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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And the USA continually keeps going to the back of the line…15th in the world in speed but dropping fast!
If the baby boomers who run the U.S.A. don’t wake up soon, America will be irrelevant technology-wise in less than a decade.
You read my mind….
America, it seems, is too busy looking back at the Super Power we were rather than looking forward at how to maintain that position. It’s good to keep one eye on the past so you don’t make the same mistakes again. But to look away from the future like we have done, is sending us off course.
This applies to far more than broadband speed, coverage and price.
Cable companies here spend all their money on executive salaries instead of upgrades
This is really depressing to me. And the really sad thing is that there’s nothing we can do to fix our broken system without the help of those who broke it in the first place and they don’t have the desire to fix it. This is where I’d be perfectly happy with some “socialism.” There is something to be said about capitalism, but when you have no option other than crap service, that’s not capitalism. It’s painfully obvious these companies are going to need to be forced to play fair. Maybe ending the virtual monopolies ISPs have will help elevate competition. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m fine with a ISP putting lines in my yard (providing they put everything back the way it was, relatively) for a few weeks if it means we get some actual competition.
I believe municipal broadband will offer some communities a way forward. I also think the public policy impact of the Google Think Big With a Gig plan will carry larger implications for America’s broadband landscape than people realize.
When Google pulls off wiring a community/communities for fiber service at reasonable prices, they will finally bury the industry talking point that fiber is too expensive and broadband speeds aren’t important and the price we charge is “fair.”
Look at what this website has managed to do in fighting off the nation’s second largest cable operator’s overcharging schemes. We successfully beat Frontier back once as well, chased North Carolina legislators down the hallways to stop their industry friendly legislation, and are engaging to fight Frontier yet again on behalf of residents in a small community in Minnesota. When people get involved, fight for what they believe is right, and hassle their legislators in a unified front to preserve broadband successes in this country, victories can be achieved.
I look at illustrative examples of broadband in other countries as just more evidence to counter industry propaganda and destroy their baseless talking points.
I don’t believe the free market works well when there is an effective duopoly for broadband, so we need some regulatory changes to force open markets and gin up competition, even if it comes from municipalities. Just make sure there are no usage caps.
Here in USA Comcast, At&t, Verizon, Frontier and others try to limit us with Meter Caps and super high fees every day. They love Cap! So Sad!
[...] Some NCTA members charge $99 for 50/5Mbps service, which in other countries like Hong Kong sells for a fraction of that price. One need only consider Google’s plan to deliver 1Gbps service to a handful of American [...]