Slashdot alerts us to the news that Spain will be following Finland's lead in declaring broadband as a basic legal right. I'm still not convinced that declaring it as a full legal right makes sense, but it does show how important broadband is becoming to society. It will be interesting to see how this growing trend matches up with the efforts from the entertainment industry to have countries pass laws to kick people off the internet for file sharing. It would certainly appear that the two positions are not compatible.
Over the past few years, there have been numerous lawsuits by telcos against various municipalities that have decided to launch municipal fiber broadband projects. Most of these lawsuits have failed -- but the main argument from the telcos is that it's unfair to have to compete against the government, and it would take away incentives for the telcos to actually invest in infrastructure to provide for those towns. Of course, that doesn't make much sense. That would mean that any competition would decrease incentives to invest. One of the nastier legal battles took place in Monticello, Minnesota, where the local telco TDS fought hard (and lost) its battle to stop muni-fiber from showing up. But, now, suddenly TDS is announcing its own fiber broadband, giving people 50 Mbps service for $50/month. What's the likelihood that TDS would have done this if it didn't have competition from muni-fiber? The reason municipalities look to muni-fiber is because there isn't enough competition and the telcos aren't investing in infrastructure (or really serving customer needs). So the end result here is that by introducing more competition, consumers and citizens are better served. So what's the problem with it again?
While the US is still struggling to figure out how to define broadband and where it's even available, Finland has decided that 1Mb broadband access should now be considered a legal right, with plans to boost that to 100Mb by the end of 2015. There do appear to be some exceptions for remote households, but if I were living in Finland right now, instead of the heart of Silicon Valley, my "legal rights" would be denied. While I'm not sure it makes sense to define broadband as a legal right, it's yet another reminder of how far behind the US appears to be on broadband deployments.
For many years, we've been among those (helped along by the usually excellent GAO) pointing out that the FCC's "broadband competition" stats were totally bogus. They relied on a rather bizarre way of counting competition. First, if a single household in an entire zipcode got broadband (er, actually not really broadband, but we'll get to that), then everyone in that zip code was counted. On top of that, the definition of broadband was ridiculously low. This has been known for years, and the FCC kept putting out the same bogus stats every years -- sometimes even admitting that it knew the stats were bogus, but it didn't have anything better. More recently, to its credit, the FCC is trying to get better about both how it defines broadband and how it counts things -- but that's just opened up opportunities for the telcos to simply tell the government what sort of coverage they offer, without having to reveal any actual data.
But, still, with the bogus FCC data out there, many folks are trying to claim that there's robust competition in broadband in the US. Thankfully, Julian Sanchez is pointing out that friends shouldn't let friends use FCC broadband data to discuss competition, and highlights the ridiculousness of the claim that 88% of zip codes have "four or more" broadband providers. It's even worse than Julian notes. While he points out that in many cases, some of the providers in question are mobile broadband providers offering up pokey EVDO connections, he neglects to mention that most of these connections cost a ton and come with ridiculously low usage caps -- such that they're not really broadband offerings at all. In fact, most 3G broadband data offerings have explicit limits in their contracts saying they cannot be used as primary broadband connections. But, it doesn't stop the same lobbyists who happen to be paid by the same telcos who make these policies from claiming that there's robust broadband competition.
Last week, the FCC held what was ostensibly a panel discussion about the National Broadband Plan, but which was actually focused on copyright issues. How, exactly, is copyright an issue for broadband? Well, mainly because the entertainment industry has been trying for years to get ISPs to act as copyright cops... and apparently the FCC felt the need to hear them out. While the deck was mostly stacked in favor of the entertainment industry in terms of speakers, thankfully the FCC allowed Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge to take part as well -- and she questioned whether the FCC even had any mandate over such issues and wondered why the hearing was even being held. However, beyond stacking the deck of speakers, it appears the FCC gave significant other beneficial treatment to entertainment industry speakers.
