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NEW YORK--Federal Communications Commission commissioner Jonathan Adelstein joined tech policy pundits, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists Tuesday to launch a new initiative aimed at making broadband a priority in the U.S.

The group, which calls itself InternetforEveryone.org, officially launched at Free Press' Personal Democracy Forum here. The main purpose of the new initiative is to help organize public support for a national broadband policy.

Prominent figures in the tech world, including Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, as well as law professors Larry Lessig of Stanford and Tim Wu of Columbia were on hand with Brad Burnham of the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures and Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, to join Adelstein in becoming members of the group.

Adelstein, one of two Democratic commissioners on the FCC, has been a big proponent of a national broadband policy for some time. During his introduction, he admitted has been frustrated with the current administration's lack of focus on broadband. But he said he hopes this initiative will help provide a forum to allow the public's voice to be heard in Washington.

"We need to mobilize the public to make broadband an issue in D.C., so that broadband penetration and pricing rises to the top of the agenda," Adelstein said in an interview following the press conference. "It's important for us to make sure that the public's interests are served. We've already heard a lot from the cable and phone companies."

Broadband advocates have long complained that the U.S. is falling behind other countries in its ability to offer high-speed Internet service at affordable prices to all of its citizens.

Josh Silver of Free Press said during the press conference that the U.S. has slipped from 4th to 15th in the world in terms of broadband penetration. And he said that half the country doesn't subscribe to high-speed Internet. He and others in the group said it was time for a national policy framework to be established to ensure that government helps make broadband more accessible to people throughout the country.

But not everyone agrees that the U.S. is lagging in broadband or that a comprehensive national policy is even necessary. Verizon COO Denny Strigl said at the NxtComm trade show in Las Vegas said last week that it was a "myth" that the U.S. lagged behind other nations in high-speed Internet.

"It's time to put this myth to rest," Strigl said during a keynote speech. "What the communications industry has achieved in deploying broadband and mobile services is tremendous. And we've done this not through industrial policy, but through private investment delivering innovation. The benefits have rippled through the entire economy creating millions of high-tech jobs and billions of dollars in value."

"People have just accepted that bandwidth is something that American families will spend hundreds of dollars on per month. People don't realize how much we pay for how little bandwidth we actually get."

--Columbia University professor Tim Wu

Indeed, comparing the U.S. with other countries with much smaller geographies and populations is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. In much of the U.S., people have access to not just one broadband provider but two. And as Verizon deploys fiber directly to consumers' homes and AT&T upgrades its network to offer faster broadband and TV service to its customers, those companies have forced their cable competitors in those areas to increase speeds and in some places even lower prices.

So in many parts of the country, broadband competition is working. But the problem is that the competitive forces aren't working uniformly throughout the country. There are still pockets of the U.S., especially in rural areas, where broadband is only offered by one provider or by none at all. And prices per bit are still much higher than they are in other parts of the world.

"People have just accepted that bandwidth is something that American families will spend hundreds of dollars on per month," Columbia professor Tim Wu said. "People don't realize how much we pay for how little bandwidth we actually get."

Wu likened the broadband market to the energy market, saying bandwidth is a commodity controlled by a tiny cartel of phone companies and cable operators. He said that prices have been inflated and kept high, which has kept many people out of the broadband revolution.

"I agree that for most of the country, access to broadband is not the issue," he said in an interview. "But I'd say beyond that, the market has stalled. We need to make America a leader in broadband pricing and speeds. The attitude that it's just 'OK' to have access to DSL isn't good enough."

Members of the new "Internet for Everyone" initiative believe that a national broadband policy can help. That said, the group didn't announce support for any particular legislation nor is it backing a specific broadband policy proposal. But members of the group seem to agree that the reallocation of wireless spectrum should be a major component to any national policy.

Broadband advocates had hoped that the recent 700MHz spectrum auction, which reallocated spectrum that has been used for analog TV signals, would lay the foundation for a third national broadband provider. But at the conclusion of the FCC auction, it was incumbents, such as Verizon Communications, that came out the big winners in the auction, gobbling up key national licenses for spectrum.

