Telecoms Tech

We have previously reported on the FCC’s campaign to stamp out cell phone jamming devices. It turns out that the Commission has apparently found some guerilla allies in that campaign. In two recent Notices of Apparent Liability, two companies have been whacked with six-digit fines – $126,000 in one case, $144,000 in the other – for operating jammers. Both times the Feds were called in by anonymous tipsters.

Back in 2011 the FCC began collecting real-world user broadband data from customised routers, then issuing reports on which ISPs were failing to deliver advertised speeds. It's one of the few FCC policies in recent years that has truly paid dividends for consumers.

Smartphones are a supplement, not a replacement for fixed line... As I've been noting more than a little bit, we're at an interesting precipice in the broadband sector where AT&T and Verizon are starting to give up on upgrading tens of millions of DSL customers, instead letting them simply flee to cable.

When you're indisputably mediocre in nearly every broadband ranking due to limited competition and regulatory capture, what's a monopoly and/or duopoly broadband market to do? For much of the last decade the U.S. broadband industry's answer to that question is to shell out millions to fauxcademics, astroturfers, paid think tankers and assorted hired flacks to argue that US broadband is secretly awesome and you just didn't know it.

As reported recently by Ezra Klein, a groundswell of support has coalesced for unlocking cell phones with the White House joining the frag aligned against the wireless carriers. The wireless industry offers several justifications, but relies principally on the ruling by Copyright Office of the Library of Congress that unauthorised unlocking of cell phones is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Your cell phone rings. You pause the movie, untangle from your significant other, and stride across the room to answer it. "Hello there!" says the cheerful recorded voice. "Are you paying too much interest on your credit card?" You stab at the hang-up button and head back to the couch, grumbling that there ought to be a law. Actually, there is.

As some of you may know, US incumbents and cable operators have been lobbying fiercely in the last few years to forbid local governments by law of investing in broadband infrastructure. Last week, one such bill which was to be voted by the Georgia legislature was repealed.

U.S. broadband subscriptions are forecast to reach the same level as pay-TV subscriptions in 2016. Meanwhile, American cable and satellite TV service providers will soon reach a critical point in their evolution -- where future success will hinge on the adoption of their TV Everywhere services.