---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20171212155704.GA11671@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:57:05 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: To Save Internet They Helped Create, Web Pioneers Demand FCC Cancel Net Neutrality Vote More than 20 internet founders and industry leaders wrote an open letter warning Ajit Pai's plan to kill net neutrality poses "imminent threat" to the web by Jake Johnson Joining the revolt taking place in the streets and online against FCC chair Ajit Pai's plan to kill net neutrality, more than 20 pioneers of the internet - including world wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Vint Cert, one of the "fathers of the internet" - published an open letter on Monday slamming Pai's proposals as "flawed and factually inaccurate" and demanding that his agency cancel its planned Thursday vote. "The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed order to abolish net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the internet we worked so hard to create," the letter reads. "It should be stopped." https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/11/save-internet-they-helped-create-web-pioneers-demand-fcc-cancel-net-neutrality-vote -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20171212154158.GA11604@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:41:58 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: U.S. urges judge to reject AT&T/Time Warner court date proposal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government on Tuesday urged a federal judge to reject the February court date sought by AT&T (T.N) and Time Warner (TWX.N) in a dispute over the firms' proposed merger, arguing the companies are rushing to meet an April 22 closing deadline for their $85.4 billion deal. The U.S. Justice Department last month sued to block AT&T's planned acquisition of Time Warner, saying the combination could raise prices for rivals and pay-TV subscribers while hampering the development of online video. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-time-warner-m-a-at-t/u-s-urges-judge-to-reject-att-time-warner-court-date-proposal-idUSKBN1E00A2 -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <ad74deada2f4f86a0f2702eb496d8751.squirrel@email.fatcow.com> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2017 03:46:11 -0600 From: "Neal McLain" <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> Subject: A Net Newtrality article from 2011. The following article was originally published in the February 2011 issue of "Communications Technology" ("empowering broadband professionals"), a publication for the cable TV technical community. The author, Brett Glass, owns Lariat, a rural WISP (wireless ISP) based in Laramie, Wyoming. This article is republished here with the author's permission. --Neal McLain Brazoria, Texas +--------------------------------------------------------------+ A new-year's resolution for the FCC: "Stick to the Plan" The FCC'S National Broadband Plan -- while containing some factual errors and a few concessions to political convenience -- is by and large a well-considered and visionary document. It sets ambitious goals but it's never a bad idea to aspire to greatness. Among the plan's most emphatic and sensible recommendations is that the government aid consumers by eliminating barriers to entry for new providers and by fostering competition. Since then, the FCC has squandered vast amounts of resources and political capital on efforts that fail [to] advance the plans goals, particularly that of competition. Chief among these has been the push [toward] rules to assure "network neutrality," aka an open internet," two buzz phrases with no agreed-upon definitions. Besieged by lobbyists, including many [at] Google, the Commission put the country's welfare aside to address a putative "threat" -- ginned up out of whole cloth by those seeking rules that would benefit their corporate sponsors. (Ironically. that threat would have been even more implausible had the Commission stuck to its knitting and acted quickly to foster competition.) The regulations were voted into place on the winter solstice -- quite literally the darkest day of the year and with Congress out of town -- and then rushed through before a new Republican majority assumed control of the House of Representatives. They are politically divisive, of questionable legality and, worst of all, harmful rather than helpful. They ignore both the technical and economic realities of the broadband business. And by raising providers' costs -- both the cost of providing service and the cost of compliance -- they discourage investment in broadband deployment. By so doing, they run counter to two goals of the broadband plan: new service to unserved areas and more competition in areas with insufficient broadband choice. Further, by favoring mobile wireless broadband providers over fixed and satellite providers (which actually have less spectrum and, therefore, more technical constraints on their services), the regulations draw a distinction that defies technical reality and is clearly driven by politics rather than by data. In the meantime, the FCC has failed to stick to its own Broadband Plan schedule. No new spectrum has been auctioned or dedicated to unlicensed or nonexclusively licensed use. The Universal Service Fund has not yet been overhauled, delaying the deployment of broadband to areas where there is no business case for unsubsidized service. And as of January 2011, not a single one of the pro-competition milestones the FCC for the third quarter of 2010 -- much less for 2011 -- have been reached. Of particular concern among these missed milestones is the FCC's failure to halt the anticompetitive pricing of "special access" lines (leased data lines) that provide a competitive broadband provider's air supply. When I founded the world's first terrestrial wireless service Internet provider (WISP) in 1992, I never dreamed that, more than 18 years later, a local ISP would be unable to obtain Internet backbone bandwidth for less than 20 times the price at which the local ILEC sold it at retail. Yet this is true for many small, independent and competitive providers -- especially rural ones. Burdened by predatory pricing and unable to raise capital due to the new regulations (which leave far too many things -- particularly the definition of "reasonable network management" -- to the FCC), many competitive providers may not survive. What's more, because these same leased lines are essential to the existence of competitive mobile carriers, this same failure to act could lead to a wireless duopoly in much of the country, with only those mobile providers that also are ILECs able to survive. Brett Glass founded and heads Lariat, a rural WISP in Laramie, Wyo. Contact him at brett@lariat.net. ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sat, 16 Dec 2017