Paramount's COO, Frederick Huntsberry, not only was given twice the amount of time to speak as the rest of the speakers had (10 minutes, instead of five, as Gigi was told), but also was able to convince the FCC that his talk was "owned" by Paramount, and should not be placed online -- as the FCC has done with all its other hearings. Wow. Yes, this was a public government hearing. Thankfully, the folks at Public Knowledge went through a low quality video of the whole proceeding and pulled out Huntsberry's part, where he not only demonstrates how file sharing works for the FCC, but goes on to implicate plenty of companies as aiding in the process, including Google, Yahoo, eBay, Boxee and others:
In the video, he demonstrates using Mininova and Drop.io (which is an amazingly useful site for many things that have absolutely nothing to do with unauthorized file sharing -- and is now being unfairly tarred by Paramount). There isn't really anything surprising in the video. He basically shows what everyone knows: it's easy to share files these days. But he seems to miss the point of that. That is, he wants the gov't to come in and try to stop this (an impossibility), rather than recognizing that it's time for him to shift his business model. Yes, distribution is cheap and easy these days. In most businesses when distribution becomes cheaper and easier, that's a good thing. Why is it that Hollywood top execs still can't figure out how to take advantage of it?
Mehan Jayasuriya points out the many problems with the way the FCC handled this whole event:
Any presentation delivered at a public government hearing should be made available to the general public in a convenient format. Not everyone is able to travel to Washington D.C. for hearings and those who cannot should not be excluded--rather, they should be encouraged to participate in the debate. The mission statement on the Commission's new Broadband.gov site seems to agree: "A great way to create a connected America is to involve all Americans in the development of a National Broadband Plan. The FCC welcomes civic participation, and we look forward to more interaction through this website." If Paramount was concerned that its video would encourage "piracy," then the company should not have presented it at a public hearing. It's as simple as that.
All of the other presentation materials for all of the other workshops are available on the FCC's website, so that citizens can download, read, comment on, reference and critique them. Why should Paramount's statement be treated any differently?
During the presentation, Huntsberry seems to suggest that a number of legitimate technology companies, including Drop.io, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple, Boxee, Sony, LG, Yahoo!, PayPal and Rapidshare, are arguably acting to enable or encourage unlawful filesharing. These companies and the users of their products should have an opportunity to respond to this allegation.
In the beginning of the clip, Huntsberry walks us through a timeline of when various camcorded copies of Star Trek were leaked to the Internet. This timeline provides a great example of how widespread the problem of camcording is, though it's worth noting that camcording is already illegal in most U.S. States and has little relevance in the context of this workshop (it's also worth noting that Star Trek made over $200 million at the box office regardless of the fact that camcorded copies were available within hours of its theatrical release). This evidence that films are commonly pirated while still in theaters undermines many of the arguments made by the studios in the FCC's Selectable Output Control proceeding (i.e. "We need to be granted the power to shut off outputs on the back of your A/V gear, otherwise you will unlawfully copy the films that we broadcast via cable").
Not only did the FCC treat Paramount's presentation with kid gloves, the agency also treated the Hollywood execs preferentially throughout the course of the workshop. Upon entering the room where the workshop was held, attendees were greeted by a massive vinyl banner--presumably belonging to Paramount--on which the aforementioned Star Trek timeline was printed. While I appreciate the fact that a visual aid can be helpful, I can't help but feel like a PDF file submitted to the record would have sufficed.
But that's not all. Though these workshops were technically less procedural in nature than a formal hearing would be, MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman was repeatedly allowed to call his technical expert, MovieLabs CEO Steve Weinstein, up to the stand to chime in with additional comments--even though nothing he said was actually technical in nature. The Commission allowed Glickman to do this so many times that Weinstein also started calling others from the audience up to the stand, including Disney Executive Vice President Preston Padden and Disney Vice President Troy D. Dow. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical but I doubt that the Commission would have allowed any of the other panelists to engage in this kind of behavior.
And, again, uh.... what does copyright have to do with broadband policy in the first place? And where is it in the FCC's mandate that it has any say in copyright policy?
A bunch of folks have been sending in this story about how a carrier pigeon beat a broadband line in transferring 4 gigs of data between two offices 60 miles apart. The problem with such stunts is that they're rather meaningless. All you need to do is pick a storage size for the pigeon that is sufficiently large. The speed of the broadband connection is known in advance, and so you can just pick a file size that is significantly larger. Given the right sizes, I'd imagine that flying across the Atlantic with hard drives full of data is probably faster than some trans-Atlantic fiber cables as well. It doesn't mean that the cable is necessarily slow. The point is that for some things a "sneakernet" or (in this case) "pigeon net" will be faster. It does sound like the DSL connection being used was, in fact, slow, but that can be demonstrated just as easily by, I don't know, noting the actual bandwidth of the connection. I guess, as a publicity stunt, it draws attention, but I can't see how it's really that meaningful.
