Good evening. Here’s a bit I’d never expect to read from the San Francisco Chronicle about Sprint’s begging for the FCC to pick winners and losers, instead of just standing aside and letting AT&T and T-Mobile get together:
At a time when wireless service is getting cheaper and more innovative, there is no reason for a Depression-era bureaucracy like the FCC to step in and regulate a dynamic and competitive marketplace.
Well put, I say. Even if the FCC’s Section 706 report on Broadband competition is a work of fiction. When 85% of US Census Tracts have two or more broadband providers according to your own numbers, and 98% have one or more, to give the industry a failing grade on infrastructure is a politically-motivated lie. The FCC is not doing its job honesty. They’re looking to regulate a booming industry (broadband user at home have gone up from 8 to 200 million Americans since 2000) to impose a socialist agenda. We must stop them and call out the lies.
Don’t believe me? Ask FCC Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker. McDowell says that “America has made impressive improvements” since 2000. Baker says she is “troubled” by the failing grade. They know the truth, and the FCC isn’t telling it.
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California’s Democrats, having refused to get tough with the unions who coincidentally will fund their re-election campaigns, are still determined to raise taxes. So they continue to push for an unconstitutional Amazon Tax on the Internet that just might cost the state more than it brings in, in the long run. They’re playing with “thresholds” to try to focus the bill on specific companies like Amazon, narrowing the tax base and making the idea even worse! So yes, as Calbuzz says, it’s still a bad deal for California.
And just think, soon the rest of the country going to face the same problem as Dick Durbin’s Internet Tax would target Amazon nationally.
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After that flurry of activity online, we seem be having a bit of a slow Friday. It’s no wonder: we have a long fight ahead with respect to the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, a process that Mike Wendy calls Legalized Extortion. And when property rights are made contingent on acceptance of a goverment-dictated consent degree, it’s hard to argue with the thrust of Wendy’s point.
Scary thought for all users of SecurID, after the RSA breakin: What if SecurID has a backdoor? If it does, then there could be real danger ahead for all its users.
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So the top story this week is going to be the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA. There’s a lot being said about it, about unions, about competition, but the story I’m seeing emerging is that this deal is about spectrum. AT&T sees in T-Mobile a way to get the spectrum it needs going forward. In fact, even power grabbing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said to the CTIA that this is an issue:
If we do nothing in the face of the looming spectrum crunch, many consumers will face higher prices – as the market is forced to respond to supply and demand – and frustrating service – connections that drop, apps that run unreliably or too slowly.
So not only is T-Mobile a sensible purchase for AT&T in the short run, due to their use of similar technology, but in the long run this is the kind of purchase AT&T may need to be able to compete with Verizon. Verizon, of course, already got more spectrum when it bought the C Block of old television spectrum in 2008.
So if we want competition now and in the future, we need to let the deal happen.
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This edition of Tech at Night is unfortunately delayed. It’s almost 4am now as I’m able to start this (7am eastern) because I had a bout of Net Neutrality to deal with. All websites loaded at the same speed on my DSL: zero. Total downtime.
So, late or not, let’s go. As I warned on Monday, Net Neutrality is forcing ISPs like AT&T to impose reasonable caps on their services. Known freeloader Netflix demands that AT&T users who don’t use Netflix subsidize those who do, which is of course completely unfair, which is why AT&T isn’t allowing it. Anyway, the rate caps aren’t that small, and $10 per 50GB over isn’t bad at all. Ask any wireless Internet user what you’ll get for $10.
More FCC power grabs are on the way, it seems. The FCC has what you might call a conflict of interest: the wireless market must be declared non-competitive for the FCC to be allowed to intervene. Who decides whether that market is competitive or not though? Yup, the FCC. So Fred Campbell warns that the FCC may ignore the Congress and just say whatever it takes to do whatever it wants. Boy am I glad we have Republicans in DC who are on top of the FCC already. This may take swift action to combat.
