When I saw the announcement of Google’s “Internet for Everyone” campaign on their Public Policy Blog, I have to admit, my BS detector started to rise.
“Ubiquitous and open broadband access for every American [should be] a priority in the next administration,” they say.
How about now, Google, and
you?
You could have bought the spectrum that you encumbered with “open” rules in the 700 MHz auction, but you didn’t. Now you’re sitting back saying the government should do it for you.
Who would gain from the next administration making broadband “a priority”? Google, of course.
Then I clicked over to the site and saw the evil kid alone at the computer in the living room. Is that a parent drinking wine in the kitchen? Really, I couldn’t help myself.
The campaign “stands for” access, choice, openness, and innovation. What about fair play? Peace? Ending world hunger? A platitude in every pot and a bromide on every CRT.
Really, it’s a bunch of pap that Google will use in Washington, D.C. to insulate itself from competition and drive wealth to its owners. Seeking profit is what compaines like Google are supposed to do –
but not using the nation’s public policies.
Update: Julian Sanchez nails it with: “All this may have a whiff of ‘and a pony’ about it . . . .”
Over at BroadbandCensus.com, my friend Drew Bennett, who has graciously agreed to be a special correspondent for the publication while he is in New York covering the Personal Democracy Forum, has been pumping out the blog entries.
Here are some of his latest… just from today:
NEW YORK, June 24 – Jonathan Zittrain, author of “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It,” took to the stage at the Personal Democracy Forum to focus “civic technologies:” the personal computer, spreadsheet applications, Wikipedia, even the Internet itself are all examples.
read more
NEW YORK, June 24 – Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig presented his ‘Declaration For Independence’ to the Personal Democracy Forum here today, fingering this problem in the American political system: the perception of a government disproportionately influenced by the stakeholders that fund political campaigns.
read more
NEW YORK, June 24 – “What happens next?” is the question Andrew Rasiej used to start off the Tuesday morning panel discussion at the Personal Democracy Forum here. read more
The complete index page of articles, blog posts, and press releases on BroadbandCensus.com is available here.
Over at the Communications Workers of America’s blog, Speed Matters, the union claims credit for the Federal Communications Commission’s recent order requiring broadband companies to provide the FCC with more information, including data about availability by Census tract.
The blog notes:
The CWA Speed Matters campaign can claim another victory – this time at the FCC. As part of our Speed Matters campaign, CWA called on the FCC to increase its definition of “high speed” – a definition that had not changed for nine years — and to improve its broadband data collection.
Well, it is possible that the FCC’s broadband data collection will be improved. But the public is not likely to benefit from any improvements. Continue reading →
The subject of tiered access to high-speed internet services has been much in the news, with the announcements by Time Warner Cable, and also Cox Communications, that they would roll out tiered services.Well, the news out of NXTcomm08, the telecommunications industry conference last week in Las Vegas, only seems to underscore the prospect that greater control by network providers is on the horizon. According to a survey by Tellabs and research firm IDC, telecommunications professionals are split down the middle on whether increasing bandwidth demands are likely to “break” the Internet.
According to the survey, half of respondents said bandwidth demands would “break” the Internet.
Of greater interest, in my opinion:
Of the 80% who identified a way to deal with internet congestion, 32% think providers address spikes in traffic by prioritizing via packet inspection, while 24% believe that spikes are better handled by charging more for excess bandwidth.
My friend Chris Parente blogged about this development on Saturday, and he was kind enough to ask for my reaction. This is what I said:
Whether or not new bandwidth demands on the Internet cause carriers to offer tiered pricing or to throttle particular applications or protocols, independent monitoring will be crucial. The core purpose of BroadbandCensus.com is to provide bandwidth consumers, both individuals and businesses, with a place to find local information about broadband availability, competition, speeds, prices and quality of service.
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=49
Google has begun including the “load time factor” into the quality score for ads on its AdWords program. This means that “Keywords with landing pages that load slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.”
Google provides two reasons for the change: “First, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate [and thus lower profits for both the advertiser].”
One could easily imagine that some might complain that Google is “discriminating” against slower-to-load pages, and even hypothesize that this would introduce a systemic bias towards sites that can afford faster server throughput. True, this change makes the AdWords system non-“neutral” in ways that will benefit some advertisers over others.
But so what? Google is simply engaging in smart management of their network: Giving priority to ads that load faster introduces a strong incentive for all advertisers to speed up their pages in any manner possible. This small change in pricing structure could have broader effects on the efficiency of Internet browsing for all users–at least in terms of building home pages that load faster–particularly if other advertising platforms follow suit. Continue reading →
The Register reports that Google is developing yet another suite of free tools for broadband users–this time aimed at allowing users to monitor traffic-management/shaping conducted by their ISP.
“We’re trying to develop tools, software tools…that allow people to detect what’s happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they’re not happy with what they’re getting – that they think certain services are being tampered with,” Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.
