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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This is a quick report, but if you compare and contrast it with the News 14 Carolina reports, it’s easy to see the difference. One report tells viewers customers weren’t happy with the experiment, the other did not. One report has an anchor that steps back and reports the company position, the other is closer to a “team play” to press the company point of view. And viewers absolutely picked up actual news from this report, instead of a recitation of talking points and press releases.
Ugh.
Consumers “understood” it last time, which is why they got a member of the United States Senate involved.
The issue wasn’t lack of comprehension.
The issue was that people didn’t *want* it.
News14 is owned and operated by Time Warner Cable, of course they’re only going to report their side.
R News in Rochester is owned by Time Warner Cable but is at least a little more balanced. Seems to be getting less balanced, though.
I hope TW “real life examples” are *my* real life usage. I don’t really care how much bandwith watching something on Youtube takes, (hypothetically) I want to know what *I* use in month, far in advance of when they start billing me.
According to a recent article*, Time Warner is planning on testing bandwidth caps in third world countries to gain a better understanding of what percentage of their US customers would be affected by caps. TWC estimates that, on the basis of early results from trials in areas such as Ethiopia and Antartica, 99% of US customers will be unaffected when caps are implemented across the country.
* in my imagination
Since this whole mess first erupted, I’ve contended that the #1 way to fight it is to get the message across to mainstream users (i.e. the non-geek, non-power user crowd) what a huge pain it will be. This means two things: First, even if everything goes as TWC plans, consumers will still have to constantly monitor their usage, including that of their kids. And not just for the first few weeks or months, but for EVERY month they have the service. Second, I don’t think for a second that this will be rolled out cleanly. I have a web site… Read more »
Does anyone here live in or around Charlotte, NC? I just need to know if there is any other possible ISP that I could switch to that doesn’t have a cap/crappy connection.
“Time Warner Still Plans to Bill By Usage”
Then I still plan to leave Time Warner, and I am not a super heavy user so they will be losing some profit.
Everyone I know who is a customer of TWC has clearly stated that the day TWC imposes a cap is the day they will pick up the phone and cancel ALL TWC services. They also fully recognize and expect to get a busy signal due to heavy call volume. However, we will all persevere and keep calling until we cancel our service. It will be an ugly day for TWC.
I’m still watching this place… 🙂 But yes. The day they announce they’re capping my service (and I’ve been watching my own usage with NetMeter… remarkably low on my end (less than 10GiB per month just based on the time between 4/3/09 to current), but I also live with two gamers, one of them being a college student, and am picking up a third roommate who is also a gaming college student), is the day I’m calling to cancel. I hate to do it… the local employees are awesome, helpful people, and I’d be losing their customer service… but at… Read more »