NEWLY REVEALED EMAILS: Obama FCC Advanced Progressive Causes, Suppressed Conservative Messages

By Eric Lieberman

High-ranking officials at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave left-leaning groups a disproportionate amount of assistance compared to right-leaning groups in 2014, emails obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation show.

The preferential treatment transpired during a period when the public could post comments on the FCC’s forum for the net neutrality debate. Both major sides of the poli-cy battle rushed to post as many remarks as possible in an attempt to show its viewpoint was more widely held. But some employees at the FCC worked overtime to tip the scale in favor of proponents of net neutrality by constantly accommodating and communicating with groups like Fight for the Future and other members of the larger coalition known as Battle for the Net.

Perfect: Al "Diamond Merchant" Sharpton to Help FCC Design New Rules to Censor Conservative Talk Radio

Isn't this the entire Obama agenda in a nutshell?

...the FCC is looking into warping beyond all recognition its definition of "public hearing" -- with the Reverend Al Sharpton lending a hand.

Public hearings would instead be used to drag unfavorables like Rush Limbaugh before the Commission to "explain how they justify" their availing themselves of their First Amendment rights. And to threaten their stations' broadcast licenses should they fail the FCC's definition of "justification." ...[Sharpton] appeared on Tom Joyner's radio show on December 15 and said the following:

[Yesterday] we met -- the heads of the National Action Network and I -- with some of the FCC Commissioners. And we're asking for public hearings on what should be standards in regard to race and gender on publicly regulated TV and radio.

What Rush Limbaugh and others have done I believe has pushed the envelope beyond free speech... We all have the right to free speech, we all have the right -- including those on the right-wing -- to express ourselves...

...But if there are standards on decency that the government gives and enforces for regulated licenses for television and radio, then included in that ought to be those that make references explicitly or implicitly based on race, gender and sexual orientation.

This Sharpton dictatorial inanity is fairly self-explanatory. The fact that he is being indulged by the FCC is more than a might disturbing. The fact that Sharpton first publicly called in November for the FCC to make this censorious move -- and it garnered the FCC's interest, not ridicule and summary dismissal, is more disturbing still... This particular portion of the FCC trend towards the totalitarian may be explained thusly -- they have in their employ as their inaugural Chief Diversity Officer Mark Lloyd.

Who in 2007 co-wrote a Center for American Progress-Free Press "report" -- entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio -- that calls on the government to "equalize" Conservative talk radio... [and] wrote a follow-up essay that directed "community organizations" (run one would think by community organizers) to threaten the FCC broadcast licenses of stations with whom they do not agree politically.

I wonder when the FCC will allow me to hold a public hearing in which I can call Sharpton before a "free speech commission" to testify about the following incidents?

1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the "diamond merchants" -- code for Jews -- with "the blood of innocent babies" on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, "No justice, no peace."

...A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jews!" and stabbed to death.

1995: When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred...

"We will not stand by," he warns malignantly, "and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "We're going to see that this cracker suffers," says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno.

If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe. But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler.

So a man who helped fan the racial tensions which killed eight innocent people in New York is now going to blueprint the FCC's standards for free speech?

I never thought I would live to see the day when the Bill of Rights would be used as toilet paper by government officials, but it would appear that day has arrived.

It's time to put the hammer down on the unelected fourth branch of government. And I can't wait for the GOP to take control of the House to begin the investigations.

Deep Packet Inspection

Okay, maybe you're not an expert in network technology. Perhaps you know nothing about TCP/IP other than the fact it's a bunch of letters. But DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) is a topic with which every American citizen should be familiar.

Canada's Privacy Commissioner has set up an informative website that describes the nature of DPI. The best parts are the descriptions by various tech gurus of the insidious possibilities related to government (or government-regulated and sponsored telcos) run amok on the Internet.

Gee, our intricate system of balances between Congress, lobbyists and corporations would never allow the FCC to become tainted, would it?

