Amazon.com today unveiled a new personal online file storage service allowing customers to access and stream up to 5GB of their music collection to their Android phones, tablets, or personal computers for free.

The new suite of services includes Amazon Cloud Drive, an online file storage locker which holds the files, Amazon Cloud Player for Web, a web-based player that accesses MP3 files stored on a customer’s cloud drive, and Amazon Cloud Player for Android, which delivers streams over a wireless broadband connection to an Android-based wireless device.

“We’re excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience,” said Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon. “The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music.”

“Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices,” Carr said. “Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.”

Apple's MobileMe service will likely need to dramatically cut prices to compete with Amazon's new cloud storage service.

Those with established Amazon accounts will find their Cloud Drive already activated and ready to store up to 5GB of files.  Customers who buy a digital MP3 album from Amazon will automatically get a free upgrade to 20GB of storage space for the first year.

Those looking for more than 20GB of online storage can purchase it for $1/GB per year, up to 1TB per account.

Although the service was intended mostly as an MP3 storage locker, any file can be saved to a customer’s Cloud Drive, which uses Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).  This means the Cloud Drive could be used to store videos, documents, or even system backups.

“Free” is a good deal for consumers.  Competitor Dropbox only gives out 2GB and Apple’s MobileMe charges a comparatively overpriced $99 a year for 20GB of combined email and file storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.  Amazon does not limit data transfers.

Online cloud storage moves files off of individual hard drives and makes them available online for immediate access, anywhere.  But Internet Overcharging schemes mean consumers will face the potential of dramatically higher broadband bills if they use these services, which are extremely data intensive.  Using Amazon’s MP3 storage and streaming service is unlikely to put a customer past their usage limit on home broadband accounts, but using the service for regular file backups could.  Usage-capped broadband and so-called “usage-based billing” threatens the viability of business plans that require consumers to use their broadband accounts to send and receive substantial amounts of data.

Amazon.com introduces its new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.  (2 minutes)

North Carolina: The home of the House-sanctioned broadband slow lane.

Not a single Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives stood with consumers yesterday as the cable industry’s custom-written anti-community-broadband bill — H.129 — passed the House in a lopsided 81-37 vote. Fifteen Democrats joined them, some after it was apparent the bill would enjoy lockstep support from their Republican colleagues.  Only three dozen Democrats were willing to choose the interests of their constituents over the interests (and campaign contributions) from Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and CenturyLink.

Rep. Bill Faison (D-Orange) told WRAL-TV voters need to be aware H.129 was Time Warner’s custom-written bill imposing harsh terms and conditions on community broadband networks, while exempting big cable and phone companies.

“Where’s the bill to govern Time Warner?” Faison asked.

Faison predicted the bill will make it next to impossible for any future community broadband effort to deliver service, even in areas where nobody else has or will.

In the communities of Mooresville and Davidson, House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Cornelius), who represents north Mecklenburg including Davidson and Rep. Grey Mills (R-Mooresville) both voted for the bill, throwing the local community-owned MI-Connection cable system under the bus.  That cable system, acquired from bankrupt Adelphia Cable and rebuilt to modern standards, faced unexpected financial hurdles from the decrepit state the infrastructure was left in when it was sold.  H.129 would limit the system’s ability to reach its entire natural service area in an effort to remain viable, likely banning service for unincorporated Mecklenburg and Iredell counties, and parts of the community of Corelius.

Avila’s statements defending her bill ranged from confusing to the downright absurd — particularly the assertion that high tech businesses will avoid North Carolina if her bill didn’t pass because companies would not want to do business in a state where the local government provided competing broadband service.  That’s a ludicrous notion for a business confronted with 1.5Mbps DSL from CenturyLink.  No high technology business will want to do business in a state that delivers some of the nation’s least adequate broadband service.  With Ms. Avila’s efforts, that fact of life could gain rubber stamp approval from many in the state legislature more interested in protecting the profits of New York-based Time Warner Cable than Wilson, N.C.-based GreenLight.

The bill is headed to the Senate next.  We’ll have a Call to Action up shortly regarding this.

If your member from the House of Representatives is not on the list below, they need to be held accountable for doing the wrong thing for North Carolina broadband.

NC House of Representatives Members Voting For Consumers By Opposing H.129

(Click the name of your member to obtain current contact information, and please send thanks for their vote yesterday.)

