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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Another downside of recessions besides all the suffering is merger mania
WXXI public radio in Rochester has a brief segment on these purchases and speculate that farther down the road it may mean Verizon gets to take over the Rochester market (Frontier keeps the rural segment) and maybe, just maybe we’ll have FiOS to compete with TWC.
Speculative indeed, but at least there’s a little bit of optimism: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wxxi/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1505427
Interesting segment. And yes, the question is … why indeed would Frontier wish to stay in Rochester because it sure does not fit in with their “rural” area service.
Thanks for posting the link to that Brion.
Is rural service a real money maker Frontier must think so if they are willing to part with 8 billion. My comment will stay in this region as I do not know how the others work. When / if this happens Frontier will have the best of both worlds for the moment the rural and the denser city systems. For a moment lets assume I live south of Rochester on a big hill top with 5 other houses 10 miles from the closest gas station. If the studies prove true that in high tech areas 80 percent of the people have cell phones ok what service can Frontier provide me? A copper wire phone yes DSL no way no structures in place close enough. And what about TV I think TW has that covered. Frontier has provided copper phone service here for many years and their outside service is very timely given your nice to the service people on the phone as it is not their fault and that brings me to my final thought. Something more then we know is cooking behind closed doors and what is cooking may be a good thing.
I do not think that Consumers have to Worry About the Frontier-Verizon Phone Swap. Our phone company has gone through how many name changes but the poles are the same the wires are the same the only thing that changed was the address on the bill. Worry from change is a natural feeling one I think and hope is unfounded.
The Frontier installer that was here this morning said that he thought that it could be more likely that Windstream acquires the local Frontier service area. And yes, I am on DSL at the moment. Seeing max speeds of about 5.8 mb/sec down and 380 kb/sec up, but excellent ping and tracert times. I was told to wait 24 hours for the circuit to complete and then check my speed again. I do know that I am seeing lower download and upload speeds than what I saw here last year from Frontier.
I think yesterday’s news is a game changer. My personal thinking is that Frontier will, at some point, discard Rochester (but there is no assurance Verizon would be a buyer) to focus on its core rural business plan. They just jumped into first place, so I think it’s likely they are not going to be easy pickens for awhile, especially with credit markets still reluctant to hand out blank checks.
If I got more than 5Mbps, I probably would have kept DSL as a backup provider here, but 3.1Mbps is ridiculous, especially for the amount of money being charged. Considering the complete lack of resistance to my cancellation request, I suspect they felt it wasn’t really acceptable either.
As other technologies zoom ahead of DSL speedwise, this is going to be a product that will probably be irrelevant outside of rural areas where cable/fiber just isn’t going to happen.
So, I guess that means any hope for FIOS in the RTP region of North Carolina has just gone up in smoke.
I had a very similar episode with Frontier when I lived in Gates and not all that far from their Long Pond Rd CO, when they could only get me a mind-numbing 56k down…yeah I did say 56k. As you can probably guess, I had an RR installation scheduled within milliseconds of that conversation. I also had zero resistance to canceling my service, which I was semi-surprised about, but with those speeds resistance would have been beyond futile. I would like to think at some point Frontier would gracefully bow out of Rochester and turn things over to Verizon and (hopefully) FiOS in the not too distant future.
I too live in Gates and had DSL with Frontier. I was satisfied with the service until I wanted to cancel my landline telephone. I swear its easier to rebuild a car engine than get your landline disconnected. I got severe run around for months and was finally told that I could not have DSL without a landline. CANCEL IT ALL! I told them. I said they better get out of the stoneage or else go out of business. I went with RR and then the cap talk started, ugh! Cant seem to win but im glad TW halted the cap crap so far or else I would seriuosly think about going back to Frontier and having a landline even though we dont need it, just to get DSL.
Joe. I just had Frontier DSL installed yesterday. You do not need a landline anymore from them. It is called standalone service. I did find out by accident that the phone number that has been assigned to my account can receive calls, but calls cannot be made.
So far , so good. The speed is adequate for what we do and the latency is low. I think that before the TW store closes tonight that my Roadrunner modem will be returned to them and Roadrunner cancelled.
I Agree Verizon is such a natural for this area so I have to think something else big is in the way now. There is nothing wrong with RR until they started the cap idea. Verizon as they grow could pull the same stunt as could anybody. ATT is about the only company big enough to think of coming here but I also think they do not want to get into a war with the Rochester area right in the middle of it. I do think we are in the eye of the storm as everyone tries to figure out what everyone else is going to do. For the most part things have got very quite. No doubt they all read this site everyday and found out it can make a difference and they also know this site can fight more then one war at a time and that scares them.