I am so sick of California. While it’s good that the “privacy” bill didn’t make it out of the Senate, it’s not so good that the Amazon tax is going on to the Senate. Texas: Don’t be like us. Defeat your Amazon tax in SB 1.
And the hacks go on: Anonymous attacks.. Iran?, its apparent offshoot lulzsec attacked PBS and Sony, but leaves itself open to law enforcement action? And yet, somehow, our elected officials think the victims are the people to be grilling. I can’t think of a metaphor that doesn’t overstate the situation some, so I’ll be direct: finding fault with the victims is what we need to do only after we’ve exhausted our options related to frogmarching the attackers.
One question though: Why isn’t the House talking to RSA, after the breakin it suffered not too long ago? Is SecurID broken wider open than the Congress wants known publicly?
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I’m late. No excuses. Let’s go.
So the courts threw out Verizon’s challenge of Net Neutrality, rejecting the very clever argument made by Verizon that it wasn’t premature. So now we wait for the actual publication of Net Neutrality to take place.
Well, to a point. The Republicans aren’t waiting and will vote this week in the full House to repeal Net Neutrality under the Congressional Review Act. Remember: this cannot be filibustered in the Senate, and so when it passes the House we only need 51 votes in the Senate, not 60. Seton Motley has some phone numbers to call if you’re represented by a key Democrat.
Tell ’em that even FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, as part of the 2/5 of the FCC that voted against Net Neutrality, still thinks it was a bad idea. Ask them his question: “Nothing is broken on the Internet, so what are we trying to fix?”
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After that flurry of activity online, we seem be having a bit of a slow Friday. It’s no wonder: we have a long fight ahead with respect to the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, a process that Mike Wendy calls Legalized Extortion. And when property rights are made contingent on acceptance of a goverment-dictated consent degree, it’s hard to argue with the thrust of Wendy’s point.
Scary thought for all users of SecurID, after the RSA breakin: What if SecurID has a backdoor? If it does, then there could be real danger ahead for all its users.
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So the top story this week is going to be the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA. There’s a lot being said about it, about unions, about competition, but the story I’m seeing emerging is that this deal is about spectrum. AT&T sees in T-Mobile a way to get the spectrum it needs going forward. In fact, even power grabbing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said to the CTIA that this is an issue:
If we do nothing in the face of the looming spectrum crunch, many consumers will face higher prices – as the market is forced to respond to supply and demand – and frustrating service – connections that drop, apps that run unreliably or too slowly.
So not only is T-Mobile a sensible purchase for AT&T in the short run, due to their use of similar technology, but in the long run this is the kind of purchase AT&T may need to be able to compete with Verizon. Verizon, of course, already got more spectrum when it bought the C Block of old television spectrum in 2008.
So if we want competition now and in the future, we need to let the deal happen.
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