Public Knowledge is on the other side of a lot of public policy issues from Verizon. That said, Verizon’s new “Custom TV” plans are a move in the right direction. It’s great to see a company announce–and then launch–a new approach that is good for viewers, good for the provider, good for competition and ultimately good for programmers, as well.

On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it reached a $7.4 million settlement with Verizon over the company’s misuse of its customers’ private information (“customer proprietary network information,” or “CPNI”) for internal marketing, which violated longstanding federal privacy rules.

Today Public Knowledge sent letters to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the process of filing open internet complaints against each of them at the FCC. The letters address violations of the FCC’s transparency requirements, which are the only part of the open internet rules that survived court challenge.

Verizon wants to replace copper landlines destroyed by Hurricane Sandy with a new fixed wireless service called Voice Link. But should victims of natural disaster be guinea pigs when fundamental basic services are at stake? Especially when it means losing access to broadband?

Ever since Hurricane Sandy destroyed huge pieces of its landline network last October, Verizon made it clear it did not want to rebuild its traditional copper network. Most folks assumed that meant replacing damaged copper with fiber. While some consumers have grumbled about being upgraded to a more expensive service, no one doubts fiber to the home represents a step up – especially on the broadband side. 

But what about those communities where Verizon does not want to spend the money upgrading to FIOS? Turns out, rather than an upgrade to fiber, these communities will play guinea pig for Verizon’s new, cheaper, more limited wireless alternative called “Voice Link.”

As regular readers know, I regard the upgrade of the phone system (aka the “public switched telephone network” or “PSTN”) to an all-IP based network as a majorly huge deal. As I’ve explained at length before, this is a huge deal because of a bunch of decisions the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made over the years that have fragmented our various policies and regulations about phones into a crazy-quilt of different rules tied sometimes to the technology (IP v. traditional phone (TDM)) and sometimes to the actual medium of transmission (copper v. fiber v. cable v. wireless).