Statements of the FCC Commissioners on the Comcast, BitTorrent arrangement:

STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
IN RESPONSE TO COMCAST/BITTORRENT ANNOUNCEMENT

Today’s announcement confirms mybelief that the FCC needs to playa proactive role in
preserving the Internetas a vibrant place for democratic values, innovation and economic
growth. If it had not been for the FCC’s attention to this issueearlier this year, we would not be
having the conversation that we are having now among network operators, edge content
providers, consumers and government about the best wayto implement reasonable network
management.
I look forward to learning more about this issue next month when the FCC holds a second
hearing on Internet issues. Iam confident that, through this process, the FCC can come up with
clear rules of the road that will benefit American consumers and provide much-needed certainty
to both network operators and Internet entrepreneurs.

STATEMENT OF FCC COMMISSIONER ROBERT M. McDOWELL
REGARDINGBITTORRENT AND COMCAST RESOLUTION

The following statement can be attributed to Commissioner Robert M. McDowell:
“I am delighted to learn that BitTorrent and Comcast have reached a resolution to their dispute.
Consumers will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this agreement. As I have said for a long time, it
is precisely this kind of private sector solution that has been the bedrock of Internet governance
since its inception. Government mandates cannot possiblycontemplate the myriad complexities
and nuances of the Internet market place. The private sector is the best forum to resolve such
disputes. Today’s announcement obviates the need for anyfurther government intrusion into this
matter.”

COMMISSIONER DEBORAH TAYLOR TATE
APPLAUDS COMCAST/BITTORRENT AGREEMENT

I am pleased that following the FCC’s investigation and recent forum, BitTorrent
and Comcast have announced several industry-based solutions for acceptable network
capacity management and lawful content distribution. I have consistently favored
competition and market forces rather than government regulation across all platforms
and especially in this dynamic, highly-technical marketplace. Finally, I would like to
encourage all interested parties to redouble their efforts to address the growing problem
of illegal content distribution, from pirated movies and music, to online child
pornography, as well as the issue of child online safety. I look forward to even more
collaborative, industry-based solutions, which are often the most effective and efficient
means of resolving complex, technical network disputes.

STATEMENT BY FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN J. MARTIN
ON ANNOUNCEMENT BY COMCAST AND BITTORRENT

“I am pleased that Comcast has reversed course and agreed that it is not a reasonable network
management practice to arbitrarily block certain applications on its network. Ialso commend the
company for admitting publicly that it was engaging in the practice and now engaging in a dialog
with BitTorrent.
I hope that the negotiations to which Comcast commits todaywill result in a solution that
preserves consumers’ abilityto access any lawful Internet content and applications of their
choice. That abilityis fundamental to preserving the open marketplace and innovation that
characterizes the Internet.
I am concerned, though, that Comcast has not made clear when they will stop this discriminatory
practice. It appears this practice will continue throughout the country until the end of the year
and in some markets, even longer. While it maytake time to implement its preferred new traffic
management technique, it is not at all obvious why Comcast couldn’t stop its current practice of
arbitrarily blocking its broadband customers from using certain applications. Comcast should
provide its broadband customers as well as the Commission with a commitment of a date certain
bywhen it will stop this practice.
The Commission will remain vigilant in ensuring that consumers have the abilityto access the
lawful content of their choice on the Internet. Our hearing on April 17 offers us the opportunity
to explore more fullywhat constitutes reasonable network management practices, including, as
Commissioner Tate has highlighted, the important abilityfor network managers to block the
distribution of illegal content, including pirated movies and music and child pornography.”

COMMISSIONER JONATHAN S. ADELSTEIN RESPONDS
TO BITTORRENT-COMCAST ANNOUNCEMENT

Washington, D.C. –In response to today’s announcement by BitTorrent and Comcast, FCC
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein made the following statement:
“The hallmark of the Internet has always been its openness, which is why it has
transformed the way we communicate. We will need to learn more details about the
recent agreement between BitTorrent and Comcast, but it is encouraging that broadband
providers are listening to the chorus of consumer calls for open and neutral broadband
Internet access. These discussions should continue with other applications providers and
the broader Internet community. I look forward to continuing to promote this kind of
dialogue at our upcoming hearing at Stanford University.”

