Anti-consumer legislation SOPA and PIPA might be all but dead, but there isn’t time to rest. There is a seemingly never-ending flow of proposed legislation, statutes and bills queued up, ready to bust down doors and storm living rooms. One of the latest involves the forced transition from analog to digital cable — something I wrote about back in 2008. If the FCC caves to massive lobbying from the cable companies, the days of unencrypted cable stations in the US will be numbered. Cable subscribers would be required to have a cable box (which will likely cost money) or CableCard-compatible box to receive even local network stations.

Boxee just recently started taking an active role in this fight. The Boxee Box has always been uniquely positioned as a legitimate cable alternative, but it wasn’t until Boxee Live TV launched last month that the company has gone against cable companies face-to-face. But if this proposal passes, it will stifle products not only from Boxee, but also products from El Gato, Silicon Dust and others — and let’s not forget about the likely millions of cable TVs currently enjoying living a box-less life.

Right now most cable providers are required by a 1996 FCC rule to provide a basic set of unencrypted stations. These are most often just local broadcast stations also available through an OTA tuner (think ABC, PBS, and a random religious station). Under the current rules, cable companies are not allowed to encrypt these stations, therefore allowing them to work with any TV, tuner, or as the FCC calls them, navigation devices like the Boxee Live TV. As cable providers started transitioning to a more efficient digital signal, these channels remained, able to work with older TVs most often found in guest bedrooms, garages and the like. But soon even those stations might go dark.

This process started several years back when Cablevision became the first provider to petition the FCC for a waiver (pdf alert) allowing the provider to completely ditch analog channels in some markets. The FCC granted the request, which caused several other providers to file similar petitions.

But this isn’t as nefarious as it sounds. Analog cable systems are notoriously inefficient. Cablevision went on to launch the US’s first residential 100mbps service way back in 2009. This was partly possible because the company freed space by using an all-digital TV transmission. At the time Verizon’s FiOS topped out at 50mbps, and as former TechCrunch writer Nicholas Deleon found out, the service lived up to its expectations. Plus it was only $100 a month. In 2009.

Comcast pointed out in 2009 that the provider can fit 10-15 digital stations or 2-3 HD stations onto a single analog transmission. Per AllVid’s press release citing Comcast’s Comments on the FCC’s docket number 11-169, Comcast went on to respond to the FCC in November 2011 that the digital transition goal set by Congress was achieved. So if the leak was fixed, why completely shut off the water now?

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association argues it’s time to move forward. Digital boxes allows cable companies to remotely troubleshoot problems therefore reducing the amount of trucks needed to respond to service calls. You know, it’s better for the Earth. Each time a cable truck is saved from rolling out to a subscriber’s house, Al Gore plants a tree — or something like that.

The NCTA goes on to state in its comments to the FCC that 77% of cable subscribers are already on a digital service, more on the larger providers: it’s 90% for Comcast, 95% for Cablevision, and 74% for TWC. The trade association insists that it’s time for the FCC to drop outdated rules and allow for a level playing field. Netflix has more subscribers than any cable provider, it states. As “the marketplace is robustly competitive and video services are being delivered over a range of different platforms to a wide array of different devices” a level playing field is warranted. Yes, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association says cable providers need the FCC’s to help stop people from cutting the cord.

Comcast started implementing a mostly digital line-up in my area in 2008. I was furious. I was going to lose service on several TVs. Now, my TV in my garage and office sit unused (first world problem, I know) because I’m not going to pay the $3 a month for additional boxes. The march to 100% digital will raise rates and alienate millions, I said. Now, Comcast and others are marching up the FCC stairs again, fueled by nearly endless lobbying money.

Boxee points out in their blog post that cable companies spent more the $50 million on lobbying. That’s $50 million, that rather than improving their service, was spent on courting the FCC and legislators into redefining consumer friendly statutes. Boxee doesn’t have that kind of cash. They instead received an audience with the FCC Chairman and staff and presented their argument that modifying the existing rules will slow innovation, harm start-ups and hurt consumers by raising rates. But moreover, the move to an all-digital service can be achieved in different means.

