The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have announced plans to coordinate efforts for online consumer protection following the adoption of the proposed 'Restoring Internet Freedom Order'. more
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a post today pointing out that the FCC continues to ignore the technical parts of a letter sent to it earlier this year by nearly 200 Internet engineers and computer scientists. more
Recently, a colleague in the Bellisario College of Communications asked me who gets a freedom boost from the FCC's upcoming dismantling of network neutrality safeguards. He noted that Chairman Pai made sure that the title of the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is: Restoring Internet Freedom. My colleague wanted to know whose freedom the FCC previously subverted and how removing consumer safeguards promotes freedom. more
As we enter the seventh round of the net neutrality fight, advocates continue to make the same argument they've offered since 2002: infrastructure companies will do massive harm to little guys unless restrained by strict regulation. This idea once made intuitive sense, but it has been bypassed by reality. ... When Tim Wu wrote his first net neutrality paper, the largest telecoms were Verizon, AT&T, and SBC; they stood at numbers 11, 15, and 27 respectively in the Fortune 500 list. more
The largest and most important global information infrastructure today by any measure is clearly the global mobile network and all of its gateways, services, and connected devices. That network is standardized, managed, and energized by a combination of the 3GPP and GSMA. The level of 3GPP industry involvement and collaboration today probably exceeds all other telecom, internet, and assorted other bodies put together... and then some. more
We've all heard too much about NN, which I've been reporting for 20 years. I support it because I don't want Randall Stephenson of AT&T deciding what I should watch on TV. The long-run effect is negative. The claims from some people who agree with me are ridiculous. "According to former FCC commissioner Michael Copps, ending net neutrality will end the Internet as we know it." Michael knows I respect him, but... more
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday told reporters that President Donald Trump's plan to roll back net neutrality protections for the internet "does not make sense". more
Turning network technical protocols into religion seems like an inherently bad idea -- transient and unstable at best. However, it happens. More than 40 years ago, the world of legacy telecommunications and network design formalism started the tendency with OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) and ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Networks). A few years later, the academic research community did it with their myriad host-to-host datagram protocols -- eventually calling one "the Internet." more
In a phone briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Senior FCC officials revealed plans whereby state and local governments will not be able to impose local laws regulating broadband service.
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Today's announcement from the Commission that it intends to roll back the exercise of Title II utility-style regulation over "any person engaged in the provision of broadband internet access service" at its 14 December meeting is the right step. As a veteran of 40 years of internet related regulatory wars in the FCC and numerous other venues, the Commission's decision and the actual Rules promulgated in the February 2015 Report & Order stand among the most ill-considered application of authority and regulatory gerrymandering ever witnessed. more
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today released a statement on his draft "Restoring Internet Freedom Order", circulated to Commissioners this morning and will be voted on at the FCC's Open Meeting on December 14 more
This week, I ran into an interesting article over at Free Code Camp about design tradeoffs... If you think you've found a design with no tradeoffs, well... Guess what? You've not looked hard enough. This is something I say often enough, of course, so what's the point? The point is this: We still don't really think about this in network design. This shows up in many different places; it's worth taking a look at just a few. more
A coalition of activists and consumer groups are planning to gather in Washington, DC to meet directly with the members of Congress, which is said to be the "most effective way to influence their positions and counter the power of telecom lobbyists and campaign contributions." more
U.S. House Republicans have invited CEOs of major technology and telecommunications companies to weigh in on the net neutrality debate amidst Federal Communications Commission move to repeal the Obama-era rules. more
A group of over 190 Internet engineers, pioneers, and technologists today filed joint comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) explaining "Technical Flaws in the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rule-making and the Need for the Light-Touch, Bright-Line Rules from the Open Internet Order." more