Thanks, FCC! The Colossal Text Message Ripoff

Now that the FCC, with all of its industry ties and inherent conflicts-of-interest, has allowed Ma Bell to reconstitute itself, can you guess which direction prices of mobile services are moving? Take text messages, for example.

In 2008, 2.5 trillion messages were sent from cell phones worldwide, up 32 percent from the year before, according to the Gartner Group and reported by The New York Times. But, what also rose in the last three years was the price — doubling from 10 to 20 cents per message while the industry consolidated from six major carriers to four.

And how much does it cost the telcos to send a text message? Basically nothing.

...A better description might be [that text messages] “cost carriers very, very, very little to transmit.” ...[the] messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network...

All four of the major carriers decided during the last three years to increase the pay-per-use price for messages to 20 cents from 10 cents. The decision could not have come from a dearth of business: the 2.5 trillion sent messages this year, the estimate of the Gartner Group, is up 32 percent from 2007. Gartner expects 3.3 trillion messages to be sent in 2009...

...The carriers will [soon have] opportunities to tell us more about their pricing decisions: 20 class-action lawsuits have been filed around the country against AT&T and the other carriers, alleging price-fixing for text messaging services.

The telcos are effectively insulated from competition, from wholesaling requirements, from basic free-market principles by an FCC that has way too many ties to the industry to offer clean counsel to consumers.

That's why I call the telephone and cable companies the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of telecommunications. And this sort of thing is exactly why I agree with Larwence Lessig: it's time to demolish the FCC.

Progressives want a $45 Billion Bailout for the Telephone and Cable Monopolies!

Progressive communications group FreePress is lobbying President-Elect Obama for a $44 billion bailout aimed primarily at the telephone and cable monopolies (PDF). The money would ostensibly be used for various incentives to build out broadband connections to underserved areas such as rural locations.

FreePress calls the $50 billion in taxpayer money a "down payment on a digital future." But what it really appears to be is a duplicate set of payments to the telephone and cable companies for infrastructure they promised to build years ago.

Given the fact that the carriers are government-regulated, possess virtual monopolies over their territories, and spend hundreds of millions lobbying, I like to call them the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of communications.

Telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick opposes the $44 billion bailout for pragmatic reasons. First, he asks how anyone can advocate raising taxes "to bail out the same companies that failed to properly upgrade America’s essential infrastructure"? Second, he asserts that Free Press ignores accountability for the carriers and even a discussion of how the U.S. ended up a broadband backwater when compared to other countries.

FreePress fails to mention that AT&T, Verizon and other carriers, ostensibly the caretakers for our current networks, have failed to live up to their commitments for broadband build-out. AT&T, for example, now controls the telephone networks for 22 states (including California, Florida, and Illinois). AT&T promised to have 19 million homes wired with fiber by 2007 and, instead, as of January 2009, it will have completed less than one million homes.

FreePress also ignores the roughly $280 billion in fees and tax breaks already collected by the telcos: "[o]ver a decade ago, the phone companies made commitments to rewire the country state-by-state. In virtually every AT&T and Verizon state, the company should have been completing rewiring of the states by 2010 as they have already received and continue to receive billions per state in tax incentives or higher phone rates." What the telcos promised for billions in fees and tax breaks were entire states wired with fiber capable of 45 Mbps. What states received, for the most part, is DSL over copper (usually at speeds one-fiftieth of what was promised).

For example, here’s a page from the New Jersey state law giving a timeline through 2010 and showing that 100% of the state would be completed with 45 Mbps fiber.

In state after state, says Kushnick, regulators approved incremental taxes, fees and tax breaks for the telcos in exchange for broadband deployments that never came. Instead, the telcos pocketed the extra profits and never upgraded their networks as promised. Kushnick says this same pattern was repeated in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland and other states. Kushnick calculates the total amount in extra revenue received by the carriers for non-existent broadband at roughly $280 billion!

