Franchise players
By: By Carol Wilson
The battle over local video franchises is heating up on multiple fronts--at the federal level, the state level and the local level. At this point, it isn't even clear in whose jurisdiction the final decision will land. The cable industry is fighting tooth and nail on all fronts...
It's all semantics
By: By Dan O'Shea
At the NTCA Expo this week, FCC Commissioner David Copps gave a crowd of rural and independent carriers reason to hope that regulators understand the current shortcomings of the universal service fund (USF) and are working to resolve them. But, he didn't really add anything to what people like him, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and members of Congress preparing for a telecom act rewrite have been saying for the last several months...
Riding the censor ship
By: By Tim McElligott
The spread of democracy seemed like a good idea way back in the 20th century. Now we know better. We can't lead with democracy when trying to mold a world in our own image, especially when we define democracy simply as an exercise in free elections when it is so much more than that...
Who deserves broadband?
By: By Carol Wilson
It's a simple question, but it lies at the heart of so many different industry issues: Who deserves broadband? Just stop and think for a minute. Does every rural community, hoping to hang on to its schools and hospitals, deserve to get broadband access?...
Third boxcar, midnight train
By: By Tim McElligott
Mobile and ubiquitous Internet-based communications are great tools. But they are also dangerous narcotics. Unfailing access to these drugs can lead a person to think he or she has their habit under control. But try to kick the habit and several things happen...
The rubber hits the road
By: By Carol Wilson
Ever since it became obvious, about a year ago, that the telecom industry was about to undergo a major transformation, companies hoping to compete with the "new" AT&T and the "new" Verizon have supposedly been champing at the bit...
Merger fever still contagious
By: By Carol Wilson
Expect more mergers in 2006, especially in the telecom vendor segment. Clifford Holliday, principal in B&C Consulting and author/analyst with Information Gatekeepers Inc., includes that prediction among his top 10 for the upcoming year...
The big picture
By: By Carol Wilson
In the name of protecting cable customers, lawmakers and regulators are encouraging the cable industry to pursue a la carte programming offers and "family tiers" of service that don't include material that could be offensive or inappropriate for children...
Family time
By: By Dan O'Shea
Several news reports surfaced last week that some cable TV companies were considering family-tier programming packages...
Winning the PR battle
By: By Carol Wilson
BellSouth today had to deny a Washington Post report that it had "angrily" withdrawn an offer to give one of its buildings to New Orleans, for use by its police department, after that city announced a municipal Wi-Fi network...
Tripping over triple play
By: By Jason Meyers
The notion of the triple play is the subject of much discussion lately, particularly as traditional telcos become more plausible video providers and cable operators ramp up their voice efforts...
Who will pay?
By: By Carol Wilson
As the lines for bargains on Black Friday proved, Americans will do a lot to get a bargain. I'm wondering, however, whether many of those same Americans are willing to pay a little more to get something better when it comes to customer service...
The other half
By: By Carol Wilson
About eight years ago, my sisters and I gave my mom, then in her late 60s, a computer with cable modem service for Christmas...
The municipal challenge
By: By Tara Howard
Municipal network deployments continue to emerge throughout the U.S., in some cases threatening to provide significant competition to service provider networks...
Pondering lessons not learned
By: By Carol Wilson
Kenny Van Zant lived through one period of telephone company history that he hopes he isn't doomed to repeat. ...
Google Earth
By: By Ed Gubbins
Can anything stop Google? Ask Jeeves that question, and you might be directed to Google itself, which is probably the correct answer...
Paving paradise
By: By Carol Wilson
After today's Federal Communications Commission approval of the SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers, I'm left wondering what we are likely to look back and regret about the Internet and the telecom market as it exists today...
Credibility gap
By: By Carol Wilson
This week, the FCC will hold hearings on the anticipated mergers of SBC Communications with AT&T and Verizon with MCI...
Competition from all corners
By: By Carol Wilson
ce the City of Chicago passed a law making it illegal to drive while talking on a hand-held mobile phone, there has been no serious flood of arrests, but there has been a boom in sales of hands-free devices...
The Inter-nyet
By: By Tim McElligott
Obviously, this is a rhetorical question: Does the UN think the U.S. is made up of a bunch of idiots?...
Who's afraid of big, bad Google?
By: By Carol Wilson
The announcement last Friday that Google has offered to deliver free Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco no doubt sent shivers down a lot of corporate spines. It isn't just that it's Google, the search engine giant already moving into VoIP and many other aspects of Internet-based commerce and communications...
Calling EarthLink
By: By Carol Wilson
To call voice over IP a threat to basic phone service revenue would seem to be a statement of the obvious. But to this point, I was firmly convinced that only the cable companies were likely to exploit VoIP in any way that would seriously damage traditional phone service...
E-mail is so immature
By: By Neale Martin
How many e-mails do you get a day? It's a set-up question I frequently ask when giving technology speeches...
Yankee finds muni love
By: By Carol Wilson
It's too early to do those end-of-the-year news roundups that publications routinely use to fill space while the staff goes to holiday parties and on vacations, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that municipally owned broadband networks, and all the controversy they've generated, are among the bigger stories of 2005....
Segmenting the herd
By: By Vince Vittore
It's sort of sweet justice--in only a perverse way--that it now appears telcos may indeed end up getting statewide video franchises. ...