"I think the commission missed a golden opportunity in the 700MHz spectrum auction to ensure there would be a third pipe into the home for broadband," Adelstein said in an interview.

The FCC is currently looking at freeing up more spectrum that could be used by new entrants to create new wireless broadband services, he added. One proposal on the table from a company called M2Z proposes that the FCC open up 25MHz of spectrum that could be used to build a free wireless network. Under the plan, the FCC would give the company access to spectrum for free. The company would build the network and fund the service through advertising. As part of the proposal, M2Z planned to give the FCC 5 percent of its gross revenue from the service.

The FCC originally dismissed the proposal, mostly because it asked the commission to allocate spectrum for free. But now the commission seems to be reconsidering it.

"Right now we are contemplating opening up about 20MHz of spectrum for free wireless broadband," Adelstein said in an interview. "There is a business plan on the table, so we will have to see what happens."

Another option for the FCC is to open up "white spaces", or the spectrum bands left vacant between broadcast TV channels.

Several companies, including Google and Microsoft, have been working on prototype devices that demonstrate that wireless devices can work within these bands without causing interference. But the broadcast TV industry has been opposed to any use of "white spaces." Still, broadband proponents see it as an important asset to be used in expanding the broadband market.

"Spectrum liberation in our time needs to be a priority for any national broadband policy," Wu said. "And the 'white space' spectrum is a good way to do that. It offers a ton of bandwidth."

When it comes to your broadband connection, Google wants you to know that it has your back.

The Internet giant is developing a suite of tools to help broadband users identify traffic discrimination by their Internet service providers, according to a report in The Register.

"We're trying to develop tools, software tools...that allow people to detect what's happening with their broadband connections, so they can let (ISPs) know that they're not happy with what they're getting--that they think certain services are being tampered with," Google Senior Policy Director Richard Whitt said Friday morning during a panel discussion at the Innovation '08 conference in Santa Clara, Calif. "If the broadband providers aren't going to tell you exactly what's happening on their networks, we want to give users the power to find out for themselves."

Whitt argues that innovation among application developers will stagnate without neutral networks, and he wants to see consumers join an "arms race" for Net neutrality--the idea that network operators shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against content or applications or charge extra fees.

"The forces aligned against us are real. They've been there for decades. Their pockets are deep. Their connections are strong with those in Washington," he said. "Maybe we can turn this into an arms race on the application software side rather a political game."

Whitt would not say when the tools will be available or how they would work, but did indicate that Google engineers had been working on them for a while.

The issue came to a head last August when TorrentFreak reported that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with file transfers by posing as one party and then, essentially, hanging up the phone. Comcast denied the allegation, but tests conducted by the Associated Press showed Comcast was actively interfering with peer-to-peer networks even if relatively small files were being transferred.

In response, the Federal Communications Commission announced it would investigate the charges, and in May, a bill was re-introduced into Congress that would rewrite U.S. antitrust law to prohibit network operators like AT&T and Comcast from blocking, impairing, or discriminating against "lawful" Internet content, applications, and services or from charging extra fees for "prioritization or enhanced quality of service."

Google has long argued that it's necessary to enact new regulations barring such activity, while broadband operators like AT&T and Comcast counter that the market will solve any perceived problems.

China and the U.S. lead the world as the two biggest sources of Internet attack traffic, according to a report published by the content distribution company Akamai.

Akamai, which operates a global server network that helps distribute and accelerate rich media across the Internet, released its first quarterly "State of the Internet" report on Thursday.

One of the key findings of the report revealed that China and the U.S. were home to the greatest percentage of Internet attacks, such as denial of service attacks and hacking attempts for the first quarter of 2008. Almost 17 percent of this traffic originated from China, while the U.S. trailed close by with 14 percent of this traffic coming from computers based here.

In total, 10 countries in the list accounted for nearly 75 percent of all attacks, Akamai said. These countries included Argentina, Brazil, Japan, India, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The most common attacks were associated with Microsoft Windows. About one-third of the attacks were on port 135, which is used for remote procedure calls using the Windows operating system.

