New submitter mirandakatz writes: New York City is lagging far behind when it comes to ensuring ubiquitous, reasonably priced fiber optic internet access for every resident. There’s a jaw-dropping digital divide in the city, and more than a quarter of households are still using dial-up. The city could be doing more to fix that — but it’s not. That’s why Susan Crawford, a professor at Harvard Law School and fierce advocate for nationwide fiber, is suing the city. At Backchannel, Crawford writes that “the city’s intransigence should be embarrassing to it. Instead of a plan, instead of exercising power and acting coherently, all we’ve got is shuffling and nay-saying. Getting information regarding access is the key to transforming telecommunications policy in the U.S. — as well as in New York City. We must do better.” “New York City is the regulator of all the underground conduit in those two boroughs — meaning the pipes running under the streets through which fiber optic lines are threaded,” Crawford writes. “At any moment, it could require that additional conduit be built where it doesn’t now exist. It could require that choked-up conduit that is now decades old be cleaned and repaired. And it could require that that conduit run to every building in the city, and require that all new buildings have neutral connection points in their basements allowing many competitors to hawk their services to tenants. If the city took these steps […] it would foster a vibrantly competitive marketplace for retail fiber-based services for everyone. Dozens of competitors. Low prices for data transmission. But the problem is that, as far as I can tell, the city that never sleeps is, in fact, asleep: It is not taking advantage of its powers. That is why I sued the city five years ago seeking information about its regulatory efforts.”

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Source: Slashdot – ‘I’m Suing New York City To Loosen Verizon’s Iron Grip’

randomErr shares an exclusive report from Reuters: A network of dummy online stores offering household goods has been used as a front for internet gambling payments. The seven sites in Europe to sell items including fabric, DVD cases, and maps are fake outlets. The faux store fronts are a multinational system to disguise payments for the $40 billion global online gambling industry. Online gambling is illegal in many countries and some U.S. states. The dummy sites underline a strategy which regulators, card issuers and banks have yet to tackle head-on. The scheme found by Reuters involved websites which accepted payments for household items from a reporter but did not deliver any products. Instead, staff who answered helpdesk numbers on the sites said the outlets did not sell the product advertised, but that they were used to help process gambling payments, mostly for Americans.

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Source: Slashdot – Fake Online Stores Reveal Gamblers’ Shadow Banking System