The CEA agrees. The Consumer Electronic Association indicated that the proposed ruling should not be enacted by itself. There are other, more pressing matters that the FCC must address alongside this issue. Granting cable providers a sweeping ruling does not solve the underlining issues of lack of competition, “downloadable security”, and allowing the private sector to enact their solutions (AllVid). “If [the FCC] is going to continue with fixes that are only “interim,” it should proceed, as well, with a true solution,” says the CEA at the end of its comments on the matter.

The AllVid Tech Company Alliance, a group of industry leaders founded to advance the FCC’s proposed AllVid standard, also oppose the ruling. The alliance states that the FCC should continue issuing waivers on a case-by-case basis. Anything less would stifle competition and force more consumers to rely on “proprietary leased devices.”

Boxee is winning. Consumers are winning. Cable companies are starting to feel the heat from people tired of paying for hundreds of stations but only watching a few. Cable companies need to do what ever they can to lock consumers in, but they’re driving them away at a faster rate. Prices constantly rise without any noticeable improvement in service.

Consumers deserve choices. Sure, they have a choice whether to subscribe to a given cable company, but they should also have a choice to use 3rd party hardware and boxes. In 1996 Congress entrusted the FCC with the task to adopt regulations that would ensure commercial availability of navigation devices such as set top boxes. As Boxee, the CEA, and AllVid point out in their FCC comments, caving to the cable companies would be in direct violation of these instructions.The FCC is supposed to look out for the lowly consumer, not the mighty cable company. Hopefully they’ll keep this in mind as Comcast and others wine and dine Washington DC.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, SV Angel’s Ron Conway, Andreessen-Horowitz’ Jeff Jordan, Twilio’s Jeff Lawson, Foursquare mobile VP Holger Leudorf and Lookout founder John Hering all gathered at Founder’s Den HQ this afternoon for the awesomely titled “Desperately Seeking Spectrum” panel, where discussion centered around freeing up broadband spectrum for the US mobile industry to use as it continues its formidable expansion.

Genachowski referred to predictions that mobile broadband traffic will increase 35 times over the next five years. Smart phones, which use 24 times as much broadband, are replacing feature phones, and tablets, which are becoming increasingly more prevalent as they continue to displace the PC market, use 122 times as much as smart phones.

“The app economy didn’t exist three years ago,” Genachowski said on why this spectrum hogging isn’t entirely a bad thing, ” And how many jobs are created per app? More than one. That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs [across all apps]. Facebook has created around 15,000 jobs. And when you really look at the jobs that have been created by companies that are building to the Facebook platform and the jobs that are created by the mobile economy, they’re not just engineering.”

Genachowski and the other panelists held that the techology industry — which is undeniably becoming more mobile-centric — is the primary catalyst for job growth in the US and an ample amount of broadband spectrum is crucial if we’d like to continue to be a (positive) disruptive force in the global economy. “As we build our products it’s critical that we’re reaching a point that we care about data,” said Foursquare’s Leudorf. ”The tech community wants to be proactive on this issue,” Conway explained, “We don’t want to wait until it is a crisis.”

Genachowski’s interim solution is something called voluntary incentive auction, which is why he and Conway are garnering support for measures that will allow the FCC to incentivize old school broadcast companies that voluntarily give up some portion of their spectrum allotment to mobile. A law that would give the FCC the power to hold these auctions is currently making its way through Congress, recently passing through a Senate committee with a vote of 21-4.

“What we saw here today was a series of examples from entrepreneurs and innovators that are creating our economic futures. We know exactly what the biggest threat to them is, [that] the infrastructure they rely on is finite, spectrum is finite. Demand is going up, supply is flat,” Genachowski later told me in a duel interview with Conway. “If we don’t increase the supply of spectrum we’re going to throttle the growth, the opportunity and the job creation we can get from mobile innovation.”