Akamai pointed out that a lot of the attacks came from "worms, viruses, and bots that spread across the Internet several years ago." The company hypothesizes that this might indicate that a lot of the attack traffic could be coming from "a large pool of Microsoft Windows-based systems that are insufficiently maintained, and remain unpatched years after these attacks 'peaked' and were initially mitigated with updated software."

Some other notable findings included some interesting statistics on broadband speeds throughout the world.

Not surprisingly, South Korea had the highest levels of high broadband connectivity, which is defined by offering broadband download speeds greater than 5 Mbps. Japan cam in second and the U.S. ranked seventh.

Within the U.S. the tiny states of Delaware and Rhode Island had the highest concentration of "high broadband connectivity." Delaware had more than 60 percent of its connections providing more than 5 Mbps per second. About 42 percent of Rhode Island's connections offered speeds of 5 Mbps or more. Washington state ranked as the slowest state in terms of high speed connections. About 21 percent of its connections were under 256 Kbps. Other slow states included Illinois, Virginia and Georgia. Washington, D.C. also ranked low.

The country with the slowest Internet speeds was Rwanda with 97 percent of its connections under 356 Kbps. The Solomon Islands, Ethiopia, and Cuba were also among the slowest countries.

This was the first report issued by Akamai. The company plans to publish further reports each quarter.

Google announced Wednesday on its official blog that Google search is now available over an IPv6 connection. What?

Right now, much of the world relies on the fourth iteration of the Internet Protocol, also known as IPv4, for its Web connections. The problem is, IPv4 facilitates only about 4 billion IP addresses, not enough for every person in the world to have one.

Google and others estimate that the IPv4 capacity will be "exhausted" sometime in 2011, which means that IPv6--which will enable each individual person on Earth to have nearly 3 billion networks--will potentially take over.

"We hope it's only a matter of time before IPv6 is widely deployed," the Google blog post read. "We will be doing our part."

The IPv6 Google search is available here, but if you don't have an IPv6 connection, it'll come up as a broken link.

We're constantly hearing that seamless integration of television and broadband video is fast approaching, but nobody's gotten it right yet. That hasn't stopped new companies from jumping into the mix.

Enter Sezmi, the latest start-up hoping to capture the market: on Thursday, the venture-backed company unveiled a piece of hardware that it claims will be able to handle broadcast and cable TV, as well as streaming and downloaded Internet video content.

Currently in testing, Sezmi has already inked partnerships with a number of broadcasters, content companies, and broadband service providers. The ambitious company hopes to start putting its wireless boxes in U.S. residences in a number of major markets by the end of 2008.

Sezmi, formerly known as Building B, isn't naming those partners yet, so it's not clear exactly how many channels or how much Web content will be accessible on the box. But the company nevertheless is willing to call its offering "a complete TV 2.0 solution." In addition to content, a Sezmi box allows for up to five personalized accounts and lets members share their video playlists with friends.

It's able to bridge the gap between television and broadband, according to Friday's announcement, thanks to an in-house technology called FlexCast.

"To deliver the full range of content that consumers expect at an affordable cost, we had to create a network that overcame the limitations of broadband and better aligned with mass-market content consumption," co-founder and president Phil Wiser explained in a release. No pricing information has been provided yet.

"Sezmi focused on the television consumer and built an entirely new television offering from the ground up to meet the needs of viewers that want a premium experience at an affordable price," co-founder and CEO Buno Pati said in Friday's release. "We have rallied support across multiple industries, and are excited to work with our partners to offer a new and differentiated TV choice to consumers."

Hey, Sezmi: Feed us more detail, and maybe we'll be more enthusiastic.

WASHINGTON--WiMax's most prominent supporters are predicting that, despite not exactly stunning support of the wireless technology so far, it will take off this year.

Speaking at a conference here hosted by the Wireless Communications Association International, Michael Seymour, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent's North American broadband wireless unit, said WiMax has experienced "tremendous growth" in recent years, even in "emerging markets" like the Dominican Republic, and predicted improvements in the technology would only continue.

