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.
Happy Birthday, Internet: Richard Bennett talks with Don Nielson
The Internet was born 40 years ago in a demonstration connecting a wireless node in California with all the computers on ARPANET. Listen to the godfather.
Scary Experimentation at 3.5 GHz
Experiments, essential to the scientific process, can advance understanding, but they can also fail without producing any valuable new information. At a time when the mobile broadband industry is thriving…
Srinivasan’s Curious Question
One the more puzzling parts of the oral arguments in the challenge to the FCC’s most recent Internet Service Provider regulations was Judge Srinivasan’s iPad question. It was a singular…
FCC Clarifies the Ask for Wi-Fi Routers
As we explained recently, the FCC is asking for input on regulations for home routers with built-in Wi-Fi. Chief Engineer Julie Knapp has written a blog post clarifying his concerns…
A Snake in the Briar Patch: Radio Interference
One of the ongoing issues in spectrum policy is the question of “causing interference to others”. It was at the heart of the LightSquared controversy; it’s central to the spectrum…
Why Spectrum Swaps Serve the Public Interest
A reporter asked me to explain what’s up with the spectrum swap that AT&T and T-Mobile have asked the FCC to let them do. The benefits are pretty simple and…
Tragedies of the Spectrum Commons
The Wi-Fi vs. LTE-U disagreement continues to rage, despite efforts by both sides to reach a détente. The Wi-Fi Alliance and the LTE-U Forum held an event last Friday on…
Senate Commerce Committee Spectrum Hearing
The Senate Commerce Committee’s Wednesday hearing on spectrum policy highlighted key issues and brought out some workable solutions to the spectrum crunch. In order to advance from 4G to 5G…
How LTE Unlicensed Actually Works
The issue of LTE Unlicensed is a hot topic in spectrum policy circles, but there’s a lot of confusion about the pros and cons of LTE-U technology. So High Tech…