A hundred years ago, America decided that everyone was entitled to an affordable telephone line. Now some Americans (thanks to muni bright spots and other efforts) are making the upgrade to a fiber-to-the-home connection – the new global standard, the replacement for a standard general-purpose telephone line. But the policies that supported “universal” (all Americans) [...]

Imagine you’re a consumer sitting in your living room. You like sports. You like high-speed Internet access; in fact, you’ve gotten completely fed up with your DSL connection because it’s so awful and you’ve seen how much better a truly high-speed wire would be. So you’re interested in some kind of bundle that includes TV [...]

AT&T has now joined Verizon in announcing a shared data plan for wireless users. This is the moment that the two companies solidify their already crushing set of advantages over T-Mobile and Sprint. Result: AT&T and Verizon can continue to reap the rewards of their existing market power, without needing to expand their services. That’s [...]

That’s the title of a story yesterday. So you might ask: Well, isn’t the Federal Communications Commission the cop on the beat? The answer may surprise you: Because of the tsunami of deregulation carried out over the last few years, the FCC’s power to do anything about abuses of consumer privacy in the wireless world [...]

Americans may remember watching the Olympics on television. : (“And .. the agony of defeat.”) : This was a collective experience. : There was the theme music, the graphics, the odd sports shown at odd hours. We paid for this experience indirectly, by watching the ads, but anyone with a working tuner could watch the Games over the [...]

The Human Rights Council of the UN has adopted a resolution supporting the equivalency of human rights online and offline – “in particular, freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice.” The Council is calling on all states to promote and facilitate access to the Internet. Why [...]

As John Schwartz’s excellent article today reports, nearly two million people in 10 states and the District of Columbia are sweltering after the recent derecho. If those people rely on high-speed Internet access to communicate and services are down, who’s going to do anything about it? Answer: As far as I can tell, no one. [...]

Brian Stelter’s article today, “Sweeping Effects as Broadband Moves To Meters,” illuminates a part of the local cable monopoly story for high-speed Internet access and the consequences of this power for America’s future. There is an epic narrative here that is worth a full-length action movie. Or two. (Who would play Brian Stelter? Perhaps this [...]

It looks as if the FCC is planning for the Verizon/Comcast deal of late last year to be approved. We don’t have many details, but Verizon is said to be swapping spectrum with T-Mobile (with more spectrum going to T-Mobile than Verizon) in exchange for both implicit and explicit promises. The explicit promise is a [...]

Today’s media self-examination section of the Times (always on Mondays) had two stories that tie neatly though invisibly together. First, David Carr glumly examined Huffington, the new online (or, more accurately, on-iPad) magazine. “Disruption makes no allowance for sentiment,” he said, marking his moment of personal recognition that no matter what he thinks “about appropriate [...]

The President’s speech yesterday marked a turn in this year’s campaign. It’s been a big week for basic telecommunications infrastructure that will help the middle class in this country find new ways of making a living. Here’s the vision: I see a country that offers businesses the fastest, most reliable transportation and communication systems of [...]