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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I’m running a post tomorrow about the Time Warner issue. I don’t have all the time in the world, but I’ll do what I can. This issue is important and I’m right upset. So are all of my co-workers as well. Thanks for getting us all organized, like I said I’ll do what I can, time permitting.
Please count me in. I live in Austin, and I’m very upset about the move. And worse, FIOS isn’t available as an alternative, so DSL from AT&T is the only other viable option.
I will volunteer to do whatever is necessary to fight this tide. Please let me know what I can do. I will be blogging and twittering about it.
Thanks for organizing a resistance group!
–Kyle ( @getify )
While not blogging about it (too many other blogs I write); I am the primary point of contact for a large number of people regarding this issue. I’m heading to tonights City of Austin’s Technology and Telecommunications Commission hearing at 6:30 to sound off and hear the latest.
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/events/city_calendar.cfm?action=EventDetail&event_id=35775
Hope everyone who can make it does so; it would send a great message about how much we *don’t* want this to happen if we overwhelmed the facility.
Count me in. I have a blog and I am upset that the powers that be want to limit our internet. I will try to be at the hearing tonight, too. Tell me how I can help!
Yes I agree we must motivate and mobilize our crew to let TW know we will leave them in droves if they try metering and capping our access.
http://meterthis.org is a site I set up just to monitor and promote this topic. And of course reference back to Stop the Cap.
@jmacofearth (Austin RR Customer, for now)
Well, my mistake, it WAS meterthis.net, but I went and bought .org too since I made the typo. .COM is parked by someone else. http://meterthis.net is up and org will redirect as soon as the DNS servers update. Y’all!
Stop the Cap “Calling All Bloggers” – Make Yourselves Heard…
I really need to get us stepped up on representing the interests of other Time Warner targeted cities, and am looking for guest bloggers who could pen and/or help us gather and get out information. If you are already running a blog focused on this issu…
Called Time Warner Cable several times trying to cancel my cable service – had some interesting responses from the reps regarding the “Price-lock guarantee” cancellation FEE.
Because it was so ridiculous, it motivated me to record the audio and make a movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiC88TQ0tZQ