The FCC is going to create rules for settling cable/content provider retransmission disputes

Per the article, Kerry applauds this and says that he says that there is no need for legislation at this point. Kerry really does seem to have been a force behind them working on this.



It will really be good if they are able to establish rules that end the drama - and it does make more sense for the FCC to do this as part of their regulation of that industry. (It's also good that they know, if they faltered - legislation is written that can be reintroduced.)

...from Kerry and others on the committee (to cable operators and FCC folks) was "Either you come up with a fix or we will." There also seemed to be a lot of good will between those involved. I'm glad the FCC will work with the providers to make things work. Legislation can then be used only as a last resort.

and everyone. This might end up as win/win - which would be a win for the consumers.

...most of which will never know of JK's efforts. :7

make sure that at least Massachusetts residents know that it was Kerry who pursued this enough to get the FCC, which was reluctant to get involved in this, to act. This likely will not happen nationwide, because if it actually works, the Obama administration itself will claim that their actions fixed it. Although it would be nice - and some people do credit others, I seriously doubt they would credit Kerry's push, hearings or his legislation. Their plan, even if very similar, will be different. (Just like the Republican never credit Kerry, the SFRC, Pepar etc for "Bush's" unprecedented AIDS in Africa aid - they some times, but only very rarely mention Frist, who in this example might be the most comparable to Kerry on retransmission.)

Especially if you are a Netflix customer who likes to stream videos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/07/AR2010120706533.html



The cable companies claim to not want to do that, but in the years to come, I hardly believe them. As it is, it is already happening with smartphones -- one of many reasons why I won't get one. It also reminds me of when I lived in Europe at the turn of the century, and at that point they were behind the U.S. on internet use. Well, it's because you had to pay PER MINUTE. I still remember my husband figuring out a way where I could log in to AOL, grab new e-mails and send ones out all in under a minute. Then I would type e-mails offline. We lived briefly in another apartment where the phone line was shared. We were hit with hundreds of dollars worth of a phone bill because of internet surfing. It was like living in a backwards country when it came to internet use.

So now Europe has reformed those ways and are now WAY ahead of us in terms of broadband bandwidth availability. How the heck did that happen? Now we are looking at another change which will quite literally put us in the Internet Dark Age I lived through in Germany. Just a really bad idea.

1. We need a huge push for more bandwidth infrastructure.
2. We need to have unlimited data plans.
3. If #1 has happened then #2 won't be an issue.