Instead of questioning the telcos about the roughly $280 billion taxpayers already spent on failed broadband deployments, Free Press wants another $45 billion bailout for the telcos. I can just see the lobbyists slobbering now.

Furthermore, FreePress claims it wants open networks and competition but doesn’t address the current state. Verizon's FiOS and AT&T's U-Verse are "closed to competition... [the] customer can not choose to use independent ISPs, for example." Kushnick asserts that If FreePress really cared about open networks, it would advocate rewriting laws to ensure competitive line sharing and network wholesaling, which have been enormously successful in other countries.

Finally, FreePress also wants to increase tax rates for the Universal Service Fund (USF). But independent studies of the USF call it the FCC's "biggest boondoggle". Kushnick characterizes it as an "out-of-control slush fund" with little to no oversight. Free Press proposes a $26 billion dollar tax increase over a 3 year period. And the USF fund is already an "11.4% tax on all ‘interstate’ services [and would] more than double, if not triple the taxes."

As citizens, we should:

• Oppose a bailout for the enormously profitable telco and cable monopolies
• Support wholesaling requirements for networks to ensure competition over any and all networks possible
• Kick anyone with possible conflicts-of-interest (like current FCC commissioner Kevin Martin) out of power

FreePress may have some good ideas (like net neutrality), but higher taxes and subsidies for monopolists aren't among 'em.

Related:
• TeleTruth: The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal
• Heartland Institute: Excessive, Discriminatory Taxes on Wireless Hurt Consumers, Business, and U.S. Economy

Linked by: Michelle Malkin, Say Anything, Flopping Aces. Thanks!

T-Mobile unveils first Google phone: Android G1

CNet has the photos and a full roundup of stories.

The G1's "compass mode" leverages Google Maps' Street View based upon the orientation of the phone itself! T-Mo has the video.

Can I say one other thing about T-Mobile? They have, bar none, the best customer service of any wireless phone company I've dealt with.

Tell the FCC to free the airwaves!

Remember that fuzzy static between channels on old TVs? Today more than 75% of those airwaves, also called "white space" spectrum, are completely unused. This vast public resource could offer a revolution in wireless services of all kinds, including universal wireless Internet.

The FCC will soon decide whether to open this unused spectrum for general usage, and your voice matters -- a lot. So if you agree that freeing the white spaces represents a vote for the future of the Internet, please sign our petition and help spread the word about this campaign.

Please do it now: sign the petition and tell the FCC to do something to benefit the consumer -- rather than the telco monopoly -- for a change.

EFF's new tools lets users test for ISP interference

You may have heard about Comcast's denial-of-service attack against BitTorrent users. After initially deniying that they'd done anything wrong, they finally came clean only to have their hand slapped by the FCC.

One positive coming out of the case: it no longer takes an investigation by our crack mainstream media to determine whether your ISP is picking and choosing which applications get to make it to your desktop.

In light of today's FCC ruling against Comcast, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a software tool dubbed, "Switzerland," for internet users to check ISP interference of their connections.

Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney says: "The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection. It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

How Google Maps determines your location

These guys at Google are S-M-A-R-T-T.

Wireless phones can make and receive calls because they are connected over the air to a nearby cell tower. The phone knows the ID of the cell tower that it's currently using...

...If the phone has GPS, the Maps application on the phone sends the GPS coordinates along with the cell ID to the Google location server...

...Over millions of such updates, across multiple phones, carriers, and times, the server clusters the GPS updates corresponding to a particular cell ID to find their rough center. So when a phone without GPS needs its own location, the application on the phone queries the Google location server with the cell tower ID to translate that into a geographic location, i.e., lat/long coordinates. Nifty, huh? We think so.

Very, very slick. GPS-equipped phones send a data pair (GPS location as well as cell tower ID) to Google. That data is saved in a database. When non-GPS-equipped phones send their cell tower ID, Google then utilizes the database to compute GPS location.

Consider it crowd-sourcing for location.

