broadband providers to police their networks for copyright violations, but public-interest groups say the effort is "misguided."
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A group of investors that is vying to build a national network for public safety communications is asking the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider rules it approved governing an upcoming spectrum auction.
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More than 300 communities consider launching local high-speed Internet service.
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For the first time ever, more Americans are seeking faster connections to access the Internet.
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Group is asking the Supreme Court to overturn decision in favor of file-swapping networks.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)Â needs to step up its regulation of the telecommunications and broadband industries and reverse its current opposition to net neutrality rules, two consumer groups said Wednesday. Representatives of the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America criticized the FTC for a lack of focus on telecom and broadband issues while testifying before the U.S. Senate's Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism Subcommittee. The FTC has "failed consumers badly" by insisting there is strong competition in the broadband space and therefore not in need of regulation, said Mark Cooper, director of the Consumer Federation of America. The U.S. has fallen from the world leader in Internet service a decade ago to lagging behind several countries in speed and price, he said. "The cozy [broadband] duopoly in America dribbles out bandwidth at 10 to 20 times what other people pay in the world," Cooper said. "Consumers pay too much for too little in this country." Cooper and Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat and subcommittee chairman, both complained aboutÂ an FTC report in June that questioned the need for net neutrality rulesÂ that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Dorgan noted that telecom providers had Internet content nondiscrimination rules in place until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Supreme Court removed them in 2005. Without such rules, large broadband providers could block innovative new companies from reaching customers if they require e-commerce vendors to pay extra fees, he said. "We won't know what we miss, we won't know what we squelch," said Dorgan, who has sponsored a net neutrality bill. "What we built, we built with nondiscrimination regulations." But Deborah Platt Majoras, the FTC's chairwoman, said the Internet is changing so fast that new regulations would have unintended consequences andÂ could stop broadband providers from prioritizing traffic that consumers demand be faster, such as video downloads. The FTC sees little evidence of Web content discrimination occurring, she said. "No way is Verizon or any of these other companies powerful enough to disrupt the amount of consumer-generated content that's out there," Majoras said. "If they suddenly put a stop to that, there will be a hue and cry across this nation like no tomorrow, and they will lose a lot of customers." Majoras called on Congress to wait with net-neutrality regulations until there's a problem with blocked content. Dorgan disagreed. "I think both the lack of informed public policy and the lack of effective competition means we have one-twentieth the speed at twice the price of Internet service that many of our foreign competitors have," he said. "My hope is that you'll agree with me that rather than wait for bad things to happen, we might want to preserve the same nondiscrimination rules that we've always had." In addition to the net-neutrality debate, Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union, called on the FTC to keep a close eye on advertising for bundled telecom services, such as voice, data, and television service together. In some cases, advertising for bundled services has not reflected the real prices, Murray said. In addition, broadband providers have cut off customers for using too much bandwidth without defining a limit on bandwidth. "If that's not an unfair and deceptive practice, I don't know what is," Murray said.