Thursday’s panel at CTIA captured the key common theme of this year’s show – how to continue the innovation of the U.S. mobile telecommunications industry with the help, not the hindrance, of regulators.  The panel represented a novel mix of entertainment, with 3D advocate James Cameron, social networking, epitomized by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and the “U.S. government CTO” Aneesh Chopra.  Mr. Chopra sidestepped the audience-popular remarks posed by the CNBC moderator which questioned the effectiveness of regulations on connectivity growth.  He preferred to leave the hard answers to the FCC, stating that his role is to leverage the existing infrastructure for utmost benefit. Read the rest of this entry »

Regardless of the FCC’s final outcome on network neutrality some form of usage-based billing may not be such a bad thing.

For example, as a result of being situated next to one of the world’s largest fresh water lakes, the city of Chicago offers an un-metered water service and flat-rate billing based upon the size of your house.
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On September 21, 2009, The US Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, gave a speech in which he outlined two new principles to augment the “Four Freedoms” originally articulated in 2004 by then chairman Michael Powell. The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination — stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications. An implicit assumption is present in this principle (and in the speech as a whole) that discrimination is a bad thing.
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