[Note: This item comes from friend Ken DiPietro. DLH]

What is Mesh Technology? Does WiMAX use Mesh?
by Michael Wolleben — last modified 2007-03-19 12:57 PM
<http://www.wimax.com/education/faq/faq46>

Mesh technology is not new. It is a technique that has been tried with varying success by a number of vendors of proprietary broadband wireless technology for some time. Some firms have met with great success in developing mesh technology for military applications for example. It is basically a physical network based NLOS workaround approach dependent on enhanced radio and routing capability. WiMAX does incorporate support for mesh networks into its technology. Several Forum members are prominent mesh technology vendors. Work is currently ongoing to define the 802.16m standard for mesh systems. The Municipal mesh network explosion of the past year has proven to be a strong driver of the broadband wireless marketplace.

Conceptually, mesh technology makes a great deal of sense. In a mesh network, a wireless or wireline backhaul circuit provides main bandwidth to an area with, for example, heavy tree cover or small hills or geographic features that reduce line of sight coverage. Networks, especially those using license-free frequency bands with such features are ideal candidates for mesh networks. In one example, a residential subdivision or series of subdivisions receives a single bandwidth signal from a distant relay tower. Then each home with service receives signal using a mesh radio, which acts as both a base station and a CPE radio thus leapfrogging service about the neighborhood from rooftop to rooftop or in the case of a city from streetlight to streetlight. This means that any other home could conceivably get signal access from several different other houses and in the event of an obstruction or failure of one node, the radios could switch access paths.

Technically, many experts consider mesh somewhat more difficult to deploy with large networks. Older mesh techniques often used a CSMA/CD approach to signal polling meaning that the level of crosstalk between radios could become very high, choking the network itself with overhead. The cost of a radio able to function in the dual base station/CPE radio modes is usually higher. Also, if there is failure and one leg of the mesh is fed through a single node this can create chokepoints.

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Esme Vos. DLH]

March 29, 2008
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
By DENNIS OVERBYE
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?ex=1364443200&en=3cac1eca16474d7f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

The lawsuit, filed March 21 in Federal District Court, in Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order prohibiting CERN from proceeding with the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environmental assessment. It names the federal Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science Foundation and CERN as defendants.

According to a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is representing the Department of Energy, a scheduling meeting has been set for June 16.

Why should CERN, an organization of European nations based in Switzerland, even show up in a Hawaiian courtroom?

In an interview, Mr. Wagner said, “I don’t know if they’re going to show up.” CERN would have to voluntarily submit to the court’s jurisdiction, he said, adding that he and Mr. Sancho could have sued in France or Switzerland, but to save expenses they had added CERN to the docket here. He claimed that a restraining order on Fermilab and the Energy Department, which helps to supply and maintain the accelerator’s massive superconducting magnets, would shut down the project anyway.

James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, said the laboratory as of yet had no comment on the suit. “It’s hard to see how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe,” Mr. Gillies said.

[snip]

March 29, 2008

Trying to Get the Swiss to Talk
By CARTER DOUGHERTY
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/business/worldbusiness/29swiss.html?ex=1364443200&en=947a14d5ebf02aeb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>

GENEVA — Like Paul Revere, Konrad Hummler sounded the alarm last week as he made his way by train and by plane to his bank’s branches across Switzerland. This country’s storied role as secret banker to the world’s wealthy is under threat like never before, Mr. Hummler warned.

Mr. Hummler, the jaunty, blunt-spoken managing partner of Wegelin & Company, a small private bank in St. Gallen, has watched a German tax-evasion scandal evolve into a debate about banking secrecy here. Worried that the treasured discretion of Swiss banks is under assault, Wegelin’s foreign clients have been inquiring about their money.

Mr. Hummler says that this time, Switzerland may not be able to stop the rest of the world from prying open Swiss banking.

“What is going on is a power play,” he said. “It may be unusual in today’s Europe, but it is here.”

This land of stunning Alpine vistas, which has chosen to remain outside the European Union, has always loomed large in the global imagination as the place where the wealthy stash their money beyond the tax man’s reach. The best estimates suggest that image is true, to the tune of $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

The scandal that threatens that lucrative business began when German authorities obtained secret financial data from Liechtenstein, Switzerland’s tiny neighbor with similar banking laws. The information in hand, investigators fanned out across Germany to seize documents thought to be related to tax evasion by hundreds of wealthy Germans. Cases are now being prepared based on the information, a process likely to take years. The fallout has claimed the job of one top executive, Klaus Zumwinkel, who had headed the German postal service, and has given the German left a political boost.

