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[Commentary] The unknown history of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in America is an ugly tale of government intervention, not free market enterprise. Most reporters and pundits today call AT&T, Verizon and Comcast et al "Internet Service Providers". They are not. AT&T and Verizon (and Centurylink) are the incumbent telecommunications utilities that have taken control of the wires as have the cable companies.
In fact, they were able to get the government to protect their businesses to keep monopoly controls over the wires. In most of America, customers are stuck with one or two wired providers. Customers have more choices in deodorant or toothpaste than they do of Internet or broadband providers as the incumbent wires are controlled by the cable or phone company. And with AT&T and Verizon having announced they are not going to upgrade most of their territories, or worse, that they plan to abandon whole areas of their wired customers, it's more like an Internet prison for customers. And now, with the new threats by AT&T, working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, to close down the entire telecommunications networks and obligations on both a state as well as federal level, it is time to stop these movements and start by bringing America real "Internet freedom", not simply freedom for the companies from regulation.
There Is No Internet Freedom Without Internet and Broadband Competition
Top officials in Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R-LA) administration used personal e-mail accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts — a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws despite Jindal's pledge to bring more transparency to state government.
E-mails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts. Those documents weren't provided to AP in response to a public records request. The practice folds into a national debate over the use of personal email accounts by government officials to discuss official business.
Top Jindal aides use personal e-mail to strategize
Could the Internet of Things arrive on our roadways sooner than we imagined? If Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has his way, it just might. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced a proposal that would require all automakers to install ERDs--Electronic Recording Devices--in their vehicles by 2014. The requirement would let the NHTSA’s team of researchers dip into a massive well of data concerning how and why car crashes happen. But these proposed requirements are only a hint of what the NHTSA is planning. Sec LaHood and his team are convinced that ubiquitous computing could make us hugely safer drivers. More specifically, they think it could reduce crashes by over 80%, by enabling our cars to interface with each other over a Wi-Fi network.
The Government Plans An Internet Of Networked Cars
Google’s product teams are built to be nimble and quick, but creating a unified design vision requires a top-down push. Google CEO Larry Page provided that push. And while the design of Google Search in 2000 looked almost the same as it did in 2010, the service--along with Maps, Gmail, and Calendar--got the biggest redesign of its history in 2011. After that, Search kept evolving.
New “knowledge graph” results popped up as photos and Wikipedia-like factoids to the right of results. Answers weren’t always presented as links. Putting a math problem in the search box, for instance, now returns a calculator. The search-options bar has migrated from its traditional post on the left-hand side of the search-results page to the top. Your average user may not have noticed anything different, but in the context of Google Search’s history, this is radical stuff. Google’s recently uncaged designers are looking at search differently.
How Google’s Designers Are Quietly Overhauling Search
Amazon, the huge online retailer, will begin collecting Massachusetts sales tax on purchases made by Bay State customers, starting next fall, Gov Deval Patrick’s office said.
“I value the contributions large and small employers alike make to Massachusetts’ economic vitality, and this agreement captures that,” Gov Patrick said (D-MA). “We are thankful Amazon was willing to come to the table and we will continue our conversations with them about creating jobs here. This agreement is a win for all sides, and I am pleased it promises to generate millions in long-term revenue for the Commonwealth.” Patrick’s press release included a statement from Paul Misener, Amazon vice president of global public policy. “We appreciate Governor Patrick’s commitment to Massachusetts jobs and investment and his support for legislation now before Congress that would provide a final resolution to the sales tax issue,” Misener said. “We look forward to creating hundreds of high tech jobs in Massachusetts and continuing to work with Governor Patrick, state leaders, retailers, and Congress to pass federal legislation permitting interstate sales tax collection. Federal legislation is the only way to level the playing field for all sellers, the only way for states to obtain more than a fraction of the sales tax revenue that is already owed, and the only way to fully protect states’ rights.” The Patrick administration had been pressing Amazon.com to begin collecting sales taxes from Massachusetts customers, arguing it is no longer exempt under federal law from charging the tax.
Amazon will begin collecting taxes in Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick says
[Commentary] There is deep irony in the desire of nations to seek more control over cyberspace. Dictators have abused their existing abilities to restrict access in efforts to chill dissent.
Hosni Mubarak shut down the Internet in just such an attempt. But he failed, because the Egyptian masses had been using cyberspace to share their anger and gather their courage for many months before the regime struck at the Net. Indeed, the shutdown was the signal to the people that it was time to go to Tahrir Square. Bashar al-Assad seems to have tried something similar over a week ago, when the Net went down briefly in Syria. He too will fail.