Special thanks!: @abrams

Obscenely high phone bills have a habit of coming from out of the blue, but that could all change in coming months. According to Reuters, the wireless trade association CTIA is expected to announce a new set of guidelines today under which all wireless carriers must notify their customers when they’re nearing overage territory.

Be it from unintentional roaming, talkative friends or text-crazy family members, nearly 1 in 6 wireless customers have experienced “bill shock,” and the FCC is none too pleased with the situation. They unveiled a similar effort to curb bill shock last year, but the regulatory commission is putting their plans on ice for now.

They’re not sitting out the game for good though — the FCC will reportedly be ready to step in once more if wireless carriers start to drag their feet.

The CTIA guidelines revolve around four types of alerts: voice, data, messaging, and roaming. Carriers will be required to send those alerts to their customers both before they hit their monthly limits, and right when they tiptoe over the line.

Unlike the FCC’s proposed rules, the CTIA’s guidelines puts these alerts into the field much sooner. Carriers will have 12 months to implement at least 2 of the 4 alert types, and another 6 months after that to get the rest of them working. It’s simple enough in theory, but the FCC has stated that the change would require some pretty substantial changes to carrier billing systems.

After having spent a few years on the retail side of the wireless industry, it’s refreshing to see some of the onus fall on carriers instead of customers. It won’t be a quick rollout, nor an especially easy one, but it’s one that will give consumers some much-needed information — after all, isn’t one heinous phone bill enough?

There have been plenty of questions over whether or not the proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T is in the public interest. We’ve heard from competitors, senators, attorneys generals, and even the DOJ, who formally filed a complaint in federal court saying that “AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.” Today, it’s the FCC who’s asking the questions, and it seems AT&T has been avoiding them.

According to GigaOm, the FCC sent a letter to AT&T today asking for clarification on the number of jobs AT&T promised the merger would yield. The letter mentions that AT&T has yet to fully respond to the question of how consolidation of two companies into one would create more jobs.

“Our review of the information currently in our record suggest that AT&T’s responses on this issue remain incomplete. Indeed, AT&T to date has produced almost nothing in response to Question 36,” read the letter from the FCC.

One of the greatest critics of the merger, Sprint, recently commissioned a study that aims to deconstruct AT&T’s argument for job creation through the merger. However, AT&T snapped back at that study quickly, calling it “woefully flawed.” In truth, both have quite a bit to gain by casting this deal in a certain light, so we’ll just take their claims with a hefty helping of salt.

Update: AT&T has also filed a letter with the FCC, which mentions that “AT&T is aware that the Commission has requested additional information about the job-related effects of the transaction. AT&T intends to respond fully to that request. In the meantime, AT&T submits the instant letter in response to the filings by Public Knowledge and Free Press discussed below.”

The following is another excerpt from AT&T’s letter to the FCC:

In the process, the merger will spur billions of dollars in additional investment, create thousands of jobs, and significantly narrow the digital divide while advancing the Administration’s rural broadband objectives – all of which will aid the nation’s economic recovery and future economic strength without the expenditure of public funds. On top of that, AT&T has made significant job commitments, including our commitment to make a job offer guarantee available to existing T-Mobile USA non-management employees, our commitment to retain the two companies’ U.S. call center employees, and our commitment to bring 5,000 call center jobs back to the U.S.

Nobody ever wants to be in a situation that requires emergency services, but when you are, that whole “dial 911” thing really helps. Sort of. In truth, our emergency response system is pretty outdated when we consider all the various forms of communication that have basically become mainstream. But luckily, FCC Charmain Julius Genachowski recently announced that a five step plan is in place to bring text, photo, video and data support to the Next Generation 911 service.

“It’s hard to imagine that airlines can send text messages if your flight is delayed, but you can’t send a text message to 911 in an emergency,” said Genachowski. “The unfortunate truth is that the capability of our emergency response communications has not kept pace with commercial innovation — has not kept pace with what ordinary people now do every day with communications devices.”

