Free Republic

The average U.S. household has to pay an exorbitant amount of money for an Internet connection that the rest of the industrial world would find mediocre. According to a recent report by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, broadband Internet service in the U.S. is not just slower and more expensive than it is in tech-savvy nations such as South Korea and Japan; the U.S. has fallen behind infrastructure-challenged countries such as Portugal and Italy as well.... Phone companies have to compete for your business. Even though there may be just one telephone jack in your...

The Federal Communications Commission's new approach to dealing with white spaces spectrum has gone from "proceed with utmost caution" to "if a channel looks open, use it." In its second memorandum opinion on white spaces issued Thursday, the FCC removed the requirement that devices operating on TV bands have built-in sensors that would automatically shut down the devices if they came into contact with an adjacent television signal. That requirement had originally been put in place to satisfy concerns of television broadcasters that were worried that unlicensed use of white spaces could interfere with their broadcast quality.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and White House Economist Jared Bernstein on Wednesday announced $1.8 billion in new broadband Internet subsidies funded by the stimulus program. The subsidies are intended to encourage telecommunications companies to build broadband networks in rural areas where it is not normally profitable to do so. (See White House news release) In a conference call on Wednesday, Locke described the subsidies as “investments.” He said the taxpayer money would help build high-speed Internet networks in areas where the private sector has been “unwilling or unable” to do so.

Candidate Barack Obama told America that he believed in an open and "neutral" Internet -- one where the owners of the wires didn't get to pick and choose which applications would run on the network. Soon after Julius Genachowski was appointed as President Barack Obama's choice to head the Federal Communications Commission, he outlined a clear and ambitious plan to turn that commitment into a reality. But now Verizon and Google have struck a deal for a legislative template that would allow Verizon to be the gatekeeper for services running over its Internet Protocol pipe, and Google to be the...

President Barack Obama announced 66 Recovery Act projects Friday aimed at expanding broadband Internet access and public computing centers in underserved communities at a cost of $795 million. The projects vary widely in their size, scope and focus, from a $45 million grant to expand broadband access in western Massachusetts to a $1.8 million grant to the Montana State Library to provide faster Internet at its 42 local libraries. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base on Friday morning, Obama said he expects the projects to create 5,000 construction and installation jobs in the short term and benefit millions of Americans...

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband internet access a legal right for all citizens. The legislation, which came into effect Thursday, forces telecom operators to provide a reasonably priced broadband connection with a downstream rate of at least one megabit per second (mbs) to every permanent residence and office, the Finnish government said in a statement. "From now on a reasonably priced broadband connection will be everyone's basic right in Finland," said Finnish communications minister Suvi Linden. "This is absolutely one of the government's most significant achievements in regional policy and I am proud...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed on Monday plans by regulators to nearly double the spectrum now available for wireless devices. The White House announced a plan modeled after proposals by the Federal Communications Commission to free up 500 megahertz of spectrum over the next 10 years to meet the demand for laptop computers and smartphones such as Apple Inc's popular iPhone. Some estimates suggest the next five years will see an increase in wireless data of between 20 to 45 times 2009 levels, reflecting the burgeoning use of wireless devices. The Federal Communications Commission, which manages commercial...

Summary You can object to the Obamunist attempt to take control of the Internet by declaring it to be a telephone service by writing an objection statement in Notepad, Word, etc., and downloading it to the FCC at http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs2/ and clicking on "Submit a Filing", which is listed under "ECFS Main Links" in a box at the upper left part of the page. You must fill out the personal identification information boxes for your objections to be included in the public record (rather than them simply being ignored). Also, be sure to fill in "10-127" in the "Proceeding Number" box....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. communications authorities on Thursday took a small but significant step toward regulating high-speed Internet in a bid to reclaim oversight, setting the stage for an eventual legal showdown with industry heavyweights. Big broadband providers like AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Comcast Corp oppose the move by the Federal Communications Commission, fearing the agency may heavily regulate their businesses in ways that could crimp profits and cast a cloud on investments. The FCC voted 3-2 to collect public comments on whether the agency should reclassify broadband regulation under existing phone rules -- typically considered a stricter...

