Tracking broadband access and other Wednesday article links

Senate passes broadband data bill [CED Magazine]

America should soon have an accurate picture of consumer's access to broadband service, thanks to a piece of legislation passed by the Senate - the Broadband Data Improvement Act. Currently the FCC tracks broadband access, and defines it as any Internet connection above 200 kbps. That's a lot lower than the speed most consumers consider "broadband." Also, the FCC's broadband tracking was only at the granularity of ZIP code boundaries - leaving out a great deal of detail of broadband availability.

This legislation promises to reform the metrics and process of tracking consumers' access to broadband. I applaud this legislation which should focus the discussion on the reality of the state of Broadband rather than on how we measure its success or failure.

From the article:

NCTA President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow said: “We applaud the Congress for approving this important legislation, which will enable policymakers to have a much clearer picture about the state of broadband in America. Improved data about the availability and speed of all broadband offerings will help accomplish the important goal of universal broadband for all Americans. As the largest broadband provider in America, our industry will continue to support efforts designed to spur broadband adoption and access in those areas where it currently doesn’t exist.”

House Web Site Crumbling Under Weight of $700 Billion Bailout [Wired: Threat Level]

It's been all the news over the past week and a half, and as citizens weigh in on the financial system bailout being debated in Congress, emails are overwhelming Congressional servers. In fact, citizens that attempt to use the House of Representatives' web site to send a message to their representative are greeted with a message that encourages them to try again later due to the traffic that has made their servers "intermittently available." According to the House's web administrator, the entire web site may be vulnerable to crashing due to the number of clicks it is receiving.

MySpace about to lose out to Facebook in U.S.? [CNET News]

One measure of popularity of social networking sites indicates that Facebook may be soon poised to overtake MySpace in the U.S. Pingdom used Google Trends to measure the popularity of Facebook versus MySpace, and according to the chart in this article, Facebook's popularity in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the past year.

Hollywood aims to block RealNetworks' DVD software [Newsweek]

Hollywood movie studios are suing RealNetwork's over their new software program that promotes itself as a way to "rent, rip and return" DVD movies. RealNetworks' RealDVD program costs $30 and allows users to copy DVD's directly to a computer hard drive. While the program has some copy protections that prevent users from making unlimited copies of DVDs, there's nothing to prevent users from renting DVDs and making a copy before returning the original.

Netflix Picks Starz's Online Movie Service [Multichannel News]

Netflix online movie streaming service is getting an update from Starz Entertainment with 2,500 new movie titles. The new deal looks to bring more current titles to the Netflix service. Netflix online subscribers can also watch a live feed of Starz TV directly from their computers.

Comments

[sineswiper]

"One measure of popularity of social networking sites indicates that Facebook may be soon poised to overtake MySpace in the U.S. Pingdom"

This is why all sentences should end with two spaces.

[Into Tech - are you into technology?]

Sweet, just gotta share this.