Bill Shock

Time Warner Cable has redefined bill shock for two of their customers this week as an Ohio man found the cable company trying to bill his credit card $16 million dollars and the Madison County, Ky., Board of Education found their broadband rate going up as much as 1,568 percent.

One of these was a mistake, the other represents a potential nightmare.

Lt. Daniel DeVirgilio received notification from Time Warner Cable his credit card didn’t have a big enough credit limit to sustain the $16,409,107 in charges the cable company tried to get authorized.  The Beavercreek, Ohio resident was taking the billing foul-up in stride, joking with the Dayton Daily News that he probably should have gotten Showtime thrown in at those prices.

Time Warner Cable Southwest Ohio officials on Thursday attributed the $16.4 million figure to human error, according to the newspaper. An employee typed in the wrong number for the amount owed, which caused the company’s automated system to generate the letter.

Unfortunately for DeVirgilio, Time Warner left him on hold for nearly 40 minutes trying to straighten out the billing mess.  No harm was ultimately done to his credit card, but the 26 year old remains concerned Time Warner could have reported the “delinquent” charge to credit reporting agencies.

Madison County, Ky.

The relatively painless resolution DeVirgilio got in Ohio is unlikely to repeated for school officials in Kentucky, reeling from news Time Warner Cable is demanding an enormous rate increase for Madison County Schools’ fiber optic-based broadband network.

The Richmond Register reports local officials were stunned when the cable operator refused to renew their existing contract, which provides service at a cost of $32,000 a year to county residents.  The cable operator instead announced it wanted the school system to pay at least 500 percent more to continue the same level of service in 2011 and beyond: $168,000 a year for county taxpayers with a five year term commitment.

School officials discovered Time Warner Cable was the only provider in the region capable of delivering the type of service the school system requires, and that has given the cable company a safe position to raise prices — dramatically.

Even worse, the Kentucky Department of Education informed the district it could not agree to a five year term even if it wanted to.  Year-by-year service was the only way forward, according to county officials.

In response, Time Warner jacked up the price again — this time by 1,568 percent, potentially costing Madison County taxpayers a whopping $504,000 annually.  Telephone ratepayers will also deliver a piece of their monthly phone bill to the cable operator from Universal Service Funds that will be diverted to cover at least another $750,000 in fees sought for an annual contract.

“It’s been a very frustrating situation from the beginning,” Superintendent Tommy Floyd told the newspaper. “This makes it very difficult for us to continue our ongoing commitment to serve children. I’m going to continue on behalf of Madison County Schools to find the lowest cost provider of services.”

Time Warner also knows time is running out for the school district.  The county must sign a new contract by June 30th or lose its fiber network.  That could be a disaster for the school district.

“We use [the network] all day long in each of our buildings,” Floyd said.

State officials wrote a letter to Time Warner Cable demanding an explanation for the rate increase and stating it was unacceptable.

The state and school officials are still waiting for a response from the cable company, which so far has yet to respond.

[Updated 11:30am ET:  Stop the Cap! received a response yesterday afternoon from Cynthia Godby, Communications Manager for Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati.  In the cause of fairness, and with her permission, we are including her response in full, below:]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

The Conservative government of Stephen Harper technically fell Friday after a no-confidence motion organized by opposition parties forced Canada’s leader to dissolve Parliament Sunday.  Harper announced new elections will be held May 2nd.

While broadband was certainly not a key issue in the take-down of the government, the forthcoming preoccupation with elections comes at the same time the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is revisiting its earlier decision about usage-based billing, dealing with conflicts over increased competition in the wireless market, and fielding controversy over the agency’s newest commissioner and vice-chair.

The government’s latest pick for the CRTC, the eminently unqualified (but well-connected) former politician/talk show host-turned regulator Tom Pentefountas, is scheduled to take his seat at the Commission this April.  The “Pentefountas Matter” threatens to become a political sideshow here in Ottawa as opposition parties feast on a host of missteps from the former president of Action Démocratique du Québec, a Quebec political party that some have called a Francophone ‘mini-me’ version of the Tories inside Quebec.

