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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Ahh memory lane. Joe “Pags” for his Rochester connection on WHAM during Lonsberry’s absence, and Prodigy for the countless hours I spent on their gaming message boards as a teenager in high school. It sounds like Josh at about 15:15 in the audio tried to plug this website. Hopefully Pags will check it out and publicize it in a future show. Here are some relevant, although unreferenced, quotes from the linked Wikipedia article: Price increases: “In an attempt to control costs and raise revenue, Prodigy undertook two separate actions. First, Prodigy modified their basic subscriber plans by allowing only thirty… Read more »
I thought the name was vaguely familiar. I can’t endure anything on WHAM personally, and while Bob Lonsberry may be a nice guy, his voice on the radio drives me batty. I essentially left local radio behind several years ago and now basically can’t live without my XM Radio in the car and home. And I was among the earliest users of Prodigy as well. Loved that clunky 640×480-style early graphical software designed to be the anti-Compu$erve, but perhaps deeper than AOL was around that time. People usually signed up for it based on promotions from Rochester Telephone. It was… Read more »
Thanks for posting the discussion. When I sent you the link previously, part 1 of the discussion with Alex Duddly, Timewarner PR rep, wasn’t available. Joe Pags recently upload the first part. To listen, check it out here: http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/SANANTONIO-TX/WOAI-AM/4-2%20HR%203%20part1.mp3?CPROG=PCAST&MARKET=SANANTONIO-TX&NG_FORMAT=newstalk&SITE_ID=1229&STATION_ID=WOAI-AM&PCAST_AUTHOR=Joe_Pags&PCAST_CAT=On_Air&PCAST_TITLE=Joe_Pags_Show_Podcast
-Josh
I remember years ago (8 maybe?) where TW implemented a cap on bandwidth with the same justification now – a small percentage of the users were using a large percent of the bandwidth. The cap would make the service “fair” for everyone.
I haven’t called TW yet, but a couple questions are:
1. Was that not effective? Why?
2. Why wouldn’t you implement another BW cap and offer higher speeds for additional cost (kind of like what you offer now with RR Turbo)
I will switch if they implement this.
-Eric
This is all about protecting their very lucrative Video on Demand TV service. By applying these caps it will sway customers from using up their allotted bandwidth on downloading movies/videos from places like netflix, hulu, and other competing video/movie places. Customers will be forced to rent video services from time warner in order to save on bandwidth.
“…This is all about protecting their very lucrative Video on Demand TV service. By applying these caps it will sway customers from using up their allotted bandwidth on downloading movies/videos from places like netflix, hulu, and other competing video/movie places. Customers will be forced to rent video services from time warner in order to save on bandwidth….” Peter has absolutely hit the nail on the head. There are other complicated business reasons as well, but this will help them to prop up a sagging business for them. (at our expense) P.S. I also loved the posts above. I was a… Read more »