From the author of $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, Bruce Kushnick: This entire series of scare tactics should simply be another indication that the Bells will come up with more ways to screw the public. Instead of allowing them to ‘please sir may I have another’, why is anyone taking these new demands as if they […]

The failure of the present de-regulatory scheme has finally moved Google to enter the political fray. The entrance came in the form of "chief evangelist" Vint Cerf (a Medal of Freedom winner lauded as "Father of the Internet"), in testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee. It’s a powerful statement. Allowing broadband carriers to control what […]

Google and Skype have both decided to invest in FON, a system that lets people share their WiFi access. Is this a substitute for fast access via wires? TheWirelessReport says $21.7 million was raised. Om Malik is skeptical, although FON says it will sell Linux-based routers pre-configured for its service at just $25, against the […]

Steve Stroh writes: Show of hands… who wants to build alternative delivery networks so you don’t HAVE to use cableco or telco? Bill St. Arnaud’s doing it with fiber. I’m doing it with wireless. Whatever works that’s NOT telco/cableco. The telco/cablecos are  STUPIDITY and CAN be routed around. For those that have access to irresistible […]

From the desk of Bruce Kushnick: Since Ivan Seidenberg feels so strongly that Verizon needs relief, let’s look at the record. In 2000,  Verizon’s domestic telecom expenditures were $12.1 billion NOW, in 2005, Verizon is claiming to be spending all of this money on FIOS, its latest fiber to the home plan. Yet its total […]

Bruce Kushnick offers some articles you should read today. Let There Be WiFi By Robert McChesney and John Podesta, The Washington Monthly Broadband is the electricity of the 21st century — and much of America isbeing left in the dark. Interview with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg The Washington Post "If the company does not get […]

The Columbia Institute for Tele-Information,and the School of Public Policy and Public Administration at George Washington University and the Federal Communications Bar Association present "The Telecommunications Act of 1996: Ten Years Later" Bruce Kushnick: Turns out that the two representatives for the CONSUMERS are Sam Simon, of TRAC,  (who runs the largest Bell Skunkworks’ and […]

The biggest lie in the debate about broadband is that it’s expensive, and that its price is rising. NO, writes Bob Frankston: THIS STUFF IS CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. IT’s FREE! Better, it reduces the costs so don’t pander to those who assume that pain is virtue. We’ve already paid for so much and its running. […]

Recently, Level 3 Regulatory Counsel Erik Cecil brought former FCC official Dale Hatfield to Wyoming in order to fight a Qwest effort to gain a virtual monopoly on Internet backhaul in that state. (Wyoming map from Wikipedia.) Qwest went to state regulators to demand that Level 3, which offers competitive pricing on fiber-based backhaul, would […]

I wrote the following this evening and cross-posted at my Mooreslore blog. Change is the one business constant. Those who embrace it succeed, those who resist it fail. But change also dislocates. Workers threatened by change organize unions and seek protection from government. The Luddite movement was a call by workers to smash the new […]