July 2010

On December 1, 20009, Rep Bart Stupak (D-MI) wrote Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski about legislation Rep Stupak introduced that seeks to strike a balance between the need for transparency and increased collaboration among the FCC Commissioners. If adopted, the legislation would authorize the FCC limited non-public, collaborative discussions when a bipm1isan quorum is present. The legislation would require that the FCC's Office of General Counsel monitor the meetings and that, within five days, the FCC would publish a summary of the meeting on its website. Rep Stupak requested that the chairman and other FCC commissioners provide prompt feedback on the proposal. On July 2, 2010, Chairman Genachowski sent his reply welcoming the reexamination of the Sunshine Act.

Who's the fastest Internet service provider in the US? According to Internet metrics firm Ookla (which runs the Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net websites), it's Comcast, with an average speed of 16.23Mbps. In the US, Comcast was followed by Charter and then by Cablevision; indeed, all of the top players are cable companies. Verizon comes in ninth, despite its FiOS deployments, in part due to its DSL lines.

For the country as a whole, the average download speed is 9.87Mbps. This sounds fairly decent, but it actually puts the US in 27th place internationally. South Korea has a 31.4Mbps average, while Latvia has 24.1Mbps and the Netherlands clocks in at 22.7Mbps. Even the Republic of Moldova has 22Mbps average download speeds. And when it comes to ISP comparisons, Comcast's 16Mbps looks paltry alongside some others like South Korea's Hanaro Telecom (41Mbps), Korea Telecom (35Mbps), and Krnic (28Mbps).

Representatives from both sides of the network neutrality debate continue to meet in private with Edward Lazarus, chief of staff to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, but publicly they're still diametrically opposed as to how the agency should clarify its broadband authority.

According to documents filed with the FCC, some are still talking about a legislative "fix" to the problem raised when a U.S. appeals court called into question the agency's authority to regulate broadband in the Comcast-BitTorrent case. The FCC has been pushing a different way to ensure network neutrality: reclassifying Internet service providers using a limited enforcement of common-carrier rules. In addition, according to an FCC source, the meetings are getting fewer and farther between, with the two camps meeting separately with FCC officials. And not everyone is at the table. The American Cable Association does not have a seat, and that does not sit well with its president, Matthew Polka, who represents about 900 operators.

Asia, thanks to the growing number of fiber-based broadband connections in countries like China, Japan and South Korea accounts for 59 of the top 100 fastest cities in the world, according to data released by Akamai Technologies.

Akamai examines the average measured connection speeds to determine which cities it deems the fastest. Asia dominates the top 100 list with 59 cities. Japan accounts for 30 cities in the list. The U.S. has 12 cities in the list, with seven located in California. Umeå, Sweden is the fastest city in Europe, and is ranked No. 18 out of 100. South Korea has a average maximum connection speed of 33 Mbps. South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are the top three countries by speed in the list. US was eight amongst the top ten countries -- with average maximum speed of 16 Mbps. European countries make up six of the top ten fastest countries, with each country averaging a maximum speed of 15 Mbps. These include Romania (#4), Sweden (#5), Latvia (#6), Belgium (#7), Portugal (#9) and Bulgaria (#10.)