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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The Clearwire mailings I’ve received over the past couple years have not impressed me and when I checked out their site I found this gem in their TOS:
Also you have no idea what the caps are until you place your order. They are not shown on the pre-checkout itemized list and they are not discussed in the plan descriptions. And to get the best deal ($30 one-time fee with free activation and free shipping) you need to sign up for a 2 year agreement. With a 1 year agreement you’ll pay $80 in one-time fees.
There are monthly plans but they start at $37/mo with $250 equipment purchase due at checkout.
This sounds like AT&T’s modus operandi.
Last I heard, Clearwire wanted to dump caps for their WiMax Clearwire-branded service, because consumers turned their nose up at them the moment they found out the service had them (surprise, surprise).
I suspect TWC and Comcast will disguise market their WiMax white labeled Clearwire service (slap your cable company logo on it even though it’s basically the same as Clearwire service directly from them) as a mobile broadband service. Consumers are enduring 5GB monthly caps on those services, so I’d hardly be surprised to see the same cap from both Comcast and TWC.
Paying essentially $30 a month more for these services, presuming you have good reception from Clearwire’s WiMax towers, would undercut wireless phone carrier plans by $20 a month for the 5GB plan. It might be enough to spark a small price war.
I personally can’t justify spending $30 or $50 a month for mobile broadband, but then again I never venture too far from home anyway. For those that do, it could be a real savings to tell Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, or Sprint to “kiss off.”
One day, I should try out Crickét (it’s classier when you pronounce it that way) and their mobile broadband, if only because they don’t lock you into a contract and it’s cap is apparently not viciously enforced.
Virgin Mobile’s prepaid mobile broadband is ludicrously expensive for all but the most casual user.
Well as of today at 1:33pm the cap/overage language was still in their TOS so we’ll wait and see.
However WiMax is a joint venture between Clearwire and Sprint (as I recall) with TWC and Comcast close monetary partners. Sprint already offers “unlimited” (5GB) data plans for their phones at $15 and $30 rates – the best in the mobile biz.
I haven’t been able to tell the difference between the two plans besides $15 and I pay for the $15 plan. If you dig around on their site I think you can find it. It’s called the Data Pack. Their basic Everything Data plan is 450 minutes and unlimited data for $70/mo which also isn’t bad. I don’t see WiMax eating into that very much for users with phones running Windows Mobile because it’s rather easy to tether your phone to your computer (though beware of that 5GB cap).
WiMax may be desirable if you don’t leave the city very often and carry a netbook around with you everywhere.
( The data pack info is here: http://nextelonline.nextel.com/en/stores/popups/data_pack_popup.shtml and the pro pack — more stuff for another $15 — is here: http://nextelonline.nextel.com/en/stores/popups/power_vision_pro_pack_popup.shtml )
Of all the internet savvy people against these caps, I wonder why nobody has attempted to start their own ISP. The second that caps are even implied as a possibility I disregard whatever service I just heard about.
You’ll find it has been discussed if you can search the archives for ‘municipal’. I know I’ve thought about it before but the problem is start-up capital.
Starting an ISP requires millions of dollars in equipment to overbuild the cable network and it requires permission from the municipality (Rochester in my case).
The thought isn’t gone, but right now I have neither the time nor the money to be able to take on Time Warner Cable and Frontier on my own. If caps were in place and our situation was closer to that of Shaw/Novus/Telus/Bell in Canada then there may actually be a groundswell of support to start a municipal ISP.
I’d also talk to the people in South Carolina and Minnesota as part of the research on what it takes to get moving with a municipal ISP since they’ve already done it.
Link: http://stopthecap.com/2009/06/22/time-warner-rochester-ups-the-ante-against-frontier-well-pay-your-early-disconnect-penalty/comment-page-1/#comment-4862