Understanding Government

Around many of America’s largest cities, high occupancy toll lanes offer drivers the option of paying to get to their destination faster.  Similarly, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner are gatekeepers to broadband Internet access lanes and have the ability assign priority lanes — with better quality and faster speeds — to those who pay a premium.  The ISPs also have an incentive to provide slower access and to block services that compete with their telephone and video services. Advocates for Internet neutrality – a term that connotes different things to different people – want the government to step in to ensure that Internet users (both subscribers and companies that work on the Internet) will have access to the services and applications they choose without interference.

In December, the Federal Communications Commission waded into the net neutrality debate, where Congress has thus far feared to tread, when it voted 3-2 to establish rules to preserve open Internet access.  With over 100,000 comments filed in the leadup to the FCC decision, it’s clear that the public is concerned about the future of access to the Internet. (more…)

Broadband grants from the stimulus bill will fund a program intended to modernize the technological infrastructure of mostly rural central Illinois. (more…)

Broadband funding in the stimulus bill was largely billed as for rural areas without internet access. However, Chicago  will also get some of that federal money, the Associated Press reports. Two Chicago groups will get a combined $16 million in stimulus money for broadband, with the Dept. of Commerce providing $7 million to the Smart Chicago Broadband Adoption Program and $9 million to the Smart Chicago Public Computer Centers project.  The public computer centers project will (more…)

Verizon and Comcast are energetically lobbying to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from regulating broadband. The Washington Post’s Cecilla Kang reports that the FCC is strongly considering whether to reclassify broadband internet service as “a common service carrier,” which means that broadband service providers would be regulated in the same way the FCC polices telephone companies. (more…)