In the end, UN efforts to control cyberspace, aided and abetted by all too many nations, will fail as well. The virtual world is a vast wilderness - artificial, but beautiful and complex, and growing in size and direction in ways that almost surely lie beyond the ability of governments to control. The sooner this is realized, the better. It will save the world from a costly global struggle between balky nations and nimble insurgent networks. There are better things for the United Nations to focus on if it wishes to play a productive role in the information age. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, whose video address at the opening of the Dubai conference spoke of a desire to foster openness and Internet freedom, should act on his own words and reject the role of regulator. Instead, he should lead his organization as a negotiator, fostering behavior-based forms of cyber arms control -- as there is still time to head off an age of "mass disruptive" cyberwars.
[Arquilla is professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School]
Access Denied
[Commentary] Telephone communications have changed dramatically but the regulatory framework has not kept pace. Long gone are the days of monopoly service provided over circuit-switched copper lines. Today, at least half of U.S. households use wireless or an Internet application such as VoIP (voice over the Internet) or Skype or text messaging to communicate with others. But despite the changes in technology, many consumer protections - including universal service obligations - apply only to the local phone company's circuit-switched network. It's time to update our regulatory framework for an all IP world. AT&T has opened this discussion with a petition at the FCC to trial a deregulatory framework. Speed Matters is eager to join the discussion. We recognize that a multiplicity of tech choices doesn't mean everyone can get a working phone line. For reasons such as geography and income, many people are at risk of being cut off. And it's the position of Speed Matters that we need a regulatory framework that protects consumers and affordable universal service regardless of the technology.
VoIP Changeover Brings Need for New Consumer protections
The nation’s largest price cap carriers and the American Cable Association have been waging a war of words over the cost model that the price cap carriers proposed for phase 2 of the Connect America Fund, the broadband Universal Service program.
Several of the nation’s largest price cap carriers have been working together for a couple of years now as the ABC Coalition, a coalition formed specifically to enable those carriers to develop consensus about Universal Service reform and to speak with a common voice on those reforms. (Initial members included AT&T, CenturyLink, FairPoint, Frontier, Verizon, and Windstream.) At issue is the cost model that will be used to determine the level of support that price cap carriers will be offered to help cover the costs of bringing broadband to areas of their service territories that are costly to serve and that cannot get broadband today. The price cap carriers submitted a cost model which has come under attack by the ACA, which argues that the model would direct more money than merited to the price cap carriers.
Price Cap Carriers, Small Cablecos Tussle Over CAF Cost Model
[Commentary] After Congress and the White House close the gap between the Democratic and Republican approaches to the “fiscal cliff”, there is another gap that they need to bridge: the gap between how the worlds of technology and government approach the future.
The opportunities for top-line, technologically driven growth – funded primarily by the private sector -- are huge. According to Forbes Magazine, the $3.9 trillion education market -- $1.3 trillion in the United States alone -- is about to be radically transformed by a new breed of venture-backed disruptors. Almost half of the education venture deals in the last decade have closed in the last two years. Investments in digital healthcare start-ups in 2012 are up 73% from last year. Healthcare start-ups exceeded all other sectors, including software, as the largest recipient of angel investments. Our carriers have raced to deploy high-speed mobile and fixed broadband networks. On these new platforms, e-education, e-health ventures and all manner of e-services based on government data can proliferate. The principal role of government in driving this growth is to remove obstacles to for-profit investment.
[Reed Hundt was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. Blair Levin oversaw the creation of the National Broadband Plan and is now a fellow at the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program.]
A broadband solution to fiscal crises
Librarian Sheila Thorne wishes the 10 computers at the Clay County Public Library wouldn't bog down during busy afternoons, but it's not like the slow Internet speeds can be blamed on a shortage of new technology. There's a new $7,800 high-speed fiber connection in the library's basement -- enough capacity to serve dozens of libraries. And there's a $22,600 Internet router capable of serving hundreds of computers. But the Clay County library isn't using the technology -- paid for by the federal stimulus. It costs too much. Across West Virginia, more than 160 libraries have new routers and fiber connections, but the fiber sits coiled up, unused, shut off. Nobody has stepped up to shoulder the blame for the snafu -- an apparent combination of project mismanagement, poor planning and bureaucratic bungling.
Libraries can't use stimulus-funded fiber network in West Virginia