Blog - Page 20

Saul Hansell at the New York Times reports that Verizon has given up on the landline telephone business Speaking to a Goldman Sachs investor conference, Mr. Seidenberg said Verizon was simply no longer concerned with telephones that are connected with wires. * * * *By converting most of its landline operation to FiOS, Mr. Seidenberg said Verizon had a new opportunity to cut costs sharply. FiOS uses the decentralized structure of the Internet rather than the traditional design of phone systems, which route all traffic through a tree of regional, then local offices. “We don’t look any different than Google,” he said. “We can begin to look at eliminating central offices, call centers and garages.” In May, Hansell shrewdly asked Read More ›

Julius Genachowski, the new FCC chairman, announced that the commission will begin a rulemaking process to formalize and supplement existing network neutrality policy. According to Genachowski,

This is not about government regulation of the Internet. It’s about fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the Internet. We will do as much as we need to, and no more, to ensure that the Internet remains an unfettered platform for competition, creativity, and entrepreneurial activity.

Of course it is about regulation. The formal rulemaking process Genachowski is planning is for the avowed purpose of enshrining network neutrality principles in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Regulation always starts out small, before it grows really big. It has to: Loopholes and other unintended consequences (and opportunities) are always discovered after the “product” launches.
Genachowski unfairly and innaccurately implies that network neutrality opponents want to “abandon the underlying values fostered by an open network, [and] the important goal of setting rules of the road to protect the free and open Internet.” In fact, the existing Internet Policy Statement that would serve as the foundation of a new network neutrality regulatory regime received 2 Republican votes and 2 Democrat votes.
Genachowski is attempting to present a false choice between letting minimally trained politicians and myopic bureaucrats get their hands all over the Internet to remake it as they see fit versus “doing nothing.”

Saying nothing — and doing nothing — would impose its own form of unacceptable cost. It would deprive innovators and investors of confidence that the free and open Internet we depend upon today will still be here tomorrow. It would deny the benefits of predictable rules of the road to all players in the Internet ecosystem. And it would be a dangerous retreat from the core principle of openness — the freedom to innovate without permission — that has been a hallmark of the Internet since its inception, and has made it so stunningly successful as a platform for innovation, opportunity, and prosperity.

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A Google representative worries that the company’s investment in Google Voice could be undermined if the service is subjected to common carrier rules.

Whitt said it would become “a real challenge” to justify Google’s investment in Google Voice if the FCC declared it was subject to common carrier rules. “Imposing legacy common carriage requirements would be unfortunate not just for Google Voice, but also for lots of innovative companies, large and small, who are using the Web to revolutionize the way people communicate with each other,” Whitt said.

Aren’t common carrier rules what Google wants to impose on broadband service providers through network neutrality regulation?
Of course they are.
Google seems to realize that common carrier rules are antagonistic to investment and innovation, so it’s difficult to understand how the company’s efforts to induce policymakers to impose these rules on Google’s broadband service suppliers is anything other than a bald attempt to exploit the regulatory process to shift costs on to someone else.

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DirecTV and Verizon’s FiOS service have recently announced app stores modeled directly on Apple’s App Store, notes the New York Times. This doesn’t seem consistent with the rationale for the proposed “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009,” (H.R. 3458) introduced by Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), which assumes that broadband service providers will discriminate against unaffiliated applications in the absence of heavy-handed regulation. Internet access service providers have an economic interest to discriminate in favor of their own services, content, and applications and against other providers. A network neutrality policy based upon the principle of nondiscrimination and consistent with the history of the Internet’s development is essential to ensure that Internet services remain open to all consumers, Read More ›

Wired has a good article by Robert Capps, “The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.“ Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of us are carrying around dinky, low-power netbook computers that are just good enough to meet our surfing and emailing needs. The low end has never been riding higher. So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. Read More ›

From pollster Charlie Cook: With 14 months to go before the 2010 midterm election, something could happen to improve the outlook for Democrats. However, wave elections, more often than not, start just like this: The president’s ratings plummet; his party loses its advantage on the generic congressional ballot test; the intensity of opposition-party voters skyrockets; his own party’s voters become complacent or even depressed; and independent voters move lopsidedly away. These were the early-warning signs of past wave elections. Seeing them now should terrify Democrats. If there is any possibility of a wave, a good bet would be that nothing of significance will happen in the Senate during those 14 months.

The Economist predicts If the decline of the landline [telephone] continues at its current rate, the last cord will be cut sometime in 2025. But if the telegraph is a guide, it may be longer than that: Western Union delivered the last telegram in early 2006, more than one hundred years after the telephone — although the telegraph was nearly irrelevant for most of that period. Still, the landline network furnishes a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of employees and more retirees than the auto industry. It’s a major contributor to nonprofit foundations, a significant source of union dues, a big affirmative action employer, a huge source of campaign contributions and it collects enormous tax revenues which politicians and bureaucrats Read More ›

This observation by David Brooks in today’s New York Times By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington. The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama’s job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast. reminded me of the National Broadband Strategy the FCC is working to complete by February. I doubt it will be Read More ›

John Wohlstetter is prejudiced in his praise of The Israel Test; he’s a friend of the author, George Gilder. Of course, a review by an author’s friend has never happened anywhere else, has it? Regardless, John is a friend and colleague of mine, too, and I know what he does when he disapproves of a friend’s views: he goes silent. This article in The American Spectator is, in fact, a very good introduction to the George Gilder’s book. The best lines are these, at the end: Israel could be the economic engine for the entire Mideast. This is the new Israel, no longer a financial ward of America. It is this Israel that most Americans know not of. “Israel Inside” Read More ›