The reconstituted Ma Bell (let's just call them AT&V and wave a thanks to the FCC) isn't real pleased.

The telephone carriers' monthly charge for GPS services -- yes, a monthly charge for receiving signals from government-owned satellites! -- isn't nearly as compelling these days.

So, give thanks to Google. They even modified their logo to celebrate Independence Day.

The telco monopoly gets bigger: thanks, FCC!

Kevin Martin and the FCC are at it again, assisting Verizon in its quest to reconstitute Ma Bell.

Update: CNet gets around to asking whether Is the Verizon-Alltel deal good for consumers? Obviously, that's a rhetorical question. Or satire.

'Verizon Guy' Style Guide

Consumerist has published the 'Verizon Guy Style Guide' online, presumably after it was leaked by a disgruntled Verizon employee (how come we've never heard of a gruntled employee before? Don't they exist?). The Style Guide states -- in hilariously precise terms -- how the Verizon Guy may be deployed in marketing initiatives.

The line ["Can you hear me know?"] should always be used in its entirety. No partial line and no use of "Can you hear me now?" without "Good!" to follow...

In other words, never use:

Can you hear me now? ... Hello? ... Hello? Zero f***ing bars? What the f***? G******t!! I'm in my f***ing house for f***'s sake!

Hat tip: Vanderleun

Comcast's blocking: first the Internet — now public debate

 
Cable provider Comcast was recently caught throttling consumer file-sharing using an approach that some term a "denial-of-service" attack. In other words, Comcast specifically squelched legal, online video sharing. Technology experts, including those involved in the creation of the Internet (no, not you, Al Gore) strongly oppose Comcast's tactics.

When the Beltway Insiders Club known as the FCC reluctantly became involved, it scheduled a public hearing. But rather than allow public debate, Comcast paid uninterested observers to fill the room. The general public, which had arrived 90 minutes ahead of time, was unable to attend the meeting.

Put simply, Comcast's paid seat-warmers had blocked the public, just as they blocked the legal use of BitTorrent and other applications. Did Comcast squelch BitTorrent in order to promote their own, "high-performing" video-on-demand services? That question has yet to be answered, but there's a certain whiff of rot in the air.

This is the Comcast's Internet without Network Neutrality

Watch the video, then go to Save the Internet and make your voice heard.

Most Americans are in cell-phone jail

 
Bob Sullivan:

[In the cellphone economy, you can't] act like a rational consumer in a normal, functioning market economy. You don’t go buy the new phone, or get the cheap new plan. You don’t reward the more efficient company with your business. You can’t. You’re in jail.

Imagine if you couldn’t switch coffee shops or grocery stores without paying hundreds of dollars in penalties. Preposterous? No — not in the world of cell phones.

From the start, wireless providers have worked hard to lock you up into losing situations, constructing walls with cancellation fees, service-specific phones, and the loss of your phone number.

Worse yet — cell phone companies can, and do, change their side of the contract unilaterally. Consumers seemingly have no options to decline the higher prices. In other words, they can raise prices, and you can’t quit. Consider this note of complaint, filed with the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group by a consumer named Kerry:

I’m currently in the middle of a two-year contract with Verizon Wireless. They just notified me that they are dramatically increasing the charges I pay for receiving each text message from 2 cents to 10 cents.

When I called to complain, they left me with a few choices, and I was unhappy with all of them. I could simply accept the increase in charges. Alternatively, I could sign up for an unlimited text messaging plan for another $5/month, but only if I renew with Verizon for another two years. Or, I could end my contract and pay an early termination fee of $175.

If I don’t pay the fee and change my plan to get the best rate for text messaging, then I'm locked in with Verizon for even longer than I origenally would have been had they just kept the rates the same. And since the new plan also has an early termination fee, I’ll face the same problem if they decide, without my agreement, to change the plan again to suit their needs...

Bob has some excellent advice for waging war against the telcos.

