Kenneth Corbin

Net neutrality is most generally considered a fight over how retail Internet service providers manage traffic on their networks, and is viewed from the perspective of the end subscriber. But on the backend, service providers are routinely negotiating terms of sharing traffic among their networks, and one of those disputes has turned ugly. Level 3 […]

Policymakers generally accept that if they don’t take steps to free up more spectrum for mobile data networks, carriers are going to be overwhelmed as Americans increasingly rely on their smartphones and other devices for an ever-growing array of applications. But where is it going to come from? On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission approved […]

The Thanksgiving holiday was kind to Internet retailers. Ecommerce sales on Black Friday, the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season, shot up 9 percent this year, while on Thanksgiving Day, spending was up 28 percent from the holiday tally in 2009. In the meantime, online retailers are poised for overall gains from last year […]

Are we out of the woods yet? Web metrics firm comScore is taking a bullish stance on the ecommerce sector, raising its forecast for the holiday shopping season after a strong start in November. The company believes that online retailers may have put the recession behind them. Of course, comScore also notes that aggressive promotions […]

It only follows that wealthier Americans would have more gadgets than lower-income people. But researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project have now quantified the gap, finding across-the-board income disparities in broadband adoption and Internet usage. Wealthier Americans are not only more likely to have computers and Internet connections in their homes, but […]

The frontrunner in the race to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the next session of Congress has been trying to burnish his conservative credentials to secure the chairmanship, and his latest target is the Federal Communications Commission. Amid speculation that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski might press for a vote on net neutrality […]

Members of the Obama administration, including the president himself, have talked about the urgent need for reforming the federal IT apparatus. Those initiatives have included online tools to track IT spending and initiatives to bring cloud-based technologies into the federal government. But change has been slow, as appropriations and procurement cycles continue to lag behind […]

Android and Apple iOS users will soon enjoy some added functionality on their mobile devices. Google has confirmed plans to begin rolling out a new documents editor for its Google Docs applications optimized for mobile browsers on the popular operating systems. The move, though not unexpected, comes amid Google’s ongoing efforts to build out both […]

Advocates of stricter laws to clamp down on Internet piracy scored a victory on Thursday when the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bipartisan Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act by a unanimous vote. The bill would establish a path for the Justice Department to take legal action against websites trafficking in pirated content or stolen […]

A lengthy new congressional report on U.S.-China relations details two major Internet security events that saw Chinese data policies and practices ripple beyond the border to affect users in other countries, including the United States. The more alarming event came in April, when the state-owned China Telecom managed to redirect foreign Internet traffic through Chinese […]

Google is calling on U.S. and foreign policymakers to incorporate Internet freedom in their diplomatic and trade negotiations, and charging that countries like China run afoul of their World Trade Organization obligations when they restrict access to content and services on the Web. And Google, of course, is no stranger to skirmishes with China. For […]

Amid the innumerable skirmishes developers have had with Apple over gaining entry for their applications into the App Store, few have been of a higher profile than the saga of Google Voice. The brief run-down saw Google develop the app for its omnibus telephony service only to see it rejected by Apple. The feds got […]