But it may also spark renewed price competition between broadband service providers, such as phone companies like Verizon Communications pushing digital subscriber line service, and cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner offering cable modem service.
He helped launch Time Warner's Road Runner cable modem service, the first Web site for Time Inc.
With 55 percent of all U.S. households beholden to a single, fixed-line provider of broadband access (mostly cable modem service), the Commission should consider how each of its rules affects broadband investment.
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All users within a couple of hundred feet of the base station who have an inexpensive Wi-Fi device in their PCs or PDAs can then share low-cost, high-speed access to the Internet--without having to pay individually for more expensive dedicated DSL or cable modem service.
"Today's Supreme Court decision is a victory for consumers and maintains the momentum to advance broadband in the U.S. Classifying cable modem service as an interstate information service, as the FCC did, keeps this innovative service on the right deregulatory path, " said a statement from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the industry's principal trade association.
Doherty, 42, formed Urban Media a year ago with two fellow founders of At-Home, a leading cable-modem service.
And while Microsoft currently offers digital subscriber line (DSL) Internet access in conjunction with its MSN online service, it needs a cable modem offering to drive more traffic to all of its Web properties.
More than 85% of U.S. households have cable modem or DSL service available to them, he says, so it doesn't make sense for a utility to spend the money to deploy broadband over gas or electric in most of the country.
These microcells are small devices, about the size of a DSL or cable modem, that create a local cellular service zone up to about 40 feet from the device in which you can make and place cell phone calls and, if you have a smartphone, use data services to access the Internet.
Better yet, if you have a cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL) service, this server will let you access your files from anywhere that you have an Internet connection.
Perhaps hitting closer to home were the comments of Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.), who told Whitacre in his opening comments how he's shutting off service on a phone line coming into his house and planning to use a cable modem for Internet access.
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