Free Press Newswire

Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO and telecom industry executive, is running for the Senate as a candidate who supposedly knows a thing or two about technology. But she appears to be a lot less interested in realizing the promise of new technologies than in warping federal policies regulating those technologies in order to make it easier for big telecom companies to get a whole lot bigger.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting and its two nonprofit fundraising partners are still working to reformulate their respective organizational roles some two months after a legislative auditor criticized how they went about soliciting donations.

The FCC said it was seeking comment on two "under-developed issues" on Net Neutrality following the joint Google-Verizon policy proposal penned last month. One key issue is whether broadband providers can launch specialized services. The far bigger issue is whether wireless access should be excluded from Net Neutrality provisions for now.

Earlier this week, a research note suggested that a group of private companies had reached "general agreement" on a private NetworkNeutrality agreement after FCC-brokered industry talks failed to reach consensus. The companies, including Verizon, Skype, AT&T, and the cable lobby, have been meeting at the offices of the ITI in Washington, but they have yet to reach a deal.

Latin America has never been more democratic: 33 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens' rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home?

Verizon dropped a four-year campaign to escape price controls in selling competitors access to its residential phone lines in New York, Boston and four other markets, U.S. regulators said.

Clearwire, whose backers include Comcast and Time Warner Cable, recently rolled out a pay-as-you-go mobile broadband service called Rover that starts at $5 per day.

Greater Boston's airwaves have become a broadband battleground, as two wireless carriers launch new, high-speed data services designed to leave current 3G cellular services in the dust.

With old friends in Washington such as Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) in opposition, Google will have to decide how aggressively to lobby alongside Verizon before Congress and the FCC for adoption of the accord the companies proposed.

The Omaha World-Herald, under fire from gay rights advocates who led an Internet-based campaign to protest the paper's policy to not run same-sex paid wedding announcements, has changed its mind.

LightSquared, a high-speed wireless broadband startup backed by hedge fund Harbinger Capital, expects to expand its network into Minneapolis next year.

The Goorizon deal is an empty shell, designed to keep tougher consumer protections away from wireless networks, while leaving plenty of loopholes open for anti-competitive behavior over wired networks. Now a group of companies including Microsoft, NCTA, Verizon, AT&T and Skype may have "reached an agreement" on Net Neutrality behind closed doors, with no public, government, or objective expert input.

The board of directors of bankrupt Tribune Co. formed a special committee to oversee the media company's contentious reorganization process and to manage any legal claims arising from its 2007 leveraged buyout.

Technology and telecom companies could soon get access to unused TV airwaves, allowing them to introduce new wireless gadgets and services, under rules that FCC officials are close to putting into final form.

This debate isn't about regulating the Internet. It's about whether consumers or a few huge ISPs will control consumers' online experiences. The Verizon-Google creates a two-tiered Internet at the expense of the open Internet we now have, almost completely excludes wireless and transforms the FCC from what is supposed to be a consumer protection agency into an agent of big business.

Nokia, AT&T and Verizon are urging the government to ease rules that keep them from operating in Cuba even after President Barack Obama loosened telecom regulations last year to promote democracy on the communist island.

The Department of Justice is focused on the fact that Comcast and the other cable companies have made it prohibitively expensive (or impossible) for online distributors to sell subscriptions to sports and other key programming, that is potentially anticompetitive.

In 1920 a Detroit station aired what is believed to be the radio news broadcast. The exact headlines of that day are of no historical significance, but with this local newscast a nascent medium finally conveys a message so compelling that it would soon capture the world's imagination as only television and the Internet would, many, many years later.

Eagles drummer Don Henley has a world of trouble on his mind, and he hopes that Congress will lighten his load -- by gutting the best part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Defending his copyrights in the digital age is just too hard for Henley and his labels, because it requires constant vigilance of both mainstream user-upload sites like YouTube and dodgier destinations like BitTorrent trackers.

Apple's iTunes, the largest music retailer, will boost the amount of time users are allowed to sample a song. Currently, iTunes offers 30-second snippets of songs, a feature designed to give users a taste of the music to help them decide whether they like it enough to buy. Some users have long complained that half a minute isn't enough time to really hear a song.