Internet Statistics by Alex Goldman

The FCC plans to force the cellcos to warn users who are about to incur a large bill. Let’s see if this gets past the lobbyists and the courts. Gut check time for the FCC.

While most branches of the Obama adminstration are seeking to describe their policies as bipartisan, the FCC today chose to describe its new internet policy as a Third Way.

The Third Way is a phrase made popular by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It describes an attempt to navigate a path between socialism and the free market. Given the extent to which the Obama administration’s opponents attack so many things it proposes as “socialism”, it is courageous of the FCC to use this term. (To be fair, the FCC says it’s seeking a middle road between re-regulation of a utility and the unfettered free market.)

The FCC does not want to regulate the internet if the internet is defined as the websites and services that we use when we connect to the internet. The FCC wants to regulate the price that users pay to connect to the internet and to be able to police monopoly power at the access level. To this end, the FCC refuses to abandon the great mistake of 2002 in which the FCC first decided that the internet was comprised of both a telecommunications component and an information service.

The problem with this splitting of the internet atom is that the internet consists of interdependent services.

Continue reading ‘FCC Seeks Third Way for Internet Regulation’ »

http://www.tested.com/news/this-is-why-people-hate-the-phone-company-att/60/

” Reading AT&T’s announcement that the nationwide rollout of its femtocell product–called the Microcell 3G–is about to begin called into sharp relief the level at which I expect to get screwed by the phone company. About halfway through decoding the PR doublespeak, I had an epiphany. It was if I suddenly saw the words on the page for the very first time. “

Here’s a draft executive summary.

Here’s a list of whom Forbes expects to win.

My comments, based on what we know at this time, are here.

(h/t Karl Bode’s twitter feed)

“Of course the lesson learned is that in the Internet age, the harder a company works to stifle criticism, the more attention that criticism gets. The better path is perhaps to listen to what your customers are saying about your business practices, and change them where possible if you value your customers,” Bode writes.

The legal documents are here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/23/magicjack-legal-docu.html

Feld warns that the telcos are really attacking a still-unpublished National Broadband Agenda.

When I last wrote about MagicJack, I was very upset with the service. It was not working.

Imagine my surprise — and pleasure — when MagicJack called me to discuss the problem. After some back and forth, the MagicJack representative recommend that I purchase a powered USB hub. Continue reading ‘MagicJack Keeps Improving’ »

Today, the state of Florida endorsed years of bad service by fining Verizon a mere $2 per customer for slow repairs on the Gulf Coast, according to DSL Reports.

Time and time again, regulators have implicitly endorsed poor service by refusing to fine telcos at a level that would provide a disincentive for harm to consumers. Verizon got away with this activity for years and is paying less than a month’s profit per customer.

Brough’s slashdotted analysis of the issues in the AT&T Wireless network, built on a mailing list and the work of David Reed, makes interesting reading.

Found some excellent advice on phone bill pricing from User Centric.

The most basic piece of advice, one that everyone should know, is here:

Two 6 second calls, each at 6 cents per minute:

11% USF with 60 second initial costs 6.66 cents
6% USF with 6 second initial costs 0.63 cents.

This is 10 times the price!