Category Archives: Internet Access

if we just had phones and Internet service

32099661.jpg If you’re stuck in a desert in the summer in a dead-end war, what do you want? Water, women, wine? Food and a ticket out? For some, the first thing they want is:
“There are two different wars,” said Staff Sgt. Donald Richard Harris, comparing his soldiers’ views with those of commanders in distant bases. “It’s a dead-end process, it seems like.”

Asked to rank morale in his unit, Harris gave it a 4 on a 10-point scale. “Look at these guys. This is their downtime,” he said, as young soldiers around him silently cleaned dust from their rifles at a battle position south of the capital. A fiery wind blasted through the small base, an abandoned home surrounded by sandbags and razor wire.

“It sounds selfish, but if we just had phones and Internet service,” said Staff Sgt. Clark Merlin, his voice trailing off.

— GIs’ morale dips as Iraq war drags on, By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, August 25, 2007

This is perhaps an indication of how important Internet service is these days. With it, these troops can communicate with their peers, family, and others, not to mention get news on whatever they want. Without it, they’re isolated in a howling desert.

Back home, without the Internet, we’re isolated in the wastelands of TV.

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Comcast’s Secret Bandwidth Limits

salmon.jpg Just when you think it’s all telcos doing things dire for Internet freedom:
Comcast has warned broadband Internet customers across the country to curb their downloading or wind up on the curb.

The company has a bandwidth limitation that, if broken, can result in a 12-month suspension of service. The problem, according to customer complaints, is that the telecom giant refuses to reveal how much downloading is too much.

The company, which a few years ago advertised the service as “unlimited” has an “acceptable use policy” which enforces the invisible download limit.

The 23-part policy, states that it is a breach of contract to generate “levels of traffic sufficient to impede others’ ability to send or retrieve information.” But nowhere does it detail what levels of traffic will impede others.

—Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users, Customers complain bandwidth limits are secret, By Joseph S. Enoch ConsumerAffairs.Com, August 24, 2007

And you have to wonder how long that AUP said that while Comcast was advertising “unlimited”.

This part is especially enlightening:

Douglas said the company shuts off people’s Internet if it affects the performance of their neighbors because often many people will share a connection on one data pipe.
So instead of fixing their bad topology, they penalize customers for using it.

Well, it’s a free market, right? Comcast users who don’t like it can switch to, er, if they’re lucky and have any choice at all, probably to whichever of Verizon or AT&T happens to be in their area. There couldn’t be any problems with those providers, could there?

Meanwhile, if you want to follow this Comcast controversy, here’s the Comcast Broadband dispute blog that one of the cast-offs started, presumably using his new DSL connection.It’s kind of like salmon organizing against a dam upstream.

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Duopoly Spies

Mike_McConnell.jpg Well, I had been waiting to post something about the telcos and domestic wiretapping until more news came out, since much of it was still hearsay. But now National Intelligence Director and former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell has confirmed it:
Now the second part of the issue was under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you’re going to get access you’ve got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities.

— Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act, By Chris Roberts, ©El Paso Times, Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:05:57 AM MDT

Ryan Singel points out in Wired’s Threat Level blog that this is even though the same McConnell signed a sworn declaration in April saying to reveal that NSA and Verizon had such a relationship “would cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security.” Continue reading →

Heck of a Job, Stickler

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Richard Sticker ((ABC 4 News))
What practical difference does it make when a president appoints political commissars as heads of departments and agencies, enforcing ideologicallines instead of doing their job?
Also coming to light, is the fact that Stickler’s nomination to head the mine administration was twice rejected by congress and rejected when republicans were still in charge. Rejected reportedly by senators who were concerned about Stickler’s safety record when he operated mines. After his nomination was twice rejected by the Senate, President Bush gave Richard Stickler the mine safety job with a recess appointment. That’s a presidential appointment made when congress is not in session.

