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Friday, 03 December 2010 00:51 |
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Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, asked me if there still were any reporters focused on the FCC because he couldn't think of any outside the trade press. In fact, Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post, Amy Schatz of the Wall Street Journal, Joelle Tessler of AP, Roger Cheng of Dow Jones, Todd Shields of Bloomberg, and Jasmin Melvin of Reuters spend most of their time covering the FCC and related issues. Michael Copps had just spoken. I asked a question about the far too frequent 'he said, she said" articles from D.C. and whether reporters should do the legwork to determine which of the contradictory advocates was lying. So I thought to highlight some of the best work coming from the D.C. reporters. I hope they point me to articles they were proud of, especially those that involved reporting beyond the predictable comments of DC officials and lobbyists, which I'll add below.
For example:
Todd Shields AT&T Gains FCC's Ear as Regulators Near Decision on Net Neutrality Rules reported AT&T uber-lobbyist Jim Cicconi called on FCC chief of staff Eddie Lazarus six times in three weeks as Lazarus was drafting the Net Neutrality rules. His report of AT&T and similar lobbying practices I believe was reflected in subsequent news reports and Wall Street analysis suggesting the rules favored AT&T over consumers. |
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Tuesday, 30 November 2010 18:49 |
Jim Crowe in 2005 tried to pull on Cogent what Comcast is doing to him today. He went to D.C. to personally rail against neutrality. So some people are laughing when he begs for government help in a fight against Comcast, whose 1/4th of the U.S. Internet population allowed them to beat Level 3 into submission.
When they started squeezing the small ISPs in the 1990's only a few of us spoke out. When the telcos/cablecos squeezed out even the big ISPs alike AOL, there was more of an outcry but it failed. When Level 3 tried to use size/market power to squeeze Cogent in 2005, few protested. When Comcast - with AT&T.Verizon panting to join - comes after Level 3, will no one effective be left to speak out?
Level 3's new comments correspond to what I and others have been saying for a decade. Welcome, Jim, and glad you now see the light. Here's their statement.
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Friday, 19 November 2010 18:56 |
I was called a "Net pioneer" by several reporters because I was one of the signers of the On-Advancing-the-Open-Internet-by-Distinguishing-it-from-Specialized-Services statement. I'm nothing of the sort, of course, but I was proud to sign alongside true pioneers like David Reed, Bruce Perens, and Steve Wozniak. AT&T introduced a "managed services" exemption into the BellSouth merger agreement in 2006, a loophole big enough for 500 video channels to evade any neutrality regulations. The word from Wired and some D.C. reporters is that Genachowski has caved on this one, giving the Bells enough loopholes that the coming neutrality rules will be nice rhetoric but Verizon or AT&T can easily bypass any rules. For better or worse. MSNBC has just censured Joe Scarborough for making political contributions to Republicans and Keith Olbermann, for giving some money to Democrats. The network believes contributions should be prohibited because they imply a reporter might be biased. I think that's hogwash. Being human implies that a reporter is biased and pretending otherwise is deceitful. I've come to know many reporters doing this gig and nearly all the best have strong personal opinions.
I have a strong pro-consumer bias and don't pretend otherwise. It's my job as a reporter to write the truth despite my bias and it's up to the reader to judge whether I remain able to write the truth. If I could have afforded it, I would have generously contributed to the campaigns of Barack Obama and others. I've given (modest) donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others. I've signed this FCC petition and filed when I feel strongly on an issue.
Any reporter or news organization that thinks they have no bias is probably mistaken. I just don't pretend. |
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Friday, 03 September 2010 15:44 |
Peter Pratt of Stimulating Broadband and Eric Torbenson of the Dallas News reported that Tier 1 Converged Networks faced SEC charges (below). RUS has now taken action, one of the few times any part of the $700B stimulus has done. Far too many parts of government - every government - prefer to sweep things like this under the rug at taxpayer expense. The story broke Friday afternoon. I confirmed it but don't yet have the details.
U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Litigation Release No. 21510 / April 30, 2010
Securities and Exchange Commission v. TierOne Converged Networks, Inc., Kevin Mark Weaver, and Ronald Celmer,
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Thursday, 02 September 2010 18:53 |
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A regulator reached out to me about the Opticom build in Montana. I believe that when I say something that affects policy I should disclose that. Here's my response.
