Special Report — Astroturf Overload – Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group

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 [...]

“The Verizon FiOS of Hong Kong”: Fiber to the Home 100Mbps Service $35/Month

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 [...]

BendBroadband Introduces New Faster Speeds, But Offensive Usage Caps the Skunk at the Broadband Party

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 [...]

Shaw Steamrolling Through British Columbia in “Sell To Us Or Die” Strategy

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 [...]

CRTC Embarrassed By FCC Net Neutrality Actions?

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 [...]

HissyFitWatch: Shaw & Rogers Non-Compete Agreement Tossed, Allowing Shaw Acquisition of Mountain Cablevision

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 [...]

Doubletake: Company With 5GB Limit in Acceptable Use Policy Promises “Near-Unlimited Bandwidth Capacity” to West Virginia

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 [...]

Sit Down For This: Astroturfing Friends Sold on Pro-Internet Overcharging Report

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 [...]

Hotel Guests Rebel Against Internet Overcharging: Consumers Won’t Pay More No Matter Where They Are

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 [...]

Court Hands Victory to Comcast: Throws Out 30% Cap On Market Share Inviting Buying Spree At Consumers’ Expense

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 [...]

Broadband Speed — It’s All About Where You Live & What Provider You Live With

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 [...]