ISPs in the US now feature speed tiers north of 50-100 mbps. Yet Speedtest.net data indicates the US has a low average speed. That doesn’t mean the US is falling behind, it simply demonstrates that most people will pay the minimum that affords them a good experience. Do they need 50mbps to watch YouTube or play Xbox Live? Nope. Not at all.

For Art Brodsky, it’s all about the vibe, man… But the fact is, engineering makes the network possible, it keeps you from getting fragged by less skilled players, and makes your video run. But it won’t make you feel warm or fuzzy.

The FCC has said the “third way” option would look just like wireless regulation. That shouldn’t make ISPs feel any better given the FCCs inability to find competition in a thriving market, and its multiple inquiries into pricing and business models.

Like the OECD report, Akamai’s State of the Internet contains skewed data. All of these comparative studies, should be taken for what they are – small pieces of information that paint a very big picture.

Cecilia Kang’s coverage of technology for the Washington Post is one of the inside jokes in telecom policy circles. She is, without a doubt, proof positive of bias in journalism. On any given day, she’ll put up three or four posts. If you read them closely, you start to see clear patterns emerge.

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.

Back in January I wrote a post titled “‘Gamers For Lag’ Weighs In On Net Neutrality“. The post argued the pro-net neutrality position adopted by the Electronic Consumers Association (an organization of which I am a member) would actually be detrimental to gamers.

They didn’t reply directly to the post, but we wanted to be fair to ECA. We asked, nearly two months ago, if we could submit some questions on the topic and have them address our concerns over their network neutrality position. The questions were pretty straightforward, but get straight to the heart of our concerns.

Amtrak is actively blocking downloads and video streams – going so far as to prevent YouTube embeds in pages you load, and redirecting links to downloads.

A lot of people like to claim ISPs are only interested in network management as a pretense for preventing competition with their video offering. Yet here is a perfect example of a privately owned network choosing to manage congestion by limiting downloads and video – absent any competing video service.

When the FCC announced its “Future of Media” hearing, it was described in rather contradictory terms.  Steven Waldman, who is heading up the project, had this to say: The starting point for this effort, of course, is the First Amendment.  A free press, independent of government control, is a foundational principle of our democracy. Any [...]

Working Assets/Credo Mobile, a telecommunications company, freely lists the $45,520 they gave to Free Press in 2007. At the time, according to their 990 filing, Free Press’ campaign Director Tim Karr was making $80,000 per year. So the Working Assets contribution amounted to more than half of Tim’s salary.

Tim’s claim that neither he nor Free Press have taken business money is demonstrably false.