1. Monthly archive
  2. June 2019

June 2019

Big Things Happening in Clarksville, Arkansas: Gigabit FTTH on the Way

Clarksville (AR) began their journey toward better local connectivity like many other communities we’ve interview and written about: by first focusing on fiber as a tool to enhance electric utility efficiencies. Four years after making the choice to deploy fiber, the town has chosen to use that fiber to offer Internet access to the community. Gigabit connectivity is on the way to every premise in Clarksville. This past legislative session, restrictions in AR eased somewhat when lawmakers made changes to allow local communities to apply for federal grants.

Sen Tammy Duckworth Joins 5 Other Senators To Introduce Bill to Address Predatory Phone Rates in Criminal Justice System

Sens Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Rob Portman (R-OH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Angus King (I-ME) introduced the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act to strengthen the nation’s criminal justice system. This bipartisan bill would help families keep in touch with their incarcerated family members, and would address long-standing concerns about the prohibitively expensive and predatory price of phone calls that incarcerated individuals at correctional facilities across the US are forced to pay.

Service Meant to Monitor Inmates’ Calls Could Track You, Too

Thousands of jails and prisons across the US use a company called Securus Technologies to provide and monitor calls to inmates. But the former sheriff of Mississippi County (MO) used a lesser-known Securus service to track people’s cellphones, including those of other officers, without court orders, according to charges filed against him in state and federal court. The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds.

In the twisted world of prison communications, voicemail is an innovation

For people in prisons and jails, voicemail can still be very useful. Corrio is a Washington state-based company co-founded by Alex Peder, a former inmate himself, that offers a service that lets inmates call a special number assigned to them and then record a voice message that gets texted as a link to any person the prison or jail has allowed them to contact. It connects the facility’s network to Corrio’s private switch network, and a person on the outside can send a regular text to the inmate, as well as record voicemails.

“…And Justice for All”: Antitrust Enforcement and Digital Gatekeepers

e digital economy is a fact of life, but it is not all things to all people.  There has been robust public discussion about whether the broader economy, undoubtedly transformed by digital technologies, is working well for everyone.  While some commenters have tried to dispatch the antitrust laws to address these problems, I do not believe the antitrust laws are bent towards values other than competition. Therefore, the right question is whether a defined market is competitive.  That is the province of the antitrust laws.... As we think about antitrust enforcement in the digital eco

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