Roslyn Layton Visits High Tech Forum

What are we losing by pretending that mobile broadband is a noncompetitive market that needs to be tightly managed by a Washington-based regulator? We can’t know that in the US because we only have the market we have. But data from other countries suggests that we’re not seeing the explosion in mobile apps development that we should expect.

June 15, 2017 0

Highly Illogical Broadband Claims

What the FCC can do is help to keep large swathes of the American population from falling behind. And it can do this by saying yes to network deployment and innovation. A good first step in that process is to let go of the vacuous virtuous cycle of networks + apps innovation. That argument is illogical.

June 13, 2017 0

Podcast: How Title II Net Neutrality Undermines 5G

Peter Rysavy identifies the friction points between 5G networks and Title II regulation.

May 31, 2017 0

Remind Me: Why Should I Care about Net Neutrality?

End-to-end is part of Internet history, but so is traffic differentiation. On the one hand, some forms of discrimination at the packet level are constructive. Applications have different needs and it’s good for networks to provide them with the type of service they desire.

May 25, 2017 0

FCC Wants to Know if Ernestine Rules the Internet

Broadband ISPs are in the same game as dial-up ISPs: providing customers the ability to access and share information. This is not a complicated issue. Hence, Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator Ernestine is not really part of the picture any more. She was a great lady, but like Manu Ginóbili of the San Antonio Spurs, she’s retired.

May 24, 2017 0

Dave Farber on Title II ISP Regulation

The FCC was designed as an independent agency because the public is always biased in favor of the status quo. As Henry Ford may have said about his Model T, the public just wanted faster horses because they were scared of cars.

May 17, 2017 0

Oops, John Oliver Did it Again

Now that we’ve enjoyed the obligatory not-so-funny HBO conspiracy theorist’s take on Title II, serious discussion can recommence. Fly, my pretty policy wonks with all your fancy knowledge of engineering, economics, and law. Make me proud with your wisdom.

May 9, 2017 0

Five Myths about Title II and the Internet

Myth #1: Title II is the foundation of the Internet. Fact: Title II didn’t make an appearance on a significant part of the Internet until the Obama FCC’s Open Internet…

May 2, 2017 0

American Broadband Policy: Information over Manipulation

While it’s true that Americans aren’t dancing in the streets over ISP customer service, it’s unrealistic to claim that replacing them with municipal utility providers will change this dynamic at all.

April 20, 2017 0

Voluntary Net Neutrality: Holy Grail or Total Hoax?

If net neutrality is what its supporters say it is – the best overall way of setting expectations and managing Internet service agreements, it should be expected to become self-executing at some point. I think we passed that point about ten years ago, but we will see what we will see.

April 13, 2017 0