Another Friday filing by the FCC: 146 pages on program access.It’s a classic on-the-one-hand-on-the-other item. This time around it’s even worse for the public, because the underlying competitive reality of the wires that run to American homes is being hidden, in two ways: First, the entire discussion is focused on the market for pay-TV, because [...]
When should a court defer to an agency’s interpretation of its governing statute and/or its own regulatory actions? I got interested in this question because deference by a flummoxed Supreme Court gave us Brand X, with its ahistorical “this looks really tricky so we’ll let the FCC categorize highspeed internet access” approach. In this week’s [...]
In response to my post a couple of days ago about the possibility that VZ might not plan to comply with the 700 MHz “open platform” rules, someone wrote: would you have the FCC mandate that every mobile device must be capable of running every operating system? If Verizon sells me a BlackBerry, should the [...]
Last Friday (HT:: IPDemocracy), Google filed a petition [PDF] asking that the Commission ensure that Verizon understands what those “open platform” requirements for the C Block really mean. Verizon has taken the position in the past that its own devices won’t be subject to the “open applications” and “open handsets” requirements of the C Block [...]
Going backwards upside down. That’s what we’re doing with telecommunications policy in the U.S. The Comcast affair should prompt a re-examination of many decisions the FCC, Congress, and the courts have made over the last few years. When the FCC reports on its reactions to Comcast’s activities, the right response will be “You’re asking the [...]
With the help of one of my colleagues, I’ve been going through the history of the Computer Inquiries and all of the regulatory muttering that goes into the “information services”/”telecommunications services” dichotomy. What a strange story of subversion. We started off, back in the 60s, with a real fear of dominant telephone companies manuvering/leveraging their [...]
Many thanks to David Isenberg for inviting me to speak today. Here is a copy of my notes for today’s talk. Life is short, so I have put on the screen an image of a clock whose hands are close to midnight. It’s always good to have a sense of urgency, both in movies and [...]
I’m at the Tech Policy Summit. There was a particularly good panel yesterday that included Tod Cohen and Ken Kay talking about what it takes to do effective policy work. Tod’s quite blunt: “Do you vote?” That’s the question he asks people who want to do policy work with Ebay. You have to love politics, [...]
Today the FCC announced the winners of the 700 MHz auction – and you can see from pp. 62-63 of this document that Verizon won Block C. (Block C was set up in two nationwide paired blocks of 11 MHz each, which were auctioned off in very large geographic areasâ€â€12 licenses, each covering a “Regional [...]
The House Commerce committee investigation of the FCC continues. According to the Washington Post, a detailed letter signed by Rep. Dingell has gone out to the FCC asking for a host of documents that (among other things) relate to “management practices that may adversely affect the Commission’s ability both to discharge effectively its statutory duties [...]
Yesterday’s House Judiciary hearing (witness statements and archived video here) had a deeply political angle – what committee should have jurisdiction over network neutrality issues – but also revealed to me that: We’re seeing the moment when Hollywood, law enforcement, and the network access providers publicly attempt to join hands in favor of monitored/monetized network [...]
I did a short segment on NPR’s Bryant Park Project with Rachel Martin this morning – for broadcast tomorrow, Tuesday. The plan had been to talk about the Cuba OFAC story from last week. But when I got there they had switched gears – they really wanted to talk about net neutrality instead. So we [...]
