Irony of ironies: The very first complaint filed with the FCC under its Open Internet rules comes from an innovative VoIP provider against a government-owned municipal utility:

A Florida VoIP carrier has filed a net neutrality complaint against a Georgia utility and broadband provider, after the utility accused the VoIP firm of theft of service for using its network to deliver voice service without paying for it.

via VoIP Provider Files Net Neutrality Complaint With FCC | PCWorld Business Center.

At David Isenberg’s Freedom To Connect conference in Washington this week, advocates of Internet Openness Susan Crawford, Vint Cerf, and Michael Copps have been touting a public utility model of network ownership while real public utilities are stifling real innovation in the real world. Don’t look too close.

This case mirrors the Madison River complaint that led the FCC to adopt its initial Internet Policy Statement in 20006, except that the rural phone company that has committed the alleged offense in this case is publicly owned.… Read the rest

More often than is warranted, Washington embraces consensus positions based on the view “we all know this to be true.” One of these is “well, while K-12 education is a mess, we all know that American higher education is the best.” There is increasing evidence the last half of this consensus view is not true.

The latest evidence of this is an article in today’s Washington Post that relies on data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) showing today’s college students spend about 40 percent less time studying than they did a half century ago. While everyone focuses on getting 6 years olds to spend every waking moment doing homework and giving up summer vacations so they can go to school (a great idea if we want to rob children of childhood), we are going in the opposite direction when it comes to college.

As I wrote in a blog on Huffington Post, “The Failure of American Higher Education,” American higher education is no longer adequately educating students – not just on STEM as we have written about, but on the broad capabilities of being able to think, write, and engage in reasoned logic. Strikingly, … Read the rest

In a new report, Thad Hall and Mike Alvarez, political scientists at the University of Utah and Cal Tech respectively, provide the first comprehensive assessment of political participation by people with disabilities in the United States in the 2008 and 2010 elections. Importantly, the report also highlights the impact that various policies can have on the accessibility of elections for people with disabilities. The report is worth a read in its entirety but I will repeat a few of the interesting top-level findings:

• People with disabilities were less likely to vote than people without disabilities. In 2008, they were 7% less likely; in 2010, they were 3% less likely.
• People with disabilities were less likely to be registered to vote than people without disabilities. In 2008, they were 4.6% less likely; in 2010, they were 1.2% less likely.
• Compared to individuals without disabilities, people with disabilities are more likely to report a voter registration problem, having difficulty with voting equipment, and having needed help voting. On a positive note, they were less likely to report having to wait in line. (One reason for this might be some jurisdictions allow voters with disabilities or older voters to move to the front

… Read the rest

The Department of Commerce (DOC) has released a preliminary ruling to impose a 31 percent “anti-dumping” tariff on 62 Chinese solar PV manufacturers (and a 250 percent tariff on all other Chinese solar manufacturers) in addition to the 2.9 to 4.73 percent tariff imposed in March for illegal subsidies. The reaction to the preliminary ruling has been varied, as the tariff would impact the solar supply-chain differently depending on whether you’re a U.S. installer, intermediate components supplier, or final manufacturer.  But one thing is certain: the DOC ruling is a positive step towards boosting solar industry innovation.

From 2000 to 2011, China increased its global solar PV export market share from 2 percent to 54 percent, or a compound annual growth rate of 115 percent. This remarkable export growth, in addition to significant deployment subsidies in the United States, has helped solar PV costs decrease 75 percent in the last 10 years.  But what’s the character of that cost decline?  According to a recent McKinsey study a share of the decline is economies of scale – i.e. greater solar PV production reduces unit costs – which in reality is a mix of incremental innovations in production and manufacturing efficiency.  Some … Read the rest

In what’s going to be seen as a response to strategic criticism, Comcast has raised the consumption cap on its residential broadband service plans from 250 GB per month to 300, the first increase since the cap was adopted in 2008. The increase is unlikely to be noticed by actual Comcast customers because the 250 GB cap wasn’t a problem. The increase hasn’t muted Netflix’ poorly-founded complaints of mistreatment.

Comcast has been criticized recently for its 250GB monthly limit on total downloads by residential broadband customers. Netflix complains that the limit is applied arbitrarily in order to keep it from growing. The Netflix complaints have been echoed by so-called public interest advocates Free Press and Public Knowledge, by the tech bloggers who generally take a hard line against networking companies such as GigaOm’s Stacey Higgenbotham, Ars Technica’s Timothy B. Lee and Nate Anderson, and the shy piracy advocates who post anonymously at TorrentFreak.

The Netflix argument is that 250 GB is so low that it discourages potential customers from using its service in favor of competing services such as the Comcast Video-on-Demand (VOD) service (operating through proprietary set top boxes, DVRs, and Xbox’s) that’s exempt from … Read the rest