“Here is a man who comes to a broadband and telecommunications regulatory body with just one telecom qualification on his resume — he was a radio talk show host,” shares François Dumont, a Stop the Cap! reader in Montreal.  “UBB (usage based billing) to this man could be a brand of suntan lotion.  In America, it would be like naming Rush Limbaugh to the FCC.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus, one of Canada’s most vocal, pro-consumer critics of the Conservative Party’s ‘corporate agenda-meets-federal policies’ dismissed Pentefountas as an unqualified mess who lacks credentials for the post and won it only through his friendship with Conservative Senator Leo Housakos and Dimitri Soudas, Prime Minister Harper’s spokesman.

Charlie Angus on the attack during Question Time in Parliament over the appointment of Tom Pentefountas.  (4 minutes)

Pentefountas made matters worse for himself this week when he declared he deserved to be vice-chair of the CRTC because he “earned it.”

Charlie Angus (NDP)

That reasoning has not impressed Angus, or some members of Canada’s Liberal party, who accuse the government of cronyism for appointing an unqualified candidate to the CRTC as the agency is mired in controversy and generates headlines in the media with every policy decision.  Angus isn’t even sure if Pentefountas even formally applied for the job.  When asked, Pentefountas would only say he “expressed an interest.”

Now, members of several opposition parties are calling on the Conservatives to fire Pentefountas before he gets the keys to his office.

Meanwhile, the CRTC continues to dig in its heels about the parameters of the review of its earlier decisions about usage-based billing.

With the applause of telecom business interests in Canada, the Commission has already fixed the future review around its own preconception of the “facts” about UBB:

The two guiding principles for the review are that “ordinary consumers served by small Internet service providers should not have to fund the bandwidth used by the heaviest retail Internet service consumers”; and that “it is in the best interest of consumers that Small ISPs, which offer competitive alternatives to the incumbent carriers, should continue to do so.”

The agency plans hearings for July, but few broadband observers expect the Commission will depart much from its original conclusion Canadians need to pay significantly higher broadband bills for the good of the providers delivering the service.  Industry Minister Tony Clement continues his efforts to soothe angry Canadian consumers with a promise to overturn the agency’s decision if it continues to give a thumbs-up to UBB.  But government critics say the mandate given to the CRTC is the real problem — so long as the Conservatives insist the CRTC take a deregulatory approach to telecommunications, the longer the green light on higher prices and less competition will continue to shine.

With most observers predicting the Conservatives are on track to win the spring elections, it is unlikely any major changes in telecom policy are forthcoming.  Technology columnist Michael Geist suggests voters across Canada can upset conventional wisdom by making telecom issues a major focus of the forthcoming campaign, urging candidates to “vote for the Internet,” supporting consumer-friendly positions like a rejection of UBB and embracing forward-looking broadband policies.

Paul-Andre Dechêne is Stop the Cap!’s correspondent based in Ottawa, Ontario.

Charlie Angus in another exchange in Parliament with Industry Minister Tony Clement over the issue of usage-based billing.  (2 minutes)

More than two dozen New Hampshire communities were left without their Comcast “digital phone” service last week when a major service outage disrupted incoming and outgoing calls across The Granite State.  As businesses and consumers were advised to have cell phones on hand in case of phone outages, WMUR-TV in Manchester didn’t even mention the other alternative: the phone company… namely FairPoint Communications, the dominant landline provider in the state.  As some businesses and consumers panicked over the loss of their dial tones, they evidently forgot all about the company many New Englanders disconnected from their lives just a few years ago. (2 minutes)

The 500 channel universe has arrived for around 23,000 households around the state capital as Verizon officially unveiled its FiOS television service last week.

The company added television to its broadband service offering after securing video franchise agreements in suburban Bethlehem, Colonie, Guilderland, and Scotia.  It also expects to win approval to provide television service to the nearby city of Schenectady and the town of Colonie shortly.

The arrival of Verizon’s triple-play package begins with a $100 monthly promotional package (go to Verizon’s FiOS website and the online price can be lower) including phone, Internet, and television service for a year, rivaling a similar $99 promotion on offer for new customers from incumbent Time Warner Cable. But Verizon delivers faster broadband service and more HD channels than its cable rival, and will deliver up to 535 channels to subscribers — 130 in High Definition.

“Consumers and small businesses in these communities at long last have a better choice for TV,” said Tracey Edwards, president and general manager for Verizon’s Upstate New York region. “We’ve had great success in many other parts of the state. Now it’s time to bring FiOS TV to this part of northeastern New York and provide customers in the region a choice that is truly different from the cable TV company.”