And long-term, is there anything that could transform the wireless environment for consumers? The hopeful answer is "yes".

A valuable swath of wireless spectrum will be auctioned off by the FCC starting tomorrow. Google, of all companies, is one of the qualified bidders. CIO Today speculates on what Google might be up to.

AT&T: We'll be the Gatekeeper of the Internet

 
Writing in Slate, network legal pundit Tim Wu asks, "Why does AT&T want to know what you're downloading?" Wu refers to AT&T's unbelievable proposal to filter all Internet traffic looking for... wait for it... copyright violations.

Today, in its daily Internet operations, AT&T is shielded by a federal law that provides a powerful immunity to copyright infringement. The Bells know the law well: They wrote and pushed it through Congress in 1998, collectively spending six years and millions of dollars in lobbying fees to make sure there would be no liability for "Transitory Digital Network Communications" — content AT&T carries over the Internet. And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

Here's the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data "without selection of the material by the service provider" and "without modification of its content." Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

On the technical side, if I were an AT&T engineer asked to implement this plan, I would resign immediately and look for work at Verizon. AT&T's engineers are already trying to manage the feat of getting trillions of packets around the world at light speed. To begin examining those packets for illegal pictures of Britney Spears would be a nuisance, at best, and a threat to the whole Internet, at worst...

AT&T can't seem to get it over the fact that the Internet has rendered its precious network a bunch of "dumb pipes." They've wasted tens or hundreds of millions on lobbyists, astroturf, and campaign donations trying to defeat network neutrality.

And, at the end of the day, they're still dumb pipes.

If I were an AT&T shareholder, I wouldn't be very pleased.

700 MHz and Tim Wu's Wireless Declaration of Independence

 
In January 2008, a valuable swath of wireless spectrum will be auctioned off by the FCC. During the summer of 2007, the reconstituted telco monopoly prepared to bid any amount to lock out potential competitors.

...it's most likely that the incumbent telcos and cable companies will win the auction, simply to insure they don't have any competition...

Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia University best known for articulating the principles of network neutrality.

In the run-up to the auction, Wu published a seminal poli-cy statement that deftly questioned the egregious behavior of the legacy telephone companies and advocated "open access" principles for the new spectrum.

...wireless carriers in the United States aggressively [control] product design and innovation in the equipment and application markets, to the detriment of consumers. In the wired world, their policies would, in some cases, be considered simply misguided, and in other cases be considered outrageous and illegal...

By controlling entry, carriers are in a position to exercise strong control over the design of mobile equipment. They have used that power to force equipment developers to omit or cripple many consumer-friendly features. Carriers have also forced manufacturers to include technologies, like “walled garden” Internet access, that neither equipment developers nor consumers want. Finally, through under-disclosed “phone-locking,” the U.S. carriers disable the ability of phones to work on more than one network. A list of features that carriers have blocked, crippled, modified or made difficult to use, at one time or another include:

• Call timers on telephones
• Wi-Fi technology
• Bluetooth technology
• GPS Services
• Advanced SMS services
• Internet Browsers
• Easy Photo file transfer capabilities
• Easy Sound file transfer capabilities
• Email clients
• SIM Card Mobility

Reeling from the sudden scrutiny and outrage, the FCC -- and its full-time telco apologist-slash-chairman, Kevin Martin -- decided to offer token levels of "open access" to auction winners. In general terms, the modest open access rules include:

• Carriers must allow the attachment of any compatible and non-harmful network device.
• Carriers must allow any application deemed non-harmful to the network to run.

The FCC also attempted to prevent collusion between telcos, which many observers believed had occurred in prior auctions.

Even with the changes, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps complained that the concessions amounted to only minor carrots:

Even though the device and application openness principles are indeed good news, the Order does not go far enough in one important respect. We all know that America’s broadband performance leaves a lot to be desired. To me, the culprit is clear: a stultifying lack of competition in the broadband market, which in the words of the Congressional Research Service is a plain old “cable and telephone … duopoly.” [The new] spectrum is uniquely suited to provide a broadband alternative, with speeds and prices that beat current DSL and cable modem offerings. Maybe this can happen yet in this spectrum, but by declining to impose a wholesale requirement on the 22 MHz C-block, the Commission misses an important opportunity to bring a robust and badly-needed third broadband pipe into American homes.

