Today, Public Knowledge, joined by a wide variety of consumer, civil rights, and civil liberties groups, urged the FCC to immediately pass rules that would prevent local authorities from ordering a shutdown of wireless services the way that BART did earlier this month. As Harold’s earlier blog post points out, we don’t even need to get to the (extremely pressing and important) First Amendment issues to find that BART’s actions violated the law—the Communications Act, to be precise.

Independent app developers would be harmed by reduced competition in the wireless market. But according to Morgan Reed of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), nothing’s going to help independent mobile app developers more than the AT&T/T-Mobile merger--apparently app developers should look forward to the day when the gatekeepers that stand in the way of them and their customers have more power.

To call the discussion draft on spectrum reform circulated by House Commerce Commitee Republicans "flawed" understates the matter almost to the point of absurdity.

The Senate is gearing up for another go-round on rogue websites legislation, and this time, they've jettisoned the "COICA" label in favor of calling it the "PROTECT IP Act." Like a summer blockbuster sequel, it tightens up some things, adds a few new villains, but in the end reprises the same general plot.

Note:  Earlier today, the NoChokePoints Coalition released a study showing the economic benefits for cutting the rates that businesses pay for high-speed broadband connections, called “special access.”  The study is here.

I hope someone made a videotape of my debate with Ray Gifford at NARUC. For my money, it provided the most succinct and straightforward framework for arguing about FCC broadband authority and where we ought to go from here. Ray framed it quite well as a conflict in vision between a classic Progressive Era philosophy and “economic analytics.” While I’m willing to debate in the economic analytics world (the two are not mutually exclusive, and economics informs progressive philosophy as much as concerns about public safety and consumer protection inform economic analytics), I think this makes a fairly good framework for how to approach these issues. Indeed, as a result of framing this as a difference in worldview, we avoided a lot of the acrimony and repetition that usually defines these debates.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, there is a good chance that you are the type of person who gets questions about choosing cell phones from family, friends, and when you go to cocktail parties.  People probably ask for your opinion about this phone or that, or the merits of one carrier vs. another.

In the next few weeks you are probably going to be getting new questions about networks, specifically about 3G vs. 4G.  If you really want to blow the mind of the person asking you the question, you can tell that it may not matter.

[Click Here to Tell The FCC To Protect Your Freedom to Text!](/action/text-message?utm_source=publicknowledge.org&utm_medium=web&utm_term=&utm_content=toplink&utm_campaign=link positioning)

Today the New York Times reported that Sprint blocked Catholic Relief Services’ attempt to raise money to help victims of the Haitian earthquake. We filed a letter with the FCC explaining what happened, and urging the FCC to intervene. Unfortunately, this is not the first letter that PK has sent to the FCC about text messages being blocked.

The story is essentially this: shortly after the Haitian earthquake, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) moved in to help victims. Instead of using the “text to give” programs used by groups like the Red Cross (text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10), CRS decided to try a “text to call” program.

Background: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to figure out how to examine the market for some of the most popular telecom services used by big business – so-called “special access” services.

Public Knowledge (PK) late Feb. 24 called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make certain that consumer interests are taken into account into as it examines the structure of a market that sells its services to big business.

Just as it has sought to offset slower CD sales with its digital music store, Walmart--the nation's largest DVD retailer--is looking to insure against lower DVD sales by purchasing the online video company Vudu.

But Vudu isn't just another Internet video company with a loopy name offering a pure over-the-top video service. Like Sezmi, its delivery method is an interesting hybrid. While Sezmi leverages free over-the-air TV, leased spectrum, and broadband (with ample local storage as a force multiplier), Vudu uses a hybrid peer-to-peer model. Content is both delivered to a Vudu device through a standard client/server model, as well as peer-to-peer between different Vudu devices. Additionally, content is pre-positioned at the edge of the network to increase the number of peers.