Plano, TX gripes to FCC after police radio signals disrupt sprinklers (2)
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Darren Murph (1046)
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Engadget (3836)
10 hours, 35 minutes
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Filed under: Misc. GadgetsWe've seen the boys and girls in blue disturb the peace on occasion, but this is just downright bizarre. It's bruited that the city of Plano, Texas has complained to the FCC about a powerful new police communications system that's being testing in Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville. The signals have the ability to reach some 30 miles away, and they're driving the radio-controlled sprinklers that Plano uses at parks and road ...
FCC chairman dreams of free mobile internet for all Americans (1)
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Darren Murph (1046)
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Engadget Mobile (159)
23 hours, 54 minutes
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Filed under: MiscJust over a year ago, we were all making bitter beer faces at FCC chairman Kevin Martin for not going along with a delightful sounding "free internet" plan. Now, it seems the main man's tune has changed. During a recent interview, Martin stated that there was a "social obligation in making sure everybody could participate in the next generation of broadband services because, increasingly, that's what people want." He's reportedly looking to attach ...
Police Radio Keeps Disrupting Sprinklers, Local Residents Get FCC Involved [Sprinklers] (2)
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Jason Chen (572)
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Gizmodo (5963)
1 day, 17 hours
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The police around Cedar Hill, DeSoto and Duncanville Texas have a fancy new communications system that broadcasts their 10-4s and 187s up to 30 miles, which coincidentally enough is screwing up a fancy radio-controlled networked sprinkler system in that general area. Turning off the sprinklers may not sound like it does anything except for making the grass die, but that's exactly what local residents are pissed off about—pissed off enough to get the FCC involved. ...
Google takes whitespace to the people with "Free the Airwaves" (4)
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Nilay Patel (410)
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Engadget (3836)
2 days, 19 hours
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Filed under: WirelessWhitespace internet has long had heavyweight industry backing from the likes of Dell, Microsoft, and Motorola, and while those companies and several others have been lobbying Congress and the FCC through staidly named groups like the Wireless Innovation Alliance and the White Space Coalition, it looks like Google is sick of the red tape -- it's launching a petition drive aimed squarely at consumers called "Free the Airwaves." Yep, Google's cribbing its whitespace ...
Google Pushes White Space, Says Free The AirWaves - GigaOM (5)
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Om Malik (405)
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GigaOM (876)
3 days, 2 hours
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Updated: Today, Google is launching a new advocacy campaign, Free The Airwaves, an effort by the company to get some traction around white spaces, the tiny slivers of spectrum that resides in the 700 MHz band spectrum vacated by analog television’s switch to digital transmissions. It even launched a lobbying web site, though the “supported by Google” text needs a magnifying glass to be found. Google has been lobbying hard to get this spectrum unlicensed ...
120GB Zune slips past the FCC (1)
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Paul Miller (419)
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Engadget (3836)
3 days, 4 hours
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video Craving some more room for that season of Avatar you've been trying to cram onto your Zune without dropping your Mega Carrie Underwood Workout Mix? It looks like Microsoft is one-upping its 80GB model with a 120GB version, which just blew by the FCC, and should allow all your media to live in harmony. As might be expected, there's not much other than that new hard drive to set ...
HTC Dream FCC approved, Android clear for launch? (1)
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Thomas Ricker (622)
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Engadget Mobile (159)
3 days, 10 hours
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Filed under: Handsets, HTC, T-Mobile, Android The long rumored HTC Dream handset -- once referred to as "The Googlephone" -- just received FCC approval. The handset is listed as type, "Dream' with a model of "DREA100." The same model also appears with a WiFi Interoperability Certificate touting 802.11b/g WiFi. If indeed this is the long awaited Android phone, then T-Mobile, HTC, and Google are free to announce in September with an October launch as originally ...
HTC Dream FCC approved, Android clear for launch? (13)
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Thomas Ricker (622)
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Engadget (3836)
3 days, 11 hours
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Filed under: Cellphones The long rumored HTC Dream handset -- once referred to as "The Googlephone" -- just received FCC approval. The handset is listed as type, "Dream' with a model of "DREA100." The same model also appears with a WiFi Interoperability Certificate touting 802.11b/g WiFi. If indeed this is the long awaited Android phone, then T-Mobile, HTC, and Google are free to announce in September with an October launch as originally planned. FCC label ...
FCC spills the beans on the new Sony PSP-3001 (2)
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Jason Mosley (35)
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CrunchGear (836)
5 days, 6 hours
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If someone was anticipating an amazingly updated PSP, the PSP-3001 isn’t it. The supposed updates of GPS, 802.11n, Bluetooth, and a mic were nowhere to be found in the PSP-3001 FCC report. So after all the hype, it certainly seems the new PSP-3001 is just a simple hardware refresh. Perhaps meant to keep hackers on their toes and challenge them to crack the new hardware. At least we now know there is an update coming ...
