AT&T’s Sponsored data scheme is actually just a win for AT&T. This plan is a tremendous loss for everyone else.
Big City Community Networks: Lessons from Seattle and Gigabit Squared
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
We recently learned that the Gigabit Squared project in Seattle is in jeopardy. Gigabit Squared has had difficulty raising all the necessary capital for its project, building Fiber-to-the-Home to several neighborhoods in part by using city-owned fiber to reduce the cost of building its trunk lines. There are a number of important lessons, none of them new, that we should take away from this disappointing news.
AT&T’s Sponsored Data is bad for the internet, the economy, and you
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
AT&T’s Sponsored Data program is a way for AT&T to levy taxes on companies who can afford to pay. That has huge implications for the free market of the internet.
New FCC chairman Tom Wheeler starts term on pro-consumer note
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
There are few jobs in the US government with more power to help or harm the country's tech landscape than the chairmanship of the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that ultimately decides how telecoms and cable companies go about their business. And Tom Wheeler starts his five-year stint at the helm of the FCC under a fair amount of scrutiny: a former lobbyist for both the cable and wireless industries, it's easy to extrapolate that the President Obama-nominated venture capitalist might not have the best interest of consumers in mind. But are the fears unfounded?
Wireless competition is good for consumers — even if it costs taxpayers extra
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
The Federal Communications Commission, under the leadership of freshly-confirmed chairman Tom Wheeler, is hard at work on rules that will govern an upcoming spectrum auction. AT&T and Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carriers, want the FCC to hold an unrestricted auction that could allow them to maintain or even widen their lead in premium low-frequency spectrum. Their smaller competitors, especially T-Mobile, are urging the FCC to adopt rules to guarantee that the largest carriers do not wind up with a disproportionate share of that spectrum.
Storytelling Ads May Be Journalism’s New Peril
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
When the guy who ruined the Internet with banner ads tells you that a new kind of advertising might destroy journalism, it tends to get your attention.
FCC’s wishy-washy rulemaking might doom net neutrality in court
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
When the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted the Open Internet Order in 2010 -- forbidding Internet Service Providers from blocking services or charging content providers for access to the network -- there was one thing the FCC was careful not to do. What the FCC did not do is declare that Internet service providers are "common carriers," a classification that could have opened the door to even stricter regulations.
Here’s what you miss by only talking to white men about the digital revolution and journalism
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on The Press, Politics and Public Policy and the Nieman Journalism Lab launched Riptide, a new project about the disruption of journalism by technology.
Cable monopolies hurt consumers and the nation
Filed Under: Benton Headlines
Choice and competitiveness are the casualties when big firms such as Time Warner and Comcast have no motive to upgrade speed or capacity. The filthy little secret of home and business Internet data services in the United States is that the vast majority of Americans receive them from their local monopoly cable provider, the two largest of which are the increasingly rapacious and indolent Comcast and Time Warner Cable.