The bizarre story of Connected Nation continues. While the telco-backed broadband mapping organization that politicians all seem gaga over has been able to sweep politicians in Minnesota and Florida off their feet, despite dubious qualifications and/or reviews, Connected Nation has apparently decided to bail out on bidding for the broadband mapping opportunity in Kentucky. This is significant, because Connected Nation is from Kentucky. It was originally Connect Kentucky, and it was the group's supposed "success" in mapping broadband deployments in Kentucky that led to the formation of Connected Nation. In other words, not only does Connected Nation actually have experience in Kentucky (unlike those other states), it should already have the maps. And yet it's suddenly claiming that it can't meet the deadlines laid out in the proposal? Art Brodsky questions the claim:
Is the deadline issue what chased Connected Nation out of Kentucky? Perhaps. There may be other factors at play, including that the Commonwealth wanted the vendor to work with all providers, and two of those significant sectors -- cable and municipals -- are not happy with the telephone-dominated nature of Connected Nation. It's also worth noting that the Kentucky state government, aware of the criticism of Connect Kentucky's efforts, was planning a very strict follow-up procedure for the stimulus mapping program. The Request for Proposals mentioned there would be a third-party verification of "any and all data at any location." That condition would seem to conflict with the general Connect philosophy of controlling access to the information. But we digress.
Given all this, it's worth asking: does the state of Kentucky have the broadband mapping data that Connect Kentucky did for it earlier? Can it give that data to other providers? Or must those providers start from scratch as Connect Kentucky takes its data and goes home?
We already pointed to the rather questionable situation in Florida where Connected Nation was "chosen" to run the broadband mapping project (and get a bunch of stimulus cash) over a competitor, despite issuing a bid that was more than twice as high, and without any local endorsements (and... oh yeah... one of the voters, the one who voted on CN by the highest margin just happened to have worked at one of the telcos that now backs CN). It looks like something fishy is going on in Minnesota too. According to Broadband reports, Minnesota's governor, Tim Pawlenty has already signed a letter supporting Connected Nation for mapping broadband in Minnesota... totally pissing off a member of the state's Ultra High Speed Task Force, who the governor (at the demands of the legislature) appointed to look into this very matter. But, why wait for them to investigate the details and choose wisely, when you can just select who you want. Again, Connected Nation has done an amazing job getting politicians to sing its praises, despite serious questions about how its mapping process works.
If there were any gov't body that you would hope would have a handle on basic things like online streaming of video and audio, it would be the FCC, which is supposed to be regulating communications, right? But... that's not how the government works. During yesterday's meeting, in which it announced plans to investigate the wireless industry, apparently the online stream required the use of RealPlayer (welcome to 1999) and only allowed 200 simultaneous connections. Perhaps instead of investigating the wireless carriers, the FCC should investigate its own broadband connections and streaming setup.
It's amazing what a little competition can do. Apparently, up in Canada, cable company Shaw started running a promotion a few months ago where they dropped the price of 15Mbps broadband, 200 channels of TV, or voice service to about $10. However, apparently, this was (conveniently) only done in places where Shaw was going head to head with competitor Novus. In response, Novus put together an amusing marketing campaign, using all sorts of social media, encouraging Shaw customers in other regions (where they couldn't get this phenomenal deal) to contact Shaw to ask why not. It's a bit cheeky, but it makes the point: Shaw appears to be dumping its product in areas where it competes with Novus to cause trouble for Novus via predatory pricing.
Now, I'm all for competition, so I don't necessarily think that such pricing is a bad thing (though, people should be aware that it's unlikely that those prices can last), but that also means that the ad campaign by Novus is fair game as well. Not to Shaw, apparently. The company has now sued Novus for its marketing campaign, claiming that it's defamation. It's difficult to see how it's defamation to point out your competitors' own promotional pricing, but perhaps I'm missing something. Or maybe Shaw just figures that the defamation suit itself will get more publicity for its $10 offer. Marketing via lawsuit? Still, it seems that in going to court, Shaw may open up some legal doors it's best to avoid. A quick stroll through some online sources suggests that Canada does, in fact, have laws against predatory pricing. Getting this whole campaign more attention might also end up drawing the attention of some regulators, too...
