Month: May 2010

Archaic Telecom

FCC’s Third Way Approach

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As expected, the FCC has decided to reclassify Internet broadband as a telecommunications service. It’s approach is to apply Title II common carrier requirements to Internet broadband, but forbear most of the provisions except six, those associated with denial of service and unreasonable practices (in other words, net neutrality).

You can read the legal theory behind the reclassification and forbearance here.

Updated: After reading through the legal reasoning behind the FCC decision, I was nodding in agreement with some of the ideas being explored. One is that different parts of Internet communications require separate regulatory approaches.Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

FCC Reclassification: Vonage, Nay.

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Based on “anonymous sources”, the New York Times is reporting that the FCC will reclassify cable broadband today as a hybrid beast, part information  and part telecommunications service. This is based on the well known principle that voice (a transmission that doesn’t involve a change in format) can infect the information part (a format changing transmission) and… forget it, it’s too painful to go into.

So you would think that information and content providers would uniformly welcome the FCC’s new classification scheme as a way to preserve net neutrality? Not so fast.

As I had argued in an earlier post, facility-less VoIP carrier  are not going to be very excited about having the legacy telecommunications legal superstructure of Title II placed over them.

If you dig into recent FCC filings, you’ll see that at least one major VoIP provider, Vonage,  has concerns about the FCC’s helping hand.Continue reading

@NYC

Last Night’s NYC Tech Meetup

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I was lucky to get one of the few seats that suddenly became available for what I had thought was a sold-out  New York City Tech Meetup. I assume Spring fever infected a few early RSVPers. Anyway, I grabbed the opportunity, and took the train into Manhattan.

It was worth it. These events—it is my second— are a little bit of a grab bag. In my mind, the theme last night could be described as  quirky.  My impressions were  heavily colored by RandomDorm, the college video chat service, and stickybits, the bar-code-the-world company.  I think both will find their markets, but I just have to process them a little more before I can say anything else.

There’s one that stood out and was familiar as the sound of a batter swatting a ball. The start-up is  GameChanger, and they have a free iPhone app (Android and Blackberry planned ) that lets the zillions of school coaches score their team statistics in real-time.

Continue reading

Archaic Telecom

And one more thing … SIP

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I have been writing lately about my experiences setting up several unified communications applications, most recently one involving an open government project with hosted service provider Tropo. The projects were cell-phone centric, and assumed I would be issuing commands into my aged Samsung model while I was managing other activities—driving, drinking coffee while driving, etc.

I do engage with larger devices, and with my new MacBook Pro I am now evolving a nomadic lifestyle. In between appointments, I’ll pitch camp at Starbucks or another WiFi friendly oasis and fit in a few licks of work before I pack up.Continue reading