Finally, congressional investigations and hearings are now expected to look at a key provision of federal mining law, one which requires the U.S. Government to be the main communicator when an accident occurs. ABC News now notes it took the mine safety administration two days to take public control of the Crandall Canyon Mine. ABC also adds, “Others were irate that [mine owner Bob] Murray was allowed to publicly predict success and contradict MSHA itself while agency officials quietly looked on.”

— Federal mine safety official’s credentials questioned, Chris Vanocur, ABC 4 News, Last Update: 8/20 2007 8:00 pm

Dead people in mines. Dead people in Hurricane Katrina. Postal rate hikes for small publications. Wireless spectrum handed over to a few big companies. And of course massive consolidation of first mile Internet ISPs in the hands of companies that aren’t delivering on their promises and that indulge in repeated political censorship while cooperating with the government in wiretapping.

The stakes going forward are even higher, including economic competitiveness, control of information, and political discourse and with it the survival of a political system.

At least the traditional media finally noticed the problem with the appointment of the Mine and Health Safety Administrator. Imagine if we had more proactive investigative media that might have actually noticed his appointment when it happened. And imagine if we had none, which is a very real possibility with continuing media consolidation and increasing control over the Internet by a very small number of companies.

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Rage Against Distributive and Content Control

51052~Rage-Against-The-Machine-Posters.jpg
And now you do what they told ya,
now you’re under control
The Pearl Jam (and John Butler Trio and Flaming Lips and Rage Against the Machine) AT&T censorship fiasco has reached the attention of an FCC commissioner:
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, fire-breathing advocate of network neutrality regulation and opponent of media consolidation, has taken a stand on AT&T’s now infamous censorship of Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder’s anti-Bush remarks at Lollapalooza. In an interview with OpenLeft.com’s Matt Stoller, Copps supported the idea that there’s a link between AT&T’s deletion of Vedder’s political comments from a webcast of the concert and the network neutrality fight that’s brewing in the halls of Congress.

“Events like this are connected to the larger issue of network neutrality, so it is very very important,” Copps said in response to a question about whether or not AT&T’s censorship of Vedder has any implications for network neutrality. He went on to say, “So when something like the episode occurs with Pearl Jam that you’re referencing that ought to concern all of us… because if you can do it for one group, you can do it to any group and say ‘Well, it’s not intentional,’ and things like that. But nobody should have that power to do that and then be able to exercise distributive control over the distribution and control over the content too.

— FCC Commissioner: Pearl Jam censorship linked to net neutrality fight, By Jon Stokes, ars technica, Published: August 17, 2007 – 01:56PM

And it’s good that Copps sees the connection between this episode and media consolidation. Copps talks a good talk, but will he do more than “grudgingly accept” this sort of thing, like he did the bogus 700Mhz auction rules? Will he vote against, and will he persuade other commissioners to do the same? And can someone persuade Congress to change the FCC’s tune? It’s all very well to rage against the machine, but who’s going to change it?

Or can we get some Internet access competition? Then we could have Internet freedom.

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AT&T: Net Neutrality Tool?

learnenglish-central-stories-animal-farm-330x220.gif Forbes, normally more of a capitalist tool than a flaming radical rag, keeps covering AT&T’s Pearl Jam fiasco:
AT&T’s “content monitor” hit the mute button during part of Pearl Jam’s “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast sponsored by the telecom, depriving viewers of some anti-George Bush lyrics—and handing live ammunition to “net neutrality” proponents in the form of an almost perfect example of what they predict will happen if a few companies are allowed to control the broadband pipeline.

— AT&T Silences Pearl Jam; Gives ‘Net Neutrality’ Proponents Ammunition, Staci D. Kramer, PaidContent.org, 08.09.07, 7:45 PM ET

Their followup gets even better:
AT&T spokesman Michael Coe said that the silencing was a mistake and that the company was working with the vendor that produces the webcasts to avoid future misunderstandings. He said AT&T was working to secure the rights to post the entire song – part of a sing-along with the audience – on the Blue Room site.