Verizon officials also claimed the introduction of FiOS TV would result in lower prices for local residents, a claim that does not necessarily hold up when examining the rates for each company.  Both deliver triple-play promotions and retention offers that come within a few dollars of each other.

Time Warner Cable says Verizon’s service does not come with the same local commitment to the region the cable operator has provided with its local news channel YNN, and features that allow customers to start programs over from the beginning or watch live streams of 32 channels on the company’s iPad application.

But the fact a new choice is now available has delighted some of our readers.

Jeff in Guilderland says a number of Albany residents were upset when Time Warner Cable unveiled its $99 promotion which turned out not to be available to existing customers.

“They only give the best prices to their least loyal customers who are ready to cancel their service or sign up as new customers,” Jeff says.  “We’ve had cable from these guys for over a decade and when we sought a temporary price break, they wanted to give us a $20 credit — thanks for nothing.”

Now Jeff says with Verizon around, Time Warner better offer more than that.

Verizon put expansion of its Verizon FiOS fiber-to-the-home service on hold more than a year ago, stopping new cities from winning new options made possible with fiber optics.  But Verizon is still continuing to meet its commitments to communities where the network has already broken ground.  Where communities have not given Verizon video franchise agreements, Verizon markets its broadband and phone options.  But delivering video completes the triple play package many consumers want.

WNYT and WXXA-TV reports some Albany-area residents can now get FiOS TV, showing Verizon is still expanding its FiOS product line in areas where fiber has already been laid.  (3 minutes)

AT&T’s support forums are being censored to stop a free and open discussion about the company’s elimination of an unlimited Internet experience.

We received word this morning from Stop the Cap! reader Roger, who tried to post a message including a link back to one of our stories exposing the myth of AT&T’s “congestion problems” to share with the large community of readers angry with AT&T about its Internet Overcharging scheme on its support forum.

“AT&T will not allow people to post links to your website,” Roger writes.  “Both myself and a friend of mine tried on two separate occasions to write messages that quoted from your facts and figures and linked back to them for readers looking for additional information, and AT&T removed them within minutes.”

Stop the Cap! can confirm AT&T is actively engaged in censorship on its support forum when I tried posting a message myself to test the theory, under my real name, including three links to three individual stories, and signed with a link back to our website’s home page.  Sure enough, within the hour, AT&T stripped out the links and implied we “revealed personal information” (about myself in the form of my name, which still appears as my ‘handle’) and were “spamming” the forum — a stretch when the only links were back to the content referenced in the piece.  A few other linked sites, including Broadband Reports, are not suffering the same fate when users link back to their content, at least for now.

(click to enlarge)

AT&T followed up claiming it does not allow messages that support the work of third-party groups, even if that “support” comes only from links back to content referenced in the forum.

“At least your message remained partially intact,” Roger adds.  “Ours were deleted completely.”

“With AT&T’s heavy handed ‘editors’ at work, no wonder there are concerns about Net Neutrality.  AT&T censors first, asks questions later.”

Q.  What moves faster than North Carolina’s cable and DSL service?

A.  Legislation to make sure the state’s telecom companies can continue to provide slow, expensive, and hit or miss service for years to come.

Big Telecom money has greased the process as H.129, the Telecom Monopoly Preservation and Protection Act is rushed to the House floor before North Carolina consumers know what is happening.

Residents have until Monday evening at 7pm to make their feelings known on this anti-consumer nightmare for cities and small towns:

• H.129 will shut down the digital economies of small cities like Wilson and Salisbury just as they are primed to sell themselves as a great home for high-tech, high-paying jobs.
• H.129 guarantees rural North Carolina will resemble the 21st century equivalent of Oliver Twist — begging for whatever limited broadband the state’s phone companies refuse to deliver.

The appalling truth is that the companies pushing for this bill only want broadband service on their watch, under their control, with their high prices and virtually no competition or choice.  And now AT&T is prepared to limit your broadband usage as well, establishing usage caps and overcharging customers who exceed them.

Do you want your broadband choices limited to these phone and cable companies?  Considering North Carolina broadband is ranked 41st out of the 50 states, it’s clear they don’t consider the state a priority.

But it does not have to be this way.  Where providers drop the ball, communities should have the choice to pick it up and run with it.  That is what Wilson and Salisbury did, and the result is the best broadband service in the state.  That’s a threat Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink can’t afford to ignore, which is why they want these networks stopped at all costs.

