Op-Ed

[Commentary]  The headlines about the trade wars being touched off by President Donald Trump’s new tariffs may telegraph plenty of bombast and shots fired, but the most consequential war being waged today is a quieter sort of conflict: It’s the new Cold War over data protection. While the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica crisis currently burns as the latest, hottest flare-up in this simmering conflict, tensions may increase even more on May 25, 2018, when the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation comes into effect. Combatants in the new Cold War are fighting over the currency of t

[Commentary] Cisco Systems Vice President Jeffrey Campbell highlighted that paid prioritization is “one of the most misunderstood issues” in the telecom policy space. There's a growing realization that prioritization can play a positive role in network traffic management. But to understand why, we need to get beyond the “fast lanes, slow lanes” metaphor that has too often dominated the net neutrality debate. All internet traffic on a network moves at the same speed — the speed at which the electrons propagate on the wire.

[Commentary] What matters is not whether internet companies “deserve” our private information but why we as consumers do not have meaningful ways to protect that data from being siphoned for sale in the first place. The American government has done little to help us in this regard. The Federal Trade Commission merely requires internet companies to have a privacy policy available for consumers to see. A company can change that policy whenever it wants as long as it says it is doing so.

[Commentary] I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave. My error was waiting so long to walk away.

[Op-ed] National debates too often miss the reality on the ground in Alaska, and that reality is at the forefront of my mind when I’m considering the current debate about Net Neutrality. I strongly support a free and open internet and agree with those concerned about internet service providers prioritizing one website’s traffic over another’s or throttling access to certain content. I also believe and prefer Congress, not an executive agency like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), should legislate protections for the internet.

[Op-ed] Publicly owned broadband networks exist for one purpose: to give the most people the best service at the lowest possible prices. They do this because they know it benefits their residents’ quality of life and incomes. Verizon, Comcast and other big internet providers don’t like localities encroaching on their business, and they have gone to court to stop public broadband networks from being established. They have lost these cases, but defending them costs governments time and money.

[Commentary] The problems at Facebook and others, real and perceived, at Google, Amazon and Apple have led to an easy consensus: The large technology companies should be regulated. Such an outcome would be a bad mistake — bad for the companies, of course, but also bad for us, their users, and bad for the country. I do not pretend to be unbiased in writing this. While I am about as tech-savvy as your average 72-year-old , I met Mark Zuckerberg when he was 20, and spent six years on Facebook’s board.

[Commentary] In Feb 2018, the Federal Communications Commission released its most recent Broadband Deployment Report, which bases its analysis on 2016 data delivered by all Internet providers. At first glance, improvements in broadband coverage are noticeable; a national summary of the accompanying map indicates that over 95 percent of all Americans now have access to the official broadband threshold (25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream). The intuitive “fixed” technologies (DSL, Cable, Fiber) made up over 95% of all 25/3 entries in the 2014 and 2015 records.

[Commentary] Instead of having a centralized database to support shared access in specific spectrum bands, innovators should explore the use of blockchain as a lower-cost alternative. If the effort succeeds, the benefits could be considerable: The system could reduce the administrative expense of allocating spectrum and increase efficiency by enabling demand-matching spectrum sharing and by lowering transaction costs. Even better, the public quality of the information on the blockchain could expose patterns in use and inspire new technical innovation in the process.

[Commentary] With the Department of Justice (DOJ) litigation to stop the AT&T-Time Warner merger set to go to trial on March 19, it is revealing to compare different views about network power from the agency’s perch on the north side of the National Mall with those of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the other side.