Following North Carolina last year passing a law to shut down community-owned telecom projects, the Georgia Senate is considering SB 313, to remove the authority of local governments in matters of broadband Christopher Mitchell, who directs the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative with the New Rules Project, writes: massive companies use their lobbying clout to stop [...]
Reforming the Universal Service Fund to better subsidize access to broadband is badly needed and the Federal Communications Commission has voted to help bring broadband to millions of families without it: Over the next six years, the new broadband fund will bring broadband service to about 7 million of the 18 million U.S. residents who [...]
Steve Jobs is rightly hailed for the software design innovations of Apple products, but the citing of his corporate leadership as epitomizing the modern economy may also reflect some unfortunate truths as well. Apple has the highest market capitalization of any company on Wall Street, yet it only employs 50,000 employees worldwide—a rounding error in [...]
There’s been a lot of debate about redirecting the current Universal Service Fund which pays for universal telephone service to also help fund expansion of broadband Internet to help achieve universal Internet access. Most people agree this is a good idea. The only problem is that the current industry proposal, the so-called ABC Plan, accomplishes [...]
Twenty-eight House members, including a good odd bedfellows assortment of legislators including Ron Paul, have sent a letter to the FCC pushing for more low-power FM stations. The FCC is now implementing the Local Community Radio Act, passed last December, after almost a decade of back-and-forth over how to promote low-power local radio stations. As [...]
Obviously, the govt did investigate Google and fined the company $500 million, but in some ways the disturbing facts of the story are that this result was only do to a separate investigation of a particular illegal phamacist. As the DOJ press release notes, this investigation was due mostly to an unrelated investigation that only [...]
One of the most dangerous aspects of the current recession is not just the length of unemployment but that many people give up looking, becoming what statisticians call “discouraged workers” who no longer are even counted in the unemployment rate. Such discouraged workers have tripled since 2007, rising to nearly 1.5 million people by the [...]
So Comcast has announced an Internet plan for low-income families: The Internet Essentials plan offers Internet service for $9.95 and a “netbook-style laptop” computer for $149.99. To be eligible, families must have at least one child receiving free school lunches, must have been a Comcast customer for at least 90 days and cannot have any [...]
Year after year, decade after decade, we have seen an abandonment of the commitment to universal access to advanced technology, always leaving some communities behind. DSLReports.com highlights more examples in its piece Buffalo Group Complains of FiOS Redlining – Verizon Continues to Insist It’s Nothing Personal: We’ve often discussed how with the exception of several [...]
