'SKYNET?' - SpaceX Files with Government to Provide Internet Service from Space.

'SKYNET?' - SpaceX Files with Government to Provide Internet Surveillance Service from Space. (Wapo).

Elon Musk’s space company has asked the federal government for permission to begin testing on an ambitious project to beam Internet service from space, a significant step forward for an initiative that could create another major competitor to Comcast, AT&T and other telecom companies.

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born Canadian American entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. He is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity. He is the founder of SpaceX and a cofounder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and Zip2.He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop

The plan calls for launching a constellation of 4,000 small and cheap satellites that will beam high-speed Internet signals to all parts of the globe, including its most remote regions. Musk has said the effort “would be like rebuilding the Internet in space.”

If successful, the attempt could transform the L.A.-based SpaceX from a pure rocket company into a massive high-speed Internet provider that would take on major companies in the developed world but also make first-time customers out of the billions of people who are currently not online.


The idea of saturing Earth with Internet signals from space has long been the dream of prominent business tycoons, including Bill Gates in the 1990s.

But many of these ventures have run into obstacles that Musk is working to avoid. Musk has his own rocket, and he has said his swarm of satellites will be more efficient and inexpensive than relying on a handful of big devices that are difficult to replace. Hmmm......Why are all these alarm bells going of in my head? Read the full story here.

"Battle for the Internet" Top web companies to join strike for net neutrality

Internet Slowdown protest: Top web companies to join strike for net neutrality.(RT).

The protesting companies will display a widget with a "loading" symbol on their websites to show how the internet would look should the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) go ahead with the proposal, thus overturning "net neutrality" rules.

The FCC proposed rules will allow cable giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to create a two-tiered internet, with “slow lanes” for most internet companies, and “fast lanes” for corporations that are willing to pay extra for a faster service.

According to the new rules cable companies would have the power to discriminate against online content and applications, shake sites down for fees, block content for political reasons, and make it easier for internet users to view content the cable companies own.

Some of the world’s largest internet companies, including Etsy, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Reddit, imgur, Foursquare, Vimeo, and Wordpress announced on Thursday they will join more than 35 advocacy organizations and hundreds of thousands of activists on September 10 to show how the internet might look if the FCC’s proposed rules go into effect.

However the FCC has left open the possibility of reclassifying internet service as a telecommunications service, and require internet service providers to deliver all content at equal speeds.

The protest comes just five days before the FCC’s next comment deadline on September 15th.Read the full story here.

 Related: Google is backing a new $300 million high-speed internet Trans-Pacific cable system between the US and Japan

Verizon to FCC: Free speech trumps Net neutrality rules.

Verizon to FCC: Free speech trumps Net neutrality rules.(CNet). By Marguerite Reardon. Bring out the constitutional scholars: Verizon says the Federal Communications Commission's Net neutrality rules violate the right to free speech. In a nutshell, Verizon argues that the FCC has overstepped its authority with its Net neutrality rules, going so far as to argue that the rules are unconstitutional -- Verizon sees the transmission of data across its network as "speech." As if that's not enough, the carrier argues that the rules are "arbitrary and capricious." In other words, Verizon doesn't believe the rules are necessary given that there hasn't been a big problem of companies slowing down traffic or blocking services on their networks. Verizon laid out its argument in a brief filed yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In December 2010, the FCC adopted a set of Net neutrality rules in an effort to protect broadband users from having a service provider slow down traffic or block certain content. The agency adopted those rules after it lost a court battle over having penalized cable and broadband provider Comcast for violating its Net neutrality principles. But a federal court said that the FCC had overstepped its bounds in that case. Once the rules were officially registered with the government in September of last year, Verizon said it planned to file a lawsuit against the FCC challenging the rules and asking the court to overturn them.Read the full story here.