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FCC safe harbor gift to telcos is a pirate's dream

26 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission’s sure-to-be-approved draft decision stripping broadband service of common carrier classification could create an island of legal immunity for Internet service providers. At least some of them.

It’s kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean. Not the Disney movie, the real pirates. The ones who looted and murdered their way to riches, and returned to safe havens far beyond the reach of law or civilisation.

The draft removes the FCC from any meaningful broadband oversight role, and preempts states from trying to pick up any of the slack, real or imagined.… More

Arizona innovates self driving cars while California pioneers regulation

25 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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California is on the receiving end of another slagging for its top heavy approach to regulating the development and deployment of self-driving cars. Ian Adams works for the R Street Institute, a Washington, D.C. consulting group – AKA think tank – that finds its home on the dark public policy corner where industry, academia and government intersect. Writing in The Hill, he points to the departure of the Waymo – formerly Google – autonomous vehicle venture for free range Arizona…

The reasoning behind Waymo’s deployment decision was simple: California opted for an overly prescriptive approach to regulating technological innovation.

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When geeks go bad: FCC majority turns twisted tech into politicised policy

24 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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The rationale for declaring broadband to no longer be a common carrier service is a dog’s breakfast of contrived logic and ignored facts. The draft decision was posted Wednesday by Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai, after being enthusiastically pimped by his fellow republicans and fearfully slagged by their democratic counterparts. It’s on a fast track to be approved on a party line vote in mid-December.

This reversal rests on the FCC majority’s argument that broadband is not a simple telecommunications service, which federal law defines as “the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received”.… More

Gonzales universal broadband service RFQ deadline extended

23 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Internet service providers have four extra working weeks to respond to a request for quotes to provide universal broadband access to residents of the City of Gonzales, in California’s Salinas Valley. Following requests from potential respondents for extra time to submit quotes, and an inadvertent glitch that delayed answers to some of the questions they submitted, the City extended the deadline for responses to 22 December 2017.

That means the offers won’t be due on Cyber Monday, 27 November 2017, but that was a coincidental, albeit cool, deadline to begin with.… More

The dingo is in the details as FCC reverses common carrier decision, preempts state broadband laws

22 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission’s draft common carrier order is an unconditional surrender to the demands and desires of big cable and telephone companies. It reverses the 2015 decision to treat broadband as a common carrier service and impose network neutrality rules. As tabled by chairman Ajit Pai and enthusiastically endorsed by his colleagues in the republican FCC majority, the draft combines a lawyerly micro-focus on cherry picked data points with arguments formed not by reason but by a pre-determined result.… More

FCC pre-cooks its common carrier turkey

22 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Update: The complete draft has been published:

In the Matter of Restoring Internet Freedom, Declaratory Ruling, Report and Order, and Order

It runs 210 pages. I’ll have a summary post up later this morning. Happy Thanksgiving.

The full text of Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai’s draft order declaring that broadband is no longer a common carrier service or subject to network neutrality rules is supposed to be released today. We’ll have three weeks to read, debate, praise, protest and, ultimately, swallow it, since there’s little chance it’ll be changed or delayed significantly.… More

Feds flex anti-trust muscle and sue to block AT&T-Time Warner deal

21 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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The federal justice department challenged the proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner in court yesterday, on anti-trust grounds. The problem, according to the justice department’s complaint (h/t to Brian Fung at the Washington Post for the pointer) is that if it owns the entire content creation-ownership-distribution chain, AT&T will use that market power to muscle out its competitors, – traditional linear distribution companies and emerging over-the-top players alike…

If allowed to proceed, this merger will harm consumers by substantially lessening competition among traditional video distributors and slowing emerging online competition.

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Big cable, telcos bleed TV subs, but monopoly broadband pricing could be the cure

20 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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It’s been a bad year for the traditional television subscription business. An analysis by Daniel Frankel in Fierce Cable shows that it’s not quite as awful as stock analysts expected, but it’s close and awful enough…

As earnings season has approached in each quarter of 2017, analysts have predicted the watershed moment where linear pay TV losses surpass 1 million customers.

The market came close in the always-volatile second quarter, losing 976,000 subscribers…

The top 10 publicly traded operators, which account for about 95% of the market, reported losses of around 398,000 video customers in the third quarter.

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State lawmakers should exorcise muni broadband evil, federal advisors say

19 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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Stomp on cities. Boiled down, that’s the conclusion of a group advising the Federal Communications Commission on what states ought to be doing to promote broadband deployment. The FCC formed the Broadband Development Advisory Committee earlier this year, which is top heavy with lobbyists and others from big and mid-sized telecoms companies, very weak on local or state government representation and devoid of any municipal broadband experience. The committee spun off five working groups, including one tasked with writing model laws for states to adopt or, potentially, for the FCC to impose through its assumed preemption powers.… More

Common carrier death watch begins in Washington, D.C.

18 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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As the Federal Communications Commission wrapped up its November weed whacking on Thursday, attention turned to the expected release of a draft decision that will overturn the Obama-era decision that classified broadband as a common carrier service. According to a Reuters story, it’s coming soon…

The head of the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content, two people briefed on the plans said.

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