Net Business: No Access Taxation But No Access Regulation Either

The government giveth, the government taketh away, as two developments -- one on Net access taxation, one on broadband access regulation -- show.First the good news -- the House of Representative has extended for four years the no state Net access taxation rule. Good thing too -- such taxes would be passed on to your business and your customers in the form of higher fees from the telcos and other access providers.

Alas, some those higher fees may be coming our way anyway.

The bad (unless you're a big telco player) news -- is that an appeals court has upheld the FCC's refusal to regulate broadband access via the big phone companies.

Whether or not this decision puts Big Phone in charge of who does and who doesn't get highspeed access (and we're talking mainly content providers here, not consumers) remains to be seen, but a good, long piece on the legal implications of the decision can be read here.