Google is the world's single largest user of Internet bandwidth. But it doesn't have to pay for most of the bandwidth it consumes, in the form of its spiderbots copying web pages, and YouTube video streams. A study in December 2008 estimated Google's 'free' bandwidth use to be about $6.9 billion, today it could be double that amount. [Precursor study- December 2008] Scott Cleland, head of Precursor, is a leading Google critic especially of its position supporting net neutrality. Google has been lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to maintain net neutrality regulations, which prevent Telcos from charging companies for bandwidth based on usage. He claims that Google is pushing net neutrality because it is the biggest benef

The announcement by Google that it would delve into the Broadband ISP arena in select markets is quite interesting in the fact that it looks to be marrying a public advocacy with a public initiative, and where it counts the most, in broadband infrastructure. To me it seems more of a logical move, putting your money into a venture which supports your core competency, Internet openness, proliferation, adoption, and access. In addition, Google seems to be promoting its core legislative agenda of having a free and open internet along with proposed high speeds that would be 100 times faster than most other ISPs. Does it matter that the initiative will not access every home in the United States, not particularly? The point remains tha

Each year at CES, queues for taxis, coffee, and lunch always seem to take a month, particularly during the first two days of the show. Pretend it’s still CES…it’s been a long month.  As Editor Rizzn says, you don’t read us for quick snippets, you read us for analysis.  Maybe even insight, at least occasionally. When we left off four weeks ago, I’d just broken the news that magicJack was stirring up the telecom market once again, with the announcement of their forthcoming femtocell, which I (and now most others) call the “femtojack”.  After Dan’s team published their release on the femtojack, I was inundated with a ton of technical and regulatory questions.  I’m not going to attempt to answer them here

Through continued research of the Net Neutrality debate, distinct realizations come to mind for Regulators’, Consumers, and Network Providers alike in pondering the heated discussions around whether either regulation, or a (hands-off) approach, are sufficient to allow unfettered and equal access, including clear competition, and that all are present on the Broadband pipelines. First there has continued to be somewhat of a hysteria and possibly pre-ordained fear, albeit without serious incidents of record, that network providers both have and will continue to throttle speeds and limit access of their customers to the copious amounts of content becoming available through the Internet. Perhaps the hysteria has unfolded as a result of one B

Ars Technica is reporting today on a bit of interesting tech policy news out of the Comcast corporate blog.  The message? That they don’t “want net neutrality rules, and will still work to convince the FCC they are counterproductive,” but “we are obviously better off having ‘clear rules,’ as [Comcast CEO] Brian [Roberts] stated, than with the confusion of having the FCC try to enforce an unenforceable and vague 'policy statement.’” I have talked about Comcast’s and the other cable company’s vested interest in ensuring that the network neutrality rules go into place in a very specific way: I’ve taken to using the following examples in my interviews and in my podcasts lately, because it’s true, bears out my

Comcast is appealing a ruling before a three-judge appeals court panel concerning the FCC’s sanctions in 2008 of the operator, and whether it has jurisdiction under current Net Neutrality rules to do so, for what has become known throughout the media as past throttling of BitTorrent. (See FCC formally rules Comcast’s throttling of BitTorrent was illegal). This could be an important decision for ISP industry operators, who have many (irons-in-the-fire) when it comes to a business model that depends on both residential Internet and business customers, in helping it pay for a broadband pipeline created with private investment. It also has implications for consumers who are increasingly using more file sharing applications to watch

At issue, the language the FCC crafted in its proposed rule making, specifically FCC NPRM Paragraph 106 which seems to suggest a blanket mandate that disallows ISP’s to prioritize access for content, application, or services providers. Digital Society, (a digital think tank that believes culture and commerce are inseparable, that the digital economy flourishes when people are free and rights are secure, and that free markets free people), highlighted the issue in (FCC NPRM prohibits good network management), from paragraph 106. “We understand the term (nondiscriminatory) to mean that a broadband Internet access service provider may not charge a content, application, or service provider for enhanced or prioritized access to the s

Every time my friend Michael Sean Wright and I have recorded a conversation (for a podcast, testing purposes, or any other reason), he’s taken to tagging it out with “Go Net Neutrality,” as a callback to a test podcast we did last week with the WeTokU service. Since then, I’ve put forth the argument in a number of podcast appearances (including the latest episode of my political podcast with fellow ANGLEr Art Lindsey) that goes a little like this: “It sounds good to say ‘Go Network Neutrality!’ and encourage our friends to make calls to our governmental representatives to stifle competition and further inhibit free speech.” The inevitable response from whomever is interviewing me on the subject is “How will Network Neut

While the U.S. takes steps to make so-called Network Neutrality principles mandatory under official rules, the European Union moved forward this week with its own set of internet access requirements. Under the proposed EU rules, “national telecoms authorities will have the powers to set minimum quality levels for network transmission services” so as to promote Net neutrality or “net freedoms” for European citizens. In addition, owing to new transparency requirements, consumers must be informed – before signing a contract – about the nature of the service to which they are subscribing. Such disclosures must include traffic management techniques and their impact on service quality, as well as any other limitations (such as band

Generally I find the topic of Network Neutrality to be cumbersome and energy draining, but two weeks in a row, I’ve listened to TWiT give the other side of the argument a half-hearted treatment, and Jason Calacanis this week simply pleaded with the listeners for 15 minutes to go write their congressman to vote for Network Neutrality.  I tuned out at about the time Jason started invoking John McCain’s imprisonment in POW camps as evidence as to why we need a network neutral internet. It was just too much. Look, I’m not against network neutrality, per se.  It irritates me like no one’s business that Comcast discriminates against BitTorrent protocol, as if everyone who uses it is some sort of a criminal. I’ve been writi