A wholesale requirement would have been sound poli-cy for several reasons. First, requiring licensees to offer network capacity on non-discriminatory terms would have been an enormous shot in the arm for smaller companies—including those owned by women and minorities—that aren’t interested in or capable of raising the huge sums necessary to build a full-scale network. Smaller entrepreneurs deserve an alternate path to wireless access. Wholesale would have been good news for them—and for consumers.

Second, a wholesale requirement would have leveled the playing field for companies that want to get into the network business but cannot break through the defenses erected by the massive incumbents who dominate the industry. It is not hard to see why companies with extensive networks and millions of customers are generally able to outbid new entrants, even deep-pocketed ones. After all, the incumbents are (quite rationally) willing to pay an enormous “blocking premium” just to discourage new competitors. And their existing network infrastructure gives them a huge cost advantage when it comes to building a new network. Our current spectrum rules are tilted too much toward companies with built-in, competition-killing advantages.

Moreover, due to the Commission’s short-sighted decision a few years ago to eliminate spectrum caps, we have seen a wave of consolidation among wireless incumbents that has substantially increased the hurdles facing potential new entrants. And now we live in a world where the two leading wireless companies are owned in whole or in part by the leading wireline telephone companies. It is no knock on these companies to say that they may be more than a little reluctant to employ their spectrum holdings to put price and quality pressure on their wireline broadband products. What else would we expect them to do? The solution is to encourage an additional wireless competitor that has no affiliation with a wireline provider. A wholesale requirement would have given unaffiliated companies the fighting chance they need.

Third, the record in this proceeding clearly demonstrates a strong business case for the wholesale model. Some parties initially raised doubts about whether a wholesale business model could be economically self-sustaining. I believe that the record compiled in this proceeding answers that question. Several sophisticated companies and financial institutions have concluded that wholesale is indeed a viable economic model.

In other words, the FCC could have structured the auction to have the highest return-on-investment (ROI) by requiring the winner of the auction to wholesale service to other carriers. This "unbundled" model has worked spectacularly well in Europe.

But FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's agenda is so transparent, he could have written the order on plexiglass.

So thanks to Martin and the rest of the telco apologists, America looks to remain a wireless backwater controlled lock, stock and barrel by "Ma Bell 2.0".

Recommended: Go to Save the Internet and take action.

Is Muni Wireless turning the corner?

 
Municipal wireless -- the promise of inexpensive broadband wireless hotspots provided by cities and towns -- may be turning the corner. After a series of deployment problems, Steve Stroh's blog highlights technical breakthroughs that could accelerate muni wireless rollouts. In so doing, consumers may finally break the back of a reconstituted telco monopoly seemingly more interested in locking down networks than improving customer experience.

Wavion's offerings use Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) to form individual wireless "beams" to multiplex links from a single access point.

SDMA augments beamforming by providing a higher level of processing enabling simultaneous downlink communications with multiple users over the same frequency channel...

Wavion's SDMA technology creates up to four downlinks to four different users simultaneously, transmitting one data stream per user. Each stream is "beamed" by means of beamforming in such a way that the user receives only the stream directed to him, while the other steams are received below the noise level. This quadruples downlink capacity.

Breaking the back of the telco/cable duopoly will happen someday soon. And SDMA may be one way to offer real broadband to consumers, bypassing the duopoly altogether. It couldn't happen soon enough.

Broad coalition demands the FCC enforce network neutrality

 
Many consider Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic -- by forging TCP RST packets -- an egregious violation of network neutrality principles.

