Day: September 22, 2009

Like Clockwork

Obama directs FCC to adopt “Net Neutrality” (and write any new or revised regulations accordingly). This policy is a 180 from the Bush administration position that can be boiled down to “whatever the big companies want, the big companies get,” and these changes would, without a doubt, foster the sorts of innovations and game-changing uses that people tend to use the word “internet time” as a synonym for (e.g. rapid advance over short time periods and the ubiquitous availability of seemingly all human knowledge to relatively simple front-end tools on computers, and nowadays, mobile devices of all shapes and forms).

Naturally, today’s GOP, ever a friend to the Established Interests is categorically agin it. Kay Bailey Hutchison says:

I am deeply concerned by the direction the FCC appears to be heading.

Indeed, just take a look at these troubling developments:

new network neutrality rules that would require carriers to deliver broadband in a nondiscriminatory manner and to disclose their network management policies. Genachowski also said the FCC would explore the question of whether to extend network neutrality rules to mobile carriers.

[…]

“This means they cannot block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks, or pick winners by favoring some content or applications over others in the connection to subscribers’ homes,” [FCC chairman Julius] Genachowski said in an address before the Brookings Institute Sept. 21. “Nor can they disfavor an Internet service just because it competes with a similar service offered by that broadband provider. The Internet must continue to allow users to decide what content and applications succeed.”

How can innovation possibly succeed in an environment that encourages open competition and a level playing field? It’s unpossible. The only way forward: Hutchison feels the monopolistic providers of net access as of today “should be unencumbered by consumer protections and basic Internet freedoms.” Indeed they should.Who could possibly want any of those things. According to the GOP, freedom is overrated anyway.

Net neutrality: clearly another example of Obama’s rampant Socialist, command-and-control agenda. By forcing the internet to remain open and free, unchained by secret access rules or “preferred” website providers and tiered service, he’s pursuing the Socialist takeover of said internet by lots of small, innovative, ideas-based companies that leverage terrifying Socialistic Free-Market principles at the expense of the moneyed interests and the various, ossified, copper-wire owning players of today. Why, that’s categorically un-American! Jon Ensign, in a remarkable bit of double-speak, clearly agrees:

In this struggling economy, any industry that is able to thrive should be allowed to do so without meddlesome government interference that could stifle innovation,“ Ensign said in a statement. "We must avoid burdensome government regulations that micromanage private businesses or that limit the ability of companies to provide what their customers want. The Internet has flourished in large part because of a lack of government interference; I see no need to change that now.

Truly, truly remarkable. No other word for it. By writing regulation that permanently opens the internet to competition from all comers, and any size company, by guaranteeing this access for both consumers and businesses we are, in fact "micromanag[ing] private business” and “limit[ing] the ability of companies to provide what their customers want.” Because we know what customers want, now and forever. So long as customers want tiered internet access, and a Comcast-approved network, that is. And, since that’s all they’re offered in most markets through built-in, city-wide monopolies, that must be what they want. Right? Right?

Super Mario Brothers will be to the eighties what Second World War was to the forties, except good. Although it is only 1985, I can also safely say that this game will be more significant than any future wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined…. Mario is going to so popularize Japanese culture in the U.S. that The Vapors’ hit song “Turning Japanese” will cease to be about a sex act and will come to describe the literal surgical transformation of Americans into Japanese citizens.

The New Yorker on the, er, slightly overheated reception of The Beatles: Rock Band.

Femtocells

Glenn Fleishman reports for TidBITS on a new doodad from AT&T, the 3G Microcell, which offers to connect to your home network connection and then make a little bubble of 3G voice and data coverage right there to the house. You get better coverage (or, in some cases, you get coverage), and meanwhile:

Carriers love femtocells because they shift traffic (and the expense of moving calls and data) from their expensive-to-operate, capital-intensive cellular networks to cheap broadband – broadband that the customer has installed and paid for separately.

That’s all well and good, but why in the hell does it cost the consumer anything? Apparently the 3G MicroCell (this is what it looks like; it’s pretty clearly the nefarious output of the Drax Enterprise Corporation) will cost $150, but that “AT&T will provide a $100 rebate for customers who sign up for a calling plan,” and but users on calling plans will get unlimited calls (placed through it) for the low-low price of $10 a month. Apparently the other carriers have like devices and offer broadly similar plans. The question: Why? Putative MicroCell users can get unlimited calls through their requisite pre-existing home network (without any femtocell attached) for the low-low price of $0 (though, admittedly, not in glorious 3G MODE!). And remember, these folks are (likely) already paying AT&T to insufficiently cover their home…this is most likely why they might be interested in the MicroCell in the first place! So: pay me not to cover your home, pay me some more so that you can personally provide said coverage for your home, then pay me a bit more per month to use said coverage that you are providing to your own home. Furthermore, said paying users are providing a carrier with extra connectivity. If lots of people on their (presumably troublesome) block did so, you can imagine said carrier’s service in said troublesome area improving for everyone. And it costs them nothing. Probably less than nothing as, just like the article notes, you’re shifting traffic onto people’s own networks and off the carrier’s; plus they’re winning hearts and minds through the magic of improved service, and getting paid by the participating subset of end-users to do so. You’d think they would be giving these doodads away just for coming by the store. But, once again, we have run into a plain example of America’s mobile industry mission statement:

Never miss a chance to screw your customer.

If we can get these idiots to run our networks for us, charge them for the privilege, and (best of all) silently shift them onto the inevitable dumb pipes while we’re doing it, so much the better. Later, we’ll figure out a way to charge them for providing access to and across their own home network; but we’ll let them get good and used to the improved signal first…oh, and texting over a MicroCell will cost, uh, $30.