"WiMax is working, it's ready, it's delivering today," Seymour said, noting that about 110 people at his company's campus are required to use the technology for work every day.

Rick Svensson, director of sales for Samsung's WiMax unit, said his company is "very anxious" to show off the technology in 2008. It plans to release a WiMax-enabled version of its Q1 ultramobile PC later this year and to offer support for Sprint Nextel's planned launch of its Xohm WiMax network sometime in 2008.

WiMax, of course, refers to a fourth-generation wireless technology that, unlike Wi-Fi, transmits signals that can travel miles, making it more similar to cellular-phone technology--and potentially useful for applications like surfing the Web in a moving vehicle.

At the moment, Sprint Nextel is the only major U.S. wireless carrier that has committed to using the technology, picking Samsung, Motorola, and Intel as partners. It has ended a partnership with Clearwire, which runs its own network--at least for now--and has trial networks up and running in the Baltimore/Washington region and Boston so far. Comcast and Time Warner are also reportedly considering offering help in bankrolling a new Sprint and Clearwire venture.

The other dominant providers, such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T, and numerous major equipment makers have endorsed an alternative approach known as Long-Term Evolution, or LTE. But it's viewed as being two or three years behind WiMax.

Svensson, for his part, said WiMax backers are still optimistic about their prospects. "With the momentum we're seeing around WiMax, we're going to blow them out of the water," he said.

Others were more cautious about the future of the technology.

"We have a situation today where not a single carrier can implement a nationwide WiMax network today by themselves; they'll either need to partner with someone else or look for additional funding," said Adlane Fellah, co-founder of a Montreal-based analyst firm called Maravedis Research. "From a spectrum footprint perspective, not every carrier has spectrum everywhere, although Sprint has the largest footprint."

To be sure, WiMax deployments are still "modest," as are revenues for service and subscriber numbers, Fellah said.

According to his firm's analysis, there were 256 WiMax operators in 91 countries and about 1.7 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2007. Of those subscribers, about two-thirds of them are residential customers and a third are business customers.

Although most of the WiMax offerings are located in Europe and Asia, the U.S. company Clearwire counts the largest number of subscribers, numbering about 394,000 as of the fourth quarter of 2007, Fellah said. Korea Telecom and Unwired Australia had the next biggest numbers, with about 100,000 and 76,000 subscribers respectively.

Alcatel-Lucent, for its part, is participating in more than 70 trials and deployments of WiMax technology around the world, from Brazil to Malaysia to the Netherlands, Seymour said. During tests in Chile in February, he said his company was able to maintain a "stable and correct" 2.3 megabits per second (Mbps) throughput speeds from as far as 43.5 kilometers away from an outdoor base station.

In ideal conditions, without "a whole lot of users on the network," WiMax users can expect download speeds of 10 to 11 megabits per second, said Samsung's Svensson. As a general rule, users can expect to get somewhere in the range of 3 to 4Mbps download speeds and 1 to 2Mbps upload speeds, he added.

Perhaps the biggest remaining problem for WiMax operators will be managing heavy traffic loads, Seymour said. "Everybody can make it work when there's three guys on (the network)," he said, "but when you're reaching your rate overload, you've got to make sure...the system can properly handle traffic."

This story was updated at 11:40 a.m. PDT with correct units for DSL broadband speeds currently on the market.

A Silicon Valley Democrat in the U.S. Congress is proposing a new auction of unused radio spectrum, but with some ambitious strings attached: The winner would have to offer a free, wireless broadband network that reaches 95 percent of the American population within a decade.

Voicing disappointment that familiar large wireless carriers scooped up the most significant share of airwaves in a recently concluded auction, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) on Thursday introduced the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act, which would direct the Federal Communications Commission to auction off a band of wireless spectrum between 2,155 megahertz and 2,180MHz that currently lies fallow and impose detailed rules on the winning bidder. Rep. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who leads a House telecommunications and Internet panel, and Rep. Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican, have signed on as co-sponsors.