"MTOpticom is more likely to have taken advantage of a loophole than broken the law, but I don't know since I can't get the documents. Apparently, Adelstein (who is a good guy and been friendly to me) left open the possibility that if there are a handful of unserved farms and mountains near a well served town the whole project could qualify for a heck of a lot of public money.
My belief is this is too much public money to upgrade the towns from 10-50 meg cable to 200 meg fiber. Fiber is better, but my opinion is the difference doesn't justify spending that much public money.
People I respect believe everyone should get fiber at any plausible cost. It's an honest debate and you should make your own decision.
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Wednesday, 01 December 2010 20:25 |
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Jason Livingood pointed out a significant error in my posting to Dave Farber's Interesting People list, although I believe the analysis holds. First is my initial comments, than my back and forth with Jason. Painfully geeky. I'll try to edit it to a clear article as soon as I can.
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Tuesday, 30 November 2010 00:38 |
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Comcast's Joe Waz argued on the Comcast blog and Dave Farber's list that Comcast should charge Level 3 because the they were downloading from Level 3 more than they were uploading. The issue is that today essentially all U.S. broadband providers upload far less than they download. That would mean charging everyone, something I disagree with. So I posted
Joe
A question.
Are you contending that Comcast need not peer with carriers with substantial asymmetry, say within 100% of the national average?
I ask because the current ratio of downstream to upstream traffic on the U.S. Internet is about 4:1, which means essentially everyone except the carriers will have significantly asymmetric traffic with any large carrier such as Comcast. Comcast will always receive far more traffic than it sends with any backbone provider and the proportion is increasing.
Which implies that Comcast could charge for just about all the traffic coming in. If I'm reading you wrong, please get back to me.
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I haven't heard from Joe with an answer.
Ben Popken of the Consumerist called as well, and quoted me saying
"Industry analyst Dave Burstein told Consumerist, "The Justice Department should step in with antitrust."
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Saturday, 11 September 2010 19:26 |
Scott Barash as "Acting CEO" doesn't have the power or confidence to improve the agency. After 4 years and 9 months as "acting" it's time to either give him the job or find someone else. The person running the agency needs to have the authority to get things done.
As acting head of USAC, Scott Barash has been essentially invisible. That's smart when you have no security in a job. Years ago I learned being "acting" anything is a terrible position. I spent 14 months "acting" at WBAI-FM and in practice couldn't do what the job required. People I ask speak well of Barash personally. His resume is strong, and he may be the right person to create USAC's future. If so, Julius should give him the job and the backing to do it well.
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Friday, 03 September 2010 15:13 |
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"Schools and Libraries (with an estimated erroneous payment rate of 13.8%) and High Cost Programs (with an estimated erroneous payment rate of 23.3%) will again substantially exceed, by an even wider margin, the IPIA “at risk” thresholds ... assessments of estimated erroneous payments exceed billions of dollars."
Here's the relevant section of the Office of Inspector General Semi-Annual Report to Congress from 2009 from which the article title and excerpt above are drawn.
Briefly, the results from those audits strongly indicated that the High Cost, School and Libraries, and Low Income programs are “at risk” as that term is defined by the IPIA. Results of the attestation engagements of USF contributor audits indicate substantial room for improvement in the management of that program, as well.
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Tuesday, 31 August 2010 15:50 |
 Montana Opticom was approved for a $32M RUS grant to build fiber to 7K+ homes in Gallatin County that were said to be "underserved." I have data from Opticom's web site, local governments for a majority of the population, local news reporting and their competitors that the area is well served. If so, the grant should be immediately frozen.
According to the map posted at Opticom's website the majority of homes they intend to cover can already get 10 megabit cable modem service from Bresnan. I checked this with Bresnan and with local officials for Belgrade, Montana; Manhattan, Montana and Four Corners, Montana. Those three contain a majority of the homes to be covered. They already have two broadband choices, at least one at 8-10 megabits. In addition, most of the additional area on the Opticom map has DSL service as well as a local WISP. I worked from a map on the Opticom site.
In addition, Opticom currently offers broadband to 300 homes at some of the highest prices in the world. Unless they firmly committed to offer honestly "affordable" prices, Julius Genachowski at the FCC should personally step in, review the situation with RUS, and make sure that this project will deliver his repeated promise of "affordable broadband."
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