It's seemed like a foregone conclusion that the US gov't was going to hand over lots and lots of cash to Connected Nation -- a group favored by the telcos -- to handle all of the "broadband mapping" needed for a better national broadband plan. There have been plenty of concerns about Connected Nation's close relationship with the telcos, as well as its proposal which wouldn't give a very fair or accurate picture of actual broadband offerings around the US. But a funny thing just happened. Connected Nation is really based on Connect Kentucky, where this experiment was first run, and the cable companies there have suddenly stood up to oppose Connect Kentucky, questioning its ability to accurately map broadband in the state. Looks like maybe the telcos should have cut the cablecos in on the deal before backing Connected Nation.
from the keep-quiet-and-take-what-we-give-you dept
We recently expressed our concerns with the state of the government's attempts to increase broadband in the US. Karl Bode, over at Broadband Reports has now hit quite a homerun with his analysis of 5 signs of why the broadband plan is in trouble. The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight number 5 on the list, because it's a big problem:
The FCC continues to hold "workshops" to discuss the direction and scope of the national broadband plan. They're also recording presentations by all of the FCC's "constituents," and offering consumers instantaneous access to all of the documents being presented at the workshop at the Broadband.gov website. All of this is absolutely great. What's not so great?
There are 51 panelists attending the latest 8 workshops. Out of those 51, there are just five people not directly associated with a company: Dave Burstein, Craig Moffett, George Ford, Victor Frost and Henning Schulzrinne. Moffett is a stock jock who's positions (such as upgrades are unnecessary and consumers should be paying more money) are clearly not going to serve anyone but investors. Ford works at the Phoenix Center, an AT&T-funded "think tank," who's job is to parrot AT&T policy positions.
Of the remaining three, only Burstein, a long-time telecom beat reporter, will likely ask any hard questions -- and then again his job is to get scoops, not to represent the public interest. Zero of the originally scheduled attendees acted as public interest witnesses. After complaints by consumer groups, Dr. Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation Of America was added at the last second, but the fact that this was an afterthought raises questions about how "transparent and inclusive" this process really is.
This definitely seems like politics as usual. And it's a problem, not just for the FCC, but for the very businesses involved in these discussions. Ignoring consumer will these days is increasingly a suicide pact. The businesses leading this discussion would be well-served to look at what's happening in other industries (music, newspapers) where business execs have been trying to ignore consumers' rights and interests, in the belief that they have some sort of monopoly control over their market. Those things can disappear quickly, and when stripped of such artificial protections, it's amazing how fast the consumers you mistreated will move elsewhere.
From the beginning, we've questioned the broadband stimulus plan, which was designed not to actually stimulate broadband so much as it was designed to stimulate jobs by getting people to install broadband in places where people weren't that interested in getting broadband. It had little to do with actually increasing broadband in a meaningful way. For that... all we kept hearing about was about how we'd also get some magical broadband mapping solution with hundreds of millions of dollars given to Connected Nation -- an organization favored by incumbents, because it lets them retain control over the mapping process. And, indeed, it looks like the broadband stimulus remains something of a boondoggle. As Stacey Higginbotham notes, there's "no map for success," and the plan itself has been watered down. The mapping plan has been cut back to appease telcos, and the focus of stimulus money will go to those not served by broadband, rather than those underserved by broadband. Installing broadband in far off places where there's no current access may sound good, but those are sparsely populated areas where broadband doesn't do all that much. Meanwhile, folks in densely populated regions have only one or two very slow options. Focusing on boosting broadband competition and speeds in those areas would seem to have a lot more bang for the buck... but doesn't seem to be in the current plans.
With various ISPs implementing forms of capped or metered broadband, you would think it would be standard (if not required) that they also provide consumers with the tools to measure their consumption. Otherwise it seems a bit unfair to say you can only use x amount, but you have no way to know when you've actually done so. But, it seems that hasn't really stopped various ISPs. News.com is noticing that despite capping broadband connections at 250 gigs/month for many months (and rumors and screenshots of it), Comcast still refuses to deliver a broadband monitoring solution for users. If that's the case, it makes you wonder how accurate/reliable its own internal monitors are, and how it can guarantee that users actually get the 250 gigs they're promised. Perhaps I'm missing something, but is it really that difficult to measure broadband usage? If so, that would seem to be yet another reason that ISPs might want to stay away from metered broadband: the cost of developing a system to actually track it.
