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Should broadband Internet service be treated as a basic utility in the United States, like electricity, water, and traditional telephone service? That’s the question at the heart of an important and provocative new book by Susan Crawford, a tech policy expert and professor at Cardozo Law School. In Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly in the New Guilded Age, released by Yale University Press, Crawford argues that the Internet has replaced traditional phone service as the most essential communications utility in the country, and is now as important as electricity was 100 years ago.

“Truly high-speed wired Internet access is as basic to innovation, economic growth, social communication, and the country’s competitiveness as electricity was a century ago,” Crawford writes, “but a limited number of Americans have access to it, many can’t afford it, and the country has handed control of it over to Comcast and a few other companies.” Because the U.S. government has allowed a small group of giant, highly profitable companies to dominate the broadband market, Crawford argues, American consumers have fewer choices for broadband service, at higher prices but lower speeds, compared to dozens of other developed countries, including throughout Europe and Asia. “In Seoul, when you move into an apartment, you have a choice of three or four providers selling you symmetric fiber access for $30 per month, and installation happens in one day,” Crawford said. “That’s unthinkable in the United States. And the idea that the country that invented the Internet can’t get online is beyond my imagination.”

While speaking at the 2013 International CES, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the FCC will soon kick-off a government-wide effort to increase speeds and alleviate Wi-Fi congestion at major hubs, such as airports, convention centers and large conference gatherings. In addition, this would also increase speed and capacity for Wi-Fi in the home where multiple users and devices are often on the network at the same time.

This will increase and free up the unlicensed spectrum available for ultra-high-speed, high-capacity Wi-Fi - known as “Gigabit Wi-Fi” - by up to 35 percent. This effort will enable higher data speeds and greater capacity – most notably, improved HD video distribution capability. Chairman Genachowski said that the FCC will take the first steps next month to unleash up to 195 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 gigahertz band. This would be the largest block of unlicensed spectrum to be made available for expansion of Wi-Fi since 2003. Because the 5 gigahertz band is already used for other purposes by both federal and non-federal users, the effort will require significant collaboration with other federal agencies. Chairman Genachowski committed the Commission to move expeditiously to complete the proceeding.

For years, the radio industry has watched with worry as consumers snap up all kinds of electronic gadgets — from cellphones to tablets to set-top TV boxes — that deliver seemingly every kind of media but that old standby, terrestrial radio. This week, broadcasters won a victory of sorts through a deal with Sprint Nextel, which will make local FM radio signals available on some of its smartphones.

It is the first such deal with a phone carrier after years of pressure from the major radio broadcasters. Yet whether customers, and other phone companies, will take to the idea is far from certain. Under the three-year deal, Sprint will make FM radio available on some of its Android and Windows phones, using a tuner application called NextRadio. The app — designed by Emmis, which owns 21 stations around the country — will allow some interactivity with other forms of media on the phone. Emmis CEO Jeffrey Smulyan said he believed that radio listening could increase 15 percent if it were widely available on cellphones. Both Sprint and the major radio companies will invest in the effort, and they can also share revenue from certain kinds of advertising that make use of the radio and phone features: for example, if a radio ad for a fast-food restaurant is accompanied by a coupon accessible on the phone.

Hundreds of new gadgets come out of the Consumer Electronics Show every year -- but to hear some inventors and tech companies talk, thousands of baseless patent suits come out of it, too. “Patent trolling,” the practice of buying up scores of little-known patents solely to sue others for infringement, is hardly a new phenomenon. By some accounts, patent litigation has been on a steady upward slope for nearly 20 years. But 2013 marks the first year that the issue has been taken up at CES, perhaps because litigators have begun chasing after small start-ups and companies well outside the tech field. That’s costing businesses dearly, argued Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and representatives from several tech companies on a panel. Companies lost $29 billion to patent litigation in 2011, Rep DeFazio said. Forbes reports that Google’s senior patent counsel, Suzanne Michel, estimated that an additional $80 billion is “indirectly” wasted when executives and engineers become distracted by the lawsuits.