That’s pretty sweet news considering there are plenty of situations in which phone support just wouldn’t cut it. Let’s say you are in some sort of bank robbery hostage situation (knock on wood). You can’t just whip out the old smartphone and yammer on to the cops about the masked gunmen. But a text sure would help, and anyone who’s young enough to have had a cell phone in class with them knows that sneaky text messaging isn’t all that difficult.

Another hypothetical: You’re at the convenient store one night perusing through the ice cream selection when a robber pulls out a gun and grabs all the money from the register. You know he’s going to run for it, but if you could just snap a pic or a grab some video, the cops might actually find him. In a few years, photos and videos sent in through the next-gen 911 service could be one of the best methods of catching criminals.

The service won’t roll out for another five to ten years, but in the meantime dialing 911 will do just fine.

So let’s say you walk into a Best Buy looking for a new tablet. You walk up to the guy in the blue polo and tell him what you’re looking for. After taking you to the tablet section, he whips out a handkerchief and blindfolds you. “They’re all really good!” he promises. “The one on the left is $499, the one in the middle is $549, and the one on the right is an even $600. Which can I wrap up for you today?”

It sounds ridiculous, but that’s essentially how you’ve been shopping around for Internet service providers: blind as a bat, unless you want to trust their ads. But now, for the first time ever, the good old FCC has compiled data from 9,000 average Joe Americans over the course of a month. The goal: to gauge the speeds offered by ISPs in the real world, not just in their advertisements.

It’s entirely unnecessary to get into all the math of this report. Instead, I’m going to hit you with some of the key takeaways so we can all be smarter shoppers. Note that this doesn’t include other statistics, like uptime, customer service, cost, and so on. It really focuses more on the difference between ISP’s actual speeds vs. advertised speeds — obviously valuable data.

First, Cablevision seems to have more subscribers than it can handle. The company scored lowest among all ISPs by a rather large margin. Over a 24-hour period, CableVision’s average download speeds clocked in at less than 80 percent of the speeds advertised. During peak hours, the ISP barely broke the 50 percent mark of its promised speeds. AT&T, MediaCom, Qwest and Frontier also had trouble living up to promised speeds, though none were quite as taxed as CableVision.

On a happier note, Verizon Fios customers should feel totally proud of themselves. You’ve made a wise choice. Fios’ average real-world speeds were actually higher than advertised speeds, both over a 24-hour period and during peak surfing hours — as it’s a new service, it’s hard to say whether it’ll stay that way, but the numbers are hard to argue with. Other high-ranking ISPs include Comcast and Cox.

Here’s the best news of the whole report: a report exists. Before this it was difficult to separate the lies from the truth. Now it’s all mapped out for you, nice and neat. And don’t be afraid to fight for what you pay for. If your ISP consistently delivers speeds slower than what they’ve promised, do a little testing, mark it down, and complain. Never forget: the customer is always right.

These photos from the FCC show us a few of the new Roku devices coming out in 2011 including the 3000X, 3050X, and 3100X. These guys will have 1080p HDMI, USB support, a microSD slot, and surround sound support. The HD model features an RF remote control.

Two entry-level models, the XS and XD, will not have Ethernet ports.

Look for these this year, probably for launch around the holiday.

via ehomeupgrade

More specifically, the complaint claims that Verizon asked Google to block tethering functionality in its Android devices, which is a direct violation of FCC requirements that the carrier not “deny, limit, or restrict” its subscribers’ ability to use whichever devices and applications they choose.

Here’s what Free Press policy counsel Aparna Sridhar had to say on the matter:

Verizon’s conduct is bad for the public and bad for innovation. It also appears to be illegal under the FCC’s rules that govern Verizon’s LTE network. Users pay through the nose for Verizon’s LTE service, and having done so, they should be able to use their connections as they see fit. Instead, Verizon’s approach is to sell you broadband but then put up roadblocks to control your use of it.

[via MobileBurn]

The filing also confirms much of what we already knew about the Android smartphone: EVDO, CDMA, WiMAX, WiFi radios, and Bluetooth antennas are all present and accounted for. A dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor powers the EVO 3D and its glasses-free 3D display. The HTC smartphone is originally priced at $499 off-contract, but if you play your cards right and are looking to renew your contract (or switch carriers), RadioShack will hook you up for $200 with a new (or renewed) two-year agreement.

