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Data Roaming Mischief…Another Pebble in the Digital River?

Mobile communications is among the healthiest of U.S. industries. Through a time of economic peril and now merely uncertainty, mobile innovation hasn’t wavered. It’s been a too-rare bright spot. Huge amounts of infrastructure investment, wildly proliferating software apps, too many devices to count. If anything, the industry is moving so fast on so many fronts ...

Akamai CEO Exposes FCC’s Confused “Paid Priority” Prohibition

In the wake of the FCC’s net neutrality Order, published on December 23, several of us have focused on the Commission’s confused and contradictory treatment of “paid prioritization.” In the Order, the FCC explicitly permits some forms of paid priority on the Internet but strongly discourages other forms. From the beginning — that is, since the advent ...

Did the FCC Net Neutrality order get lots worse in the last two weeks?

So, here we are. Yesterday the FCC voted 3-2 to issue new rules governing the Internet. I expect the order to be struck down by the courts and/or Congress. Meantime, a few observations: The order appears to be more intrusive on the topic of “paid prioritization” than was Chairman Genachowski’s outline earlier this month. (Keep ...

Dept. of Could Have Been Worse

The FCC appears to have taken the worst proposals for regulating the Internet off the table. This is good news for an already healthy sector. And given info-tech’s huge share of U.S. investment, it’s good news for the American economy as a whole, which needs all the help it can get. In a speech yesterday, ...

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

The FCC’s apparent about-face on Net Neutrality is really perplexing. Over the past few weeks it looked like the Administration had acknowledged economic reality (and bipartisan Capitol Hill criticism) and turned its focus to investment and jobs. Outgoing NEC Director Larry Summers and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced a vast expansion of available wireless spectrum, ...