AT&T's $14 Billion Dollar 'Bribe' to Get Rid of Telecom Regulations Is a Multi-Layered Hoax
call it extortion or a bribe or a bait-and-switch AT&T is holding 22 states’ economic future hostage.
Tag: wireless broadband services
Open Source Policy Versus the Last Telecom Monopolist by Daniel Berninger
Open Source Policy Versus the Last Telecom Monopolist by Daniel Berninger
Daniel Berninger
Founder, Voice Communication Exchange Committee
The founding of the Voice Communication Exchange Committee (VCXC)
offers a competitive alternative to the Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) and the first example of a startup addressing policy
questions. The decision to target the FCC reflects the government
agency’s status as the last monopolist on the telecom landscape and
the failure of other means of policy reform. The number of companies
regulated and the FCC’s funding doubled since the arrival of the
public Internet and VoIP in 1995. VCXC leverages the transition to
all-IP networks to setup an end game for the telecom regulator as the
100th anniversary of the first government intervention into telecom
arrives next year.
The FCC presides over a domestic telecom industry generating almost a
trillion in revenue and employing over a million people. The
relatively tiny FCC budget of $335 million and staff of 2000 indicates
either striking efficiency or a worrisome concentration of power. The
reality seems unlikely to be the former as there exists no company
among the 6000+ obligated to file the FCC Form 499 or public interest
advocate satisfied with the result. This type of performance usually
makes a monopolist irresistible for entrepreneurs, but startups do not
usually target government agencies. A plan for influencing government
usually involves paying a registered lobbyist.
VCXC applies the same means of disrupting the FCC as Linus Torvalds
applied in the case of the Microsoft operating system hegemony.
Publish the starting point for a competitive alternative and issue an
open invitation for incremental contributions. The open source process
benefits from the energies of people and organizations seeking relief
from an oppressive monopolist. Open source initiatives do not always
succeed and may even rarely succeed, but they do tend to advance the
cause of meritocracy. The collective impact of the open source
movement transformed the software business, and VCXC seeks to test the
approach on questions of governance.
The roots of telecom regulation in the US trace to an agreement
between AT&T President Theordore Vail and President Woodrow Wilson as
outlined in a December 19, 1913 letter from AT&T Vice President Nathan
Kingsbury to the Attorney General. The agreement settled an antitrust
complaint against AT&T and made America the exception as every other
country in the world nationalized telephone networks. The Kingsbury
Commitment represents the first example of a theme repeated over and
over in the subsequent 100 years – government policy makers recognize
the importance of communication as an input to economic and political
power and the resulting policy interventions tend to prove counter
productive.
The most successful communication policy also represents something of
an embarrassment and further illustration of the benefits of
non-regulation. The invention of the transistor at AT&T Bell
Laboratories in 1947 and the awarding of a Nobel Prize did not prevent
the Department of Justice from excluding the AT&T monopoly from
pursuing information technology revenue in a 1956 Consent Decree. The
FCC maintained a separation between the transistor driven
communication and information technology industries through the
Computer Inquiries in the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and through the Telecom
Act of 1996 as well as in rulings such as the Free World Dialup
Decision in 2004.
The nascent information technology industry regulators sought to
protect from the AT&T in 1956 now enjoys equivalent revenue, profits,
and 4x the collective enterprise value of the still heavily regulated
telecom industry. There exist no differences between the worlds of
information and communication technology sufficient to account for the
outcome aside from the relative benefits of regulation and
non-regulation. The expansion of information technology includes a
wholesale takeover of communication via the Internet and creates a
dilemma for the FCC VCXC seeks to exploit. The transition to all-IP
networks makes telecom and information technology indistinguishable.
The Permanent Militarization of America
Military-industrial complex in American life. Eisenhower worried that the defense industry’s search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation.
The Permanent Militarization of America
November 4, 2012 By AARON B. O’CONNELL Annapolis, Md.
IN 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office warning of the growing power of the military-industrial complex in American life. Most people know the term the president popularized, but few remember his argument.
In his farewell address, Eisenhower called for a better equilibrium between military and domestic affairs in our economy, politics and culture. He worried that the defense industry’s search for profits would warp foreign policy and, conversely, that too much state control of the private sector would cause economic stagnation. He warned that unending preparations for war were incongruous with the nation’s history. He cautioned that war and warmaking took up too large a proportion of national life, with grave ramifications for our spiritual health.
The military-industrial complex has not emerged in quite the way Eisenhower envisioned. The United States spends an enormous sum on defense — over $700 billion last year, about half of all military spending in the world — but in terms of our total economy, it has steadily declined to less than 5 percent of gross domestic product from 14 percent in 1953. Defense-related research has not produced an ossified garrison state; in fact, it has yielded a host of beneficial technologies, from the Internet to civilian nuclear power to GPS navigation. The United States has an enormous armaments industry, but it has not hampered employment and economic growth. In fact, Congress’s favorite argument against reducing defense spending is the job loss such cuts would entail.
Nor has the private sector infected foreign policy in the way that Eisenhower warned. Foreign policy has become increasingly reliant on military solutions since World War II, but we are a long way from the Marines’ repeated occupations of Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century, when commercial interests influenced military action. Of all the criticisms of the 2003 Iraq war, the idea that it was done to somehow magically decrease the cost of oil is the least credible. Though it’s true that mercenaries and contractors have exploited the wars of the past decade, hard decisions about the use of military force are made today much as they were in Eisenhower’s day: by the president, advised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council, and then more or less rubber-stamped by Congress. Corporations do not get a vote, at least not yet.
But Eisenhower’s least heeded warning — concerning the spiritual effects of permanent preparations for war — is more important now than ever. Our culture has militarized considerably since Eisenhower’s era, and civilians, not the armed services, have been the principal cause. From lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to NBC’s shameful and unreal reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas. Of course, veterans should be thanked for serving their country, as should police officers, emergency workers and teachers. But no institution — particularly one financed by the taxpayers — should be immune from thoughtful criticism.
[snip]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/opinion/the-permanent-militarization-of-america.html>
BITAG Announces Next Technical Topic on Port Blocking
BITAG Announces Next Technical Topic on Port Blocking
Denver, CO (November 7, 2012): The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) is pleased to announce the launch of a new technical review on the topic of Port Blocking best practices. BITAG’s Technical Working Group elected to take up this topic through a self-initiated vote, as Port Blocking is of interest to many stakeholders in the Internet ecosystem.