February 2011

Most of the New Jersey's regulation of basic cable and land line telephone service would come to an end under a controversial bill that passed the state Assembly.

Supporters of the "Market Competition and Consumer Choice Act" (A3766) say it removes outdated rules that go back to the era of Ma Bell. But Stefanie Brand, the state ratepayer advocate, said in a letter to lawmakers that it would leave New Jersey residents "at the mercy of cable and telephone companies." And local officials are complaining it allows Verizon to go back on pledges it made to towns in exchange for getting a statewide franchise in 2006 so that it would not have to negotiate town-by-town to offer its FiOS service. Currently, companies offering basic telephone and land line services have to get the okay from the Board of Public Utilities before they can raise rates. The bill, which passed 66-7 with four abstentions, would eliminate that oversight. It would also roll back rules requiring cable companies to give credits to customers whose service is out for more than four hours, correct billing errors and protect customers from "slamming," in which their telephone company for local or long distance service is switched without their permission.

Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has pledged to be vigilant on whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will honor a commitment not to apply network neutrality rules to peering disputes.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Rep Blackburn that network neutrality rules do not govern peering disputes. That's a win for AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, who have weighed in at the FCC to say that companies such as Level 3, which provides streaming services for Netflix, should not be able to make network neutrality charges when they get in fee skirmishes with broadband providers. Stifel Nicolaus analysts wrote that Level 3 has "little chance" of "drawing the government into this particular dispute." They added, though, that "the fight isn't over" and that Level 3 can still seek government recourse. Harold Feld, legal director of Public Knowledge, said Level 3 may be able to bring a network neutrality complaint. "AT&T and NCTA are taking this to be more than it is to say Comcast and Level 3 is completely off the table," he said. "Genachowski hedged a little. My assumption is if Level 3 could come in with a juicy piece of evidence that says we've got Comcast guys over there jacking up the price because it's Netflix, that would change things." He said he saw some options for how Level 3 could bring a complaint if he were advising the company. "I'd see two ways: showing that Comcast really intended to punish them for carrying Netflix traffic and was deliberately singling out Netflix as its biggest competitor, and showing it is not a reasonable network management practice because it has a disproportionate impact on video. I think the latter would be a lot harder, however," he said. Still, Feld said that if the FCC decides such a dispute is a business deal, "then it wouldn't fall in under net neutrality."

Cyber crime costs the British economy some 27 billion pounds ($43.5 billion) a year and appears to be "endemic," according to the first official government estimate of the issue.

The study by Britain's Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance concluded digital crime is a growing, widespread problem, and attempts to address it have been hampered by a real lack of understanding and insight. Business is bearing the brunt of the costs at an estimated 21 billion pounds, with the pharmaceutical, biotech, IT, and chemical sectors the worst hit. However, government lost some 2.2 billion pounds and the cost to individual Britons amounted to 3.1 billion pounds.

Hillary Clinton called for the U.S. to promote Internet freedoms earlier this week and introduced a $25 million fund for technology companies that might help with the task. The New America Foundation has already applied for a grant under the program, which includes a $3.5 million proposal, of which $500,000 will be funded by the New America Foundation itself.

The mission? To build the technology stack for a distributed, open-source telecommunications system. The project would combine well-known projects — such as the open source voice projects Asterisk and OpenBTS – with new projects for mesh networking known as The Serval Project and Commotion, open-source firmware to enable routers to create an open mesh network. Dan Meredith, a technologist at New America, broke it down for me, and said the hope is to deliver communications in areas where Internet access is scarce, but also among populations unable to use communications because of government interference. While this technology stack would have been of limited use in Egypt, it actually could have helped protesters in the country stay connected to each other if not to the wider Internet.