Under the proposed measure, aside from offering the free broadband network, the network operator would have to:
• begin offering "always-on" broadband service within two years of receiving the license
• offer a service free of subscription fees, airtime, usage or other charges to consumers and "authorized public safety users"
• ensure the service offers at least 200 kilobits per second transmission speeds in at least one direction (a far cry from the 768 kilobits per second speeds associated with most entry-level DSL lines)
• outfit the free service with "a technology protection measure or measures that protect underage users from accessing obscene or indecent material through such service"
• publish royalty-free standards so that others can develop and deploy equipment that can operate on the network

"While the auction required under this legislation is open to anyone, it is my hope that the bold conditions of requiring free, family friendly service will encourage the entry of a new kind of national broadband service provider," Eshoo said in a statement.

The requirements, however, sound strikingly similar to a plan that a Silicon Valley start-up called M2Z Networks offered to the FCC in recent years.

Specifically, M2Z sought permission to obtain a 15-year exclusive, nationwide license to essentially the same band of spectrum described in the Eshoo bill. It wanted to offer a "free," advertising-supported tier of service that would offer speeds of at least 384Kbps down and 128Kbps up, and a "premium" tier with 3Mbps speeds. And, like the Eshoo bill, M2Z pledged to reach 95 percent of the American population within 10 years and outfit the free tier with filters designed to block obscene content.

The FCC dismissed that petition, opting to undertake its usual public comment and rulemaking process before deciding who would control the spectrum. It has reportedly already begun moving ahead with that process, although it wasn't clear when it would finish.

An Eshoo aide said her boss had conversations with M2Z while drafting the bill, but her motivation was "primarily to provide alternative means of broadband access for more Americans, and this fallow spectrum seemed to be a real opportunity."

M2Z CEO John Muleta said the bill's introduction is a hopeful sign for would-be new entrants like his firm. "What we've been advocating for is, there needs to be new entry, not necessarily more regulation, to do innovative and unusual things that would get more broadband to more people," he said in a telephone interview with CNET News.com.

An array of consumer groups supported M2Z's idea, but the wireless industry opposed its original petition, calling it a "self-serving attempt to gain access to valuable spectrum outside of the auction process."

The new House proposal doesn't appear to be much better in the industry's eyes. Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA-The Wireless Association, said his group objects to the stringent conditions it would impose on bidders, saying flexible conditions would ultimately raise more money for the federal treasury.

"We agree with Congresswoman Eshoo that additional spectrum must be made available and we look forward to working with her on this important endeavor," he said in an e-mail on Friday. "However, mandating how providers should deploy and use such spectrum is something we can't support."

First, it was a very public detente with BitTorrent.

Then, on Tuesday, Comcast continued its make-nice-with-P2P campaign by announcing a new collaboration with P2P software maker Pando Networks. Specifically, they're leading the development of a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities," driven by input from "industry experts, other ISPs and P2P companies, content providers and others."

"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content," Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner said in a statement.

The companies also plan to test Pando technology designed to capture and analyze the flow of P2P traffic on Comcast's fiber-optic network and other Internet service providers' networks. The idea is to publish the results of the tests--which will measure "performance, speed, distance and geography as well as bandwidth consumption impact to the ISP"--so that other ISPs can learn how P2P applications might be optimized on their networks.

Pando, for its part, has already worked with Verizon and Yale University researchers to test "smarter" P2P routing techniques that have been found to drastically reduce network utilization and speed up downloads for subscribers.

Comcast drew public criticism and a Federal Communications Commission probe after reports that it was delaying uploads of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic on the BitTorrent protocol. Comcast has defended the move as necessary to keep its network running smoothly at peak hours for all users. But there have been allegations, including from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, that the company didn't do enough to inform its users about those activities.

The subject is likely to come up again this Thursday during a second FCC hearing at Stanford University, as well as at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on the "future of the Internet" scheduled for next week.

Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association--the industry group of which Comcast is a member--called the announcement "further evidence that private sector collaboration, not government intervention, is the most appropriate way to address complicated technological issues."

