Legislation
  • FCC's Clyburn Rebukes Comcast for Broadband Rate Hike

    When Mignon Cliburn was appointed to the FCC, many people in the media/telcom world assumed that she would be a mild-mannered “get along, go along” Commissioner. In fact, she has turned about to be a forceful and outspoken defender of consumer rights.

    FCC’s Clyburn Rebukes Comcast for Broadband Rate Hike

    Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn on Wednesday indirectly hammered Comcast for recently raising its broadband prices.

    As Cyburn and other FCC commissioners discussed broadband affordability at a digital literacy summit on Tuesday, Comcast instituted a http://www.mediaaccess.org/rss/ rate increase on its lowest-tier customers.

    That prompted Clyburn to issue a statement rebuking the company late Wednesday, though she never once mentioned Comcast by name.

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  • Is Cheap Wireless Broadband for Real This Time?

    As the FCC reveals more and more details of the forthcoming National Broadband Plan, it is hard to keep up with the details. The hype at Tuesday’s “Digital Inclusion Summit” was mostly about the need for a “Digital Literacy Corps,” but Chairman Genachowski also suggested the Commission would propose setting aside some spectrum for free or low-cost wireless. RoadMAP’s first response was this sounded like the plan from our friends at M2Z, but GigaOm reports that it is something different. But what?

    Is Cheap Wireless Broadband for Real This Time?

    The FCC said today that as part of its National Broadband Plan it might allocate spectrum for a free or low-cost wireless broadband network as a means to help address the affordability of broadband for poor people. If all this sounds familiar to you, maybe you recall the efforts of M2Z Networks, a Kleiner Perkins backed venture that tried to offer filtered, low-cost broadband using WiMAX.

    A source at the FCC assures me that the agency’s efforts, which will be detailed next week when the National Broadband Plan comes out, are not similar to M2Z’s plan. M2Z wanted to offer free subscribers dialup-like speeds of 768 kbps and would have provided filtered access to the web. The source said the FCC’s plan would offer speeds “that are real broadband” and would likely involve using proceeds from the Universal Service Fund reform to offset the cost of building out a network.

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    GigaOm

  • Media Access Project Expresses Support for Reform of FCC Retransmission Consent Process

    WASHINGTON — Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President and CEO of Media Access Project (MAP), issued the following statement regarding the petition being filed today with the Federal Communications Commission by cable operators and other groups, asking the agency to reform its retransmission consent process:

    “The system is out of balance. Increasingly, broadcasters are demanding that the public pay them for access to their TV channels, even though they receive free use of public airwaves. People are tired of paying ever more for the same thing. Viewers should not be used as pawns in contract negotiations, but that is what the broadcasters are doing.

  • Citizens Groups Ask FCC to Address Diversity in Telecom, Media Ownership and Programming

    A coalition of public interest organizations sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski yesterday, calling on the Commission to make increased diversity in the media and broadband communications landscape a top priority. The groups issued the following joint statement:

    “Historically marginalized communities still face countless barriers to their own members’ provision and ownership of communications services. The Communications Act instructs the Commission to examine these barriers and take steps to eliminate them. This Commission has taken strides in this area, yet much work remains to be done to address persistent and growing digital divides.

    Read the letter here.

  • Why Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love

    Several of MAP’s staffers have installed ad blockers on their Internet browsers, and many readers of RoadMAP have probably done so as well. Here comes the Editor In Chief of RoadMAP’s favorite tech site, Ars Technica, begging all of us not to use our ad blockers because it threatens to kill off free content on the Internet. (By the way, Ars is hardly a hand-to-mouth startup. It is owned by Conde Nast, which also owns The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and other major magazines. This plea has forced RoadMAP to rethink its practice.

    Why Ad Blocking is Devastating to the Sites You Love

    Did you know that blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit? We recently learned that many of our readers did not know this, so I’m going to explain why.

    There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won’t hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn’t pay. In a way, that’s what ad blocking is doing to us. Just like a restaurant, we have to pay to staff, we have to pay for resources, and we have to pay when people consume those resources. The difference, of course, is that our visitors don’t pay us directly but indirectly by viewing advertising. (Although a few thousand of you are subscribers, and we thank you all very, very much!)

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    Ars Technica