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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Interesting read…….and another name to contact and voice opposition too…
“New York Congressman Eric Massa has already registered his displeasure with TWC’s trial, but the real test will be if Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) responds. He’s key because he runs a sub-committee on the internet and telecommunications, and has many levers to force telecoms to change their ways.”
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/consumer-group.html
I am glad to see that someone at wired.com has picked up this story.
However, the story mentions that frontier has a 5GB cap. The link in the story goes to the acceptable use policy where frontier outlines what it considers acceptable usage.
This was the statement in their Acceptable Use Policy:
“Frontier may suspend, terminate or apply additional charges to the Service if such usage exceeds a reasonable amount of usage. A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period. ”
http://www.frontier.com/policies/residential_aup/
It looks like even if they say they are not planning on charging, they seem to be reserving the right to charge in the future should they deem it necessary.
Based on the language, I would guess that they could charge customers overage fees without any additional notice and without violating any contracts.
Anyone else notice this?
This site did battle with Frontier over this issue last summer. If you wade all the way back in the article pile, you’ll see the long history. In the end, Frontier left the AUP the way it is, but will not enforce or take any negative actions against any customers who exceed it. They have also made it clear they have abandoned caps as an issue at least through 2010, and customers who sign up with a Price Protection Agreement are exempt from any cap action for the length of their contract term.
We’re hopeful Frontier will enjoy the massive boost in their customers in the coming weeks and months as people bail on Time Warner. I am still waiting for my DSL modem to arrive, and whatever happens, rest assured we will be keeping an eye on things.
Update: http://www.boucher.house.gov/
Contact at: http://www.boucher.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=645&Itemid=
Something kind of scary/bizarre occurred to me recently… It appears to me that this entire grab for money is almost a little too obvious… How is it possible that one of the largest Cable/Internet providers in our country can expect to “pull one over” on so many people? Can a company with enough expertise in communications to gain such a giant customer base really think that they can change their service plan so drastically without an enormous public outcry? Is this really a “grab for money” or is there something we’re missing? I’m not pointing any fingers, but I think that it’s something to chew on…
This isn’t really being ‘missed’, but, the main component of this is TW trying to grow their new VOD market. They are trying to impose the caps to force ppl to stop using hulu/youtube and netflix VOD services.
Eventually they will unveil their Video on Demand service and they’ll proclaim ‘d/l’s don’t count against service cap!!!’. So anytime you want to stream video, naturally you’ll do it from their website/service. The extra money they will make from this is just icing on the cake.
They are a communications company as you state and I’m sure they are well aware of the massive backlash this would cause. To them it is a necessary part of the plan. They don’t care at all about customer reaction and they’re probably prepared to lose 10-15% of customers I’d imagine.
This is for CONTROL of video on demand services over the internet. Which is only going to continue to grow exponentially in the future. If someone was willing to pay 4 billion for youtube, certainly TW is willing to eat some losses from dissatisfied customers to secure their place in the VOD future. One great way to ensure that future is to entice all TW customers to only use TW VoD services.
It’s really pathetic and I’m sure more attention will be brought to this in the future. It has been metioned before but I don’t think enough emphasis is being placed on it. However, it’s hard to produce any solid facts on this matter, although IMO it’s obvious this is what they are doing. It’s the only rationale explanation as to why their caps are SO much lower than all their competitors. 100GB is paltry for the top tier @ $75 a month. So if you are a heavy user you’ll pay more and then still end up using their VOD service so you can save bandwidth for something else.
In closing, I hope people really hammer them on this, they are going to follow through with it anyway though. It will take a truly cataclysmic event for them to backdown on this one. Don’t expect the caps to be raised either, if they are going to do that they might as well not cap at all. Having a 250GB cap alla ‘Comcast’ isn’t going to help force people to their VOD service.
Thankfully I’m a comcast customer now after the Comcast/TW swap. Initially I wasn’t sure about it, but now I’m thanking my lucky stars. To think I though Comcast was bad? They must be thrilled that TW is taking the lead as THE premier Internet villain for the 21st century!
Im so happy Wired pick up the story I emailed them several times since April first about it, Glad to see someone ran with it