Via Rob Hyndman, we learn that in the Canadian gov't hearings investigating broadband provider traffic shaping, the providers revealed a lot about their traffic shaping practices that seem to contradict what those same providers claim on their websites well selling connectivity. Even if traffic shaping is to be considered legal, shouldn't broadband providers be required to be honest about what they're offering customers?
Last year, we discussed whether or not Connected Nation broadband mapping group, was really just a big telco boondoggle designed to get gov't money and allow telcos to avoid really providing broadband data. For some reason, politicians are absolutely in love with Connected Nation, though. When I was in Washington DC recently, they talked about it like it was the solution to our country's broadband needs. That seems quite bizarre no matter how you look at it. First, it's just a "mapping" organization and it's run by the telcos themselves, allowing them to continue to fudge the data to make markets look a lot more competitive than they really are. And, yet, thanks to all the political love that goes out to Connected Nation, it looks like they're about to get hundreds of millions of dollars in broadband stimulus money.
Broadband Reports points us to Art Brodsky's "final warning" about Connected Nation, before we hand over tons of tax money to it, and it's not pretty. He notes the ridiculousness of politicians complaining that the gov't agency in charge of getting accurate maps has failed (solely because the telcos refuse to give them the data) and deciding the best "response" to this is to simply hand the whole project (and lots of money) over to the telcos who refused to give the data up in the first place:
The fruit is not the product of the state agency, however. Faison used his announcement to criticize e-NC: "Until now, we have not had a map showing street address availability of broadband. e-NC has generated maps based on information disclosed by the providers which are based on the average number of customers with broadband access in a wire center. Unfortunately, information provided in this fashion does not allow you to see where broadband is and where it is not, it does not allow you to see the holes in the Swiss cheese, and depending on the area the hole may be larger than the cheese."
Note the circular logic here. Faison and other members of his committee are criticizing e-NC for their maps, which were based on information supplied, or not, as it were, by the telecom industry. The state agency has been hampered by AT&T's unwillingness to supply broadband data and its insistence on a very restrictive non-disclosure agreement for information the company did supply.
Instead of pushing the industry to stop stonewalling e-NC, Faison and the others trashed e-NC's work and commended the work of – AT&T, the very company that hamstrung e-NC. Here is Faison’s praise for the industry: "In the face of legislation recommended by the Committee which would have required the providers to disclose precise information to the Legislature for our staff to generate a detailed map of availability, the providers have come together and collectively decided to provide the information through Connected Nation, to not only provide the "street address" map but also to make the map both accessible and interactive through the internet. Special recognition should be given to AT&T, Embarq, Sprint, Time Warner Cable, The Cable Association, the Telephone Co-op association, and Alltel for their work on this matter."
Brodsky goes on to show a Connected Nation map, and note how useless it is in actually giving granular data, and then compares it to another group's map, with much greater detail. I certainly agree that better data is important, but I have to admit I'm still somewhat confused as to what real problem we end up solving with mapping alone? Yes, it will give us more data to figure out just what the current situation is when it comes to broadband deployment, but that's got little to do with actually improving our broadband infrastructure.
As was widely expected, Rep. Eric Massa has introduced a bill that would outlaw metered billing and create a bunch of other regulatory hoops ISPs need to jump through on pricing plans. We're no fans of metered broadband by any stretch of the imagination. It stifles innovation and limits the usefulness of the internet. Contrary to what some broadband providers will claim, it's not at all necessary and has nothing to do with preventing the network from being overrun or to stop part-time users from "subsidizing" everyone else. The Broadband Reports link above walks through how silly each of those arguments are. It also explains why this is a pure money grab. Flat-rate pricing has been quite profitable for the providers, but they want more. Note that nowhere in these usage plans do they talk about cheaper tiers. Beyond just being about a straight money grab, part of the desire is to use this to reduce competition for online video by making it more expensive for anyone other than the ISP to deliver video services.
That said... this bill seems laughable and is unlikely to go anywhere. The real issue here (as it has been all along) is the lack of meaningful competition in the broadband space. Get meaningful competition into the market, and this whole issue goes away. But that's not what Massa's bill does. It just adds regulatory burdens to ISPs without doing much to get at the root of the issue.
