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The Federal Communications Commission will look into issues raised recently by Netflix and other companies about Internet traffic delivery, chairman Tom Wheeler said at a hearing, as he faced a bipartisan chorus of complaints about his recent net neutrality proposal.

Chairman Wheeler said that the FCC “needs to look at and will be looking at” an issue raised by Netflix about deals it has had to cut recently to get its traffic delivered more quickly to Comcast, Verizon and other Internet providers.

Content companies routinely enter into peering, or interconnection, agreements with middle-mile Internet providers to carry traffic more efficiently across the Internet so it can get to consumers more quickly. Netflix recently signed a paid deal to deliver traffic directly to Comcast’s network after customers complained about delayed videos.

[Commentary] The US Department of Justice has secured criminal indictments against five active-duty members of the cyberwar unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army. Here’s what you should expect to happen as a result: Nothing meaningful.

The charges announced by Attorney General Eric Holder amount to the diplomatic equivalent of the pot criticizing the kettle’s wardrobe. The chance that anyone sees the inside of a US courtroom as a result of the charges is virtually nil. While the particulars are interesting -- and hopefully we’ll get to read more nitty-gritty details when the official indictment documents are unsealed -- the fundamental problem is one of credibility.

Essentially, when it comes to cyberattacks, the US has none. The revelations concerning the aggressive collection efforts of the US National Security Agency by its former contractor Edward Snowden have demonstrated there is very little in the global communications infrastructure that agency won’t touch in an attempt to compromise. And while Attorney General Holder and other US officials are quick to say that the US government doesn’t hack non-US companies in order to help US companies, there have been hints from Snowden that there are disclosures yet to be made that tell a different story.

In the last nine months, some 28 million US customers opted to pay one of the major carriers full price for a smartphone rather than sign up for a two-year contract to get a discounted model, according to a new study.

Of those customers, an estimated eight million switched carriers to get one of the new-style plans, with the lion’s share of the switchers (5.1 million) of those going to T-Mobile, according to research being released later by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Typically, such purchase options come with lower-cost monthly service, the option to upgrade sooner or both. T-Mobile has shifted entirely to such plans, while AT&T offers no-subsidy options with its Next and Mobile Share Value programs and Verizon has its Edge program. Even where customers have a choice to get a subsidized phone, the financing programs appear to be gaining steam.

[Commentary] Despite all the hand-wringing statements about network neutrality that Silicon Valley companies were shooting out, tech actually had a pretty good day in DC.

While Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s fast-lane/slow-lane net neutrality proposal was taking a beating on all sides (even Chairman Wheeler took a few whacks at it), Internet companies sneaked through a huge victory when the agency agreed to set aside up to three channels of TV airwaves for unlicensed use.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s something that Google, Microsoft and other tech companies have spent years advocating.

The Internet Association, which represents Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet companies, said it will “advocate for the FCC to use its full legal authority to enforce rules that lead to an open Internet -- nothing should be taken off the table as this discussion evolves.”

And Netflix issued a statement saying, “Netflix is not interested in a fast lane; we’re interested in safeguarding an Open Internet.”

Was the FCC’s vote the victory that Internet companies wanted? No. But net neutrality advocates appear to be better positioned today to make the case for Title II than they were before.

If you’re the type of person who loves having the latest and greatest smartphone, there’s good news. All four major US carriers -- AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon -- now offer some kind of early upgrade program that lets you trade in your old device for a new one without having to wait every two years.

The bad news: The plans are so complicated that it’s hard to know which to choose and whether you’re getting a good deal.

It would seem that AT&T is the cheapest, but you need to take into account that the carrier’s monthly data allotment is less than the other carriers. For power users, the unlimited data offered by Sprint might be worth the extra money. And at just $4 more, T-Mobile includes phone insurance, and once you’ve reached the 3GB data limit, they’ll slow your data speeds, but won’t charge you extra like AT&T and Verizon.

