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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Monroe County should look into this. If Time Warner, Frontier, or even Verizon can’t provide fast, cap free fiber optic then our government should step in. I have no doubt large corporations would try and stop it.
I’m also in favor of heavy government regulation of cable and internet providers. It is obvious they are only interested in very high profits for their shareholders.
Seems like a better use of money than the Ren Square theater.
A few years ago Bill Moyers had a feature about how Philadelphia was developing a municipal internet service. It worried the industry enough to strongarm the Pennsylvania politicians into writing legislation that would ban such a thing anywhere it wasn’t already in place. I don’t recall whether it actually became law in PA or not , but if we don’t keep up the pressure too many politicians will be only too willing to be bought.
While watching the video, I was struck by how similar Wilson is to the Rochester, NY area. We also have historic buildings, valuable waterways (including a river, waterfalls, and a large bay connected to a lake big enough to drown Connecticut), several big high-tech companies, and strong links to other nearby major cities.
Wilson doesn’t, however, have over a million residents and several colleges and universities within its metro area. Given Rochester’s density and relatively tech-savvy population, why are we stuck with such crappy internet service? If Wilson can do it, why can’t we?
I say we tell the city (and surrounding areas) to lay down some fiber in the name of economic revitalization, and rent out the network to anyone willing to provide service. The income would pay for maintenance and operational costs, with any surplus devoted to further infrastructure upgrades. No monopolies, no exclusive licenses, just sweet, sweet fiber to the home.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=14934
My region in California has a local ISP called sonic.net, Sonic rolled out city wide free high speed wi-fi. It was great, the city people were so happy with the service. People had the power of the internet.
AT&T and Comcast threaten to shut down its network to the city’s large business if Sonic.net did not shut down its free wi-fi, needless to say the free city wide wi-fi was removed.
Sad to see small ISP’s shut out by the large ones.
This was a very good video. Kudos to Wilson, NC. I am interested in moving from Greensboro and am glad this popped up on my radar screen. Thanks for sharing.
I am looking forward to following this story.
I would like to know how they got started on this plan; If they can do it what would a city like ours have to do to get something like that started. . . I would love to start something like that and i am 100% serious, I am going to email them and ask.
If I had to guess… the leaders came up with the brilliant idea that if they provided better representation to their constituents, and if the town made some smart investments in technology, businesses would begin flocking to their town, and these leaders, along with the people that make up the town, would benefit and prosper. How rare and awesome an idea!!!
Craig… I wouldn’t hold my breath on this sort of thing being replicated elsewhere. Unless people in your town are already pushing for this sort of thing… you’re gonna be waiting a long while.
wow. This city is awesome. I wish all other cities follow what Wilson did.
There were argument about whether internet is an utility or not, and in the case of Wilson, they make it a public utility. Can someone tell me if they are based on usage (aka cap) like other utilities? I’m 99% sure it’s uncapped though.
And since this is a city owned company, can they give out the detail of cost/revenue details? This will show a more concrete proof of how much profit margin the rest of the cables company have been getting from Americans.
The little town that roared perhaps because they use their public money for projects for their people and are not saddled with TW owning them. A question that needs to be asked is why they need to charge $1.00. Is rent on the big pipes going up or is it just a nice round number to work with. Good luck finding that out. Around here we waste 100’s of million of dollars on things that people neither asked for and do not want or support, they never have except the few the proud the local politicians and most will not back down now because they would look dumb with all those pesky elections coming up. Just less then 100 miles away the rules all change I can not wait what those people in Buffalo will be paying after the contract is over. Talk about shell shock. The internet is not the cell phone market and never should be. There is plenty of competition. Some offer a two year contract some offer a one year an a few offer no contract but they are often very open why To offset the cost of the phones to some degree. To me a cell phone has to be one of the bigger black holes in the universe just the idea of the police, The FBI, or the DHLS being able to follow me around. I not only turned it off I take out its battery. A GPS does not work so well without power. The internet is very important to me one of my last things I have to do. The blogs the news contact with the world. That gas gauge that people talk about you do not need to install it im sure it talks back to home base without you even noticing it and you will be paying for that too. A reason Microsoft auto updates I have turned off many times sort of fixed a problem at the cost of all the unknown things it loads that in turn kills many of your programs into turnips. I don’t trust them so I use TechNet to get what I think I need. Yes the net is important to me but not at $150 a month as it now becomes an issue of do you want to eat that month or pay TW. Phil has written it cost him $170 a month. Ill assume that includes the net and TV but given his busy life I do not see how he can use all that power.