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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I just dropped my Turbo. 10 down 1 up is sufficent for me and fits my budget (on promotional pricing). If turbo was 2 up, I would be willing to spend the extra $5/mo for it.
A tiny offering to go along with the rate increase. Nothing for those who can only afford RR Lite.
I just called them and was told they have no plans to increase turbo customers upload speed. I will give them a week or 2 to change their minds before cancelling my turbo service.
The only reason that I have turbo is for the faster upload speed.
I nice bone!
Thanks for the heads up on the need to unplug the cable modem. Last night I uploaded a bunch of high resolution photos to Picasa and could have used the 3X increase in upload.
I called Time Warner and confirmed that upload speed is now 1 Mb/s in my area for both RoadRunner Standard and Turbo. I cancelled my Turbo option as I only ordered it in the first place to get a faster upload speed. I told them that they can call me back if they come out with a faster upload option in the future.
Just called them to drop Turbo and the CSR told me that Turbo is getting increased in February and that the standard RR hasn’t been increased yet.
So I’ll be following this site, to see if Time Warner in Rochester actually increases the upload speed for Turbo, then I will resubscribe.
Interesting, although the standard speed increase has already taken place. They will probably make a formal announcement of the increase in February. Speed increases from TWC typically are soft-launched and several weeks pass before they mass-email customers with the news.
I will be happily surprised if upstream speed increases. Thus far, in western/central NY, only Buffalo gets 2Mbps upload speed. If that becomes the new standard for Turbo across the region, that will be the only real benefit most people would find worth the extra $10 a month for the Turbo service. A 5Mbps increase on the download side is nice, but probably not compelling enough for most people. A 10Mbps increase starts to get more worthwhile.
For me, upload speed is the worst part of Road Runner’s service at the moment.
Same here. I am willing to give TW some time to get my turbo speed to 2Mb. I too am more concerned with upload speed at this point in time. Download speed is fast for me, until DOCSIS 3 comes, it will carry me over for a while.
There seems to be an indication that Time Warner will work towards full national DOCSIS 3 rollout by the end of 2010 or early 2011. They are not exactly selling lots of service at the premium speeds at the high price they are charging for it right now. If they brought 50/5 service for perhaps $70-75 a month, that would probably attract a lot more customers than the current $100 a month price. But I realize it’s just getting started.
I would love to see pricing around $1-$2 per Mbs/month and you decide how much of it you want (within the limits of the technology).
That is definitely true upload needs to get increased. Otherwise for $10 more it is too much money for 5mbits down more. I can wait a little bit longer for things, since normally most speeds don’t max you out.
But upload is something that is very lacking. I hope Rochester can get DOCSIS 3 sooner rather than later, I guess we will see.
Hope that includes TV phone and internet because im not going to pay
$100 a month for just internet.
Ken, He was referring to a much faster (and higher priced service).
They don’t want you to upload. Every bit of video that someone uploads is one more incentive to cancel TV service. Time Warner sucks.