There’s been a push lately to attack punitive, unfair taxes on wireless service, one that Erick Erickson signed onto, and was advertised at RedState. Ironically I only found out about it because I saw the ads while working on the code side of the site, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Anyway, that movement seems to have gotten a win, as the House passed the Wireless Tax Fairness Act, a 5 year freeze on new wireless taxes. Sounds good to me.
SOPA, the House answer to the Senate’s PROTECT IP, isn’t dead yet, unfortunately. This attempt to have the US government censor the Internet, and in fact forcibly steal domains from people, and cut off Americans from the rest of the world online, incredibly is being considered by House Republicans. Copyright apparently is sufficient justification for government of unlimited size. Kill the bill.
And what’s worse is that Republicans are being dragged along as dupes to help Democrats continue to justify huge Hollywood fundraisers by smacking the Internet around to favor the movie industry. Which is probably why the MPAA is trying to stifle criticism of the bill. Kill the bill.
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Wireless competition continues to grow, as Cricket edges closer to 4G LTE. I’m losing track of how many 4G providers we’re starting to rack up. So yes, the people who tell you smaller and regional carriers are not an acceptable substitute for national carriers? They’re selling you something.
That something is an attack on federalism via the Sprint/Soros/Obama/Holder attack on AT&T and the rights of T-Mobile shareholders.
Which is why it’s bad news that these coordinated lawsuits are continuing. It’s ridiculous: both C Spire and Sprint are in better shape than iPhone-less T-Mobile.
At least there’s good news in new and continuing Republican efforts against previous power grabs.
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Sorry if you missed Tech at Night on Friday. I was under the weather. But I’m back, and with so much to review.
How about legislation, good and bad? Well, mostly bad.
- Senate Democrats continue to push for senseless regulation of 4G Internet speeds, hindering vital new technology to increase high-speed Internet competition in America. Worse, Democrat Anna Eshoo is piling on in the House.
- Mary Bono Mack continues her push on privacy and security even though I don’t really see a government role in that, at least when it comes to private sector data. High profile cases do not good models make.
- Joe Barton wants to harass Amazon now, once again proving we did the right thing in not letting him head up Energy and Commerce. Seriously: If you’re allying with a Massachusetts Democrat, reconsider.
- When government comes preaching fairness, watch out: the push for a nationally-enforced Internet sales tax continues, which of course is just the first step to a joint state-national sales tax akin to the Canadian Harmonized Sales Tax. It’ll start at just one percent, I’m telling you. “One penny, for the children,” or “for seniors,” or even “for the Global War on Terror.” And then it will grow.
- We’re deeply in debt and running a massive deficit, but it’s time for a new program on “distracted driving”!
- OK, one piece of good news: Kay Bailey Hutchison is pressing the issue in the budget supercommittee of all places. encouraging voluntary incentive auctions of spectrum is great news no matter what the context, as we need all we can get. Giving the D block, previously proven to be unwanted at auction, over to civil defense is also good news, I believe. We learned that on 9/11. Look, I’d be all for auctioning it… if we hadn’t already tried and failed.
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Net Neutrality goes to court. Great news, too: Verizon’s preferred venue won the lottery, and the Net Neutrality fight will happen in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. This is, of course, the same circuit that slapped down Net Neutrality last time in Comcast v FCC.
Oh, but here’s a big surprise. Despite the FCC claiming previously that “We look forward to defending our open Internet framework in court,” they’re actually doing everything they can not to have to defend it in court by attempting to get Verizon’s appeal dismissed. So much for that day in court.
As for Sprint Nextel, even as they sue claiming competition will be impaired if T-Mobile and AT&T join up, their own strategy update presentation admitted the truth. See the 9:46AM slide, showing the growth rate of the year-on-year net postpaid subscribers across the top four providers. In 2010, Sprint was the only one to accelerate, while AT&T saw the biggest drop in its growth. In the first half of 2011, Verizon and Sprint are accelerating, while would-be deal makers AT&T and T-Mobile look on pace to notch their third and fifth (respectively) years of slower growth.
Yes, that’s right. Sprint’s gaining subscribers at a faster clip, and is trying to keep the laggards from combining to keep the pressure (and 4G prices) up. And they’ve gotten the Barack Obama/Eric Holder Department of Justice to help, using your taxpayer dollars.
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So, LightSquared. Some say that in some nebulous way, the firm is getting unreasonable and possibly illicit support from the Obama administration. I still don’t see it though, especially after listening in on a briefing of LightSquared’s today.
The briefing discussed in depth the issues LightSquared has had with GPS manufacturers. LightSquared that they’re trying hard to be a “good neighbor” and have worked with the FCC to address all issues, to the point of giving up half their spectrum voluntarily, and standing ready to invest $50 million to help GPS makers fix the issues. Because LightSquared does claim that the only issues left involve “precision” GPS which, by design, listen on LightSquared’s spectrum.
