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

Faster Internet up to Web Sites

The ISP can take traffic from a server to a user as fast as the speed of light, but if the web server is underpowered or overloaded with badly written tracking code, the user isn’t going to be happy.

April 26, 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

Wireless First: A Winning Strategy for Rural Broadband

The nice thing about focusing on wireless for the final leg of the extended broadband system is that it doesn’t duplicate effort or waste money. Despite the glory of fiber optic networks, people want mobility. So wireless is going to be part of the solution regardless. Why don’t we just accept that and concentrate on building the best wireless networks first and fill in with fiber only when and where it’s truly needed?

April 11, 2017 0

Congress is Watching You: What to Look For in the House Internet Privacy Debate

Yes. Does Google track you outside of google.com? Yes. Does Google share sensitive data about you with third parties it collects from sites like edmarkey.com and standtallforamerica.com? I don’t know that it does, but it’s entitled to by its privacy disclosures. And the same goes for a dozen other trackers unleashed on web users who visit these two sites.

March 28, 2017 0

What’s a Tracker Network and What Can it See?

In Wednesday’s Senate floor debate over the Congressional Review Act resolution on the Wheeler FCC’s privacy regulations, each Democratic Senator made the same claim: ISPs can see all the web…

March 23, 2017 0

San Francisco’s Cultural Divide

Co-chair Susan Crawford (right) leads a panel discussion about the plan to wire San Francisco with high-speed Internet service.

The failure of Google Fiber to connect America’s cities to ultra-fast gigabit networks took a bizarre turn this week: San Francisco, the incubator of the apps economy, is seriously considering…

March 16, 2017 0

Digital Broadband Migration Conference

This is one of my regular stops and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. If you’re in Boulder next February and interested in Internet policy, check it out.

February 21, 2017 0

Mysteries and Loopholes in the Open Internet Order

The claim that Internet regulation can only be carried out by an agency with rulemaking power remains to be proved because we don’t actually have concrete rules yet.

February 15, 2017 0