Ex-FCC Commissioner Reed Hundt on Telecoms Policy

Reed Hundt gave an interesting interview to Telephony Online, covering a range of topics including broadband deployment and wireless spectrum policy.

Video Traffic and Net Neutrality

The Associated Press has an article about the impact of increasing video traffic on the network neutrality debate.

Facts and Fiction About Cable Cuts

See this Wired post for a description of some of the issues around the Middle Eastern cable cuts. One surprising statistic is that cable cuts happen on average once every three days.

Over $4.6 Billion

The reserve has been met in the FCC auction...

Stalled at $4.3 Billion

After rising to $4.3 billion, no additional bids were made on the C block today. As this NYT article explains, tomorrow is an important day for the C block auction.

IEEE Spectrum 700 MHz Auction Primer

IEEE Spectrum Magazine has a primer on the 700 MHz spectrum auction.

Do You Believe the MPAA?

John Heidemann, a researcher at USC (and coauthor of my colleague Ashish Goel), is quoted in this Cnet article about whether we should believe the MPAA's claims about the extent to which illegal filesharing takes place in college campuses.

Good Mathematical Modeling

Sitting in a program committee meeting as I write this...

I interpret mathematical modeling as the act of representing a "real" system through a mathematical formulation, for purposes of both quantitative and qualitative insights--into design, operation, and performance. One of the key features of good models is that they retain enough connection to the system to make the qualitative insights robust, and yet remain parsimonious enough mathematically to be tractable. I am thus often surprised that the reaction to good modeling papers is to claim, "But they didn't include Feature X of the system!" Now, if Feature X is necessary to have a robust model, then this is a fair claim. But often, Feature X is an orthogonal feature, that only adds extraneous detail and complexity to an otherwise elegant system representation. As an advisor of mine once said, the best work is done at the boundary between the trivial and the intractable; I say kudos to those who walk this line successfully.

Nice FAQ On 700 MHz Auction

The Wired article cited in the previous post also has a link to a nice FAQ on the 700 MHz auction.

First Day of 700 MHz Auction

Bidding in the 700 MHz auction has begun; see here for stats after the first day. The FCC required $4.6 billion to be bid on the C block to have the open access regulations bind; currently the bidding on C is at $1.5 billion, though Google has proclaimed they will ensure the reserve is met.

Interesting Comments From FCC Commissioner

This post on CNet relays thoughts of an FCC commissioner about recent moves by providers such as Verizon to preemptively implement open access policies on their networks. Interesting questions of whether it is all smoke and mirrors on the providers' part or not...