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POPS"FreePress" Wants A $45 Billion Bailout For The Telephone And Cable Monopolies! FreePress fails to mention that AT&T, Verizon and other carriers, ostensibly the caretakers for our current networks, have failed to live up to their commitments for broadband build-out. AT&T, for example, now controls the telephone networks for 22 states (including California, Florida, and Illinois). AT&T promised to have 19 million homes wired with fiber by 2007 and, instead, as of January 2009, it will have completed less than one million homes. FreePress also wants to increase tax rates for the Universal Service Fund (USF). But independent studies of the USF call it the FCC's "biggest boondoggle". Kushnick characterizes it as an "out-of-control slush fund" with little to no oversight. Free Press proposes a $26 billion dollar tax increase over a 3 year period. And the USF fund is already an "11.4% tax on all ‘interstate’ services more than double, if not triple the taxes."
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POPSGoogle, Telcos, Net Neutrality Woth Barrack Obama vocally supporting Network Neutrality, this dialogue will get more intense and more interesting. Seems to me there are some real issues here: Informed Citizenry, Facilitation of Democracy, First Amendment, etc
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POPSMcCain's Two Positions on Wiretaps Yeah, about that position -- it's kinda new and kinda 180 degrees off his previous position. Wonder why? Raw Story : While McCain's position on wiretaps and telcos is zigging this way and that, a new report also details the extent to which lobbyists who earned a living representing the very phone companies accused of breaking the law are now working for his campaign. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is leading the charge against telco immunity and representing plaintiffs in several pending lawsuits, lays out the connections ... How awkward...
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POPSCisco invests in P2P start-up Now that's interesting. Cisco is, on one side, feeding white papers to the Telcos about how and why to filter the Internet using Cisco technology, and on the other side, buying P2P companies. Maybe this (http://www.news.com/Harnessing-the-power-of-P2P/2100-1034_3-6227406.html?tag=item) has something to do with it.
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POPSWSJ's take on NetNeutrality Any legislation looks like regulation from their point of view. An interesting article but it misses the point that their is a rift between the telcos and the web2 companies and leaving this up to them to decide completely ignores the "users".
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POPSPearl Jam and Net Neutrality Sunday night, Pearl Jam played at the last Lollapalooza show of the summer. Eddie Vedder took the opportunity to make a few comments of protest against the war and the president, but somehow, the webcast - which was being run by AT&T - "mistakenly" dropped out, preventing those comments from being heard. The band points out that this is a perfect example of why net neutrality is such an important principle. Under net neutrality, broadband companies are required to give equal access to all websites. If the telcos get the kind of legislation they want, however, they'll be able to give companies that can afford it "priority" access, prevent users from reaching sites the company doesn't approve of, and relegating smaller sites - and smaller (often new) businesses to slow, unreliable service.
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POPSWill The FCC Finally Serve the Public Rather Than Private Interests? The U.S. is very much behind Asia and Europe in offering high-speed broadband Internet access to the public. Now, the cable and telcos wanna hog all the new bandwidth for themselves so they can either use it for other purposes or make sure it does not fall into the hands of cheaper services that could compete with them on the high speed Internet market. Senator Kerry has the right idea. Give the access to the people, not the corporations.
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POPSThe atomic weight of your bits Well, there you are. A bit can (will) be assigned different "weights" depending on the content it carries (make "bit" a "packet"). If telcos have their way. Meaning, a VOIP bit 'll be heavier, and more expensive, than a text bit. I have been wondering how these huge companies will survive the onslaught of internet telephony (not to mention what broadcasters of video are thinking). A very good article
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