But Switzerland is the bigger prize. And its continuing refusal to help other countries catch tax cheats hiding their money there appears to have hardened Europe’s resolve to force change.

“If a car is stolen in Germany and taken to Switzerland, the Swiss help find it,” said Hans Eichel, a member of the German Parliament and a former finance minister. “But when it’s about tax evasion — and much larger sums — they do nothing. No one outside Switzerland understands that.”

To Thomas Borer, a former Swiss ambassador to Germany, few inside Switzerland understand the depth of foreign discontent.

“It is obvious,” said Mr. Borer, now a lobbyist, “the government and the banks, really, are heavily underestimating the impact of this scandal.”

“There may be an avalanche coming, and we are not ready,” he added.

Mr. Borer compares the coming storm to the debate Switzerland faced in the late 1990s over dormant bank accounts belonging to Holocaust victims and their families. When first faced with demands for restitution, Swiss banks dismissed the claims despite urgent warnings from some Swiss diplomats that the issue would not go away.

After an international blowup that sullied their reputation, the banks settled the matter by creating a $1.25 billion restitution fund.

[snip]

Open Access Won’t Be What You Think It Is

by: Jason Rosenbaum
Sat Mar 29, 2008 at 18:29
<http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4857>

(A good companion to Chris’s latest. – promoted by Paul Rosenberg)

Want faster Internet? Want cheaper Internet? Want both cheaper and faster Internet – the kind people in Europe or Asia currently enjoy? Don’t hold your breath.

The same two telecommunications companies that control vast swaths of America’s wires have just won another auction, this time for the much-hyped “700 band” wireless spectrum:

When Congress authorized this auction, their stated intention was to pry open our cell phone and broadband markets to consumer choice and new competition. But having Verizon and AT&T control the most significant chunks of the spectrum — including the so-called national C Block — means more of the same for Internet users.

…

Verizon and AT&T are already among the most dominant providers of “wired” broadband access in the U.S. Their victories over the bulk of 700 MHz licenses leave slim prospects for genuine Internet competition via a wireless “third pipe.”

But wait! What about that “open access” stuff Google was pushing for?

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from friend Steve Goldstein. DLH]

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein@cox.net>
Date: March 28, 2008 2:45:16 PM PDT
To: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks), “David Farber [IP]” <dave@farber.net>
Subject: Wash. Post Article: Net Neutrality’s Quiet Crusader

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032703618.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter>

Net Neutrality’s Quiet Crusader
Free Press’s Ben Scott Faces Down Titans, Regulators in Battle Over Internet Control

Excerpt:
…

For the first time, Congress and the FCC are debating wide-reaching Web regulations and policies that would determine how much control cable and telecommunications companies would have over the Internet. The issue has given rise to a new political constituency raised on text messaging and social networking and relies on e-mail blasts and online video clips in its advocacy.
Although Free Press has generated buzz for its aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics online, its ringleader in Washington is an unlikely crusader. A soft-spoken 30-year-old PhD candidate, Ben Scott has become an operator in multibillion-dollar battles involving corporate titans, regulators and consumers debating policies over who controls the media and the Internet.
“There have been policy moments in the past when the market has been shaped by decisions made in Washington — radio in the 1930s, television in the 1950s and cable in the 1980s. That moment is now for the Internet,” said Scott, who runs a nine-member office.
Working mostly behind the scenes, Scott has been a driving force for “net neutrality,” a concept that in policy terms has come to mean enforcement of open access online, so cable and telecom operators cannot block or delay content that travels over their networks. In a complaint filed at the FCC last November, Scott and his staff called for action against Comcast, which admitted it slowed content over its network involving the BitTorrent file-sharing site.
Scott and the group’s 500,000 members, most of whom joined online, helped sell their argument. Free Press drew together strange bedfellows, including the Christian Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Gun Owners of America, and helped set in motion a broader debate on the issue that resulted in the recent FCC hearing in Cambridge, Mass. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) also sponsored a bill to strengthen governance against Internet service providers trying to control consumers’ Web access over their networks.
…

[Note: This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis. DLH]

From: Mike Cheponis <mac@wireless.com>
Date: March 29, 2008 12:30:11 AM PDT
Subject: Learn to Be Kind

Scientific American.com, Mar. 28, 2008

University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists says imaging technology shows that people who practice meditation that focuses on kindness and compassion actually undergo changes in areas of the brain that make them more in tune to what others are feeling.

