My Reply Comments on Restoring Internet Freedom
Today I filed a critique of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Engineers Letter” with the FCC. The letter, based on a an amicus brief filed in support of the 2015 Open…
The Information Network vs. the Conversation Service
[Note: This is the third in a series of posts on the EFF letter. The others are here and here.] “The Internet’s just like plain old telephone service”. In essence,…
EFF’s Engineers Letter Avoids Key Issues About Internet Regulation
One of the more intriguing comments filed with the FCC in the “Restoring Internet Freedom” docket is a letter lambasting the FCC for failing to understand how the Internet works….
The Internet Model
The FCC’s first instinct when it encounters a legitimate issue with Internet management should be to involve the multi-stakeholder community through such means as reaching out to the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Society, and professional organizations such as ACM and IEEE.
Progress in the Debate over TV White Space
Tuesday (July 11, 2017), Microsoft unveiled their current vision for unlicensed radio services in the TV White Space (see “Microsoft calls for U.S. strategy to eliminate rural broadband gap within…
Microsoft Closes Digital Divide! Heh, Just Kidding
Happy Prime Day! Here’s one special deal you don’t want to buy: Microsoft’s grand plan to bring high speed broadband to the less-populated fringe of rural America for peanuts. It…
Regulators Stoke Gatekeeping Fears
FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny and former FCC Chief Counsel Jon Sallet have written a frightening editorial for Wired: “Kill the Open Internet, and Wave Goodbye to Consumer Choice“. If the…
Congestion Pricing for Infrastructure: I Still Don’t Know Why Net Neutrality is Important
When usage, delay tolerance, and loss tolerance are all unknowns, we fall to an unknown level of quality. While this simplifies billing, it doesn’t do justice to the needs of applications, innovation, or investment.
A side effect of switching from the current billing model to a quality-based model is that the unproductive net neutrality debate summarily ends. When users have control over the end-to-end quality of each application transaction, the means used by the provider to deliver the desired quality are unimportant.
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.
A Technical View of the Title I/Title II Debate
The FCC’s review of the regulatory status of broadband Internet Services focuses the spotlight on the distinction between Title I and Title II services. Title II is meant to apply…