Posted 08/22/08 at 08:07:37 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Kevin Martin, chairman of Federal Communications Commission, is doing his best to sell his free, porn-free internet dream. The plan is – if you were on an intergalactic voyage all this while - to auction AWS-3 spectrum to a company willing to provide nationwide wireless broadband internet for free and sans pornographic content. “More and more people expect and demand to have access to the Internet and new wireless technologies,” Martin apprised USA Today about the increasingly insatiable thirst for broadband.

He rests his case on the absolute necessity of broadband and compares it to copper lines as the most prominent means of communication. His plan hasn’t gone down well with T-Mobile which believes that wireless services in the AWS-3 spectrum will interfere with its own services in the AWS-1 range. But Martin tried to allay such fears by telling USA Today that engineers are busy finding a solution.

There is certainly a case for free wireless broadband if one considers the abject rate of broadband penetration in the U.S with only 38% of rural America enjoying broadband, according to a report by Communications Workers of America. Furthermore, the percentage of broadband homes is only 25% amongst households with annual incomes of $20,000 or below.

What the MPC Readers Are Saying: But T-Mobile is not the only one frowning. Many people, including a few MPC readers, don’t like the porn-free part of the proposal. “I would rather see nationwide free internet fail completely than to see our government actively "filtering" the net. Leave net censorship to the Chinese,” wrote a charged up MPC reader; and “porn drives innovation,” according to another. 

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Internet, fcc, t-mobile, Kevin Martin, AWS-3, free wireless broadband, no porn, porn-free, aws-1

Posted 07/11/08 at 08:15:32 AM by Chris Moody

It sounds like Comcast is about to get it’s hand slapped for blocking P2P file sharing on it’s network. That is good news, as it will send a message about screwing with folks internet access. The funny part is where the message is coming from.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin said he will recommend that the Comcast be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. "The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet," Martin told The Associated Press. "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles."

This is the same Kevin Martin that wants a free but filtered national broadband that we covered previously. Don’t mess with people’s file sharing, but it is a good idea to filter access to information. (we really want our pr0n). Ah, the duplicity of politicians, even appointed ones. It’s kind of like the obnoxious Uncle from when you were a kid. He’d point at your shoes so he could whack you upside the head while you were looking at your feet.

More on Martin's order for Comcast after the jump.

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Comcast, P2P, fcc, filtering, Kevin Martin, network neutrality