Policy Blog
Verizon/SpectrumCo: What’s the Deal?
The largest wireless service provider, Verizon, and the largest cable companies (Cox, and SpectrumCo, which is made up of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House) have proposed a series of transactions that will harm consumers, inhibit competition, and stifle technological innovation. The transactions would move spectrum away from the cable companies and to Verizon, already the largest wireless provider. But that’s not the worst of it —the companies are also proposing to divide the market and not to compete with each other by exclusively marketing each other’s products and jointly developing new technologies. Essentially, Verizon and AT&T get wireless; cable gets wireline; and consumers get nothing.
These sorts of cease-fire agreements—cartels, essentially—will leave customers unprotected from the whims of a few large companies by denying them the benefits of a fully competitive and fair marketplace.
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Shhhh. The TPP is Secret.
In my previous post on the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), I explained how provisions of TPP might harm you. Of course, it's hard to know exactly what might be bad within secret agreements like the TPP--all we have to go off of is leaked text that is many months old. But this raises another point: the secrecy itself is bad, not just because it makes it hard to comment on what may or may not be in the text, but because it undermines the democratic process. Secrecy might make sense for nuclear disarmament talks but it's hard to see why agreements like the TPP--which amount to international treaties that set levels of intellectual property protection around the world--deserve such hush-hush treatment.
Cable Companies Love to Compete, Right?
Although Comcast's announcement that it is preparing to launch a Netflix competitor may be a step forward for online video competition, it also highlights the dirty little secret about cable companies – they do everything they can to avoid competing with one another.
PK In The Know Podcast: Spectrum, Apple eBooks, Fake Data Hogs, and Bittorrent TV
On today's podcast we update the status of spectrum in the payroll tax bill, and discuss Apple's overreach in its ebook authoring software, AT&T proving that data hogs are fake, and a new way to broadcast video from bittorrent.
The Final Score on Spectrum Legislation: Bad Stuff Averted, Good Stuff Made Possible. I Call That A Win.
Last month, we warned about how some folks in Congress (with support of the usual suspects) wanted to get some really bad law on the future of wireless included in the Payroll Tax Cut Extension. The proposed law would have:
a. Stopped the FCC from having any kind of net neutrality conditions on any future wireless services the FCC would create by auctioning more wireless spectrum licenses.
If Data Caps Lack Clarity, Then Data Hogs = Flying Pigs
AT&T started throttling the cell phones of some of its heaviest data users (sometimes referred to as “data hogs”) a few months ago. Reports from the field indicate that those heavy network using “data hogs” are not that different from anyone else.
AT&T says it only throttles the smartphones of customers who use “extraordinary level[s] of data usage.” It turns out that these “extraordinary levels of data usage” on unlimited plans are actually a lot lower than amounts offered by the tiered plan at the same price. What does this discrepancy mean?
First, the most current definitions of “throttling” and “data hogs:”
Throttling (verb)
preservesthe openness of the Internet and the public's access to knowledge, promotes creativity through balanced copyright, and upholds and protects the rights of consumers to use innovative technology lawfully.