Washington, D.C. -- The Federal Communications Commission today released a comprehensive white paper which provides the capacity analysis behind the National Broadband Plan recommendations for the deployment and operation of a nationwide 4G wireless public safety network that allows first responders to seamlessly communicate across geographies and agencies, regardless of devices. The white paper, titled: “The Public Safety Nationwide Interoperable Broadband Network, A New Model For Capacity, Performance and Cost”, shows that the 10 MHz of dedicated spectrum currently allocated to public safety will provide the capacity and performance necessary for day-to-day communications and serious emergency situations. One study cited...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

Security: A Senate bill lets the president "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "nongovernmental" computer networks and do what's needed to respond to the threat. Didn't they just collect our e-mail addresses?We wish this was just a piece of the fictional "Dr. Strangelove" that fell to the cutting-room floor, but it's not. It is a real piece of disturbingly vague legislation sponsored by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Senate Bill 773 would grant the administration emergency powers (where have we heard that before?) in the event of a cyberemergency that the president would have...

So is the Federal Communications Commission really going to place common carrier restrictions on Internet service providers? Well, yes, but not too many of them. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Friday said he would move to reclassify ISPs as common carriers, while at the same time insisting that ISPs be exempt from the vast majority of regulations in the current common carrier rules.

Federal regulators plan to change the way they govern broadband services ...Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski...a Democrat, is now pushing the FCC to adopt formal net neutrality rules that would apply across the industry. Comcast also argued the FCC lacks authority to mandate net neutrality because it had deregulated broadband by classifying it as an information service under the Bush administration. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005, but the FCC's next move could reverse course on that approach.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told a Congressional panel on Wednesday that a recent court ruling that the agency lacked authority to regulate the Internet should not prevent it from carrying out its plan to broadly expand the country’s high-speed Internet service. But the chairman refused to say if the commission would try to reclassify Internet service as a utility similar to telephone service to overcome the court decision, a move that some Democratic senators supported but that several Republican senators strongly warned against.

The FCC announced Thursday, April 8, its 2010 agenda for putting the National Broadband Plan into action. The agenda "explains the purpose and timing of more than 60 rulemakings and other notice-and-comment proceedings the plan recommends for FCC action," according to the agency, and will "implement plan recommendations requiring rulemakings through a series of open, participatory notice-and-comment proceedings."Progress on the plan's implementation can be tracked at www.broadband.gov/plan/broadband-action-agenda.html. An implementation schedule is also available at www.broadband.gov/plan/chart-of-key-broadband-action-agenda-items.pdf."Our implementation plan lays out a road map for reforming universal service to connect all Americans to broadband, including in rural areas; unleashing spectrum, promoting competition...

A massive national broadband plan the Federal Communications Commission released last month proposes creating a national framework for the taxation of digital goods and services and imposing a fee to establish and maintain a national public safety wireless broadband network. The Obama administration has a plan to expand online innovation and boost national public safety. And it wants to do it with more taxes and higher fees. The massive national broadband plan the Federal Communications Commission released last month proposes creating a national framework for the taxation of digital goods and services and imposing a fee to establish and maintain...

While reading about the competition for broadband in South Korea .. I wondered ...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-national-broadband-plan Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 16, 2010 Statement from the President on the National Broadband Plan America today is on the verge of a broadband-driven Internet era that will unleash innovation, create new jobs and industries, provide consumers with new powerful sources of information, enhance American safety and security, and connect communities in ways that strengthen our democracy. Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the Transcontinental...

The Federal Communications Commission has begun to benchmark Internet service speeds across the United States to allow consumer to compare the real world performance of their ISP with its advertised speeds. Consumers may visit the agency's Broadband.gov Web page to run the rest from their PCs or download the FCC Broadband Test app for Android and the iPhone.