Google was for government regulation of broadband before it was against it. That’s the only conclusion to reach after reading the Internet firm’s joint FCC filing with the Media Access Project and Dish Network earlier this month, and its joint Wall Street Journal op-ed with Verizon yesterday.

Losey, Li, and Meinrath compare data on various countries’ national broadband plans to the U.S. plan released in March. They note that the U.S. plan calls for a “universalization target” that would make broadband speeds of 4 megabits-per-second downloads and 1-Mbps uploads available to everyone. The other top speed goal is to deliver 100-Mbps downloads and 50-Mbps uploads to 100 million homes by the year 2020.

In another reaction to AT&T’s Femotocell product called “MicroCell”, Stephen Shankland at CNET proposed that AT&T give away femtocells to consumers.  [UPDATE - If you want to learn more about AT&T's femtocell, Anandtech has this awesome detailed article on it]. Unlike some of the more irrational demands that Femtocells should be free, Shankland actually makes a [...]

The words “we were wrong” apparently are not in the vocabulary at Free Press and Public Knowledge. The groups say Sprint is blocking text messages for Haiti earthquake relief, but the wireless carrier is just following procedures designed to protect its customers from phony charities. The manufactured controversy has exposed the two faces of the “public interest” groups.

Seth Cooper of the Free State Foundation believes the constitutional principle of protecting free speech eventually will lead to deregulation of video content. He cited a federal court case in early March backing the FCC’s authority to make regulatory rulings in the “video marketplace but argues that in future cases, the First Amendment will trump those rules as being obsolete.

Last week in Washington, Andrew Keen of Arts + Labs interviewed Progress and Freedom Foundation president Adam Thierer about the “free culture” movement. He tackled three basic questions: 1) What is free culture? 2) Who is pushing the idea? 3) What is the content solution in the digital age?

Are ISPs really just a bunch of greedy job and investment killers with some of the fattest profit in the economy? When we actually look at the facts, the anger is simply irrational because ISPs make relatively low margins, invest heavily in infrastructure, and is one of the biggest employers of the economy.

Sprint was accused by Free Press and Public Knowledge (who got the story so wrong it’s laughable) of threatening to turn off a Catholic relief agencies Haiti disaster short code because, according to Free Press, the carrier wanted full control over giving on its platform. According to Public Knowledge, Sprint actually turned off the code – like I said, laughably wrong. When contacted by Ars, Sprint explained what actually happened.

“Architects of the legislation that binds the nation’s communications infrastructure in the year 2010 were born in the 1870s and 1880s. There is talk today in Washington about categorizing technologies and platforms developed in the 21st century under different Titles of legislation written by people born in the 19th century. We don’t need to jettison [...]

With the release of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, we continue to hear all sorts of depressing stories about the sorry state of American broadband Internet access. But is it true? International comparisons in such a fast-moving arena as tech and communications are tough. I don’t pretend it is easy to boil down a hugely [...]