— AT&T Errs in Edit of Anti-Bush Lyrics, By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Forbes, 08.10.07, 10:59 AM ET

While the lumbering dinosaur was working on that, Pearl Jam already had the uncensored version on their site.

And it just keeps getting better. Continue reading →

Yet Less Spectrum

m2z.jpg Not being content with squelching competition in the 700Mhz auction:
The Federal Communications Commission is seeking to shut the door on a plan by a group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to offer free wireless broadband Internet service everywhere in the U.S., the chief executive of the group said Wednesday.

M2Z Networks Inc. issued a statement Wednesday in which it said it would take the FCC to court in an attempt to force the agency to conduct a thorough analysis of the plan before it determined whether it would back it or not.

The company has proposed taking 25 megahertz of spectrum that is currently vacant and using it to build a wireless broadband Internet network to provide free service to 95% of Americans within a decade.

— UPDATE: FCC Opposes Silicon Valley VCs’ Free-Broadband Plan, (Updates with comment from Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Cal., in the fifth paragraph.) By Corey Boles, Dow Jones, August 15, 2007: 05:14 PM EST

Why would the FCC object to that? Continue reading →

Pearl Jam Censored by AT&T?

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Photo: AP Photo/Magnus Johansson-MaanIm
Political censorship?
After concluding our Sunday night show at Lollapalooza, fans informed us that portions of that performance were missing and may have been censored by AT&T during the “Blue Room” Live Lollapalooza Webcast.

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

— LOLLAPALOOZA WEBCAST: SPONSORED/CENSORED BY AT&T? News, PearlJam.com, 7 August 2007

So, “a mistake”.

Uhuh.

But it gets better. Continue reading →

Russian Roulette

michael_copps.jpg FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has a way with words. Last year he said we should be talking about Internet freedom rather than net neutrality. And now he says we’re
playing Russian roulette with broadband and Internet and more traditional media

— FCC Commissioner: US playing “Russian roulette with broadband and Internet” By Nate Anderson, ars technica, August 03, 2007 – 09:20AM CT

And the Russians are winning. Continue reading →

French FttH

gauthey_tate_voisin-ratelle.jpg In the U.S., it’s difficult for a municipality to put up a wireless Internet service even if it’s a disaster zone and the telco hasn’t gotten its POTS service back up, because the duopoly doesn’t want the competition. Meanwhile, in France:
Municipalities, cities, states, territories and regions are driving the French municipal (wireless and wired) broadband uptake as newly authorized by law. A new article of French “code général des communications” passed in June 2004 (law ref code is L-1425-1) gives these public entities the following rights :
  1. build, subsidize and develop “passive” telecom infrastructure and provide/transfer them to carriers or independent local users.
  2. build open networks on a given territory and provide/transfer them to a territorial carrier.
  3. operate open telecommunications networks in respect of regulations.
  4. provide telecommunications services to end users.

— Municipal broadband in France, by Esme Vos, MuniWireless, at 7:42 PM on September 5, 2005

The municipality does have to demonstrate that there isn’t already a similar service, but given the “open networks” aspect, that shouldn’t be difficult. Could this have something to do with why France is ahead of the U.S. in Internet connectivity and speed?

Apparently so:

Nowadays there are over a hundred projects, small and big. One famous one One famous one is the plan to do FttH in Hauts-de-Seine, the department chaired by Mr Sarkozy until he became President. Sarkozy was the man personally proprosing the FttH roll out in Hauts de Seine.

— Some French muni BB inspiration to Maybe Rep’s Boucher & Upton? Dirk H. van der Woude, Interesting People, 5 August 2007

He points out that picture FCC Commisioner Tate and ARCEP Commissioner Gauthey have met, as in the picture. Perhaps soon we’ll get a U.S. president who might be influenced by French president Sarkozy on this subject.

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