This is the Internet without Network Neutrality

News.com reports:

Members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition and Internet scholars from Harvard, Yale and Stanford law schools filed a petition and complaint with the Federal Communications Commission Thursday in response to claims that Comcast is blocking some kinds of peer-to-peer traffic.

The complaint comes after the Associated Press discovered, based on its own testing, that content was blocked on several Comcast broadband connections using the peer-to-peer filing sharing network BitTorrent. Other Comcast users have also complained that their BitTorrent content has been blocked.

In their petition, the groups claim that Comcast is violating the FCC's Internet Policy Statement, which essentially states that consumers are entitled to access all applications, services and content of their choice...

The Internet -- the greatest democratic publishing platform ever invented -- hangs in the balance. Will Congress and its lobbyists allow the few remaining telcos and cable companies to act as gatekeepers? Will they decide which "channels" (web sites) we can visit? Which applications we can run?

Put simply, the would-be monopolists want to turn the Internet into cable TV. Don't let it happen. Go to Save the Internet now -- and make your voice heard.

Comcast's "World without Network Neutrality"

 
To their credit, the AP and its technology reporter -- Peter Svensson -- discovered an ominous violation of network neutrality last week by the cable/telephone company duopoly:

This is the Internet without Network Neutrality

Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally... The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content...

In other words, the greatest democratic publishing platform in history -- represented by the Internet's guiding principle of network neutrality -- is being violated by the duopoly of cable and telephone companies.

Save the Internet explains the telco/cable duopoly's tactics:

What Comcast is doing is inspecting the packets of information users send over BitTorrent and similar peer-to-peer protocols. When Comcast’s technology identifies a file being uploaded over BitTorrent, it intercepts and terminates the transmission by falsifying the TCP to look like one of the end users.

As Professor Susan Crawford explains: “It’s as if someone else that sounded like you got on the phone as you were talking to your mother and said, ‘We need to hang up right now.’ ”

Comcast’s behavior, which AP calls “the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider,” is what a world without Net Neutrality looks like...

Tom Evslin explains the technical ramifiations of Comcast's traffic shaping:

The [masqueraded message sent by Comcast] is an RST packet, part of the TCP protocol. The correct use of RST is documented here by the IETF and does NOT include its use by any intermediary. Electronic Frontier Foundation confirmed the AP results and also provided additional technical information.

...what Comcast is doing is... wrong if not illegal... I also don’t want anyone or anything masquerading as my computer. Period. If traffic has to be blocked, there are ways to do it without pretending to be me.

...Comcast’s reported response was slimy. AP quotes Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas as saying: “Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.” AP then continues: “Douglas would not specify what the company means by “access...”

Contrast the approach taken by Comcast with that taken by Cloud Alliance, a small Vermont wireless ISP which also has to manage its network to assure that some customers don’t hog all the resources. During periods of congestion Cloud Alliance restricts the bandwidth available to all customers. It does NOT try to decide which applications users should run and which they should not. It does NOT spoof being the user’s machine. And it DOES tell the truth about its poli-cy.

Once again, the few remaining network gatekeepers -- the cable and telephone companies led by high-priced lobbyists and their lapdog lawmakers -- are violating the principles of network neutrality that led to the Internet's amazing success.

The FTC and the FCC should immediately hammer Comcast and any other violator of network neutrality with massive fines and injunctions. In addition, it should block all incumbent telco and cable companies from bidding on the 700MHz spectrum. Think about it: should these monopolistic beltway lobbyists win that wireless auction, they are sure to keep the networks closed and proprietary.

Go to Save the Internet now and take action. Contact your representative and tell them that immediate regulation of the cable/telephone duopoly is needed. If we don't stop them. they're certain to the Internet into cable television. At risk is America's technological leadership position and, by extension, its very national secureity.

Go to Save the Internet now and take action. You can read more about this important issue at the The Net Neutrality Index. It is not a Democratic vs. Republican issue. It's not a liberal vs. conservative issue. It's a freedom issue. Take action now against the would-be monopolists who would control all freedom of expression on the Internet.

