Stories about: FCC

The U.S. should aim for 100M bps (bits per second) of broadband available to all U.S. residents by 2012 and 1G bps by 2015 in order to catch up to other countries that are moving forward with broadband rollouts, recommends a study released Monday.

With regard to the free exchange of information over the Internet, we, the people, have mostly managed to hold our ground. We can thank activists, hacktivists, legislators saying "no, thanks" to money from the entertainment lobbies, and forward-thinking artists and content distributors--I'm proud that writers and publishers took the lead on this--who recognise that reach is the currency of the digital age.

Verizon's proposed US$28 billion acquisition of privately held Alltel signals the start of hurricane season for wireless providers. And this season might just include the perfect storm: Technology shifts, consolidation and business-model changes are combining to reconfigure the world of wireless.

When Google launched its web-based e-mail service (Gmail) on April 1, 2004, many people thought it was an April Fool's Day joke, and perhaps with good reason. That same day, the company had posted plans to open a research facility on the moon.

Comcast announced this week that it will no longer target individual protocols for traffic shaping, and will instead slow Web traffic for individual users who consume a "disproportionate" amount of bandwidth.

Largely due to the continued dumb statements and actions of a few apparently PR-challenged carriers, the network neutrality issue is alive and well in the United States. Since any issue like this seems to create a legislative void that must be filled, we now have at least two network neutrality related bills for Congress to consider. If one liked legislation-based solutions, merging these bills and tossing out a bit of Federal Communications Commission make-work would not be too bad, but there would still be some questions left unanswered.

Broadcom this week has unveiled its latest 802.11n chip for wireless LAN access points, with advances that promise lower power demands and lower prices for enterprise-class products that could be available by year-end.

Speakers at the US Wireless Communications Association (WCA) meeting this week threw out a flurry of suggestions to improve both public and private broadband access in the United States, from public investment to holding new spectrum auctions to allowing unlicensed use of TV "white spaces."

Some VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and mobile phone service providers are riding free when connecting to the traditional telephone network in the US, potentially costing carriers billions of dollars, according to testimony at a Senate hearing this week.

Comcast's slowing of peer-to-peer traffic appeared to be more widespread than the company has disclosed, the chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission said this week.

Fighting insomnia one night, all Robert Topolski wanted to do was send digital recordings of 19th-century barbershop quartet music to some friends.