Wayne Rash

Turning off a few big Websites is a nice gesture. I’m sure the operators of Wikipedia, Reddit and the other sites that are going dark are proud of themselves for making the statement, and are probably patting themselves on the back, thinking they struck a blow for an open Internet. They’re kidding themselves. Congress doesn’t […]

There’s no question that the current situation surrounding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) currently foundering in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the similarlystalled Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate, is a mess. While both bills seem to have little chance of passage in the current Congress, especially now that theWhite House […]

On Jan. 12 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened up the Domain Name System to allow basically anything as a top-level domain. This means that you can now expect to see addresses with company names or other specialized words in the part after the dot. You might, for example, see domains with […]

The progress has been slow and painful, but network managers for government sites on the Internet are on their way to implementing Domain Name System Security Extensions, which is a system for providing authenticated Domain Name System information for IP address requests. The reason for DNSSEC is that hackers are able to insert bogus DNS […]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced a plan that would expand the Universal Service Fund’sLifeline program to include broadband communications. Currently, Lifeline provides funding for landline telephone service for people who can’t afford it or who otherwise couldn’t get phone service because the cost of extending phone service would be too expensive. Many […]

The Windows Phone 7.5 Mango edition is a far cry from the other smartphone operating systems you’ve seen people use. It doesn’t have a grid of icons, it doesn’t have a multi-touch screen and it doesn’t give you that Apple iPhone experience that everyone seems to expect. Whether this is good or bad is, as […]

Buried deep within the500-page-plus National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is a series of requirements that specify exactly what LightSquared must do before the Federal Communications Commission can authorize operation of its satellite and terrestrial based Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wholesale data service. The provision, which appears under the Space Activities section of the defense funding […]

For those of us who write about the wireless industry, 2011 was a busy, and sometimes annoying, year. We got to read hundreds of pages of court documents and FCC pleadings for the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile, which fortunately never happened. We got to see 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology finally get rolling, at least […]

The question of Windows Phone 7’s place in the wireless marketplace has jumped into the foreground with the wide online discussion about a question raised in the blog of Charlie Kindel, a former Microsoft employee and WP7 evangelist.Kindel asked why WP7 hasn’t taken off, considering that the product is, in his view, superior to the […]

It’s the week before a show, and the convention services team is preparing an exhibit hall of the Austin, Texas, Convention Center for the first arrivals. The team, which consists of everything from decorators to utility personnel to IT specialists, hurries about from one future booth location to the next to prepare each space for […]

When LightSquared, the company that promises to create a national satellite network for Long-Term Evolution data traffic, suddenly sprang into action at the end of December to demand that the Federal Communications Commission confirm its right to use frequencies that interfere with GPS, it was more than just the company’s usual aggressive behavior. It is, […]

Nobody outside the executive suites at Deutsche Telekom and AT&T really knows what was promised early in 2011 when the management of the two telecommunications companies agreed that AT&T would buy T-Mobile USA. Most likely, the AT&T executives did what they have done so often in the past, which is to say exactly what the […]