Toward a Better Open Internet Order

Administrative agencies don’t do their best work when consumed with settling scores and playing politics. We’re all going to benefit from FCC actions based on balanced assessment, rational analysis, and good old-fashioned American optimism.

June 1, 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

Making the Internet of the Future Happen Today

With all the policy controversy around the Internet today it’s useful to take a step back and look at the overall trajectory. While the battles over privacy, security, and the…

May 11, 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

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

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

5G vs. FTTH: The End of Wire

You can count on rural networks being built out of a variety of wireless technologies in present and near future. As needs for capacity increase, signal processing systems that enable more efficient sharing will keep the rural folks ahead of the tsunami.

February 23, 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

DirecTV Now Too Good to be Legal

AT&T’s Monday announcement of the DirecTV Now streaming service drew nearly unanimous applause from tech pundits. This is a new business model for cable TV that harnesses some of the power of the broadband networks to provide personalized sports, entertainment, and news packages to TV viewers. But some are critical, albeit for strange reasons.

December 1, 2016 0

Trump Administration Telecom Program

The Trump Administration is going to chart its own course through the tech policy issues we discuss here, as AEI’s Jeff Eisenach explained on the Communicators last Friday. The Trump Administration…

November 10, 2016 0