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NET NEUTRALITY NEEDS A NEW PLAYER
[SOURCE: Fortune, AUTHOR: Stephanie Mehta]
Would Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Citizens Communications, be a better spokesperson against Net Neutrality than AT&T's Ed Whitacre? Citizens offers telephone, television and Internet products in 23 states under the Frontier brand name. Wilderotter is the rare phone company CEO who also has worked at a tech company -- Microsoft to be specific -- so she has some credibility on both sides of the aisle, so to speak. In fact, she says she placed a call to her former boss, Microsoft research and strategy chief Craig Mundie, after the whole Net neutrality issue started to come to a boil. During their call, she says, "Craig told me he was working at Microsoft to come up with a set of guiding principals we could all sort of live by, a sort of Internet bill-of-rights," Wilderotter says. Internet content companies and telecom players "can figure out ways to work together," she adds. Not surprisingly, Wilderotter believes the disputes that pit phone and cable companies against Internet companies should be worked out in conference rooms, not on Capitol Hill. She argues that no access provider would be dumb enough to prevent its users from getting to sites such as Google or Yahoo or MSN, or even to popular fledgling sites, like YouTube. Such a move, she says, simply would drive consumers into the arms of competitors. (However, Net neutrality advocates rightly argue that there's not a whole lot of competition for broadband access; in most communities broadband is, at best, a duopoly). "To tie our hands with regard to what we can do with these networks, when we're not going to do anything to preclude [anyone's] access [to them] is crazy," she says. "Legislation should be a last resort." Despite her diplomatic tone, Wilderotter can also hit back when necessary -- another quality the telcos require in a spokesperson. She is particularly critical of Google's efforts to promote Net neutrality at a time when the company is widely believed to be assembling its own Internet backbone, and is toying with different access strategies such as Wi-Fi. "Someone needs to ask Google what its real intention is here," she says. "It is easy to put yourself in the content camp and tie the other guys up in a regulatory box while you secretly develop a whole access network to go after their customers."
http://money.cnn.com/2006/07/20/technology/pluggedin0720.fortune/index.h...

NET NEUTRALITY ADVOCATES PUT PRESSURE ON LAWMAKERS
[SOURCE: ComputerWorld, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
Members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee rejected a network neutrality amendment to a wide-ranging broadband bill on June 28, but it turns out that’s not the last they've heard of the issue. Since that vote, a group of organizations supporting Net neutrality have cranked up the pressure on the 11 Republican senators who voted against an amendment that sponsors wanted to add to the broadband bill. Organizations including the liberal MoveOn.org and the conservative Christian Coalition of America and others involved in the SavetheInternet.com coalition have urged members to contact senators and express their displeasure over the Net neutrality vote. Opponents of a Net neutrality law, including large broadband providers such as AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., say a law isn't needed because they do not plan to block or degrade Web content. A Net neutrality law would prevent them from exploring new business plans such as charging Web sites new fees for priority speeds and a higher quality of service, and those new business plans are needed to build next-generation broadband networks, providers say. Some of the people contacting lawmakers about Net neutrality say it will be an important issue as they vote in the November elections.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

THE PHONE COMPANIES STILL DON'T GET IT
[SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Mark Gimein]
[Commentary] Welcome to Telco Land, a strange country where the biggest players talk more and more about innovation yet approach new ideas with baby steps, build little themselves, and when they think about technology are apt to believe it's a threat they have to fight. In fact, in San Antonio, John Kirby, the architect of Project Lightspeed, neatly managed to dispel any confusion about the status of engineering at the company when, after clarifying what it is he does, he explained that when it came to big new projects, "marketing dreams it up, and then I have to design it." The old AT&T had a world- class research operation; its successors -- the new AT&T and Verizon -- don't. One of the signal facts of the communications revolution is that virtually all the new technologies that made it possible were developed outside the phone world. Last year, Verizon's revenue came in at nearly $80 billion. AT&T (without BellSouth or Cingular) had revenue of $44 billion. And yet while Intel spent $5.1 billion last year on research and development, AT&T spent just $130 million. The word "research" doesn't even appear in Verizon's annual report. So isn't it a little odd to hear the CEO of a company the size of AT&T talk about needing to get bigger to have the resources to innovate? To some extent, Verizon and AT&T have been forced to take innovation seriously and move into offering TV and improved broadband. A world in which big telcos competed with big cable companies was something envisioned as far back as the 1996 Telecom Act. It only became a reality when Internet-based phone services allowed cable companies to offer the dreaded "triple play" of television, broadband, and phone, putting AT&T and Verizon on the defensive. But even as they've pushed into this new area, in others the telcos' instinctual response has also been to fight new technologies rather than foster them.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_31/b3995070.htm?chan=inn...

H--L TO THE CHIEF
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Broadcast networks last week insisted their decision to bleep President Bush's profanity was an appropriate response and not because of the FCC's crackdown on cursing -- even potentially in news shows. During a break at the G-8 summit, President Bush said, “Get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over” in a would-be private conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it was picked up by an open mike, it became the “sh-t” heard round the world” or, in some cases, not heard. ABC, NBC and CBS all bleeped the expletive. Was it out of fear of FCC reprisal? “No,” says CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius. “Fundamentally, we don't air expletives. It is a long-standing policy.” “This was not a policy change,” agrees NBC's Barbara Levin. “We have our own values and policies that predate this or any FCC.” Ditto for ABC.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6355400.html?display=News

* The President's Bad Word
[Editorial] Because the FCC said its profanity crackdown won't exempt newscasts, broadcasters can never decide to air an indecency in a newscast without fearing a fine. It is highly unlikely the FCC would hammer any station for language in a newscast, but nothing is certain. And that unpredictability steals the journalistic birthright of First Amendment freedom from broadcasters. How ridiculous. How stupid. Some legislators are vitriolic about television indecency, thinking not about what they're espousing but only about how righteous it makes them look in the eyes of voters. We're sure the Founding Fathers never anticipated that, either.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6355543.html?display=Opinion