Oh, and here’s that RadioShack flyer I mentioned:

[via UberGizmo]

Comcast isn’t exactly known to be friendly with the downloaders or streamers. In the past they’ve limited and even blocked seeding of torrent files. The term throttling was synonymous with Comcast a few years back. The company eventually entered into a partnership with BitTorrent, Inc and was later asked by the FCC to stop the practices, but perhaps the company just moved to block specific sites in an effort to kill the bandwidth-sucking practice of torrenting.

Like TorrentFreak I ran a couple of quick network checks on ThePirateBay from my Comcast connection and traceroutes and pings come back kosher. As of 9:30am EDT I could not access ThePirateBay on my main desktop computer. I then grabbed a Verizon Xoom, which also failed to connect to the site when on WiFi mode. However, when using Verizon 3G, the site loads without an issue.

So what’s a torrent-addicted Comcast subscriber supposed to do? Well, good friend, I have some solutions for you. First, freeproxyserver.net is a quick and dirty way around the blockage. But you might also want to look at — damn, I’m going to break a rule here — usenet. That’s all I’m going to say because like that other place, the first rule of usenet is not to talk about usenet. You could also look into more discrete torrent sites as ones with private trackers and strict rules generally fly under the radar.

Comcast has yet to comment on this issue and they might never. Everything is pure speculation without an official Comcast statement. Perhaps the site will suddenly work again for Comcast subs. Funny how that works sometimes, eh?

In other Comcast related news, this just happened mere months after this.

Update: Comcast reached out and indicated that they are not blocking the site, and reminded, as mentioned above, the site is not accessible from other ISPs either. They link to this part of their FAQ page, which indicates that they do not block peer-to-peer traffic although that was never part of the original argument as the torrent traffic goes through fine, it’s just access to the site that was limited.

As we wrote in December, Republicans had vowed to give the loophole-filled rules hell when the Congress turned more Republican in January, first voting to deny the Commission federal funding in February.

Today we see the fruits of their efforts again, namely the voting through of House Joint Resolution 37, a regulation that would prohibit the FCC  from having any authority over ISPs and broadband, thus overturning December’s regulations.

One-half of the government wanting to revoke your power isn’t cool and I don’t want to necessarily down play the impact of a house vote but, as Wired’s Ryan Singel explains, the vote is indeed largely symbolic.

Historically, the votes for or against Net Neutrality rules have been divided down party lines, and the resolution would have to pass through the Senate to go into effect, which is unlikely as Democrats are in the majority. President Obama has also said he would veto any legislation reversing the rules if passed by Congress, according to the New York Times.

Sure it could take the votes of two-thirds of the members of both Congressional houses to override a Presidential veto.  But as the Senate is currently split 53:47 Democrats to Republicans, and Democrats tend to be pro-Net Neutrality, an Obama veto override seems sort of a stretch.

Supporter of the resolution and Oregon Republican representative Greg Walden told the New York Times, “Congress has not authorized the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet.” Yes, but it as of yet hasn’t yet unauthorized it either. Stay tuned.

Oh, here comes controversy. The FCC has preliminarily approved the use of mobile phone signal boosters, but let’s say it’s only put one foot in the water. A 55-page notice of proposed rulemaking [PDF] has been put online that details what the FCC has in mind. The idea is to give consumers a limited ability to boost their mobile signal in times of need. Wireless providers, like AT&T, are none too pleased.

AT&T says the use of signal boosters could be nothing less than dangerous. It cites one incident off the coast of Florida where a a signal booster was used that led to 21 hours of interrupted service and nearly 8,000 dropped calls. (Insert your own AT&T-dropped-call joke here.) Police in Massachusetts have also had run-ins with signal boosters in the past, run-in that led to the interruption of their radio service. Signal boosters can also interfere with mobile 911 location services. Kinda dangerous.

