Telecommies

Verizon just lowered the price for unlimited mobile internet on a few cell phones to $29.99 a month. Now the plan is limited to the Verizon SMT5800, Verizon Wireless XV6800, and Motorola’s Q9m (shown in image). This plan will expand to more smart phone models in the future.

Comcast’s new alliance with BitTorrent(a popular peer-to-peer file sharing software) shows private mediation is still the best solution for online conflicts. While impractical activists clamor for regulation, strictly enforcing neutral internet service, they fail to recognize some basic internet management is both desirable and necessary.
ISPs Need Freedom to Overcome Challenges

Back in 2004 internet service providers(ISPs) had a glut of extra bandwidth (a measurement of internets capacity for traffic). However four years later (an eternity in the world of technology), this is no longer the case. During peak hours internet use now reaches full capacity (you may notice the internet seems a little slower in the early afternoon).

What’s disappointing is, most internet bandwidth is consumed by a small minority. Comcast estimates, on congested links, two percent of the users occupy fifty percent of the bandwidth. This problem sparked the net neutrality controversy. Comcast found, during peak hours in particular, only five percent of the users consumed seventy percent of internet traffic. BitTorrent, useful for trafficking huge files, was a likely culprit. In hopes of restoring a greater degree of equal access among customers as a whole, Comcast reduced the speed of BitTorrent users. Objection to such management gave birth to the present “Net Neutrality” movement, a reactionary group opposed to any ISP management what-so-ever.

Should ISPs lose the right to manage service and protect their deeply invested internet infrastructure? In an online environment plagued by malicious spam, viruses, and spyware, do absolute net neutrality policies make sense? What good is a free internet if it doesn’t work? And should a free internet respect property rights, or conflicting utopian ideals?

Consider enacted net neutrality in Canada:

[A] Canadian court judge sentenced a London, Ontario man to nine months in prison for hate crimes. The defendant was brought to justice through the dogged efforts of Canadian civil rights lawyer Richard Warman. In response, operators of several hate websites targeted Warman, making explicit death threats against him.

Warman was justifiably was concerned that these threats could result in violence to him or his family. So he turned to Google in the U.S. and to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (Canada’s FCC) and asked that the death threat web sites be blocked. Google, which was hosting one of the sites through its Blogger service, immediately complied, saying, “We want Blogger to enable free expression, including the hosting of views that are unpopular. However, advocating violence against a person is not acceptable.”

But in Canada – where there is the equivalent of net neutrality regulation – the bureaucratic red tape has resulted in inaction and the death threats remain online there(source).

Internet activities don’t deserve blanket protection, regardless of merit.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago Comcast and BitTorrent announced a cooperative effort for enhanced service. The ISP and software designers are adjusting their operations to better complement each other. Tony Werner, chief technology officer of Comcast Cable, explained,

This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure out network management technique that is more appropriate for today’s emerging Internet trends… We have been discussing this migration and its effects with leaders in the Internet community for the last several months, and we will refine, adjust and publish the technique based upon feedback and initial trial results(source).

You don’t have to understand the technical side to appreciate successful mediation between private parties. No regulations could produce such a constructive solution. An Internet run by the people, not the government, will always produce a better outcome for the consumer.

FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell commented,

The private sector is the best forum to resolve such disputes… It is precisely this kind of private sector solution that has been the bedrock of Internet governance since its inception. Government mandates cannot possibly contemplate the myriad of complexities and nuances of the Internet marketplace(source).

Considering the complex issues as a whole, the best way to preserve our treasured online resource, a free internet, is a continued U.S. commitment to non-regulatory polices.

While surfing the internet, I came across this great Net Neutrality site. It has a great blog, with plenty more video (click here for more).

Going through this mornings news clips, I came across an entertaining article on Verizon from the “SocialistWorker.org.”

First, the article complains about the switch from old copper telephone lines (landlines) to modern fiber optic cable:

This has allowed Verizon to sell off their copper plant in New England, leaving thousands of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) members facing the possibility of the termination of collective bargaining when their contract runs out.

What’s more, the fiber system is projected to need only a fraction of the maintenance of the existing copper wiring.

Better performance and lower labor costs… that sounds horrible.

Other union threats include adjusting the health care plan, which Verizon pays 100 percent of, freezing pension plans, and a new “acclerated discipline plan” against no-show workers “which led to firings in the first year it was in place.”

Meanwhile, Verizon’s unionized work force “has plummeted to 30 percent[.]” All-the-while Verizon Business Workers (the non-unionized ones) don’t even perceive themselves as “scabs.” Unions are desperately turning recruiting over to their legal department. “Union lawyers are preparing for hearings this summer to decide if the 30,000 former MCI employees should automatically be part of the bargaining unit by virtue of the type of work that they do, as they fit in existing job categories and do identical work.” Union assimilation by job description… it’s an interesting concept.

Without any substantiation, the article accuses Verizon public relations of a “throw-shit-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks-approach.”

Finally, aside from the combat analogies, the Socialist Worker finds Verizon guilty of refusing to honor the “card check” scheme(I had to google this one…), monitoring employees out on disability, and firing those that abuse the system.

These complaints can only mean one thing, Verizon is trying to run a business.

Broadband-NIMBY’s

Some California residents are angry about local broadband construction…

Turn Your Smart Phone Into a Mobile Wi-Fi Hotspot, Associate Press (4/8/08)

Software by Taproot Systems Inc.

It’s about time your cell phone internet connection and laptop worked in harmony… without paying an extra fee.

These cell phone signal boosters, “femtocells,” designed for home use are one more reason to ditch your landline. The Associate Press explains:

Not only do femtocells improve coverage indoors, where the carrier has a hard time reaching, they reduce traffic on regular, outdoor cellular towers. Perhaps best of all, the carrier doesn’t have to pay to carry the traffic from the femtocell to its network, because the device plugs into a home broadband connection. The so-called “backhaul” traffic, which carries calls from a cellular tower to the wired network, is a major part of the cost of operating a wireless network.

While these gadgets threaten already suffering landline business of Verizon and AT&T, market forces may force them to embrace it anyway. Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin comments, “‘They’re afraid that by deploying these femtocells, at least where they have a landline footprint, they might be putting their landline business at risk’… But that business is at risk anyway – a lack of femtocells may make cellular subscribers keep their landlines for another year or so, but not for long[.]”

Right now Sprint has a competitive lead, already offering them for $49.99 plus $15 a month for unlimited home calling.

Source: Wireless industry works to boost cell phone coverage in the home, Associate Press (4/3/08)

While neglecting landline maintenance isn’t ideal, I can understand why. DSL is slow, and landlines are secondary to cell phones; and an expensive alternative at that.

Business wise, those old copper wires are going nowhere…

$19 Billion for Spectrum

In case you haven’t been following the FCC auction of old TV airwaves, here’s a brief outline of the key points.