We used these USDA measure in the NTIA broadband competition study.

The Census Bureau explains their definitions for urban areas on this page.

Jonathan Zittrain's new book on Internet law and policy is available online with a Creative-Commons license. This site presents the book in an interesting hypertext format that allows readers to comment on specific passages.

"The problem is that you can’t negotiate with a protocol, for the same reason that you can’t negotiate with (say) the English language. You can use the language to negotiate with someone, but you can’t have a negotiation where the other party is the

The cable operator paid people off the street to pack an FCC hearing on its network discrimination practices, keeping critics and activists from attending or speaking at the hearing.

The Economist discusses the odd enduring power of the teletype.

Here's an informative discussion, including maps, of the severed submarine cables that have left users across the Middle East and Asia without access to the Internet.

This article lists "those groups whose interests always seem to run counter to those of technology companies and consumers."

Free conference call services were "exploiting some legacy telco regulations, that were officially designed to help rural telcos get extra money to build out more rural service."

Sean McCullough suggests that because Austin Ventures is the only major VC organization in Texas, smaller and more interesting startups are stymied in Austin and Texas.

If you have not yet seen this comic, you must.

Verizon is suing Vonage for patent infringement, leading to an injunction against Vonage signing up new customers. Although the injunction was lifted, it's clear that Verizon is using patents to broadly protect its business.

This art project depicts fictitious obsolete technologies. It's pretty slick, but I have to say that there are plenty of old forgotten technologies that are just as weird.

Inveneo.org, which does telecom development work in Africa is collecting new and used USB flash drives for use in their training programs.

Our state media was nice enough to put Bill Moyers' special on network neutrality in full online. (via donturn)

Washington Post photo essay showing DIY telephone booths constructed after Verizon ripped the payphones out of the Amish country. When I lived in Philadelphia, I saw plenty of Amish-looking folks talking on cell phones...

Windom, Minnesota – the small town where my dad went to high school – rolled out a municipal 100mbps fiber-optic network last year to serve the town and surrounding farms.

To commemorate its 150th anniversary, the magazine has uploaded several articles about emerging technologies by famous writers, including Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" and piece by Mark Twain about the telephone.

A new technology enables users to test the relative neutrality of an ISP, opening the possibility of shaming telcos into operating neutral networks.

This article details some of the issues at stake for the telecom companies with the new round of regulation in Congress. I was not aware of the issues surrounding the Universal Service Fund.

This article provides useful insights into the political strategies behind the telco's efforts to implement network discrimination.

The ancient tax on long-distance calls has been repealed. It was first levvied to finance the Spanish-American War.

The internet news site has published 30 pages of documents that detail AT&T's compliance with the NSA's domestic spying program. These are under seal in the EFF's litigation against AT&T, but I'm glad they're out in the open.

The telco lobby is considering running ads using the threat of child predators to spread FUD about network neutrality. Too bad the Christian Coalition has come out in support of neutrality.

A TPM reader describes his experience working at a Bell. It doesn't surprise me that intelligence folks are experts in data management and mining, but it's icky the RBOCs would be so buddy-buddy with the intelligence world.

The House Telecom Commitee resoundingly rejected maintaining network neutrality in a vote today. Democrats were as bad as Republicans at giving handouts to major telcos.

Blog post says that Kevin Martin has come out in favor of network discrimination, allowing AT&T and other to charge Google, Vonage, and others for traffic on their networks.

AT&T bars soldiers in Iraq from using cheaper prepaid phone cards and engaging in other shenanigans, according to this blog post. Way to support the troops, Ma Bell.

Ed Felten explains how the Net Discrimination scheme proposed by major ISPs might be implemented.

Found this in the undergrad "New Communication Technology" class when a student asked about DSL on twisted pair.

Via Bruce Sterling, scroll down to see a map of the original RBOC operating regions. Who knew there was a Cincinnati Bell?

Paul's perspective on the imminent merger of AT&T (nee SBC) and RBOC Bell South.

Company sells ancient cellphone models for collectors and compatibility