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News

• Internet Slowdown Day becomes an online picket protest

  Have you noticed more spinning "loading" icons on Web pages today?

• Reddit, Mozilla, Imgur and others in slowdown protest over net neutrality rules

  A consortium of some of the Internet's most visited websites, including reddit, Imgur, Wordpress, and Mozilla, will prominently display a spinning red loading icon on Wednesday, September 10, in a protest against planned FCC rules changes that would undermine the principals of net neutrality.

• FCC broadband report offers fodder for net neutrality discussions

  A recent FCC study may have taken some wind out of the sails for those who suggest that ISPs are not living up to performance promises. In its fourth such annual report, "Measuring Broadband America-2014," the FCC has found that, on average, ISPs now provide 101% of advertised download speeds.

• Big Four U.S. Carriers Now Accepting 911 Emergency Text Messages

  Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, and their associated 911 call centers, now accept emergency SMS text messages, but the new functionality is currently available only in limited areas in 16 states.

• Outrage over net neutrality decision heard ‘round the Internet

  The Federal Communications Commission's proposed new rules for net neutrality touched off a firestorm across broad sections of the Internet this week, as critics charge that the FCC has effectively gutted the entire concept.

• AT&T Data Plan Is 'a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing'

  Open Internet advocates are warning that AT&T's 'sponsored data' program could create pay-to-play mobile Web. It has also been described as a new form of double-dipping, where both customers and businesses are charged for the same data usage.

• FCC approves Google project that will identify unused wireless spectrum

  A Google project designed to collect information on available wireless spectrum into a central database has been given an FCC go-ahead to begin a public trial, the company announced today.

• Free Public Wi-Fi to Get Faster to Meet Mobile Demands

  In response to the soaring use of smartphones, tablets and other data-hungry wireless devices in public mobile broadband hotspots such as airports and convention centers, government regulators have voted in favor of a proposal to increase the capacity of free public Wi-Fi.

• FCC IT Healthcare Fund to Boost Broadband Connections

  The FCC's new $400 million Healthcare Connect Fund is designed to boost broadband connections in rural areas in order to support telemedicine to expand patient access to specialists and drive down costs.

• FCC Addresses Mobile Broadband Concerns

  House subcommittee members question FCC commissioners about the planned 2014 wireless spectrum auction to advance mobile broadband. The panel voiced concern over using too much spectrum for unlicensed uses versus licensed uses.

• FCC's Approach to Technology 'Siloed' and 'Antiquated,' Critics say

  As the Federal Communications Commission continues its work on expanding broadband access and adoption, some Washington insiders urge the agency to relax its regulatory approach as wireless and wireline technologies converge.

• Timeline: The birth and death of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger

  In retrospect, it's not hard to see why AT&T thought its proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile would sail through with relatively few issues.

• The Internet has escaped the ax, at least in the US, at least for now

  A year ago <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2010/121310-bradner.html">I wrote</a> that 2011 would be a year in which the Internet would "be under a multi-pronged attack that threatens to change it irrevocably in ways that may destroy much of the Internet's potential." Well, 2011 has come and mostly gone, and it turned out that my pessimism may have been misplaced but not invalid.

• FCC group crafting plans to open up mobile spectrum

  The Federal Communications Commission Spectrum Task Force laid out preliminary ideas on Friday for making frequencies now used for satellite services available for conventional mobile broadband.

• Court rules against US FCC's Comcast net neutrality decision

  A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop throttling peer-to-peer traffic in the name of network management.