Blog - Page 24

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.

It is unacceptable that the country which invented the Internet ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption, according to President Obama — a fact which he and some others believe justifies government spending and regulation to “renew our information superhighway.” A new paper by Scott Wallsten at the Technology Policy Institute contributes useful perspective concerning the U.S. ranking (which actually is in relation not to the world as a whole, only to the 30 nations which comprise the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).) Because average household sizes differ across countries, when every household in every country is connected to broadband the U.S. will rank 18th among OECD countries and much lower when compared to all countries in Read More ›

What George W. Bush named “The Axis of Evil” included Iraq, North Korea and Iran. Iraq is relatively, if perhaps deceptively, quiet, but Iran is “hot” and North Korea seems bent on getting into our faces whether we want to see them there or not. This AP story by Lolita Baldor should push the federal government–as well as the private sector–to greater defensive action. Computer security is national security, and in that light it is worth noting that cyber attacks have increased almost three fold in three years. This is the kind of story that, in retrospect, may be seen as a lot more significant than what is daily emphasized in most of our hedonistic, anesthetized media. Both hardware and Read More ›

Congress could increase funding for organizations which enable foreign citizens to breach Internet firewalls operated by closed society regimes, according to Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA). The money would aid groups like the Global Internet Freedom Coalition, maker of the FreeGate software described by Nicholas D. Kristof: … small enough to carry on a flash drive. It takes a surfer to an overseas server that changes I.P. addresses every second or so, too quickly for a government to block it, and then from there to a banned site …. E-mails sent with it can be encrypted. And after a session is complete, a press of a button eliminates any sign that it was used on that computer The coalition is running Read More ›

The Department of Justice is looking into whether large U.S. telecommunications companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are abusing the market power they have amassed in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal. One area that might be explored is whether big wireless carriers are hurting smaller rivals by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers. Lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T’s exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.’s iPhone in the U.S. The department also may review whether telecom carriers are unduly restricting the types of services other companies can offer on their networks, one person familiar with the situation said. Public-interest groups have complained when Read More ›

Amazon.com Inc. has informed its marketing affiliates in Hawaii that it is ending its business with them to avoid collecting sales tax in the state. Lawmakers in Hawaii, following in the footsteps of North Carolina and Rhode Island, have passed legislation that would require companies to collect sales tax if they have marketing affiliates in the state. Affiliate marketers run blogs or Web sites and get a sales commission by featuring links to outside e-commerce sites. Although sales taxes are an efficient way for state and local officials to raise lots of revenue, sales taxes are a vestige of the industrial age which are doomed to extinction in the information age. Consumers don’t have to buy goods and services locally. Read More ›

George S. Ford and Lawrence J. Spiwak at the Phoenix Center conclude in a new paper that government intervention is not warranted in the market for special access services purchased by businesses and institutions (which I discussed most recently here). They note that the rates of return a prominent study estimated AT&T, Qwest and Verizon are currently earning either are similar to or less than the rates of return these companies used to earn when the market was fully regulated. NRRI bases this analysis on ARMIS rates of return, a perplexing approach once one calculates ARMIS rates of return from the period in which all special access services were price regulated. In 1999, for example, the average rate of return Read More ›

The Israel Test will be published Jul. 22. The following is an excerpt: The central issue in international politics, dividing the world into two fractious armies, is the tiny state of Israel. The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam or a split between Arabs and Jews. These conflicts are real and salient, but they obscure the deeper moral and ideological war. The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous “fairness,” between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it. Israel defines a line of demarcation. On one side, marshaled at the United Nations and in universities around the globe, Read More ›