Net Neutrality

Shadow Regulations and You: One More Way the Internet’s Integrity Can Be Won

Even those who care about net neutrality might not have heard of the aptly-called Shadow Regulations. These back-room agreements among companies regulate Internet content for a number of legitimate issues, including curbing hate speech, terrorism, and protecting intellectual property and the safety of children. While in name they may be noble, in actuality there are very serious concerns that Shadow Regulations are implemented without the transparency, accountability, and inclusion of stakeholders necessary to protect free speech on the Internet. more

FCC Gets 27,063 Comments on Network Neutrality

To date, the FCC has posted 27,063 comments it has received from the Citizens of the United States about its Network Neutrality NOI, aka Broadband Industry Practices WC Docket No. 07-52 [.doc, .pdf]. The first hundred are here, with links to the rest. more

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Says FCC’s Roll Back Plan on Net Neutrality Makes No Sense

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

F2C: My Opening Remarks

Here are my opening remarks at F2C: Freedom to Connect yesterday: "I am honored to be among so many remarkable people. We have to be remarkable people, because we have a hell of a job to do. The Internet has been given to us. It is a miraculous gift, and a boon to our lives... at least in part because it accidentally matured outside the purview of profit and loss. Now the money has arrived. If you want to see what happens when the money arrives, look at Nigeria or Venezuela or Russia or Iraq..." more

Net Neutrality in the US Under Fire

John McCain has introduced a new legislation at the US Senate, which is called Internet Freedom Act... I agree with the statement about the governmental control and regulation -- we've done exactly this in Bulgaria, and the results are stunning (for the US user): today Bulgaria ranks No. 1 among the EU in number of users per capita who are connected to the Internet at speeds above 100 Mbps (in the US, the typical connection speed is 3 Mpbs), or 30 times faster than the US, and in many cases, people are connected via fiber, at 1000 Mbps, or 300 times faster. more

Data Tsunami and the Looming Broadband Capacity Crisis

There is such a huge volume of genomics (DNA related data) and bio-informatics data being produced that it cannot be transferred over commercial Internet networks, and instead organizations are using FedX and other sneaker nets to ship the data. The same crisis in data volumes is also occurring in the climate modelling and other fields as well. Research and Education (R&E) networks for many years have been warning about this coming data tsunami. more

Comcast Streaming of NBC Broadcast Content

NBC soon will join the ranks of content providers offering a streaming option to cord cutters and mobile consumers. This future service warrants special attention, because two corporate affiliates within the Comcast family will participate in many parts of the United States: Comcast as the last mile, "retail" ISP and Comcast the parent of NBC-Universal. Operating as an ISP, Comcast has at least three pricing/interconnection options, each of which raise questions relating to network neutrality... more

Burger King’s New Ad Teaches Customers About Net Neutrality

Burger King released a three-minute ad today trolling FCC's decision to repeal Net Neutrality rules. more

California Introduces Its Own Net Neutrality Bill; Similar Bills in Progress for WA and New York

Sen. Scott Wiener along with ten state assembly and Senate Democrats have proposed legislation which includes a number of ways to ensure telecom companies operating in California adhere to the principles of net neutrality. more

Genachowski to Broadband: Reduce Prices, Increase Speeds, Increase Access, Embrace Competition

Broadband providers are not taking the recent move by the FCC to reclassify broadband under Title II; i.e., put broadband under its regulation arm along with the likes of telephone companies, very lightly and have come out swinging to stop that effort... Seemingly at issue; an appeal brought by Comcast with the D.C. Court of Appeals and the subsequent defeat of the FCC's perceived role as a broadband regulator, ruling the communication had no authority under current legislation to sanction Comcast over a 2008 Internet throttling incident. more

Why the Blackout Never Happened: Internet Governance Lessons From Poland’s Energy Sector

Poland thwarted a large-scale cyberattack on its energy grid without disruption, offering a rare case study in critical infrastructure resilience, decentralised energy governance, and the balancing act between openness and digital security. more

Extra Details on the Measurement Lab Launch

Well if you've been following tech news today, you probably already know -- after month (years, really) of work, the MeasurementLab.net (M-Lab) initiative has now officially launched. Given how many people have been working on this project, I'm amazed it didn't leak. Having just launched, I've been stunned by the immediate outpouring of interest — not only did it peg our servers, taking a couple of the research tools momentarily offline, but my inbox has been entirely flooded by correspondences. more

“Non-Discriminatory” Broadband: Just Carriage, or Miscarriage of Justice?

The foundational idea behind "net neutrality" is one of fairness by constraining ISP power over network mechanisms. The theory is this: if there is "non-discriminatory" local traffic management, then you have "fair" global outcomes to both users and application providers. There are thousands of pages of academic books making this assumption, and it is the basis of recent EU telecoms law. more

Revisiting the Impact of Killing Net Neutrality

Ajit Pai recently wrote an article in the National Review where he talks about how his decision as head of the FCC to repeal net neutrality was the right one. He goes on to claim that repealing net neutrality was the driver behind the current boom in building fiber and upgrading other broadband technologies. He contrasts the progress of broadband in the U.S. with Europe and says that the FCC's action is the primary reason we are seeing a fiber boom in the U.S. more

Obama Reinforces Belief in Net Neutrality

Following his State of the Union Speech last week, Obama was asked a number of user-submitted questions via prepared via YouTube. Popular questions included the issue of open internet and neutrality, to which Obama responded: "I'm a big believer in Net Neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we've got to keep the Internet open..." more