AT&T wants the signal boosters to be pretty limited, if it has to be passed at all. They should never be activated in areas with high signal strength, and should only be used where there’s terribly low signal strength; they should be used to take the signal from 10 to 11, say, but from 2 to 7.

The FCC hasn’t given its final stamp of approval on the plan yet, and there’s a 45-day window where people can make their thoughts known.

It’s illegal to own or operate a GPS jammer in the United States for many valid reasons. More importantly, it threatens many systems us humans find relevant. If GPS goes down, how will people get around cities without getting lost? (Google Maps works so well for public transit.) It’s not surprising that the biggest threat to GPS is actually its owners: the US government.

GPS frequencies are very weak, so any slight amount of interference can cause the signals to fail. LightSquared, a company that plans to deliver wireless broadband over satellite, operates in frequency ranges adjacent to those used by GPS. Many people involved with GPS were surprised when the FCC gave tentative approval to LightSquared, essentially setting up GPS for failure. Apparently, the normal processes were circumvented for possible political favors.

Garmin recently tested GPS near the LightSquared transmitters and found jamming at 3.57 to 13.76 miles with a loss of location fixing from 0.66 to 5.6 miles away. Even the US Air Force thinks the FCC has gone crazy. Hopefully, this doesn’t interfere with my hooking up on Ditto.

Not much here to note but this FCC filing shows that the Blackberry Playbook has pushed through another hurdle towards reality. The filing shows the capacaties – 16, 32, and 64GB – but the rest is classified per RIM’s request to the FCC. I’m actually quite intrigued by this pad but I’d probably never buy one. We shall, as they say, see.

via Engadget

Back to the drawing board. The House of Representatives struck a mighty blow against Net Neutrality yesterday, with the communications and technology subcommittee voting against the recently adopted Net Neutrality rules. The rules will actually remain in place until Congress or the president do something about them, ie, send them back to the FCC for further re-tooling or worse.

The 15-8 vote was along party lines. The committee’s Republican chairman (the Republican Party won control of the House in last fall’s election), Fred Upton, of Michigan, said, “If the FCC was truly weighing the costs and benefits of its actions, the agency would not be attempting to regulate the Internet.”

There’s that dreaded “r word” again, regulate. As if making sure ISPs don’t selectively block traffic without telling you, or ensuring that they treat every bit equally, is regulating the Internet.

Keep in mind that Rep. Upton received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon in the past several election cycles alone. In fact, AT&T is Rep. Upton’s top campaign contributor of all time throughout the course of his congressional career to the tune of $94,000.

Make of that what you will.

At the same time, it may not even be worth getting too upset over this latest setback given how toothless the Net Neutrality rules the FCC passed actually were.

Some parts of the Baltimore-DC area received up to 12 inches of snow on and around January 26 and the resulting traffic problems, flight back-ups, and dangerous conditions resulted in a snarl of traffic on the highways and some casualties.

Why Verizon got singled out is beyond the scope of the hearing but presumably they were the only carrier overloaded enough to fail that evening.

via Bloomberg

The Republican Party has a bone to pick with the Federal Communications Commission, and you’ll never guess why. Oh, wait, yes you will. Predictably, several Republican congressmen have come out against the evils of Net Neutrality, despite the fact that it passed several months ago, and despite the fact that it could charitably only be called Net Neutrality Lite. What gives?

The latest complaint, by way of Rep. Fred Upton, of Michigan, and Rep. Greg Walden, of Oregon, centers on two things. One, that the FCC may have overstepped its bounds when it comes to “regulating” the Internet, something the NYU School of Law sorta agreed with. Not that the FCC overstepped its bounds per se, but that it went about implementing Net Neutrality (Lite) using the wrong legal avenues. Oops.

The other part of the congressmen’s assertion is a little less inspired, and that’s that the FCC didn’t show any market-based reason for implementing Net Neutrality in the first place.

I suppose these congressmen never had the please of, to mention one concrete example, Comcast shaping their traffic without so much as their knowledge, let alone their approval. How about, “You want to shape my traffic? OK, I’d like the cancel my service with no penalties, please.”

