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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Starting today, StoptheCap! will rate the integrity and quality of the video news reports you see on this site. We feel it’s important to inform you when we think the reporter has gone beyond simply reciting a press release and accepting Time Warner’s assertions at face value. A “thumbs up” indicates a news report that provided fairness and balance, exposing viewers to multiple sides of an issue and/or a reporter willing to challenge the assertions made by those on camera. A “thumbs down” represents a report largely consisting of a rehash of company press releases, or a reporter who simply plants a microphone in front of a company spokesperson and allows them to ramble on, without any apparent hard questions or contrary viewpoints. You’ll quickly be able to identify which is which on your own soon enough.
Ughhhh. Great video, except for the piece at the end about TWC claiming that 85% of their customers would not be affected.
Realize its just a nightly news story, but need more specifics otherwise TWC will just keep quoting questionable statistics like the one above.
I think a good news report needs to contain both sides of view to be balanced. I don’t agree with TW’s assertion either, but it’s clearly impossible for a reporter to be able to dispute their numbers when Time Warner is unwilling to allow access to their raw data.
Besides, in the gallery of multimedia to come, you’re going to be see FAR WORSE, which is why I adopted the thumbs-up and down rating system. There are some reporters who simply turn into bobbleheads nodding and saying next to nothing when TW spinmeisters are rambling on and on….
You are right Phil, I sort of knee-jerked that one.
On balance the TV news report is a good start, hopefully of more to come.
Will have to do some digging to find out what the actual total amount of data that would be needed to fully patch a Windows XP system, for example. I’m sure its easily at least 1 GB.
The thumbs up thumbs down system seems a good compromise. Will have to keep refining these arguments about why any form of data capping just doesn’t make sense.
I just did a Vista update and forgot how many MB’s it took. I know it wasn’t a 1gb but I think it was close to 500mb.
The 85% of customers won’t be affected line is BS because if this goes though EVERYONE will be effected. We will no longer be able to get on the internet each day and do what we need to do like we have been for years. We will have to check our “gas gauge” to see if were aloud to do what we need to do.
All depends on whats on your disk; if you’re pulling down serice packs et all youre going to go well into the 3GB range.
I just built a system over the weekend;
Vista x64 ISO, (from MS Technet subscription) +SP1: 3.7GB
Fully patch up through the weekend: 1GB (+/-)35%
Hardware updates (drivers etc…): ~600MB(+/-)20%
AVG8.5 (free AntiViri) +all updates: ~400MB(+/-)20%
Thats almost 6GB worth of data in 1 day, to get a base system up and running, (not including pulling down any other things such as flash/adobe +updates, Office ISO, any game/software updates…)
So to build out a gaming PC with basic software we are probably sitting at about 8GB worth of file transfers to get it up and running, (this doens’t include MMO’s which have a TON of net patches etc… or anything from Steam.)
so aparently I can only build 1 or 2 of these a month, (or rebuild/fix for that matter,) and still be able to check my email…
Careful not to let StoptheCap! product placement in these reports sway the rating system.
I didn’t think we were actually mentioned at all in that report, were we?
Um, yeah. Three shots of StoptheCap! on the laptop.
Honestly, I never even saw it!
I was listening to the clip mostly while I uploaded a ton more to feed out in the coming days.
Most of the time, we don’t get mentioned on TV news reports, but people have the power of The Google, and find their way here easily enough when they search for caps, or from fine folks who put our link in the message boards on those stations.
Anyway, rest assured I won’t be taking placement into account. I promise you, there will be some stuff coming soon that will make your blood boil and you’ll see why I wanted to implement this.
We need to alert the media in Greensboro, I haven’t heard anything here yet about this. The average consumer is unaware they are about to get bent over.
Greensboro has covered the story, just not as much or as often. It looks like WXII and WFMY are providing the only substantive coverage on television, though.
WGHP has only done a couple of reports and our newspaper has done a few more. Basically we are told that nothing can be done and not many of our government officials are willing to act upon it. The only council member that seems to care is our mayor. I’ve sent emails to the council and letters to the editor and so far no response.
It’s kinda sad.
Did they do any recently? If there are any video clips up, send me the URL and I’ll embed them here for everyone. I am working on Greensboro with increasing priority, if only because our two cities are now in the same boat, with caps coming sooner rather than later.
Here is a new article from today, Greensboro is going to have a protest
http://tinyurl.com/Greensboro-Protest
Article about the effect on local businesses
http://tinyurl.com/Effects-Businesses
The most recent story from WGHP
http://tinyurl.com/WGHP-story
I hope that helps Phil. If you need anymore info send me an email. I plan on going to the protest so I’ll send you the update on that
Phil and all,
My wife, friends, and I have been following this issue for some time now. Thanks to you in particular Phil for starting the site. I wrote an email to WETM telling them about the situation and that I thought that our local community as well as TWC customers in general needed to know about this. Yes we mentioned stopthecap to the reporter as we use it as one of our primary means for information concerning this issue. We also mentioned it to Congressman Massa at his town hall forum last Saturday. I don’t think that it was at all a product placement but an alert that there is a site out there that you can go to for information.
Again, Thanks to everyone for their concern and input on this serious issue. Thanks again Phil
I am from the immediate WETM viewing area and there are lots of people here in the Twin Tiers (Southern Tier NY, Northern Tier PA) who are upset about this Tiered pricing scheme. We’re part of Massa’s congressional district also so we’re in this fight together!
Up until January 1, 2009, TWC Rochester provided the Elmira broadcast stations to TWC cable subscribers in Yates County. Now they don’t.
So I had an unfavorable opinion of TWC Rochester before this Internet issue came to fore.
Maybe it was preemptive by TWC against Massa; deprive his constituents of a major source of information about him.