Earlier in 2014, when viral content spreader Upworthy saw its traffic decline, lots of people assumed that this was because of Facebook, which is tinkering with the way it surfaces other people’s stuff in its News Feed.

Not so, say Upworthy’s leaders: Traffic is an unpredictable thing, and it had shot up dramatically last fall, so it was reasonable for it to move around a bit. But a couple months later, Upworthy’s traffic continues to head downward.

It’s not falling off a cliff, but it is shrinking, according to comScore. In April it had 10.7 million visitors, its lowest levels since August 2013 -- but still way ahead of where it was before.

So what’s going on now? It’s our fault, says Upworthy co-founder Eli Pariser. But it’s also a choice, he explains.

If you don’t pay for cable, and you get all your video from the Internet instead, how much bandwidth do you eat up each month? Quite a bit, it turns out. Much more than everyone else.

Sandvine, the broadband networking company that provides periodic reports on Web usage, says that the top 15 percent of streaming video users go through 212 gigabytes of data month. That’s more than seven times the average broadband user, who uses 29 gigabytes.

As heavy broadband users start bumping up against data caps, it will also highlight the way that some broadband providers differentiate between digital video they send through their own “managed service” pipes -- which doesn’t count against usage caps -- versus digital video served up by the likes of Netflix, which does count against caps.

In a surprise to no one, Internet service providers warned federal regulators that treating broadband like phone lines will stunt future investments and service upgrades.

Twenty-eight CEOs representing companies which provide Internet service to a majority of Americans sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission warning the agency against adopting more regulations of broadband lines. AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, Verizon’s Lowell McAdam, Comcast’s Brian Roberts, Cox Communication’s Patrick Esser and Brian Sweeney of Cablevision were among the signatories.

The letter, meant to strike back at net neutrality activists who have been pressing for the re-regulation of broadband lines, offers few new arguments in the debate but is a reminder to regulators that Internet providers won’t allow re-regulation of their lines without a fight.

“Reclassification of broadband Internet access offerings as Title II -- telecommunications services -- would impose great costs, allowing unprecedented government micromanagement of all aspects of the Internet economy,” the companies warned. “An era of differentiation, innovation, and experimentation would be replaced with a series of ‘Government may I?’ requests from American entrepreneurs. That cannot be, and must not become, the US Internet of tomorrow.”

[Commentary] The outrage over the Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to write new open Internet rules has caught many by surprise, and probably Chairman Tom Wheeler, as well.

The rumored possibility of the FCC authorizing broadband “fast lanes” draws most complaints and animus. Many net neutrality proponents would like to smear all priority traffic as unjust and exploitative. This is unfortunate and a bit ironic because one of the most transformative communications developments -- cable VoIP -- is a prioritized IP service.

There are other IP-based services that are only economically feasible if jitter, latency and slow speed are minimized. Prioritized traffic takes several forms, but it could enhance these services: VoIP, cloud-hosted virtual desktops, TV, gaming, teleconferencing, telemedicine, teleteaching, etc.

[Skorup is Research Fellow, Technology Policy Program, Mercatus Center at George Mason University]

The traditional TV industry may be reaching its apex, at least when it comes to ads. But the TV Industrial Complex won’t go down without a fight. Two of the weapons they’re using: “Stacking rights” and “Dynamic ad insertion.” These are boring words for relatively basic ideas, but they’re still important for TV programmers and pay-TV providers.

Here’s why:

• Stacking rights just means “the ability to show viewers the entire current season of a show, instead of just the last few episodes, via video on demand systems.”
• Dynamic ad insertion just means “the ability to put new, relevant ads into video on demand repeats, instead of musty spots that we loaded into the system weeks ago.”

So in this case, what this means is: Comcast will have the ability to show every episode from the current season of some of Turner’s shows, like “Falling Skies” and “Robot Chicken,” on video-on-demand. And it will have the ability to put new ads into those shows when you watch them.