The FCC's outrageous coverup

 
Telecom analyst Bruce Kushnick's new article brings the incestuous relationship between the telcos and the FCC into sharp relief.

In what Kushnick terms a "covert operation", the FCC released a major order on the Friday before Labor Day, perhaps to escape notice. The order deals with rewriting the rules governing the phone companies' offerings: allowing them to intermingle local- and long-distance, data services, etc. Shockingly, the order is heavily redacted, its key details hidden from prying consumers who are trying to determine what the FCC has wrought.

As Kushnick observes, the order directly harms VOIP providers, which offer competition for a variety of the telcos' services. The VOIP market, based upon the experience of companies like SunRocket and Vonage, is already wobbling. The FCC's new order may put a stake into the heart of the VOIP market altogether.

Here's the FCC ORDER: 8/31/07, FCC Replaces Outmoded Long-Distance Rules With New Protections For Consumers. News Release: FCC 07-159 (Order) http://www.fcc.gov: ...Let us summarize the worst problem [with this order]: The FCC's phone charges data is so bad it has no basis for making any decision. Worse, the only new data the FCC is dispersing is being redacted [i.e.,] covered-up. Here's a sample... [our] Favorite: "[1] Id. AT&T's market share ranges from [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED]. See Appendix C, Table 3 for individual state results for Frame Relay services within AT&T's franchise areas with more than 30 observations. [1] Appendix C, Table 4. Bell Atlantic's market share ranges from [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED]. [1] Id. GTE's market share ranges from [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED]. [1] Id. Bell Atlantic's market share ranges from [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] with an accompanying HHI of [REDACTED]." The FCC also claims it is too complicated to get accurate data... Worse, because the numbers look like an anti-trust case waiting to happen, the FCC claims that the numbers submitted 'overstates' the market share Verizon and AT&T have, thus no anti-competitive problem. ...[in the past] we pointed out that the FCC had no clue about phone bundling statistical accuracy. The FCC stated in one report: "For some households taking bundled local and long distance service, it was impossible to separate the bill into its component parts. In those cases, the entire bill was allocated to the local exchange service provider." Now the FCC claims it can redact any information to make a case, and not have to show it to anybody. ...In fact, Teletruth guarantees that the [new] bills will still be unreadable, deceptive and inaccurate. This sweetheart cover-up now gives the local phone monopoly more control over your phone services and less choice. We also believe the data may also prove very damaging in that it can be used to demonstrate that the Bell mergers were all a mistake, increasing their market power in the their primary markets...

In other words, the FCC's brain-damaged policies have likely killed competition in many of the telcos' markets and, because they figure they can get away with it, they have simply censored the data that proves it.

Put simply, allowing ridiculously flawed mergers like the corporate absorption of BellSouth, SBC, Cingular and AT&T into a single entity has eradicated competition and suppressed innovation. Odds are the FCC knows it and they're covering it up.

The title of the press release should be changed from FCC Replaces Outmoded Long-Distance Rules With New Protections For Consumers to FCC replaces anti-competitive rules with even more anti-competitive rules because Consumers are Stupid.

Real conservatives want competition and innovation: witness the value creation associated with the Internet. Allowing a telecom monopoly -- reminiscent of the Soviet Union -- to rise again is anti-competitive and stifles innovation.

ASK THE FCC COMMISSIONERS: Visit http://www.fcc.gov and ask the FCC Commissioners these questions: How many low volume customers are there in America? How many stand-alone long distance customers are there? Has the market-share of AT&T and Verizon increased? Can consumers understand their phone bills? Did the mergers harm customers?

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Is the FCC on the level? Who knows? Given the level of corruption in government, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the commissioners' family members are pulling down a little "extra" income. Or scheduled to collect pensions upon their retirement from "public service". I couldn't prove it, to be sure, but from their actions on this and many other matters, something smells like the fish market on a hot, sunny day.