<http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=F2D1DCCE-E9D8-AE36-FE3C1E6CAA3B0C6C>

March 29, 2008

Editorial
Broadening Broadband
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/opinion/29sat4.html?ex=1364443200&en=b335ef70e03a55b4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all>

The big problem in providing Internet service to rural America is often called “the last mile” — the difficulty in reaching the smallest communities and farthest-flung houses and farms. In cities, that problem might be called “the last block” — the difficulty in reaching every neighborhood, no matter how poor.

For a while, many American cities, caught up in a tide of technological and fiscal optimism, promised to try to make Internet coverage available to all by making it citywide, wireless and low-cost or even free.

That has proved to be harder than it seemed at first. EarthLink, an Internet provider that was partnering with Philadelphia, has pulled out of a much-heralded project there, and other service providers are rethinking similar projects.

EarthLink is calling it a change in strategic direction. What that phrase means, simply, is where’s the profit? It is a reasonable question. But for the people who have been left without Internet service as municipal wireless plans have collapsed, there are no reasonable answers, only an all-too-familiar barrier between them and the information age.

The neighborhoods that most need low-cost, public wireless service now find themselves largely dependent on Internet access through public libraries. This may not sound like a terrible thing, but have you seen what’s happened to the budgets — and the operating hours — of public libraries?

[snip]

[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH]

From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Date: March 28, 2008 6:15:28 AM PDT
Subject: IPhone Users Love That Mobile Web

March 18, 2008, 7:41 am
IPhone Users Love That Mobile Web

By Brad Stone

The last thing anyone wants to do is to give iPhone users another
chance to crow about their phone’s slick interface and seamless
connection to the Web. But, until now, little was known about the
media habits of iPhone users and how they have diverged from the
activities of mere mortals who own run-of-the mill smartphones and
regular mobile phones.

Tuesday, M:Metrics, a measurement firm that studies mobile media, has
released a survey of iPhone users six months after the device was
released to long lines and nearly unending fanfare.

The results, from a January survey of more than 10,000 adults, are
somewhat dramatic. 84.8 percent of iPhone users report accessing news
and information from the hand-held device. That compares to 13.1
percent of the overall mobile phone market and 58.2 percent of total
smartphone owners – which include those poor saps with BlackBerries
and devices that run Windows.

…

<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/iphone-users-are-mobile-web-junkies/index.html>

M:Metrics Press Release

M:METRICS: IPHONE HYPE HOLDS UP

85 percent of iPhone users browse the mobile Web; iPhone is top
device for news and information accessed on mobile browser

SEATTLE and LONDON – March 18, 2008 – Six months after the iPhone’s
U.S. launch, has the device changed the mobile landscape? According
to M:Metrics, the mobile media authority, the answer is yes. Today,
the measurement firm reports that the iPhone is already the most
popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile Web,
with 85 percent of iPhone users accessing news and information in the
month of January.

…

<http://mmetrics.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?article=20080318-iphonehype>

[Note: This item comes from reader Monty Solomon. DLH]

From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Date: March 28, 2008 6:35:47 AM PDT
Subject: Google Creeps Onto Cell Phones in Threat to Symbian, Microsoft

Google Creeps Onto Cell Phones in Threat to Symbian, Microsoft

By Edward Robinson and Ari Levy

March 26 (Bloomberg) — On a chilly February morning, Andy Rubin
hustles past equation-filled whiteboards in a two-story building on
Google Inc.’s Silicon Valley campus.

Rubin, a computer scientist who builds robots for fun, has spent
three years in this top-secret sanctum of the Googleplex. He’s
putting the final touches on one of the most ambitious and
potentially humbling projects the Internet juggernaut has ever
undertaken: an operating system for cellular phones that’s designed
to give Google the same grip on the mobile Web that it commands in
online searches on personal computers.

“We’ve gotten to the point where anyone can build a cell phone,”
says Rubin, 44, dressed in blue jeans and a red crewneck T-shirt as
he explains why Google is piling into wireless, the Internet’s new
frontier. “What’s important now is software, having the next cool
application.”

After luring an audience that tops 588 million people who search in
more than 200 languages and winning 72 percent of the $22.5 billion
in annual advertising linked to Web queries, Google founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page are hunting beyond the PC for growth. Fewer
googlers are clicking on the text ads that run alongside Google’s
search results, threatening the area that generated most of the
company’s $16.6 billion in 2007 sales.

…

<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=afTam30WxcsE>