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Net Neutrality 8-19-2006

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Municipal WiFi is the new hope for Net Neutrality – thinker [via ZERO PAID]

Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig has argued the WiFi clouds popping up across cites from Philadelphia to San Francisco could provide broadband access over the “last mile” between the internet cloud and users’ doorsteps.

Lessig, author and co-leader of the Creative Commons, told LinuxWorld attendees in San Francisco, that unification of the WiFI patchwork would provide an infrastructure that frees the last mile from the “proprietary control” of carriers like AT&T and Verizon. This would restrict carriers’ ability to charge content providers different fees in order to prioritize delivery of their data packets across the internet.

“When one owns the wires as these network operators do, there is a desire to leverage control. To exploit and capture the value up the stack,” Lessig said.

“There’s an explosion in municipal mesh networks… as you see the clouds exploding above the cities and people unify them, the last mile is solved. The last mile is provided free of proprietary control,” Lessig said

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-18-2006

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Comcast Wants To Be Yahoo

AdAge reports on Comcast’s ambitions to become a Yahoo-type portal. The cable giant is beginning to add more online sales people, hoping to capture a piece of the online advertising pot of gold. It is also opening up its Internet pages to its non-broadband subscribers, which quickly doubles its potential user base. In theory at least! Paid Content has a good wrap up of the story, and some pithy observations.

Now with around 10 million broadband subscribers, it is hard to blame Comcast for having portal ambitions. Just as an aside, isn’t portal a throwback of a vertically integrated Internet 1.0 era? How quaint! How old fashioned! Still, I wonder the wisdom of this move, especially since the company is fighting the triple play battle with politically more savvy phone companies. Shouldn’t that be the focus? I think this is yet another example of “google envy.”

[…]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-17-2006

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Google: We Only Want to Be a Catalyst in Wi-Fi

The free Wi-Fi network offered by Google in its hometown of Mountain View has gone live.But don’t look for the search giant to go nation-wide with its broadband wireless agenda. The New York Times’ John Markoff has this piece today noting that Google has said no to jumpstarting wireless competition to incumbent broadband providers beyond its deal with EarthLink to deliver wireless services in San Francisco.

Not that Google wouldn’t like to see a third broadband pipe into homes; it would make net neutrality a moot issue.

“I think there wouldn’t be a Net neutrality debate in this country if we really had a competitive environment for access,” said Chris Sacca, a Google executive who heads special initiatives for the company. “The Internet is not pervasive as it could be, or democratic.”

[. . . ]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-16-2006

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The Internet Must Die

The guy behind the brilliant techno remix of Sen. Ted Stevens’ “Series of Tubes” speech has released another pro-Net Neutrality song inspired by the Alaska senator’s rantings.

BoldHeaded:

To piggy-back on the huge success of our last parody of Ted Steven’s techno remix, we released a new track to our podcast subscribers last week

This time, Senator Ted Stevens pulls no punches and reveals his true objective. Hear the geeks speak out!

Link

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-15-2006

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The Four Faces of Net Neutrality

For Dr. René Alvarez, a surgeon from Homer, Alaska, the debate surrounding network neutrality isn’t about the digital minutia of speeds and tiered services; it could be about life and death.

For his patients in Alaska’s interior, the Internet isn’t a link to movies and games. “The Internet,” he said during a recent meeting in Boston, “is their lifeline, their link to the outside world.”

Alvarez’s biggest fear is that patients living in small towns in Alaska’s interior aren’t in a position to shoulder any additional increase in Internet access charges.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a somewhat larger town such as Bethel, Alaska, has a per capita income of $12,602, which is about half the poverty level for a family of four in Alaska. An increase in Internet access could discourage the use of remote medicine, especially if it’s viewed as a bandwidth-intensive, upper-tier service, Alvarez said.

It is unclear how Alvarez and his patients will ultimately be affected by the nuances of the net neutrality debate in Washington, especially when few actually agree on a definition.

[…]

Lost in the debate are the concerns of millions of forgotten stakeholders such as Alvarez; Kimberly Johnson, a Washington-based educator; Tom McInerney, CEO at Internet startup Guba; and Ralph Riley, product marketing manager for Siemens Communications.

[…]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Net Neutrality 8-14-2006

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Weighing High-Tech Bills in Analog [via Congress, Comic Books, Technology And Passing New Laws]

The fight over House and Senate telecom bills has sparked an estimated $1 million a day in lobbying and advertising by companies and advocacy groups. Urged on by politically powerful phone companies, Congressional leaders have been actively pushing the legislation. Recognizing the momentum, advocates for a variety of technology issues — including a new Internet tax moratorium and anti-piracy measures — are trying to tack on amendments.

But fear of unintended consequences and difficulties grasping the highly technical issues are making some in Congress hesitant to support technology legislation.

[ . . .]

“I’m tired of talking about 18-wheelers,” an exasperated Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) said at a House hearing this spring. “I’d like to know what we’re talking about here.”

[ . . .]

Phone and cable companies, which oppose any new regulations governing whether they can charge for prioritizing content, have seized on that confusion. They’ve warned lawmakers not to act on a vaguely defined potential problem because it could have those dreaded “unintended consequences.”

Those arguments carry weight among lawmakers trying to be careful about intervening in the technology marketplace, said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who chairs a House subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet.

“We didn’t want to lock in or lock out future players,” he said. “Who knows what’s going to come down the pike?”

But the debate has frustrated Internet executives.

“To our industry and our customers, very important issues are being decided today in Congress,” said Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global public policy. “Much of the concern is decisions might be made without a complete understanding of the facts.”

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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