There are reports that Google is tracking people’s Wi-Fi MAC addresses and will be mapping them onto Google Maps. The MAC address which can uniquely identify a person’s laptop, smartphone, or any other device with 802.11 Wi-Fi capability.

The old telephone wire may have several more years of life left in the age of hundred Mbps broadband because Alcatel-Lucent has achieved 300 Mbps performance at distances of 400 meters, and 100 Mbps at 1000 meters. The technology could be commercially available by 2011 and will be a formidable competitor to Cable.

BitTorrent’s CEO continues to spread the word that the BitTorrent Micro Transport Protocol is “network friendly” even though the company knows this to be false. The test data shows it’s false, and BitTorrent producte managers don’t dispute the data.

Markham Erikson of the Open Internet Coalition says they want Title II “reclassification”, but he doesn’t want to go back to the days of Title II “Open Access” which required broadband operators to provide competing ISPs with access to the Broadband transport infrastructure. This diverges from Net Neutrality supporters like Public Knowledge, the Berkman Center, and Susan Crawford.

The claim that the DC Circuit has somehow “stripped” the FCC of all ancillary powers and that even the National Broadband Plan is in jeopardy has no basis in reality. Two previous FCC Chairmen debunk this notion and an analysis of the DC Circuit ruling confirmed their assessment.

Is Title II reclassification really the silver bullet that the Open Internet Coalition and others say it is? When we examine the actual history of Title II classification with regard to broadband, we see that it only applies to the transport infrastructure and never the Internet service riding on top of it.

Now that Google is factoring in site speed into their search rankings, it is even more obvious that the Internet has never been a place of equal outcome. It highlights the fact that search rankings and content have always been king. With the cost of bandwidth being so low and often paid for by Google, the concern over premium service network connectivity in the debate on Net Neutrality is irrational.

Rasmussen’s latest poll of Internet users found that 63% of Internet users oppose FCC regulation of the Internet. The polls conducted in 2008 were far more favorable to FCC Internet regulation but support has dropped 22%. Considering how the FCC’s handling of the Comcast case was far more contentious than it needed to be, this new found opposition from consumers seems understandable.

Now that the court has ruled against the FCC’s jurisdiction over the Vuze versus Comcast matter, how did we get into this mess in the first place and could it have been avoided? In light of all the misconceptions about Comcast’s actions, perhaps it could have been.

With average wireless taxes pegged at 16% according to MyWireless.org, the FCC is proposing an additional $1 per month tax on broadband services to fund an inter-operable public safety network. This seems to run counter to the goal of the FCC to increase broadband penetration because piling more consumption taxes on broadband can only have the opposite affect. We tax cigarettes like this because we want fewer people to smoke but do we really want fewer people on broadband?