Recent Headlines
October 2, 2009
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about.
Members of Broadband for America
Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to an astroturf [...]
October 2, 2009
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to [...]
September 27, 2009
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of [...]
September 23, 2009
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be [...]
September 23, 2009
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way.
Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw launched [...]
September 22, 2009
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail.
[FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's] proposal – to codify and enforce some general [...]
September 21, 2009
In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario [...]
September 11, 2009
Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them.
This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment of [...]
September 7, 2009
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes.
Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by the [...]
September 1, 2009
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta.
After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:
The Good
Alberta is like [...]
August 31, 2009
A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.”
The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling more [...]
August 27, 2009
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider.
PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community.
The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking their actual [...]
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The rally is the 18th, not this Saturday, just wanted to let you know
Can you copy the information from the Facebook event into your post, for people that don’t use Facebook?
I could, but what I am really looking for is some volunteers who could help pen those articles and alerts themselves for publication here. It’s going to be increasingly difficult for just one person to do these reports, particularly when events are happening on multiple Facebook groups (in addition to other channels).
I am a big believer in delegating and making this entire endeavor a team effort.
I’d volunteer, but I despise Facebook. I did post the announcement in a couple places, though, linking back to this page.
I was hoping to get one of their Facebook group leaders or enthusiasts to take up the challenge. I spend very little time on Facebook myself and with the growing number of protest groups forming there, I’d be spending an enormous amount of time trying to keep track of them and ferret out the important calls to action in between the hundreds of people simply sharing justified outrage.
It literally takes hours to research, edit and compile the longer articles I place here, so trying to track down a lot of the stuff being worked on by other groups can be challenging.
This entire issue has sparked a huge Grassroots response. I started an online petition;
http://www.petitiononline.com/twcfedup/petition.html
While I have joined many groups and causes on Facebook that reflect the outrage, I have located other petitions online as well. It would be best to combine them all into 1 but listing them here would help.
Keeping this issue alive in the media is essential! If we do not keep it in the headlines, it will vanish, be forgotten and shoved under the rug. Please do not let that happen.
Here is the information that someone did not want to take the time to post (above) from Facebook as well as Causes Information;
http://www.facebook.com/events.php?ref=sb#/event.php?eid=79868745942
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/263322/49693771?m=6d54c0aa
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/262319/49693771?m=26c5a60d
Petitions Online;
http://www.petitiononline.com/twcfedup/petition.html
http://www.petitiononline.com/UHSICP01/petition.html
Petitions Online charges a Fortune to print Original Hard copies of the signatures ($1.00) per signature. I do not know how I will pay for the Hard Copy Original of my Petition but I will not give up until I can. These need to be mailed to Albany, Congress, TWC and copies provided to Media sources. If any one has any suggestions please let me know!
Keep up the great work!
In case it hasn’t already been mentioned: Time Warner’s Director of Digital Communication posted on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/JeffTWC) that comments and complaints should be emailed to
realideas@twcable.com
and that they are in the process of “gathering feedback”.
So lets give him OUR Feedback!
[...] other issues they will face in the future, a planned demonstration outside of their offices on Mount Hope on the 18th April from 11am to 5pm (hay protesting for those hours should save you that 5gb you would have used watching three of [...]
For sure, just let me know what to do. I’m admin of the protest, and would be appreciative of any help from ANYONE – facebook or not.
Right now the best thing you can do to help for the protest, is spread the word. We have one flyer currently that I’ve hung up EVERYWHERE around RIT. Print a couple off, put em up around work, talk to people… spread the word. (:
If you would like to help out in some other way, drop me an email. Within the next week I’ll be sending out a mass message to everyone in the Facebook group, letting them know the exact plan of action for the 18th. Currently we’re looking for anyone thats willing to speak… if anyone is interested?
I can post here again (or somewhere on this site) with a copy of the rally info once its been written up and planned out.
flyer pdf:
http://people.rit.edu/~dxg1235/Stoptwc.pdf
Thanks all (:
Kyle I am going to try to make it there Saturday for an hour or so, if you need a speaker i might be willing to speak depending on what the material is. THanks!!
And yes I head one of the larger facebook protest groups with Diane as my co-administrator we are almost 2500 strong!!
Crap, i just used some of my bandwidth going to this page…
I will be bumping this back to the front page shortly in a new article, just as an FYI
11 am to 5 PM? A six-hour protest? You’re diluting the crowd. No one will stay for 6 hours. For maximum impact, keep it short – no more than 2 hours.
It is from 11am until 3 pm.