I discovered an excellent group blog, Wetmachine, that covers telecom policy, technology, and software. The telecom part is written by Harold Feld, a public-interest attorney, in his Tales of the Sausage Factory—aka the FCC.
Feld provides excellent background on the recent reclassification of broadband transmission as Title II. Once you’ve digested Feld’s enumeration of the many flavors of telecommunications, you can follow his nuanced arguments that reclassification will not mean, as some say, the Facebook, Twitter, and the whole darn Internet will now be regulated.He gets extra bonus points for referring to AT&T’s brazen attempt a few years back to avoid paying access charges to local carriers because calls for its then phone-to-phone IP service were carried over the Internet. The FCC was right to designate this as a common carrier service even though VoIP “pixie dust” was involved.
(And there’s also an oblique reference to AT&T’s cooties argument regarding Frame Relay. Long ago, in the 1990’s, AT&T was arguing FOR regulation regarding Frame Relay and other enhanced services, so that new upstart network players would be tariffed. Enough…)
He strikes just the right attitude (bemused, optimism tinged with wariness) towards the FCC and telecom. I approve!
Related articles by Zemanta
- Art Brodsky: The Big Lie About The FCC’s Open Internet Plan (And A Dirty Little Secret) (huffingtonpost.com)
