[Commentary] The land-line telephone is marked for imminent obsolescence. The phone companies are adding mountains of wireless customers as fast as they're losing land-liners, as millions of young whippersnappers switch to using their cell phones exclusively (or, more accurately, never order up a land-line in the first place).
Following a speech to bloggers at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in which he discussed Internet policy and the Federal Communications Commission's recent ruling against Comcast, Commissioner Robert McDowell warned that an effort to reimpose the defunct Fairness Doctrine could sync up with efforts to regulate network management, resulting in "government dictating content policy" on the Web. "This [presidential] election, if it goes one way, we could see a reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine," Commissioner McDowell told BMI, the economic arm of the conservative Media Research Center. "I think it'll be intertwined into the [Network Neutrality] debate ... because there are a few isolated conservatives who might be cherry-picked in a Net Neutrality effort, and I think the fear is that somehow, large corporations will censor their content, their points of view. I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy -- which, by the way, would have a big First Amendment problem -- then whoever's in charge of government is going to determine what is 'fair' under a so-called Fairness Doctrine." Visit B&C and see video of the statement.
[Commentary] FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell increasingly sounds like a man stranded on a desert island, willing to say anything to get a ride back to shore. In recent remarks, Commissioner McDowell has tried to tie Network Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine (which at one time regulated equal airtime for diverse perspectives in broadcast media), saying they are both about content regulation. But contrary to these misleading assertions, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with empowering the FCC to regulate content. Net Neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet, and has been part of the Net since its inception. It says that no one -- government agency or corporate giant -- should be able to tell consumers what legal content they can access and share online. It is absurd to equate Net Neutrality -- a principle that promotes and protects free speech on the Internet -- with any effort to regulate speech.
[Commentary] In response the recent remarks from FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, Karras writes, "It's tempting to fall back on our old friend Let The Market Decide. After all, if Comcast throttles BitTorrent traffic, the BitTorrent folks use a different ISP, Comcast loses market share, and eventually it changes policy. Voila: market signals triumph, seed rates soar, and everyone gets a pony. But it's not a free market. Most Americans are confronted with a duopoly (at best) when choosing broadband providers, and the infrastructure is so expensive that it's hard to break into the market. Without meaningful competition, consumers can't push for better service. I can get my high-speed Internet from Comcast, with all its attendant issues, or I can use dial-up." Call it "net regulation" if you want -- I suppose it is, technically -- but mandated content neutrality protects the customer without hurting competition.
The average download and upload speeds for broadband services across the U.S. have remained relatively unchanged over the past year as the U.S. continues to lag behind other countries in terms of broadband speeds, according to a report published by the Communications Workers of America labor union. The report consists of data from 230,000 online speed tests across the U.S. In its Speed Matters blog announcing the study's results, the group highlighted that the average download speeds increased only 0.4 megabits per second to 2.3Mbps. By contrast, the average download speed in Japan is 63 Mbps and in South Korea the average download speed is 49 Mbps. As for upload speeds, the average in the U.S. was only 435 kilobits per second.
The debate over managing networks can seem hopelessly abstract. To help the rest of us understand why fast networks with a lot of capacity are so important, here's a list of the top bandwidth-needy applications. 1) High-definition telepresence requires 24 Mbps and about a 50 millisecond latency to recreate the feeling of sitting in a room speaking with people. 2) Telemedicine and Remote Surgery. 3) Video Instant Messaging and Video Presence. 4) High-Definition Television requires between 8 and 5 Mbps to deliver crisp video to consumer's televisions. 5) Real-Time Data Backup require speeds of up to 2 Mbps and 10 milliseconds of latency, and they may become more necessary as enterprises begin to store and save data in the cloud.
Examining the political landscape, it's good that the Federal Communications Commission is focusing on the issue of Intercarrier compensation. It's also the focus via the topic of phantom traffic, a form of arbitrage based on the ambiguities in the rules about termination based on interconnection--not the call's origination. The existing system of Intercarrier compensation came about after the divestiture of AT&T, and it operated on assumptions about the cost of transport which were accurate for the time, but have lost relevance today. A call placed today, as Executive Director of the VON Coalition Jim Kohlenberger points out, costs as much to go across the office as it does to go around the world. State tariffs now have lower rates for services, thanks to competition between fiber and IP. Locally, however, the price may not reflect the market.
The boards of directors of the ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC affiliate organizations have agreed to support a voluntary month-long "quiet period" ensuring no disruption of local television service in the weeks leading up to and following the digital television transition.
More U.S. TV households are receiving programming via an alternate delivery system, such as satellite, than ever before while wired cable's penetration hit an 18-year low in July, according to a Television Bureau of Advertising analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. ADS penetration—which includes direct-broadcast satellite and satellite master antenna—reached 28.4% of TV households in July, an all-time high that is up from 27.5% in July last year. It now represents 32.1% of subscription television customers (those paying for video delivery), another all-time high.
Sen. Barack Obama has already proven himself to be the most popular presidential candidate on the Internet, what with his more than 1.3 million Facebook supporters and lofty aims of 2 million online donors. Now Sen Obama is not only outshining other politicians on the Internet, but also the very stars of social networking -- Obama has just overtaken Kevin Rose's spot as the most followed person on Twitter, according to Twitterholic.
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