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When a person feels an earthquake, it tends to come in one of two varieties. There’s the brief, sharp jolt that comes from being near a minor earthquake, where one receives the localized high-frequency waves, and there’s the low rumbling that comes from being further away a larger earthquake, where one receives the low-frequency waves that travel further. Earthquakes strong enough to defy these two categories, strong enough to matter and close enough to be felt fully, are rare.
Throughout my entire life, there has been only one earthquake that left me with genuine concern for my surroundings, if only for a couple of seconds. This is true despite my living my entire life in earthquake country, apparently across town from an offshoot of the mighty San Andreas itself. That earthquake was an otherwise unremarkable earthquake in 2005. About 16 miles away from me a magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck Yucapia. This earthquake lasted just long enough, and shook just hard enough, that as it went on I was concerned for serious damage if it lasted too long or got any stronger. Fortunately it was only a 4.9 and did no such thing. However when it started I was sitting right where I am right now, at my desk. Though at the time I used a plain, old 6 foot plastic table as a desk, its top warped from my old, heavy computer resting on it for years. That warping, combined with the shaking, was causing a cup I had on the desk to slide.
When you’re used to earthquakes, they don’t cause you to panic. But when they hit, any sensible person will pause and evaluate the situation. That’s what I did when this one hit. I remember sitting there, staring at my cup as it shook, and realizing that this could be a big one. I had a moment of genuine surprise before I finally grabbed my cup to keep it from falling. And then, as the shaking continued, I got seriously concerned… just in time for the shaking to stop, and life to go on.
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I know nobody wants to talk about Net Neutrality right now when unions are the issue giving everyone warm feelings right now, but there were important hearings held Wednesday. Greg Walden’s House subcommittee held hearings on HJ Res 37, which disapproves of Net Neutrality to invoke the Congressional Review act and overrule the FCC’s power grab.
On top of that, the FCC responded to the demands from Fred Upton, Lee Terry, and Walden to give an economic justification for Net Neutrality. The response was unsatisfactory, and the Republicans concluded, in a statement that in fact called Net Neutrality a “power-grab”: “The truth is imposing these rules will cause more harm than good by stifling innovation, investments and jobs.” They’re right, too, notwithstanding Nancy Pelosi’s ignorant bleating.
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Good evening, I wrote in my best Alfred Hitchcock impression. Top story as we go into the weekend: our friendly neighborhood House Republicans are pressing on with their oversight of the FCC and Net Neutrality in particular. The resolution disapproving of Net Neutrality is postponed, but instead we’re getting pressure on the FCC to justify its actions economically. Good on Greg Walden, Fred Upton, and Lee Terry!
Meanwhile, up in Vermont, we’ve got a case study going on demonstrating why we don’t want industrial policy in the volatile, constantly innovating telecommunications world. Government grants to favored firms tend to favor those firms and their investors, not the people intended to get the help. Vermont is trying to pump government money into Universal Access, and failing. Let’s not repeat that nationally, please.
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Remember when the Communication Workers of America backed Net Neutrality in the mildest way possible, despite the fact that it risked killing CWA jobs? Well here’s their payoff: CWA is all-in for the Internet Tax.
Of course, the left isn’t calling it the Internet Tax. Instead it’s “Universal Service Fund reform,” by which they mean finding a way to get more money into the so-called Universal Service Fund for rural phone access, then spend that money on state-run Internet access. How will they get that money? With “contributions” of course, by which FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski actually means USF taxes.
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On this date in the year 1848, in the conquered and occupied Federal District of Mexico, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed by representatives of US President James Polk and interim Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, ending the war between the two countries.
By every possible measure, the war ended as a decisive victory for the United States and a humiliating defeat for Mexico. As a result of the treaty, Mexico ceded all rights to territory north of the Rio Grande and the Gila River, including all of California, Nevada, Utah, and Texas, parts of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, as well as the parts of Arizona and New Mexico not later bought in the Gadsden Purchase. From Mexico’s perspective, a perspective that recognized neither the revolutions in Texas and California nor the Annexation of Texas, the country lost over half of its prewar territory.
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