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 [...]
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 Hong [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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Listening to this right now.
I am listening to this as well. I like that they were able to get a rep from TimeWarner on so I can laugh at all the lies falling out of her mouth. I will definitely be at the Austin town hall meeting this evening.
Let folks know StoptheCap! is here and helping in the fight. We’re ALL in this together and are all sister cities now.
I so want to go, but I am working until midnight. Go get them Danke. I called ATT today and told them that Time Warner is telling everyone that ATT will be doing the same thing and is speaking for their company.
I will bring up this website if I have any platform to speak on this evening. I already forwarded this site in a personal letter AND fax to my representative here in Austin.
Oh please… here we go with the talking points. One of the things I am beginning to suspect is that we’re going to have TW foist these ridiculous cap levels on us until later this summer when they suddenly announce they might “double them” or whatever and call it a “victory.”
One of the important things folks will always need to remember is that we OPPOSE CAPS. There are some caps that are war crime-like, there are some caps that are potentially tolerable today, but they won’t be tomorrow. This fight is about keeping caps off broadband.
The “corporate team” that is meeting hard on these issues includes everyone but the residential customer.
The only communication Austin residents need to deliver to Stacy is that they do not want caps on their Road Runner service. That needs to be the consistent message.
Do not play their game in fighting over GB amounts on a cap. Stay resolute.
Does Time Warner charge more for HD programming in Austin? They don’t in Rochester for the basic networks/locals.
This woman is saying a load of nothing. “Um, uh, uh, like I said, we are trailing this now so we do not have the numbers in place so I can not say right now how the tiers will operate.”
invest in our infrastructure!
best products and services!
Danke:
I think Stacey must have gotten the short end of the stick to go on the show.
Interesting. She doesn’t have the data regarding what the citizens of Beaumont TX thought of this. I wonder why not?
The poor hapless spokesperson. You have to be nice to them because they are tasked with explaining something they had no decision in. I don’t envy her position.
Same thing with the customer service reps.
Stacy doesn’t have a clue what the other providers are doing. And your monthly Internet bill is not going to go down based on the TW plan. HA! The “we want to encourage more use of the Internet overall” LOL talking point.
I am unsure what HD programming costs in Austin because I do not enjoy or desire cable programming. All media I choose to consume is now always more easily available online in the same HD format. I am not interrupted by constant ads and I am not constrained by time programming time schedule.
Any time I want to catch a sporting event I find it is always better watched at a local bar anyhow!
If one has a DVR, we get free HD, actually. Not sure how many channels though.
Edit: *TV programming time schedule
oops! you should add an edit button that expires 15 mins after being posted.
I thought you guys could already edit your comments. If not, I’ll look into it, because I get to edit mine.
Yeah, “don’t overreact,” says Stacy. Time Warner wants to put your bill up into the stratosphere, but be calm… all is going to be okay.
Stacy doesn’t have a clue about Beaumont either.
Remember, the Beaumont trial only impacted NEW customers, not existing ones. It was a worthless survey.
Oooh… trick question! Will I be charged if I go to News8austin.com? A net neutrality trap. Ask about unlimited digital phone and if that will count.
(Stacy thinks it might when it comes to the website; guess she didn’t bite.)
A shout out to Eric Massa on KOOP! Nice to hear.
Wish I could listen, must be a firewall issue.
I will put up the archive edition when it is released so you can download it.
“There is a wide array of providers in (Austin).” Yes, and customers are now learning all about them.
Jim, if you try the dial-up feed, it might work. I had a problem as well with the broadband feed, and it may be due to too many active connections. Hopefully dial-up works for you
I am recording this at the moment but realized it didn’t start recording until almost 15 minutes in. It started at what is essentially the start of the debate minus all the introductions.
Oooh… the Earthlink quandary.
Austin… we here ya. It’s the phone company vs. the cable company here in western NY too. Only you guys have Grande coming in as well. No such luck here. We have Clearwire, which is slow and expensive (a wifi kind of approach)
Wow! Grande is news to me. I need to look into the quality of their service. I am in downtown Austin and was completely oblivious to this company. Where is their marketing around here? All I see is TW ads everywhere.
Yeah, I don’t really see adverts for them either. Someone I know got it a few years ago. They love it. Website is grandecom.com. They’re also on Twitter. http://www.twitter.com/grandecom. I’ve been keeping tabs on them for some time though. So far, I’m unable to get them since I’m in an apt complex that contracts with TWC.
Finally glad to hear someone else say it. ATT and TimeWarner as the only options are not an example of compeition. LOL give me a break! I can’t believe this kind of business practice just blindly goes on and we call this the information age!
Good grief
And remember, we had to fight back Frontier, our phone company, who last summer wanted to put a 5GB cap on everyone.
Blah, blah, blah… rinse and repeat from Stacy.
“There is no strategy.” Oh no… not at all. They really think we are stupid.
I am also just remembering I haven’t eaten lunch, and darnit, it is SNOWING outside of my window AGAIN. Argh!!!!!
Invest in the infrastructure… they already make a ton of money from Road Runner.
This TW rep obviously doesn’t have a clue what is going on. Why didn’t they get the CEO of TWC on instead. Oh, he’s probably out having ‘steak and salad’ for lunch!