The article provides a short-but-interesting history of how Google’s views on Net Neutrality have evolved in recent years and about the debate inside the company as to whether to governmental prohibition of traffic management/prioritization by enshrining some conception of Net Neutrality in law. Today, of course, the company has become perhaps the most outspoken corporate defender of Net Neutrality principles. Google senior policy director Richard Whitt shows no sign of rethinking Google’s commitment to those principles, but suggests that the monitoring tools being developed by Google might fundamentally change the calculus of the debate:
“The forces aligned against us are real. They’ve been there for decades. Their pockets are deep. Their connections are strong with those in Washington,” he said. “Maybe we can turn this into an arms race on the application software side rather a political game.”
As Verizon’s Link Hoewing observes, these tools promise to increase dramatically the transparency of network management practices. This increased transparency will provide a clearer picture of what ISPs are actually doing, something that is largely a subject of speculation today, while helping to remove the current uncertainty that fuels sometimes wild speculation about the “death of the Internet” and other calamities in a world without Net Neutrality. Psychologically, transparency may thus remove much of the need for perceived need for Net Neutrality mandates.
But, of course, as defenders of traffic prioritization argue, there
will be instances where ISPs “deviate from Net Neutrality principles” by prioritizing certain traffic to enable advanced voice and video services over more intelligent networks. (Read, for example, George Ou’s post taking issue with aspects of The Register‘s story.) Of course, some will surely point to such instances as further evidence of the perceived “need” for regulation, but the fact that these practices will be rmore readily apparent to more users than ever before will in fact provide three powerful alternative mechanisms for disciplining ISP traffic management.
Continue reading →
WASHINGTON, June 15 – In an effort to increase the data that the Federal Communications Commission has available as it designs broadband policies, on Thursday the FCC ordered broadband providers to provide the agency with more detailed information.
For the past eight years, broadband providers had to provide the FCC with semi-annual information about the number of subscribers that they have in each ZIP code. Now, they will need to provide the number of subscribers in each Census tract, too.
In a last-minute change sought by AT&T and the non-profit group Free Press, the FCC decided to also require broadband carriers to separate out the number of business from residential customers.
Additionally, under a new form created by the broadband data order, carriers must also say how many of their subscribers within each Census tract fit into each of eight separate speed tiers.
Continue reading →
Today I’ve filed several articles on BroadbandCensus.com with extensive coverage from the Broadband Policy Summit last Thursday and Friday. You can also see the links to these stories and others on broadband, at the home page of BroadbandCensus.com.
Check back at BroadbandCensus.com on Monday morning, when I’ll be posting material about the Federal Communications Commission’s Friday decision on broadband data issues.
June 14 – Critics and proponents of Network Neutrality squaring off on the topic on Friday agreed that recent actions by both cable and wireless providers had had re-vivified the debate about the topic. read more
June 13 – America’s wireless policies continue to be emulated by developing nations, Ambassador David Gross, United States coordinator for international communications and information policy, said Friday. read more
June 12 – Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., decried the move to impose Network Neutrality on broadband carriers, speaking at a keynote luncheon address at the Broadband Policy Summit IV here. read more
June 12 – Questions about the availability and detail of broadband data featured prominently in presentations and in discussions at Thursday’s sessions of Broadband Policy Summit IV. read more
Michael Powell seems to have finally found his political voice. Reed Hundt probably never lost his. But both former FCC chairmen got into the spirit of debate at the Federalist Society gathering today at the National Press Club. Reporters William Korver and Cassandre Durocher, of BroadbandCensus.com, were present to record the exchange.
The story is just the most recent of a stream of news articles on broadband-related subject available for free at BroadbandCensus.com. As TLF readers may be aware, the goal of BroadbandCensus.com is to collect user-generated data — otherwise known as “crowdsourcing” — through inviting individual Internet users’ to contribute to our publicly-available database of local broadband information, all sorted by ZIP code.
Now, we’re pleased to announce that we are also following technology and communications policy news in Washington, and elsewhere, through daily reporting. If you haven’t been to BroadbandCensus.com, I encourage you to do so. And don’t forget to Take the Broadband Census!
Read Net Neutrality Disagreement Between Two Former FCC Chairmen at BroadbandCensus.com
MINNEAPOLIS, June 6 – The Internet has opened up so many possibilities for communication that the most important concern about the media isn’t broadcast television ownership, but about threats from cable and Bell companies, said Free Press Executive Director Josh Silver.
“The conferences of yesterday [dealt with] blocking consolidation of media ownership, and trying to reform the media,” said Silver, speaking at a press conference at the National Conference for Media Reform at the opening of the conference here on Friday.
Today, by contrast, the non-profit advocacy group Free Press finds that “we have to embrace the reality that every Web site can be a TV network, or a radio network, and that we have an opportunity to fundamentally break the bottleneck” of the media, said Silver.
Continue reading Media Reform Now About Internet, Not Broadcast Ownership, says Free Press
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.