Defeating H.129 is critical to the state’s broadband future.  As written, it delivers no new broadband connections, does not promote or provide any competition, or help any individual or community.  It was written by the state’s telecom companies to benefit them, and them alone.  It guarantees you will be stuck paying ever-increasing bills for limited service indefinitely.

Tell House members they must do what is right for the voters, not what is right for the cable and phone companies.  Tell them to VOTE NO ON H.129.  The broadband saved may be your own.

You can find your individual representative and their contact information below the jump.  Please get writing and calling today!

… Continue Reading

Getting the mainstream media to cover issues in the telecommunications sphere usually means wading into the “business news” sections of newspapers or watching business cable news channels.  Unfortunately, too often these outlets cater to the whims and preconceived notions of the audience — big business.  In the case of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, Wall Street loves the idea, but consumers do not.  Watch as Free Press’ Joel Kelsey handily deals with the gang at Bloomberg News, who are convinced mergers and acquisitions never result in price increases for consumers.  Has your cell phone bill gone up or down in the last three years?  (4 minutes)

BitTorrent, the company behind the popular file sharing protocol routinely blamed by providers for overburdening broadband networks and by Hollywood for distributing pirated content, took a tentative step today to oppose Internet Overcharging schemes.

Eric Klinker, CEO wrote a guest piece for GigaOM calling out AT&T for its announced 150-250GB usage caps:

While the trend toward metered bandwidth is not inherently pro-consumer, ISPs have staked out a singular public rationale: data caps are necessary to limit the consumption of “bandwidth hogs” in order to protect the network experience for everyone else. Such concepts are simplistic and easy to imagine. They are also completely wrong.

And with that, Klinker stumbled into a public relations and marketing effort defending the company’s culpability for increasing broadband traffic, and proposing a resolution for their ‘part of the problem’:

Since any data traffic that doesn’t induce congestion on a fixed cost network is essentially free; applications can voluntarily play a role in traffic prioritization. And since BitTorrent is a high percentage of global Internet traffic, we have a responsibility to be a part of the solution.

This was the primary motivator around our release of a new protocol a year ago, called µTP. The protocol essentially senses congestion and self-regulates to avoid contributing to Internet traffic jams.

Because µTP can never induce network congestion, it doesn’t contribute to an ISP’s cost. An ISP still has regular network maintenance expenses, but remember, with a fixed-cost network, traffic only becomes an economic burden if it contributes to congestion and forces the need for expansion.

As a result, µTP is exceedingly friendly to ISPs and their business model. µTP is open-source, and we invite application and cloud services providers to work with us directly or in the IETF’s LEDBAT working group in the ongoing innovation and usage.

Klinker

Some providers and their allied interest groups have disputed the diminished impact Klinker cites as a benefit of µTP, but in provider-world, the BitTorrent “problem” is rapidly becoming yesterday’s news anyway — online video is the new boogeyman.  NPD Research just released numbers showing peer-to-peer use has dropped from 16 percent of all U.S. Internet users to 9 percent over the last three years.

After making a spirited sales pitch for what he hopes will represent peer-to-peer 2.0, Klinker surrenders on behalf of everyone else, arguing the solution to America’s ‘broadband crisis’ is speed throttles during peak usage periods, and time of day pricing.  Klinker suggests broadband users might need to plan their “on-demand” viewing well ahead, or face the kind of “congestion pricing” Londoners face if they attempt a journey by car into the city center at high noon.  Klinker suggests Netflix customers should pre-schedule downloads of their movies the night before watching them, or else pay a fee for instant gratification.

That assumes, of course, you know what you want to watch the day before you do, that you can download Netflix content (you cannot), and that you didn’t remember you could accomplish the same thing if Netflix shipped the DVD out to you by U.S. Mail.

Are broadband rationing coupons far behind?

Klinker’s willingness to submit his own company’s peer to peer technology to provider speed throttles is likely to earn him a dressing down by investors wondering what the future holds for a protocol that can be dosed with Xanax at provider will.  Handing over the power to make your file sharing technology painfully slow and frustrating is likely not going to win new converts, either.

Before willing to subject everyone to solutions for broadband providers’ scary predictions of a broadband exaflood, would it not be better to actually obtain verifiable evidence there is a congestion issue in the first place?