FCC

Internet regulatory policy and the “middle mile”

The notion of a government-subsidized Internet is enormously appealing to many, and nearly everyone in the media, so it always gets a lot of hype. There are, in fact, some programs to provide broadband subsidies, ranging from the limited U.S. rural subsidy program to the incredibly ambitious...

Carrier handset antitrust review threatens LTE capex

The Department of Justice (DoJ)is apparently opening an inquiry into competitive practices in the telecom industry, a move that’s been tried before but failed because of turf objections from the FCC and its congressional...

Senate FCC hearings tied to open handset & broadband policy

Obama’s pick to chair the FCC starts his confirmation hearing today, and there’ll certainly be a lot of inane questions and evasive answers. The primary focus is likely to be the national broadband policy that’s on the FCC’s plate and is even to be featured as a topic in the next open...

Broadband stimulus and the unsmart debate

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 82% of all Internet users were on broadband and that about 62% of those broadband users were on the Internet, as of 2007. The FCC says that broadband was available in over 99% of zipcodes at that same date.

That’s an interesting set of numbers...

FCC’s national broadband plan: Inquiry process begins

The FCC has issued a Notice of Inquirymon developing a national broadband plan as required by Congress.

The NOI seeks comment on how to achieve universal access, how to...

Government-sponsored broadband: Hard track record to overcome

You’d think that municipal and state governments in the U.S. were drinking too much Fosters. Many of them are looking actively at applying for some of the broadband stimulus dollars to create government networks for their citizens, following the same model as Australia but on a smaller...

US RBOCs: Just how open is open?

The US RBOCs are concerned about applying for aid under the broadband stimulus package because it may force them to open their networks to competitors. The provision in the rural broadband aid portion of the stimulus requires the grantees to adhere to FCC principles of open interconnection, but it...

FCC could enter cable bandwidth management fray

Comcast has, as we had predicted, asserted to the FCC that its voice service is not carried over the Internet or Internet access infrastructure, and is therefore neither subject to their traffic management policies nor to the FCC’s four principles of net neutrality.

They’re right, of...

The Internet access traffic management flap, net neutrality and reality

Google is releasing a set of tools from its Measurement Lab that are intended to help consumers figure out if their ISPs are doing them wrong with traffic management. The new tools capitalize on the flap created by the Comcast-FCC war on bandwidth management policies.

At the same time,...

FCC policies under Obama Administration

January 2 2009: An Xchange Magazine interview of Democratic FCC commissioner Adelstein may offer some insight into what an Obama FCC would do. Adelstein does not sound like he favors returning to a wholesale/unbundled age (not that it would likely pass muster with the...