Blog - Page 21

George Gilder’s new book, The Israel Test, is starting to get around. We ourselves have already filled over 1,000 book orders in house. (Actually, we recommend that purchasers go to Amazon.com to order. For both orders you can still come to us.) Mona Charen had a terrific column a few days ago on George’s appearance at the AEI. David Pryce Jones has a fine article out in the National Review, and The American has published a long excerpt of the book.
The growing buzz may have somthing to do with the fact that there really is an Israel test going on right now in international affairs. We definitely are on the case — led by George.

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Reacting to Apple’s decision to not allow Google Voice for the iPhone, Wall Street Journal guest columnist Andy Kessler complains, It wouldn’t be so bad if we were just overpaying for our mobile plans. Americans are used to that–see mail, milk and medicine. But it’s inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications. How many productive apps beyond Google Voice are waiting in the wings? So Kessler proposes a “national data plan.” Before we get to that, Kessler complains that margins in AT&T’s cellphone unit are an “embarrassingly” high 25%. He doesn’t point out that Read More ›

From the Oregonian, Frontier’s inexperience is a concern, Jenks said. But if Verizon doesn’t want to be here, perhaps Oregon will be better off. “Sometimes,” he said, “it’s to your advantage to get rid of an owner who doesn’t want to own something.” Who wouldn’t want to own something that makes a profit, unless… it doesn’t make a profit? Oregon’s problem is that it has driven the profit out of the telephone business, so the industry’s innovation leader — Verizon — is getting out. Nationwide, Verizon is investing $28 billion in fiber to the home, but it needs to earn a competitive return on investment. That isn’t possible in Oregon, which aims to align the price consumers pay for communications Read More ›

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski promised to investigate exclusivity arrangements between handset manufacturers and wireless carriers and “act accordingly to promote competition and consumer choice.” But according to Nielsen, only 6.4 percent of 25,000 wireless users surveyed rated choice of handset as the most important factor in choosing wireless service. Prohibiting exclusive handset deals doesn’t sound like a very good use of the FCC’s time if only 6.4 percent of consumers care enough about a particular handset that it would affect their choice of wireless service. A representative of one of the smaller rivals who are seeking FCC intervention claims that exclusive handset deals have made it “significantly harder for smaller carriers to attract and retain subscribers, and to effectively compete Read More ›

If you ever wondered how net neutrality could possibly arouse as much passion as it does, The Bullet, a socialist newsletter from Canada, has an illuminating interview with Free Press co-founder Robert W. McChesney in which he discusses the big picture: … Instead of waiting for the revolution to happen, we learned that unless you make significant changes in the media, it will be vastly more difficult to have a revolution. While the media is not the single most important issue in the world, it is one of the core issues that any successful Left project needs to integrate into its strategic program. * * * * The first issue is the Internet. The battle for network neutrality is to Read More ›

The New York Times has an excellent report on the promise of digital education: “I don’t believe that charters and vouchers are the threat to schools in Orange County,” [Superintendent William M. Habermehl] said. “What’s a threat is the digital world — that someone’s going to put together brilliant $200 courses in French, in geometry by the best teachers in the world.” The economics of digital courses will be so compelling that no vested interest will be able to stop it. If each course is approximately $200, students can sign up for 10 digital courses for approximately $2,000 plus the cost of a computer and a broadband connection versus — in the case of the D.C. public schools, for example Read More ›

Great commentary from Bret Swanson: Microsoft decided in 2008 to build 20 new data centers at a cost of $1 billion each. This was a dramatic commitment to the cloud. Conceived by Bill Gates’s successor, Ray Ozzie, the global platform would serve up a new generation of Web-based Office applications dubbed Azure. It would connect video gamers on its Xbox Live network. And it would host Microsoft’s Hotmail and search applications. The new Bing search engine earned quick acclaim for relevant searches and better-than-Google pre-packaged details about popular health, transportation, location and news items. But with just 8.4% of the market, Microsoft’s $20 billion infrastructure commitment would be massively underutilized. Meanwhile, Yahoo, which still leads in news, sports and finance Read More ›

Over at Broadband Politics, Brett Glass takes exception to what I have written about special access. Glass and I disagree on a couple factual matters, as well as on the big picture. One factual disagreement concerns the following observation by Glass: Despite the fact that it’s absolutely essential to the provision of many services, prices for it are held in check neither by competition nor by even a minimal amount of oversight. It’s thus an area that’s ripe for price gouging and anticompetitive tactics, both of which are occurring. In fact, special access pricing is only deregulated in areas where competition exists. In noncompetitive areas, special access prices are still regulated. Also, Glass and I draw opposite inferences from his Read More ›

The FCC received reply comments last week concerning the national broadband plan it is required — pursuant to the stimulus legislation — to deliver to Congress by Feb. 17, 2010. In the attached reply comments of my own, I conclude: The broadband market is delivering better services at lower prices. There is no evidence of a market failure which would justify additional regulation. I pointed out that just as the Sherman Act does not “give judges carte blanche to insist that a monopolist alter its way of doing business whenever some other approach might yield greater competition,” according to the Supreme Court, the Commission would be wise not to insist that broadband providers alter their way of doing business just Read More ›

Authoritarian regimes from China to Iran have made it their business to try to control what their peoples can see or do on the internet. It is usually about politics. Now Turkey joins the pack, even while its leader quips about how easy it is to thwart the government’s censorship efforts. In this useful article from Radio Free Europe, Claire Berlinski wonders how Turkey thinks it is going to get into the European Union when it employs such behavior.