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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Maybe it’s not a bad idea to let Frontier buy from Verizon. That way when Frontier goes bankrupt,
bye bye DSL from Frontier, hello FIOS from Verizon.
/sarc
That assumes Verizon would buy what’s left. Somehow I don’t see that happening. I remain unsure exactly what Verizon is thinking these days — they are slowing down FiOS expansion, probably as a cost-saving measure, so am not sure why they’d want to take it on. Besides, there’d be a nice bailout of Frontier in the case of bankruptcy and then it would be restructured and we’d still be stuck with it.
What needs to happen is Frontier needs to license FiOS technology/service from Verizon (it says it will continue to roll it out in the households sold off to them that Verizon already started).
Frontier is extremely unwilling to make a lot of investments in its network expansion beyond “we won’t survive without DSL” slow speed broadband service.
I think the way to provoke companies to roll out fiber, barring a municipal solution when the economy improves, is through directed tax incentives and stimulus in the most challenging Return On Investment areas, but it has to come with real conditions, not the song and dance routine that usually turns up where they get the money and break their promises.
@Judy Ha! Do you really think Verizon would invest in fiber for WV?? Dream on.
Was referring to Rochester NY, not WV.
I don’t understand all of this. How can you stop someone from selling their business off? I mean if they want to sell their business and there is a buyer, what can you do to stop it?
As long as there is a buyer nothing can stop them except government
state level perhaps. The internet and cable TV are not utilities and could be
turned off today no matter what the states think. They only have to keep the
phones going. Phone is a utility.
Tim, telephone companies are a regulated utility service. They know going in they can’t simply sell to anyone willy-nilly. There is government oversight to help assure that vital service is treated with the care and respect it needs. Too often, state regulators and a hands-off FCC has not done a good job with this (witness the approval of FairPoint).
Should states reject the deal, Verizon will continue to provide service. I don’t particularly care for their “rural is bad” business plan myself. I think we’re on the cusp of a realization some substantial incentives are going to be needed to assure we don’t end up with rural America left out of the broadband revolution.
Lets get real here. Fairpoint was a perfect example. Town hall gets
wired for free, maybe a couple of public channels for free so everybody
says yes and it was a done deal… now Fairpoints and the local governments
problem it did not work out. You can bet Verizon will be more careful in
future where they build out. As far as way out in the country DON”T hold
your breath. Stock holders want pay back in a year…. not ten or twenty
and many areas could not even support such an expense. They should
be happy if they even get 1 gig. Their option is no gig.
i don’t know what the best option here is….the only thing that i’m sure about is we need rid of frontier. simply put, they are the worst company that i have ever had the misfortune to deal with….and i have no choice but to deal with them. i hope they go bankrupt.