Telecom investors: The 21st century's biggest chumps?

The last decade has been heaven for buyers of new communication gadgets and services—and hell for the telecom industry's investors.

Sure the new communications technologies of the 21st century are breathtaking—the iPhones, the Wi-Fi hotspots, the Xooms, the Skype video chats and so on—but that's only the half of the industry's magic. Since 2000, Americans have gained the power to communicate in ever more ways while somehow paying less to do MORE

Free minds, free markets ... free networks?

What does it means to be a libertarian in the digital age?  Tim Lee is just the man to ask.

Many computer geeks are also libertarians, so it's not too surprising to hear Tim Lee proudly describe himself as a member of both groups. No, what makes Lee unusual is his passion for figuring out exactly what it means to be both a libertarian and a technophile. What's the best way to MORE

Who to blame for your dropped calls: Try local TV

Entrepreneurs and consumers desperately need access to more spectrum; it's time for the FCC to stop coddling the current hoarders of the airwaves.

Last summer, when the federal government ordered all local TV stations to begin sending out digital signals, the promised benefits were supposed to be huge. Upon the switch, spectrum once reserved for Good Morning Louisville! or People's Court reruns would instead carry valuable wireless data, voice, and MORE

The puzzling pessimism of Tim Wu

How network neutrality's biggest advocate misreads history

If you want to understand why Tim Wu -- the Columbia Law professor who invented the term "net neutrality" -- is such a fanatic about open networks, consider the sorry state of cellular phones a mere four years ago. Back then, phone companies exercised total control over handsets, blocking customers from downloading any software to customize their phones, except perhaps for a few over-priced, MORE

Why the NFL Network is using the wrong playbook

Are you ready for some vertically-integrated football?

Last year NFL Commissioner Roger Goodel hailed what he called the NFL's "tradition of being the most pro-consumer, widely available sport on television."  He wasn't talking about Thursdays.

Tonight marks the NFL season's first Thursday night game and fans hoping to watch the Falcons play the Ravens will scour their cable or satellite line-ups to see if they get the rarely-watched NFL Network. While many will MORE

Netflix will ruin the Internet!

Oh wait, never mind. Here's why the latest panic over the Internet's coming collapse doesn't add up.

Just for fun, try to guess the year in which the following  warnings about the Internet's impending meltdown were issued:

No. 1: "Over the coming six to 12 months, computer users around the planet are likely to experience the Internet equivalent of the Great Blackout, or at least frequent brownouts, as our information infrastructure staggers MORE

Coming soon: Cell phone calls so good you can hear a pin drop

The quality gap between wired and wireless phones is about to disappear.

The amazing quality improvement in cell phones can be measured in a number of different ways: the explosion of useful and fun apps, the bazillion-megapixel cameras, the museum-quality industrial design that makes hiding the phones in holster feel like a crime. All of which highlights one area where the phones have remained pretty much awful: voice quality.

That's about to MORE

Carly Fiorina's troubling telecom past

Before she became the controversial CEO of HP, Senate candidate Carly Fiorina was a star at Lucent. What does her time at the telecom disaster say about her?

In the spring of 1999, Lucent Technology's star executive Carly Fiorina pulled off yet another coup—or so it appeared.  A tiny start-up called PathNet agreed to buy huge amounts of fiber-optic gear from Lucent, a deal worth at least $440 million and potentially MORE

Verizon's refund is just the start of a shakeup in wireless

Verizon just confessed to overcharging 15 million wireless customers. It's a tiny part of a much bigger problem for the wireless giant.

Verizon Wireless padded the bills of 15 million customers with unnecessary charges, the company admitted in a terse statement released on Sunday afternoon.  Verizon (VZ), which clearly hoped to bury the matter quickly, wouldn't specify either the average or the total amount of the overcharges. It simply said that MORE

It's time to stop cheering "Super Wi-Fi"

If the government really wanted the new, more powerful Wi-Fi to work, it wouldn't confine it to the margins of the spectrum world.

When Julius Genachowski announced the creation of "Super Wi-Fi" last week, the nation's top telecom regulator painted it as a high-tech triumph. Under his plan, the government will open up access to powerful airwaves that can easily penetrate walls, allowing phone calls, tweets, Netflix streams, and every other MORE