In the category of onerous regulation, it appears that the Israeli Knesset has approved a new law that would mandate email portability despite the fact that email was never designed to be portable.  This is similar to a failed attempt in the United States when a freelance writer Gail Mortenson petitioned the FCC for an immediate [...]

The FCC cites the $41/month average cost of broadband as an obstacle to broadband adoption, yet broadband costs as little as $15/month and is 20 times faster than dial-up services. The real reason for lagging broadband adoption seems to be dirt cheap dial-up services, virtually free local calling, and the fact that dial-up is “good enough” for nearly all websites and email.

Larry Dignan at ZDNet has done some excellent investigative journalism on the Devil Mountain Software (DMS) scandal and the story gets more bizarre by the minute.  It’s an extremely complex fiasco that needs to be read to be believed, but the gist of the story goes as follows. It all started with a dubious “Alarming” report from [...]

The Internet is fundamentally biased against long distance communications by giving them much lower speed limits in data transmissions than short distance communications. But this is a good design feature because it encourages more efficient short range file transfers and this is precisely what has happened with Content Delivery Networks.

High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Status as of December 31, 2008
Federal Communications Commission
Industry Analysis and Technology Division Wireline Competition Bureau
February 2010

Google was quite upset that Apple didn’t approve of their Google Voice application on the iPhone due to the fact that Apple didn’t like Google replacing some core Apple iPhone functionality.  Now it seems that Google has just bought one of the best email applications on the iPhone called reMail only to kill it on [...]

Network bandwidth costs can vary tens or even hundreds of times depending on various factors. These factors must be taken into account for any comparison of broadband to be useful.

By urging a move from non-discrimination to unreasonable discrimination, NARUC recognizes that “big dumb pipes” are a model for the Internet that was abandoned years ago. NARUC also realizes you cannot have a neutral internet if only one side of the content/access equation has to abide by those rules.

Next Generation Connectivity: A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world
Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society
February 2010 Final Report

The main argument for this type of a network is to give high bandwidth applications a home to be tested because the theory was that broadband networks in the US were constricting applications to very low bandwidth. But does broadband really lag applications, or is it really the other way around?