net neutrality

Verizon CEO comes out swinging against net neutrality

I gotta say, any trade show that opens the ceremonies with some trash talkin’ has my attention.

After giving up a little hip-hip-hooray for Verizon’s long-awaited 4G network (ready for 60 devices thus far and expected to be in 25-30 markets next year) at the opening keynote of SuperCOMM 2009 on Wednesday in Chicago, CEO Ivan Seidenberg shelved his warm and fuzzy feelings there.

The Federal Communications Commission was on the cusp of releasing its proposed net neutrality regulations — a hard sell for the SuperCOMM crowd, to say the least.  Seidenberg pretty much stopped short of calling the net neutrality proponents (and their sympathizers on the FCC) lefty wingbat commies.

“If this burdensome regime of net regulation is imposed on all parts of the Internet industry, it will inject an extraordinary amount of bureaucratic oversight into the economy’s main growth engine for the future,” he said.

Seidenberg said his main beef with net neutrality proponents was their suggestion “that network providers like Verizon and applications providers like Google, Amazon and others occupy fundamentally different parts of the Internet ecosystem — a binary world of ‘dumb pipes’ on the one hand and ’smart applications’ on the other.”

Verizon Wireless and Google — who has been at the front of Team Net Neutrality — are partnering to release a smartphone that runs on Google’s Android system.

“This is a mistake, pure and simple: an analog idea in a digital universe,” he said. “We can’t create smart economy by dumbing down our critical infrastructure.”

Sen. Franken grills Judge Sotomayor on Net Neutrality

“Isn’t there a compelling, over-riding First Amendment right here for Americans to have access to the Internet?”

That’s the question Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) posed to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, citing the increase of using the Internet as a primary, if not the primary, means of information sharing for more and more people ,and the fact that in many areas, there isn’t a whole lot of choice between service providers if one starts to constrict or even block traffic to and from certain websites.

Sotomayor’s response should bring at least a little relief to telecom operators: She said that such decisions aren’t for the court to rule on, but for the legislature to decide, and that the Brand X decision, which designated Internet service providers as “information services” rather than “telecommunication services” should stand.

Here’s the video:

Time Warner Cable turnaround: No caps for you

Time Warner Cable is canceling its trial plans for what the company termed “consumption based billing,” citing consumer confusion, as DSLReports.com notes. I think a likelier culprit is the threat of legislation from the likes of Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Eric Massa, as well as a heap of bad publicity Time Warner Cable got as a result.

Is it really Time Warner Cable’s fault?

“The issue here is that 90% of the people writing about this topic are writing stupid, self-serving, cowardly bull,” Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp. and SearchTelecom blogger, told me when I first began interviewing him on the subject. In Tom’s eyes, and the eyes of much of the industry, the current model is simply not going to work, and it’s not fair to either the majority of customers or the carriers that some “freeloaders” can drain as much bandwidth as they want, while paying the same amount as the proverbial grandmother who checks her e-mail twice a week for pics of her grandkids. Continued »

Proposed FCC head is an FOB

The rumored new head of the FCC is an FOB. That’s “Friend of Barack,” people, as in a former Harvard Law School classmate of the president-elect, who definitely knows his way around Washington D.C. (Yes, he’s on Facebook, but has he friended you?)

The nomination of technology exec Julius Genachowski is still an official secret, which is obvious because it’s been blasted all over every website and publication that has any interest in communications policy. The Genachowski nomination will be no big surprise, as he is already Obama’s chief technology advisor already.

Genachowski already knows the FCC drill, as he was chief counsel for Reed Hundt, the FCC chairman under former President Bill Clinton, and has worked at IAC/InterActiveCorp and other technology companies. He also co-founded LaunchBox Digital, a venture capital firm in Washington, D.C.

What policies does Genachowski favor? We’re hearingnet neutrality (government mandated?, cheap broadband for everybody, and media ownership rules that favor diversity.

Even before Obama’s inauguration, telecommunications policy and regulation has been in the spotlight, as the new Commissions will need to immediately deal with the conversion to digital television and the Obama universal broadband strategy.

The FCC is supposed to ensure that the digital television conversion on Feb. 17 goes smoothly (only an estimated 20 million people to switch and the government fund that provides conversion box coupons running out of money). The Obama transition team made it clear that the president-elect would like to push the conversion deadline back to the summer, citing readiness and funding concerns.

In the longer term, building out broadband is part of Obama’s economic stimulus package. The new FCC chairman will hear every possible viewpoint on how to accomplish a broadband buildout and arguments who should be allowed to get tax credits or other incentives to do so. Navigating that free-for-all alone will show us what Genachowski is made of. Stay tuned.