Blog - Page 59

Proof that you can never have it both ways can be found in a report by Christopher Rhoads in today’s Wall Street Journal, which notes that countries and organizations are erecting rival Internets. Internet pioneers such as Vinton Cerf are alarmed about a fragmentation of the Internet, according to Rhoads. But we should step back and give thanks for what this development is not. It is not U.N. control of the Internet. The U.N. is a sclerotic, and some say corrupt, organization that is full of strange notions about the importance of personal and commercial freedom. Were it to control the Internet, foreign dictators and bureaucrats would be able to influence how we can use the Internet in this country. Read More ›

It looks like we might have some progress at the U.S. Treasury Department, which mostly botched the China currency-trade issue over the last few years. Now Undersecretary Tim Adams is changing the biannual monetary-trade report that previously was used, among other purposes, to label nations “currency manipulators,” whatever that means. As Adams now acknowledges, the economics surrounding these currency and trade matters is much more subtle than the “on-off switch” approach that Treasury had been taking (and that Congress wished it would continue). There are no guarantees the new, more nuanced, more frequent reports will also be more intelligent, but this change points in the right direction. -Bret Swanson UPDATE: Maybe I spoke too soon. Other articles suggest Tim Adams Read More ›

The Wall Street Journal Asia notes a new international poll (sub. req.) gauging sentiment on capitalism. In a poll conducted for the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes between June and August last year, fully 74% of Chinese citizens said they agreed with the statement “the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world.” The Philippines, at 73%, and the U.S., at 71%, were second and third. If you’ve been there recently, you know it’s true. -Bret Swanson

Today at Slate.com, Adam Penenberg examined the “net neutrality” debate in an article entitled “Internet Freeloaders: Should Google have to pay for the bandwidth it consumes?” Following is Penenberg’s column (indented) with my comments interspersed: Internet Freeloaders The Internet has always been about democracy–what the geeks who designed it call “network neutrality.” Data, whether e-mail, a Web page, or video, get sent as packets that are reassembled at the end of their journeys. All packets are created equal, and Internet service providers deliver them without prejudice, based on their network’s speed and capacity. This isn’t quite right. For years, providers of certain content, applications, and services have used specialized techniques to deliver higher value data in faster and more robust Read More ›

Terabyte-capacity disk drives will soon be available. A terabyte is 1,000 (actually, 1,024) gigabytes; the PC on your desk probably has 100 or so gigabytes in it; the biggest iPod nano has eight gigabytes. …. The last time the disk drive crossed such a threshold was in 1991, when the first gigabyte drives were introduced. Back then, all that people used computers for was actual work — spreadsheets and such — and it was hard to imagine why anyone would need so much storage. News accounts noted that a gigabyte would store 1,000 copies of “Gone With the Wind,” without ever explaining why you would want to. Those first gigabyte drives were priced in the neighborhood of $2,000, which on Read More ›

Last night in his State of the State address, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana endorsed what I think is the nation’s most aggressive effort to reform state telecom laws. The relevant excerpt: “Perhaps the single most important step government can take for our economic future is to ensure the best possible infrastructure, the strongest possible framework, to support the businesses of tomorrow. “In a wired world, “infrastructure” no longer means just roads, rail lines, or waterways but also the invisible fibers and frequencies over which today’s most vital and valuable commerce is transacted. It is time to modernize a telecommunications regulatory system set up for the age of monopolies and copper wire to unleash this century’s most dynamic, diverse and Read More ›

Could changing technologies and evolving voice telephony service plans effectively doom the century-old telephone excise tax before politicians ever get around to it? Blogger Jim Glass has been following the story and notes a new class action law suit that we’d actually support. The suit targets the IRS for illegally collecting some $9 billion or more in taxes that don’t meet its own definition under the phone excise law, which was enacted in 1898 to support the Spanish-American War. IRS regulations say the tax applies to calls measured in “time and distance,” but from mobile phones to VoIP, many of today’s calls aren’t measured by time or distance, and often neither. The IRS has already lost all 10 relevant court Read More ›

China today announced a large $102 billion trade surplus for 2005, triple last year’s total. But wait. Excluding its $114.7 billion trade deficit with the United States alone, China actually ran a modest trade deficit of almost $13 billion with the rest of the world. We’ve been predicting this development all year. China’s consumption of consumer and capital goods is growing fast. According to a recent “economic census,” the nation’s first ever, its domestic services economy is one-third larger than previously thought and accounts for over 40 percent of GDP. These numbers are just one more factor showing that China has not been “manipulating” its currency, the yuan, to gain unfair advantage in international markets via a singular focus on Read More ›

The Wall Street Journal this morning updates the evolving story of how bandwidth pricing might change as more content and applications move from the traditional phone and cable TV networks onto the Net. The phone companies envision a system whereby Internet companies would agree to pay a fee for their content to receive priority treatment as it moves across increasingly crowded networks. Those that don’t pay the fee would find their transactions with Internet users — for games, movies and software downloads, for example — moving across networks at the normal but comparatively slower pace. Consumers could benefit through faster access to content from companies that agree to pay the fees. The size and structure of the fee systems remain Read More ›

Good news from here in my home state of Indiana: State Sen. Brandt Hershman has introduced bold and far-reaching telecom reform legislation that would, among other things, (1) remove telecommunications from its historically defined role as a “utility” and block the state utility commission from regulating all but the most basic telephone services; (2) block any regulation of broadband services or technologies and limit IURC authority over wholesale matters so as not to go beyond FCC rules; and (3) provide for a statewide video service franchise, enabling major new fiber-optic (or wireless or powerline) bandwidth providers to enter the market almost immediately instead of wrangling with several hundred local boards and councils over franchise fees and restrictions. As far as Read More ›