The idea that the almighty market will ensure that the Internet remains free and open is laughable. Have we forgotten that Google and Verizon capriciously decided that the “mobile” Internet is separate from the “regular” Internet, and that data there should be treated differently than data elsewhere?

And by the way, what market? Hoe many high-speed Internet providers are available in the average American town? You’re lucky if you have one crummy cable operator offering “high speed broadband.” Seems to me if your ISP is treating your data unfairly then you really don’t have anywhere to turn.

There’s your market at work.

And how about this: Comcast was in the top five contributors to Rep. Upton’s campaign back in 2008, and AT&T similarly contributed to Rep. Walden during the previous election cycle. I guess we’re supposed to believe that random congressmen, backed by the very companies that stand to lose if Net Neutrality were to stick around, just so happen to have an interest in seeing the FCC knocked off its perch.

How convenient.

Or maybe that’s what they mean when they say they want the market to dictate policy? Whatever company comes around with a cheque-signing pen gets its agenda pushed. Neat.

Who saw this coming? (Oh, right: everyone.) Verizon has taken umbrage with certain aspects of Net Neutrality, and has taken the rather predictable tract of challenging the FCC’s authority in order to get out of complying with the rules. It’s nothing more than a simple case of if you can’t win an argument based on its own merit attack the credibility of your adversary. Verizon isn’t too keen on the provision that would force it to treat all data on its network equally, so it’s going to court to make sure it doesn’t have to.

Verizon, while claiming to be “committed to preserving an open Internet” (whatever that means), says that it’s “deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority for sweeping new regulation of broadband networks and the Internet itself.” Note the presence of the word “sweeping,” which is designed to make it seem like the sky is falling. Sweeping new regulations? What kind of evil agenda is at work here?

You know, making it so that ISPs don’t treat you and your data like dirt. Such an evil agenda, I know.

Verizon has taken its complaint to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. That’s the same court that said the FCC didn’t have the authority to make any sort of Net Neutrality rules, so perhaps Verizon is hoping the court will see things its way.

Meanwhile, the FCC says Net Neutrality rests upon solid legal ground, something NYU Law School has suggested may not actually be the case.

It’s best to keep a skeptical eye trained on any company that claims to be looking out for your interests.

In fact, I still don’t know if I’ve seen any coherent argument against the requirement that ISPs treat all data equally? How, exactly, does that hurt consumers?

Not only does LittleBigPlanet 2 come out today, but the FCC approved the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Will the two companies use their combined powers for good and not evil? A healthy skepticism may be in order.

The merger cleared the FCC with a 4-1 a few moments ago. The merger was initially announced in late 2009, but its approval was held up because the FCC wanted to ensure that the merger wouldn’t wreak havoc with things like consumer choice when it comes to content consumption.

The Free Press, the watchdog group that criticized the FCC for passing only a “lite” form of Net Neutrality, has similar misgivings with regard to the merger.

Today’s decision by the FCC represents a failure of the agency to live up to its own public interest mandate, as well as Barack Obama’s promise to promote media diversity and prevent excessive media concentration. This deal will give Comcast unprecedented control over both media content and the physical network that delivers it. The FCC has opened Pandora’s Box, and we can soon expect a whole new swarm of mega-mergers that will have dire consequences for media and the Internet.

Such power concentrated in the hands of a single company is deeply troubling. Access to information from a variety of independent sources is essential to an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy. While the FCC has adopted conditions, they are insufficient short-term or voluntary fixes that will fail to prevent permanent harm to competition, consumer choice and the future of the Internet. This deal will drive up cable and Internet costs for subscribers, while further eliminating diverse, independent media content that is already woefully lacking in the commercial media….

Today, Comcast has won the jackpot, and once again, it is the American people who will end up paying out.

Harsh words, to be sure.

Comcast is expected to host a press conference at 4pm ET to “to discuss the Federal Communications Commission’s and Department of Justice’s clearance of the Company’s joint venture with General Electric related to NBC Universal.” We’ll see if the company will address any of these concerns.