If I were a dedicated blogger, I’d have a lot to write about today.
The Markey hearing yesterday featured an extremely bizarre reminiscence by the Chairman on the good old days when he championed the fight against the black rotary dial telephone. Unfortunately, that was 30 years ago and Markey hasn’t found a good fight since then, hence the dearth of sponsors for his silly Internet regulation bill.
Google and Comcast are in bed together, with both ponying up serious money to build a nation-wide WiMax network friendly to Google’s advertising.
And Comcast confirms they’re thinking about some usage-sensitive pricing that will at last penalize bandwidth hogs on their network. This is the plan that the big regulators have asked broadband carriers to consider, so be careful what you wish for.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D, Google) is threatening ISPs with loss of safe harbor if they don’t bend to the will of his sponsor. Don’t make too much of this, as it’s an Ars Technica story by a very biased reporter.
MAP and AT&T are holding a series of policy forums on net neutrality in Silicon Valley, where nobody cares about politics but the ladies. This should be interesting.
One conclusion we can draw from this sudden outburst of net neutrality stories: 2008 is an election year, and we’re at the phase where all the fringe causes are trotted out for their focus group effects to be measured. Net neutrality is being sized up for traction relative to corn-based ethanol, among other things.