Proponents of Net neutrality rules--that is, barring network operators from prioritizing Internet content based on its ownership or type--have asked the FCC to declare that Comcast's peer-to-peer traffic management is not reasonable and therefore off limits.

One such group, Public Knowledge, called the agreement "long on rhetoric," "short on detail," and "ludicrous." Another group, Free Press, was similarly unimpressed by the company's latest overtures, saying the need for Net neutrality rules "remains urgent."

"Slick press releases by a dishonest would-be gatekeeper do nothing to protect consumers," said Marvin Ammori, the group's general counsel. "Comcast's announcement is little more than the fox telling the farmer, 'I'll guard the henhouse, you can go home.' And that's all the attention it deserves."

WASHINGTON--A global nonprofit group is enlisting the likes of AT&T, Verizon, and cable companies for a project aimed at boosting the number of low-income Americans who subscribe to broadband by 2010.

The two-year campaign launched Tuesday by the One Economy Corporation has three major components: getting broadband connections into the homes of 500,000 low-income Americans, enlisting 5,000 young people to train their elders and neighbors in a sort of Technology 101, and dispensing video-based information about a range of topics through a new "Public Internet Channel" accessible via the Web.

The goal is "making sure as a country, we leave no one behind," One Economy CEO Rey Ramsey said during a press conference here at the National Press Club.

According to the 8-year-old organization, whose mission is getting broadband to low-income households, only 21 percent of people earning less than $30,000 per year have broadband in their homes.

One Economy said its projects have already helped to get broadband adopted in 300,000 homes and has lobbied successfully in recent years to change affordable-housing policies in 42 states so that broadband is built into the homes of low-income people. It also has dispatched 1,500 so-called "Digital Connectors," who volunteer to train area residents in computer and Internet skills at schools, community centers, and affordable housing developments in more than 20 urban and rural areas across the country. The latest campaign, which the group is calling "Bring IT Home," is designed to expand those projects.

AT&T, Verizon, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Intel, and Symantec are among the big names that have signed up to help bankroll the two-year venture. About a dozen state and local governments--including West Virginia; Atlanta; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Seattle; Raleigh, N.C.; Kansas City; Mo.; and Buffalo, N.Y.--also plan to participate.

AT&T and its eponymous foundation, for their part, plans to provide about $36 million to One Economy by the time the project is complete, which makes One Economy the "largest recipient of AT&T largess," senior executive vice president Jim Cicconi said at the press conference. (In 2006, the company partnered with One Economy to launch a three-year, $100 million effort called AT&T Access All, supplying technology "packages"--including a new computer, printer and Internet access--to 50,000 low-income families nationwide. Just to put things into perspective, AT&T's net income during the fourth quarter of 2007 was $3.1 billion.)

It wasn't immediately clear how much money the other partners planned to contribute, but One Economy spokeswoman Austin Bonner said they were all "six figure" amounts.

One Economy, for its part, spent about $10 million in 2007 on its various projects and ended the year with assets of more than $22 million, according to its latest annual report (PDF). Its biggest donors--in the $1 million-plus camp--include the AT&T Foundation, Cisco, Google, and E*Trade.

As for the government partners, all of them are committing to increase "digital inclusion," but beyond that, their efforts will vary, Bonner said. For instance, in Buffalo, One Economy is providing "technical assistance" to the mayor's office in support of a subsidized Wi-Fi pilot program for low-income households. In some cases, the projects won't be focused so much on lack of broadband access--after all, cities like San Francisco are heavily wired--as on lack of adoption, which means promoting the "value proposition" of Internet access, Bonner said.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said waters, sewers, and roads still consume most of the state's infrastructure budget, but his small state has already gone from a 58 percent to 80 percent broadband penetration rate in the past two years, in part because of a partnership with Cisco Systems, headed by West Virginia native John Chambers.

The group's campaign is just one of many efforts to increase broadband adoption among low-income people. Late last month, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle unveiled plans to outfit a San Francisco public housing complex with 100 megabits-per-second Internet access.