T-Mobile Holds Up Free Broadband Plan (1)
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Betsy Schiffman (59)
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Epicenter (65)
1 week, 1 day
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Tomorrow is the big day. No, it's not a national holiday -- the stock market is still open and the postal service delivers mail as normal -- but August 14 marks the date by which the FCC Commissioners are supposed to vote on whether to license a chunk of spectrum for use as a free broadband service. Under the proposal, two big bands of spectrum would be combined to support a nationwide license, part of ...
Get Ready for Internet Advertising Regulation “for the Children” (1)
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Adam Thierer (14)
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The Technology Liberation Front (24)
1 week, 2 days
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Catherine Holahan of Business Week points out that consumer and children’s advocacy groups are looking to expand their efforts to regulate fatty and sugary food advertising in the name of “protecting the children”: Having successfully lobbied the government to place limits on junk food ads on TV, they now target marketing to kids via the Web. “While there are some rules for TV, there are no rules when you move online,” says Patti Miller, vice-president ...
Forthcoming Nokia N85 Slider Looks Like It's Getting U.S. 3G [Fcc] (2)
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John Mahoney (547)
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Gizmodo (5963)
1 week, 6 days
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Nokia loves to tempt U.S. folks with hot 3G N-Series phones that only work in Europe, before releasing a U.S. version several months later like they did with the N95. But according to FCC clearances, it looks like a version of the forthcoming N85 slider (N96's little cousin that isn't $1,200) with full tri-band WCDMA support is going to hit North America, which means AT&T users are in luck. Sorry T-Mobile folks still waiting for ...
New Report Says Tiered Broadband Bad, Unlikely (2)
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Stacey Higginbotham (155)
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GigaOM (876)
1 week, 6 days
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The Free Press issued a report this afternoon casting doubt on the theory of network congestion that has been cited by ISPs as the reason behind P2P blocking or broadband caps, and offering more rational solutions for dealing with sporadic congestion. It also claims that tiered broadband and limitation pricing — in which a carrier charges per gigabyte fee after users exceed a certain cap — is unlikely to become reality. Prior to the report ...
Mpaa: MPAA Want to Bung-Up "Analog Hole," Disable Piracy-Enabling Cable Box Outputs (2)
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Kit Eaton (421)
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Gizmodo (5963)
2 weeks, 2 days
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Movies movies movies... we all love a good show, but the lovely MPAA is up to some pretty strange shenanigans to ensure that you get to see some shows just once—until they're out on DVD at least. The fab guys at the Motion Picture Association of America are petitioning the FCC on behalf of some major movie studios to close the "analog hole" that may allow people to record movies broadcast on cable before they ...
Comcast Decision Scratches a 20-Year Itch (2)
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Gigi Sohn (3)
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Public Knowledge - Blogging, Events, and Action Alerts (5)
2 weeks, 3 days
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Later this month I will celebrate 20 years as a public interest communications lawyer. After two unhappy years in a private law firm, I walked into the small and cluttered offices of Media Access Project in August 1988 and never looked back. We spent most of our time in those early days trying to get broadcasters and cable operators to live up to their public responsibilities – impossible work in the laissez-faire Reagan-Bush I years. ...
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Wendy said:
Wow. Congrats to Gigi and the whole media reform movement. She puts it all together beautifully here.
Verizon to the FCC: We're not down with tru2way (2)
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Ben Drawbaugh (22)
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Engadget HD (97)
2 weeks, 4 days
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Filed under: Industry, Regulatory, Set-top boxes, Cable, Fiber, Satellite Finally, a multi-system operator that see this whole two-way CableCARD problem the same way we do. Don't get us wrong, we want to get rid of our providers STB as much as the next, but the way we see it is tru2way isn't that great, but is better than nothing. Just like Verizon, we'd like to see "a cable-centric approach to interactive connectivity [that] does not ...
Stop Blocking, FCC Tells Comcast (2)
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Dominic Rivera (23)
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The Inquisitr (607)
2 weeks, 4 days
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In a move to preserve the open nature of the Internet, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to uphold the complaint against Comcast that it had illegally inhibited its users from using a file-sharing software, the New York Times reports. “We are preserving the open character of the Internet. We are saying that network operators can’t block people from getting access to any content and any applications,” Kevin J. Martin, the FCC’s chairman said. Aside ...
EFF Tool Hunts BitTorrent Throttling ISPs (3)
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Ben Jones (26)
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TorrentFreak (623)
2 weeks, 5 days
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Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywhere else. It has brought the issue of traffic shaping to the forefront of people’s minds, and into public discussion. Aiming to highlight ISP’s and their shaping, the EFF has released a new tool for users to test their connection’s integrity. It’s been about a year since we first broke the story about Comcast ...
FCC Rules Comcast Violated Internet Access Policy (1)
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Truthout - All Articles (28)
2 weeks, 5 days
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Washington - A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network. read more
Big Net Neutrality Win Courtesy the FCC (3)
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mcjoan (16)
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Daily Kos (303)
2 weeks, 5 days
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For the first time ever, the FCC has handed down a pro-Net Neutrality ruling. Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules. The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage ...
