High-speed Internet access is so important to the welfare of U.S. consumers that America can't afford not to offer it — free of charge — to anybody who wants it, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin says. Martin would like to use an old $6 billion federal subsidy for land lines to subsidize broadband instead. Only 38% of rural households are broadband customers, and only 25% of households with incomes less than $20,000. A chunk of wireless airwaves known as AWS-3 (Advanced Wireless Services) is due to be auctioned to carriers next year. Martin wants to attach a requirement to reserve 25% of AWS-3 network capacity for free broadband.

T-Mobile paid $4 billion two years ago to buy AWS-1 spectrum, which abuts AWS-3. T-Mobile's chief technical officer says wireless broadband for rural customers in the AWS-3 spectrum would interfere with paying T-Mobile customers. Martin says FCC engineers are studying the interference issue.

Not in USAT's report: Martin wants to content-filter the free stuff. (Photo by AP/Jeff Roberson)

The problem for Comcast and other Internet service providers is that they can no longer block file-sharing traffic from their networks. And yet file-sharing usage is consuming more and more bandwidth, which they must pay for. Broadband providers are businesses, not charities. So they are increasingly considering charging their users by the bit for bandwidth over a certain level. Most users won't be affected, but file-sharing downloaders will be.

The prospect of pay-by-the-bit bandwidth had immediate consequences for BitTorrent's two main businesses: an online-media store delivered via file sharing, and a content-delivery network which competed with the likes of Akamai and Limelight Networks.

For users who would have to pay bandwidth fees to their ISPs on top of paying the usual charges, BitTorrent's Torrent Entertainment Network store would soon look uncompetitive with the likes of Apple's iTunes Store and Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace — which prompted Best Buy to back out of talks to acquire TEN for $15 million.

As for BitTorrent's content-delivery network, it was premised on the notion that BitTorrent would negotiate with ISPs to get privileged delivery for their file-sharing packets, while Comcast blocked others. With the FCC forcing Comcast to treat all file-sharing traffic equally, the promise of that business evaporated.

Which leaves BitTorrent with not much of a business. As the first Napster showed, peer-to-peer file sharing is easy to make popular — and surpassingly hard to make profitable. BitTorrent may have improved on Napster's technology. But it never solved the fundamental business problem.

What's important is that if the vote passes, it will set a precedent that strengthens the FCC's claim on jurisdiction over regulating the Internet by giving some teeth to the agency's Internet Policy Statement from 2005. Republican chairman Kevin Martin can count on majority, thanks to the support of the two Democrats on the commission, and the motion is expected to pass.

But not unanimously, as Republican commissioner Robert McDowell doesn't approve. He penned a dissenting opinion piece in the Washington Post arguing for the preservation of the laissez faire status quo for ISPs: "If we choose regulation over collaboration, we will be setting a precedent by thrusting politicians and bureaucrats into engineering decisions." (Photo by AP/Stephan Savoia)

Google's wireless dreams have been thwarted at every turn, from the botched Wi-Fi effort with Earthlink to Verizon reneging on open-access provisions after the spectrum auction. I doubt Page's blatant desire to line his own pockets will win the FCC over. Perhaps he should refine his pitch and mention the possibility of 10 percent more campaign donations. (Photo by Danny Sullivan)

In recognition of the rules, Verizon will also make available much-more expensive devices that abide by Google's "open access" rules, but the company doesn't plan to market them. Upset, petition-filing Google lawyers say "Verizon's position would completely reverse the meaning of the rule." (Photo by mtcool1988)

Readers voted that I should attend the hearings as a Comcast representative. In true Comcast spirit, I stayed home, just like the telcos, and watched it online at VON TV. (Besides, I don't have an appropriately ugly suit to play the role.) Only one actual network provider showed up — Lariat.net CEO Brett Glass from Laramie, Wyoming — but the anti-regulation argument was still well-represented on the panels, if not in the audience.

The main arguments against government regulation basically amounted to the typical accusation that regulation will restrain free market competition; if network operators aren't allowed to manage traffic and content, that will prevent them from policing the Internet for child pornography and copyright infringement; and that ten percent of users are using 75 percent of available bandwidth — presumably to trade child pornography and infringe on copyrights using file sharing protocols.

The man of the hour, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, gave one of his typical speeches accompanied by slides. He turned the free market arguments against the telcos, paraphrasing Adam Smith in observing that producers rarely meet but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public. But the most interesting perspective in favor of network neutrality came from the Christian Coalition's Michele Combs. She argued that the cable companies would be happy to let the porn industry pay for access to consumers, whereas "grassroots" organizations like her own would be silenced.

Of the public commenters, none came to the defense of ISPs. Most brought up free speech issues. An impassioned "Tiny" Lisa Gray Garcia from Poor Magazine brought up the issue of the digital divide and how a tilted Web playing field could potentially restrict access to Internet adoption among communities, such as immigrants, who are just starting to get online and access media. No wonder Comcast didn't show up — public opinion was stacked against them. Thankfully, they don't have to worry about the average American truly understanding the issues, and game knee-jerk politics to their advantage if necessary.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

(Illustration by Victor Agreda, Jr.)

As Google's auction team — led by product manager Larry Alder — ratcheted up its billion-dollar bids to meet the reserve price, the competition stayed away. Top Google executives and the board suddenly decided to become concerned. Alder and his team were pulled into a board meeting and asked to explain again why Google was bidding against itself for spectrum it didn't want to own. "There were definitely some people at the company that had cold feet," Adler told the Times. "People had to be convinced that it was the right business decision." No wonder people on his team were getting sick.

Why? Because we hear the people working on the bid worked themselves sick trying to pull off the impossible. A tipster tells us members of the team saw nervous breakdowns and other health problems. Google's likely to throw the same people on a rush project to lobby for more airwaves. We're curious: How bad did it get for the Googlers, and are they in any shape to work on a new rush spectrum job? Tell us what you've heard. (Photo by alistairmcmillan)

The FCC's Martin had reportedly downplayed our report of a second hearing at Stanford. A spokesperson said, "The chairman never indicated that there would or would not be additional hearings, only indicated that there may be additional hearings. No decision has yet been made." I guess you shouldn't believe everything a politician tells you.

The D-Block is still up for sale, so Google could still pick up a slice of nationwide bandwidth for $1.3 billion. Though the search giant would have to build out coverage for at least 75% of the population in four years, plus share it with emergency services and other public agencies, and we all know how successful Google's been at working with public officials on wireless infrastructure projects. (Photo by Omid Tavallai)

The chairman never indicated that there would or would not be additional hearings, only indicated that there may be additional hearings. No decision has yet been made.

The Harvard hearing, a rare outside-the-Beltway event, ended disastrously for all involved. The hearing had many more attendees than were expected, with the room running out of space well before the hearing began. As a result, dozens of members of the public and opposition groups were refused entry. Comcast's ruse was detected when some of its fresh hires fell asleep.

The FCC will take no official action against Comcast over the held seats, but relocating the hearing to Stanford is punishment enough. Net-neutrality crusader Larry Lessig teaches there, and the Valley's Comcast-hating engineers may actually be provoked enough by the seatwarming episode to pry themselves away from their keyboards. And best of all: Stanford would get to one-up Harvard by showing it knows how to run a meeting.

(Photo by AP/Stephan Savoia)

AT&T is seeing pressure from cable providers in providing broadband Internet access. And while young singles were the first to abandon landlines for cell-phone-only lives, increasingly families, lured by free mobile-to-mobile calls, are doing so, too. When households go unwired, they rarely switch back. Naked DSL may not be the phone company's favorite way to make money off its copper wires. But it's far better than nothing.