Wired broadband is often compared to the highway system, in that both are "natural monopolies" in that it often doesn't make sense to build competing setups, since you really only want one massive infrastructure product. With highways, you don't want to rip up too many parts of the country, and with broadband you don't want to let every company get rights of way to dig up everyone's yard. However, some politicians are pushing a rather simple, and totally reasonable plan that says if someone is already building or modifying a highway with federal funds, then they should also run conduit for fiber optic cables (they don't have to run the fiber themselves, just install the conduit). The idea -- and this makes a surprising amount of sense -- is that if the road is already being dug up, why not put conduit for future fiber there, rather than having to redig up areas to run fiber in the future. Sensible thinking from government officials? How much do you want to bet this goes nowhere?
Almost all of the issues facing broadband in this country (our slow speeds and high prices relative to other countries, questions about "neutrality" and things like customers being forced into broadband tiers) are really symptoms of a lack of significant competition in many markets. Many customers really only have one or two options, neither of which they like (I'm in that camp myself). Yet, the broadband providers want to make everyone believe it's a really competitive market. That's why they've done everything possible to block the FCC from getting accurate data about actual broadband deployments and competition over the years. Their most recent plan has been about pitching the idea of an organization called "Connected Nation" to "map" broadband penetration. However, as has been discussed previously, Connected Nation seems more like a front for the big telcos to try to pretend there's significant competition... and an increasing number of doubts are being raised about Connected Nation's efforts -- even as it seems to remain a darling of DC politicians. However its "mapping" still won't look at house-by-house penetration and competition (by demand from the broadband providers) and the collected data will remain proprietary, rather than open.
Meanwhile, Verizon has put up a video claiming to explain why there's plenty of competition in broadband in the US, but it does so by pulling a neat little trick: rather than defining the market as DSL and cable providers, it dumps wireless providers into the mix... So when you add mobile data providers, yes, there are more players in the space, but that ignores the fact that (1) many of the mobile players and broadband players are actually connected (i.e., AT&T has both, as does Verizon) and (2) that the cellular wireless broadband providers are all greatly limited, and use terms of service that tend to forbid using the data account as a primary connection. In other words, they're not really part of the same market at all.
But, most importantly, the video fails to back up its thesis that the US is "one of the most successful broadband markets in the world." It says there's lots of competition, investment in new technologies and consumers are getting more as prices go down. That suggests there is, in fact, some competition in the market -- a point pretty much everyone agrees on. But it does nothing to compare the US to other markets around the world that have much more competition, much more investment and much greater consumer value per dollar spent. Just saying that because there's some competition, the US is one of the most successful in the world, doesn't back up the thesis at all. It's like saying that you won a baseball game because you fielded nine guys. You forgot about the actual game.
We've been receiving a series of different reports from different folks about a recent interview that new FTC boss, Jon Leibowitz, gave on CSPAN. Leibowitz has been in the FTC for a while, though, he's yet another former entertainment industry lobbyist in the administration (he was VP of Congressional Affairs for the MPAA from 2000 to 2004). So far, however, he seems to be taking quite reasonable positions on a variety of topics (though, some questionable views on other areas). Questioned about Google's dominance in the market (something that the FTC has been investigating for a while now), he pointed out that dominance is "the American way" and not necessarily an antitrust violation:
Google has certainly has a dominant position in search advertising. There's no doubt about that. From our perspective, just having a dominant position doesn't in any way violate the law. It's if you do something -- as the Justice Department in the 1990s alleged that Microsoft did -- to exclude competitors illegally, that's when it becomes a problem.
If you get to a dominant position or a monopoly position by virtue of your own acumen, that's really the American way.
Then there's broadband competition, where he definitely does appear to be concerned about the lack of competition and the lack of transparency from current broadband providers:
We believe consumers need to have notice and consent about what they're getting. It's very, very important that these providers tell consumers about the speed they're getting, and whether (ISPs) are making any types of management decisions in terms of the network that affect consumers....
In a perfect marketplace where you had more competitors, you wouldn't need the government necessarily to be terribly involved. Particularly in the consumer protection area, we have a big roll to play. Broadband is a deregulated product. That's good, we like deregulation generally. But when you have deregulation, you also have law enforcement to make sure people do the right thing.
I think some of the more enlightened companies do do opt-in. I think a lot of them don't. I think the better practice is always opt in.
On the whole, then, he seems to not be too quick to bash companies for being successful, and seems to recognize that competition and transparency are important issues. Those are all good things. There are some fears however, that he's a bit quick on the trigger when it comes to regulating over that behavioral advertising issue, and doesn't seem to mind metered broadband, so long as customers know what they're getting.
RSS
Twitter
