As everyone expected, the FCC did go ahead and approve the AT&T/BellSouth merger Friday by a 4-0 vote, based on AT&T’s concessions on net neutrality and other issues.
Saturday’s PD had an AP article on the deal that questioned the significance of the concessions, especially with respect to standalone DSL service (i.e. no basic phone service [...]
Yesterday I explained why buying natural gas through our municipal aggregation group, the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, is about to become a lot more expensive than buying gas directly from Dominion East Ohio (as opposed to just somewhat more expensive, which has been NOPEC’s average for the past ten months.)
Today I acted on my [...]
AT&T’s settlement offer to consumer groups in its BellSouth merger case at the FCC yesterday is a very big deal for its customers throughout the country.
Harold explains why.
See AT&T’s whole offer here.
Among other things, AT&T actually agrees to a formulation of “net neutrality” that applies to its whole network, top to bottom. It agrees to [...]
At 2:30 this afternoon on the trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, the price of a thousand cubic feet of natural gas to be delivered in January was $5.84.
Because today is the third business day before the end of the month, this became the “NYMEX month-end settlement price” for purposes of setting Dominion [...]
59,000 downloads since November 2005.
Consumers Union
Alliance for Community Media
National League of Cities
TechDirt
Update 12/26: A Christmas addition from Harold at wetmachine
I’ve been looking for more details about the FCC’s new restrictions on municipal video franchising powers, but I haven’t found much that adds to the agency’s own press release (the order itself isn’t posted yet). So here’s the press release description (the bold type is mine):
To eliminate the unreasonable barriers to entry into the cable [...]
House Bill 690, the Statehouse GOP’s “implementing legislation” that unconstitutionally rewrites parts of Ohio’s voter-adopted minimum wage amendment, was passed by the Senate late last night.
An overnight update from Progress Ohio:
“The passage of this legislation is a betrayal to voters,” said Senator Prentiss. “This legislation hits hardest tens of thousands of home healthcare workers, [...]
Dispassionate Liberal proposes a reading exercise that’s related in some obscure way to Time’s “Person of the Year R Us” cover.
Okay, I’ll play. Here’s what I found on page 123 of Peter Ward’s Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life:
The problems are not trivial. [...]
This just arrived in the email from State Rep. Mike Foley (D-Cleveland):
Hi all, this is a quick email, asking you all to contact Governor Taft to request him to veto SB117. SB117 started out as a good bill from the Senate. It would have helped victims of crime in civil litigation.
As it came over to [...]