We’ve heard this before

Posted by Richard Bennett

Check out this essay from The Atlantic, “Closing the Digital Frontier”: Digital freedom, of the monetary and First Amendment varieties, may in retrospect have become our era’s version of Manifest Destiny, our Turner thesis. Embracing digital freedom was an exaltation, a kind of noble calling. In a smart essay in the journal Fast Capitalism in [...]

Internet Congestion

Posted by Richard Bennett

I posted the second part of my Internet congestion article on High Tech Forum: This is the second part of an examination of the nature of congestion on packet switched networks such as the Internet. In the first part, Internet Congestion 101, we looked the at an idea expressed on Chris Marsden’s blog regarding the [...]

Wrong Way

Posted by Richard Bennett

The FCC’s “Third Way” rhetoric is especially interesting to ITIF because the notion that a third way was needed is something ITIF president Rob Atkinson and current Obama advisor Phil Weiser introduced in a 2006 paper. The rhetoric of the third way doesn’t align with the use of a Title II classification, however, because Section [...]

FCC Regulates Internet, Film Here

Posted by Richard Bennett

News leaked out earlier today to the effect that the FCC has decided to pursue a Title II regulatory program for the Internet, treating it in effect as if it were a telephone network. Others have called this approach “the nuclear option,” but I think it’s less severe, more like the 9/11 attacks on New [...]

eComm Presentation

Posted by Richard Bennett

I gave a presentation at eComm last week on the challenges in building a mobile Internet building on themes I explored in my recent ITIF report, Going Mobile. As I didn’t have much time, I skipped over some of the policy content, so I’m uploading my slides for interested parties to peruse. FacebookTwitterDiggItTechnoratiDel.icio.us

Going Mobile: Technology and Policy Issues in the Mobile Internet

Posted by Richard Bennett

I’m presenting a report on the Mobile Internet at the ITIF Global Command Center in Washington bright and early Tuesday morhing: The Internet is changing. In a few short years, Internet use will come predominately from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets rather than traditional PCs using fixed broadband. A fully mobile broadband Internet [...]

Speaking of privacy

Posted by Richard Bennett

I went to the FTC’s second privacy workshop yesterday in Berkeley, and found it a generally interesting and worthwhile event, although it did exhibit some of the familiar patterns. Privacy, like net neutrality, isn’t as much a coherent issue as a grab-bag of grievances about a number of loosely connected concerns. Privacy is even more [...]

Open Internet Rules

Posted by Richard Bennett

Incidentally, ITIF filed comments with the FCC in the Open Internet rule-making: The FCC should proceed with caution in conducting its inquiry into Open Internet rules, according to comments filed by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation today. All the evidence suggests that the Internet is thriving: network operators are investing and new applications, devices, [...]

Chairman Genachowski Goes to San Francisco

Posted by Richard Bennett

GigaOm sponsored a conversation with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowki at their Intergalactic Headquarters in San Francisco today. Watch live streaming video from gigaomtv at livestream.com I asked the net neutrality question toward the end, and applauded the Chairman for the way he’s transformed the FCC. Genachowski brought some of his best staffers with him, and [...]

FCC Broadband Deployment Research workshop

Posted by Richard Bennett

The long-awaited video of the FCC’s December 10 workshop Review and Discussion of Broadband Deployment Research is finally on-line. This workshop featured discussions of Yochai Benkler’s controversial Berkman Center report on unbundled DSL and Bob Atkinson’s report on current broadband investment dynamics in the US. As the FCC put it: As part of the Commission’s [...]