Verizon Wireless Buying Alltel for a Bazillion Dollars

By the end of the year, AT&T's reign as the largest wireless service provider in the United States will come to an end and Verizon will ascend to the throne: Verizon Wireless Agrees to Buy Alltel for $28.1 Billion.

Engadget is a whiny baby

 Engadget recently distilled a NY Times article into a blog post, Microsoft and NBC working on copyright filters for Zune?  They go through the routine of how it's bullshit that companies are trying to protect their property, as if we have an inherent right to do whatever we want with whatever we want.  I'm mostly sympathetic to such views.  I believe in freedom, and that means I believe that people/companies have the freedom to protect their shit.  It's no more "wrong" for Microsoft to want their products to protect the rights of their clients than it is for me to want to be able to watch a movie, which I copied from you (illegally), on my media player.  Companies (and a lot of people) exist so they can make money.  Giving their products away for free or sitting idly by while people just take whatever they want doesn't make any sense.  There's not a lot of proof that illegal sharing (LOL...illegal sharing...thou shalt not share) is pilfering from the coffers of the corporations and it's impossible to totally lock down your stuff but that doesn't mean that companies are evil or foolish for wanting to try to lock down their property.  It's like not bothering to put locks on your doors because there are ninjas who can pick them.  Whatever.  I lock my doors.

And then Engadget goes on to bitch about Micro$oft and AT$T working on filtering copyrighted material at the ISP level.  I just don't get why people think that companies are evil for trying to prevent them from doing shit that's illegal.  Again, I'm not against file sharing.  I'm just against the belief that for-profit entities are wrong for attempting to maximize profit.  If you have a network that you built and paid for then you'd want to do what you want with it.  Is it so wrong for there to be forces patrolling the internet in the same way there are forces patrolling our highways trying to bust people for breaking the law?  Only the staunchest anarchist would argue that there is no good reason for the existence of police.  You don't have to be for such groups.  Do what you want to do and accept the fact that your behavior brings you enemies.  Repercussions make life fun, right?

Keep em teetering on the EDGE

GigaOm is reporting that EDGE networks will soon be sped up via a software update, Coming Soon, Even Faster EDGE Networks.

In case you don't know, EDGE, which stands for Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, is adigital mobile phone technology that allows increased data transmission rates and improved data transmission reliability.[EDGE - Wikipedia] It's employed by AT&T and T-Mobile.

I'm an AT&T Wireless customer with an EDGE compatible phone so I think it's wonderful that they're upgrading even though I'm not sure that my phone would be able to take advantage of it. What I'm wondering is this, though: if a software upgrade can increase bandwidth, are they intentionally holding out on us so they can string us along and get more money out of us as we pay to upgrade each time or are they just now figuring out the code that'll take better advantage of their hardware?

Verizon courts privacy advocates

I'm a customer of AT&T and while I can't really complain about my personal experience with them, I can't really say much that's positive, either. AT&T has participated in some customer surveillance shenanigans, though, and they seem to be willing to be compliant with government efforts to snoop on people.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed legal briefs and evidence against AT&T, claiming they are diverting Internet traffic to the NSA for widespread secret surveillance and possibly breaking federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment. [SecurityFocus]

It's not just AT&T, though. It seems that most companies involved with data flow are looking at ways to snoop on their customer's activities. Well, Thomas J. Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs at Verizon, is breathing some refreshing ideas into the discussion:

“We generally are reluctant to get into the business of examining content that flows across our networks and taking some action as a result of that content,” he said.

Amen, brother!

Preach on!

“We don’t want to solve any network congestion issues by restricting the flow of certain kinds of traffic,” he said.

Read the complete article from the New York Times: Verizon Rejects Hollywood’s Call to Aid Piracy Fight. [by way of Gizmodo]