LightSquared points out that this is legal. You can listen to whatever you want. The problem is, legally you have no leg to stand on if you receive ‘interference’ by the legitimate holder of the spectrum you’re listening to. That said, they’re still working on a solution so everyone can benefit.
Now obviously this is their side of the story. If there’s a detailed rebuttal of these claims available, I’d love to hear it and link to it in Tech at Night. I’m interested in finding the truth of this matter. We need spectrum, desperately, but I want to go into this knowing the facts.
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Up late tonight. Spent the better part of the last 8 hours setting up my new computer*. Lots of data to transfer around and all that. But fortunately there aren’t many new developments lately to talk about, so let’s go.
I’m going to start with LightSquared. Out of the blue, it’s been repeatedly claimed that LightSquared is “the next Solyndra,” and that some nebulous form of corruption is somehow benefiting the company. Is it possible? Certainly. But I’d like to see some proof that LightSquared received actual benefits from the Obama administration, as Solyndra got free money from the government in the form of loan guarantees.
No, I won’t accept proof that Barack Obama is a bad guy as proof that LightSquared had something going on. I’m playing the role of skeptic on this particular issue, because I don’t want it to be true. I want America to get more spectrum used for 4G wireless Internet, and I want us to have more national networks supplying 4G wireless Interent. LightSquared coming online would give us both, as LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja has said.
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I’d like to start off tonight’s edition by saying that I enjoy some of the pushback I’ve been getting in this Tech at Night series. It’s fun when someone comes here, telling me I’m all wet, then ending up admitting they’re enamored of the whole Obama regulatory apparatus. It feels good to have my pro-liberty, pro-growth, small-government positions validated like that. So to the multifaceted George Soros astroturf machine I say this: keep it coming.
And of course, one of their key talking points is that wireless competition is in danger. Consider that Radio Shack says you have nine options, and Cellular South, a carrier you might never have heard of, is suing AT&T now, while budding 4G national competitor LightSquared answers accusations it’s buying favors from Obama. It’s hard to see how the DoJ lawsuit is anything but an attempt to prop up Sprint Nextel, and hard to disagree with T-Mobile thinking its deal with AT&T will proceed on the merits.
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We’ve lost some battles lately. That’s what happens when we let a radical Democrat become President. We let Patrick Leahy’s America Invents Act pass, imposing on America a Euro-style patent system that rewards lawyering, not being the first to invent something. We let the FCC pass an illegal Net Neutrality power grab, and that will have to go to court soon.
We’re even seeing some nominally Republican-run states get on big government bandwagon against AT&T, sadly joining in the effort by the Obama administration and Sprint Nextel to hinder competition and pad Sprint’s bottom line. What are Ohio and Pennsylvania doing there? Come on.
But at least we’re on track to get meaningful 4G competition. Some question the firm’s ties with the Obama administration, but I welcome progress toward LightSquared launching its network. Unlike Obama and Holder, trying to prop up Sprint, I actually want competition and lower prices.
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Competition, growth, and innovation are all important for the American wireless Internet market. We need more, better, and cheaper service if we’re going to move in large numbers to wireless Internet, as some are predicting. This means competition and growth in the 4G sector is vital to our future economic health.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I think it’s essential that the government stay out of the way and allow the AT&T/T-Mobile deal to proceed. Obviously now it’s too late to prevent a lawsuit, since it’s already happened, but dropping the suit would be better than proceeding on the current anti-competitive path.
That’s the one fact that more and more evidence is bringing to light: stopping the merger is the anti-competitive act, not the merger itself. Both Sprint Nextel and the Department of Justice are threatening competition, hindering us from moving beyond the 4G duopoly of Verizon and Sprint Nextel.
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Friday has come and gone at last, and in fact we’re well into Saturday now unfortunately, due to my needing to have covered so much this time.
Additionally, at long last it looks like the ongoing saga of California vs Amazon is coming to an end. Amazon had already floated the idea of compromise with the Democrats on their unconstitutional plan to try to bully Amazon with respect to California’s high sales tax rates.
But now it looks like the firm got cold feet. Having already put itself on the line with a plan to lobby for a national law on the matter, with a promise to pay the tax if now law is passed in two years, they caved and cut the “safe harbor” down to one year. As you might guess from how I said that, I disagree that Amazon was wrong to play hardball. I think Amazon was wrong to give in after playing hardball, because if things go wrong they risk victor’s justice.
Joe Mathews says Amazon has given an example of “how not to do business in California.” At this point, I don’t see why anyone should do business in California, with all the corruption and corporatist socialism going on in this one great state.
This matters if you don’t live in California, by the way, because of the next steps.
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