Lauren Frayer

The FCC released rules for the newly "deregulated" providers of high-speed Internet service over digital subscriber lines and mandated that they and Internet telephone companies design their networks to facilitate surveillance by law enforcement. The agency issued two separate orders. One declared that broadband over DSL provided by telecommunications companies is now an unregulated "information service." The other imposed requires all broadband and companies capable of being linked to the public-switched telephone network to help law enforcers implement wiretaps.

The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled on Wednesday to begin enforcing its requirement that VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) providers that use the public telephone network make sure that 100 percent of their customers know whether they can access 911 services. Those customers who haven't acknowledged that they can or cannot access the emergency network are to be restricted from regular VoIP usage.

Over the past years, the merits of network neutrality regulation have become a hot topic in telecommunications policy debates. Repeatedly, proponents of network neutrality regulation have asked the Federal Communications Commission to impose rules on the operators of broadband access networks that forbid network operators to discriminate against third-party applications, content or portals (“independent applications”) and to exclude them from their network.

Much has been written about the potential for new information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enhance public participation in the democratic process. The new technologies are described as having the potential to revitalize the public sphere by enabling citizens to gain unprecedented access to government information and allowing them to interact with officials in decision-making at the local, state, and federal levels.

[Commentary] By their disposition, hurricanes are a television story: great pictures, an informational crawl at the bottom, and a wind-swept, rain-soaked anchor. But big papers like The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times all dug in, sending dispatches out of New Orleans that shed light where there had been only heat. What exactly happened at the convention center? Is Mayor Ray Nagin a saint or a kook? Were the levees overtopped or undermined? Will New Orleans be a real city again, or just Disneyland with Jell-O shots?

Given the impact of Katrina, Hurricane Rita was covered differently than any other storm. Television outlets devoted great resources to coverage. Before Katrina, “the thinking had always been, ‘It's no longer a story once it's no longer a hurricane. Be there when it hits, get out by the time it's downgraded to a tropical storm,' ” CNN chief Jon Klein says. Katrina, he says, taught news outlets that post-hurricane storm surges and flooding, which destroyed levees and much of New Orleans, “are even more dangerous than the initial wind and rain.

Eight days after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" included in its coverage of the storm's aftermath a report on toxic water and another piece on global warming. The story on the toxic soup created by the New Orleans floodwaters raised issues about the environmental impact of the cleanup as the dirty water is drained into Lake Pontchartrain. The global warming story explained the complicated cycles of increased and decreased hurricane activity and their relationship with rising temperatures in the oceans.

[Commentary] One lesson of Hurricane Katrina and the terrible chaotic aftermath is this: The public needs direct, unlicensed access to cheap, robust communications. The FCC can make this happen. A portion of the analog TV spectrum that will be clawed back from broadcasters in the next several years should be made license-free. Let the technical circus -- that world of geeks, entrepreneurs, companies and venture capitalists -- seek profits by making a mass market of super-duper WiMax gear.

Telephone and cellphone outages persisted in parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi on Sunday as crews repaired damage caused by Hurricane Rita. Joe Chandler, spokesman for BellSouth, said about 560,000 customers were without service, mainly in northern Louisiana and northern Mississippi. He said crews were at work in areas that weren't severely flooded. San Antonio-based SBC Communications said its core network in Texas “is fully functional, with the exception of a small central office in Sabine Pass,” near hard-hit Port Arthur.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) board will name a successor to the controversial head of the organization -- with another candidate who could also draw fire. Outgoing board Chairman Ken Tomlinson, who drew strong criticism from the public-broadcasting community and some key legislators for what they see as pushing a Republican agenda, saw his role as balancing a liberal-programming bias.