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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WRAL did a very good job packing a lot of information from all sides into a two minute package. I found it interesting WRAL seems to be the only station in the area spending a considerable amount of airtime in their newscasts on the Wilson story, which would soon develop into a major controversy.
More cities, towns and villages should look closely at Wilson and seriously consider following their commendable lead on this issue. The internet will be as impotent as any utility in the near future, and already is to many. Nobody would dream of selling water for your home on a private market like they do with internet service.
Thanks Phil for confirming that they don’t cap.
Even if the city uses tax money (which IT DIDN’T), I wouldn’t mind all if my tax money is used that way, much better than wasting it all for wars and bailouts. In fact, if they do it in Austin, I’ll be happy to pay more tax for a few years to fund the network setup.
Seriously. This is an excellent idea. Every city which has one ISP holding a virtual monopoly on broadband internet should be examining this possibility. How much longer until Time Warner starts punitively cancelling your service like they have begun in Austin? Let’s find out what it would take to set up similar services in our own town. The new behavior of Time Warner in Austin is the last straw. Even if they don’t cap now, we should all be doing our best to get away from this corporation. I will be investigating what it will take to replicate Wilson’s success here in Rochester.
I’m biased, but it seems that that Fairport (especially the village) would be a perfect fit for this.
Why?
1 ) Most of the village has above ground poles, make wiring much easier
2 ) The poles are owned and maintained by a municipal agency already (Fairport Electric)
3 ) The property density is high — less fiber to wire per household.
In Texas, a state law prohibits municipalities from providing certain broadband services like wireless. At the time, few paid attention to the law, lobbied by SBC, ATT and Time Warner. Essentially, it reduces competition by taking municipalities out of the field of potential competitors. If it were not in place, Time Warner wouldn’t dare attempt what they propose for Austin since we already have a functioning city wide public utility(Austin Energy) that could afford to embark on a city wide high speed broadband effort.
City of Austin should lobby to change that law at the state level. Time Warner sees their broadband as an entertainment service similar to cable TV. I say internet is just as important as electricity and therefore it’s reasonable to expect Austin Energy to provide it. Cable TV, to me, is optional and insignificant.