She is obviously not prepared for any questions, doesn’t have any numbers to back up her points. I’ve an idea for her, leave the service alone, take some of that multi-million dollars profit and reinvest it in upgrading to something like DOCSIS3, or step aside and let Verizon FiOS into town! If you really want to listen to your customers, then leave well alone, just take our monthly bill and invest in upgrading rather than making political donations or share dividends!
The recent stimulus package that passed, with our billions of TAX PAYERS hard earned dollars included provisions for funding for improving broadband and infrastructure, which means we now have a stake in this as consumers and taxpayers. How much did TWC take of this money?
Who is the ultimate monitor of their ‘gas gauge’? How can they or you prove what you’ve used in their cap system?
She’s joking when she says that consumers will be paying less a month. If you want to charge me for what I use on cable, then charge me for only what I use on TV too. I would only like to pay for 20 channels and not 2500 channels!
ROFL on the steak and salad. Of course, he doesn’t get the check. WE GET THE CHECK.
I might actually subscribe for a complete cable package if I could pick the channels I wanted. Sign me up for that!
I would, too. I think it’s called a la carte. And none of the cable companies want to do it because they’d lose money. It’s been talked about for years and years, but nothing’s been done about it. That’s why the ‘net’s taken over watching for watching programs. One can pick & choose what they want, when they want it.
“Who is the ultimate monitor of their ‘gas gauge’? How can they or you prove what you’ve used in their cap system?”
If you have a router connected to your cable modem, and can do it, look up either DD-WRT or Tomato. You can flash your router’s firmware with either one of those open source firmwares and they have a monitor as part of their packages. I’ve d/l’ed Tomato, but haven’t flashed my router yet (I’m somewhat of a chicken when it comes to that lol)
I use DD-WRT – It is pretty slick and depending on which router you have, it can be easy or very hard.
Stacy being honest: “We are targeting all of our customers.” You betcha darn tootin.
I am not that optimistic federal politicians from Texas are going to be responsive to a regulatory approach. I know Austin is not as red as the rest of the state, but I believe it’s better to approach Republicans with a competition argument and Democrats with both a competition and regulatory/oversight approach.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett might be someone to contact, But Sens. Cornyn or Hutchison will not be interested in this.
Uhhh oh, she said the realideas email is a website…Does she really know the difference, or did she just mispeak…?!
Stacy might be on the Lite tier. I really don’t get the impression she’s that well versed on technical issues like websites.
I think she mentioned twcable.com as the website, which is an employee only site. Talk about one’s head up their own ass so far that cant see!
Your next step: Either rescind the cap or you cancel service.
That is the most effective message you can send.
For crying out loud. Stacy did not prepare for this at all, she just showed up with “defend the cap” written in crayon on a napkin.
Wrapping it up at 12:48pm? What do they do with the rest of the hour….
Oh well, that means I get to eat lunch now.
I am working on article for this afternoon about the customer service people and the tall tales they are telling customers, and then I am out for a meeting tonight. I seem to be spending most of my time with this site. I hope we can get more content contributors soon before I get carpel tunnel.
I did talk to a nice TWC rep yesterday. Don’t remember her name, but I could tell she just didn’t believe this metering was a good idea at all, even as she was giving me she script.
Oh it’s the postgame show.
I remember being on Compu$erve in the late 1980s at $15 an hour during the business day. I guess we’re back to the 80s with Time Warner.
Perhaps I will flesh out the alternative options Austin customers have.
The postgame is better than the earlier part of the show.
It doesn’t appear to me that Time Warner is listening to any of our concerns, she keeps quoting ‘When we roll this out’!
I think after that interview with Stacey, the CEO is choking on his steak lunch because now he has to go back into damage control to ‘clarify’ what his reps are saying, Stacey, Alex Dudley, Customer Service Reps et al. He should have had the salad!
Wait for the later afternoon article on this. I am compiling the crazy responses TW reps are telling customers.
That sounds like Jim Hightower.
Oh, it is Jim Hightower.
Well, that wraps this event up. Thanks for joining for another hour of frustration with TW.
Phil,
Maybe we should send this report onto TWC so we wouldn’t have to pay for 97% of our emails/data traffic!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7988579.stm
Time Warner is the largest ISP in Austin. Besides them, it depends on where you live. UVerse is still fairly new and is continually connecting new areas. Grande has been around for a while but has a limited service area. I believe FIOS can be found up north near the Round Rock/Georgetown area.
Most HD content is available with a digital package but they have about 4 channels that constitute a premium tier and cost extra. They are remnants of the orginal HD channels when there was very little content.
Rochester made TWC’s Wikipedia page under “carriage controversies”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable
Can someone get a link to Stop The Cap on there? I’m not too familiar with editing Wikis. Maybe get something about Eric Massa too?
One, I can’t link myself. It’s a safe bet it will get edited out as blatant self-promotion. So if someone wants to tackle this, go ahead.
Found an other website dedicated to stopping the cap on the wikipedia page. They wanted links for other websites sent to them, so I sent an email about stopthecap.com
BTW, the website I found on the wikipedia page was http://stoptwc.info
The “editors” over there (self-proclaimed) love to drop links they suspect of being self-promotions, so it can be difficult to get a link to stay there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable edited with links to:
# April 7, 2009 – US Congressman Eric Massa, NY (D) calls on Time Warner to eliminate Broadband Internet Cap. [2]
# Stop the Cap [3]
There didn’t seem to be an Austin-specific site, so I started one last week.