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 […]
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 Hong […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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WFTS-TV in Tampa launched a consumer investigation when a local customer noticed the Verizon FiOS Internet service he was paying for — 25/25Mbps — was actually only providing him with 2.88Mbps upload speeds. Even worse, both providers in the Tampa Bay area — Bright House Communications and Verizon, say actual speeds are not guaranteed, leading at least one customer to file an official complaint with the Federal Communications Commission for false advertising and misrepresentation by Verizon Communications. WFTS examines whether providers have to actually deliver the speeds they promise, or does the fine print get them off the hook, leaving you paying more than you should for Internet speeds you are not getting. (3 minutes)
That video is terrible. They establish in the beginning that the guy needs faster internet because he works from home, on 3 computers. Look at his setup, he’s got 3 monitors side by side on one desk. That’s not something a person does/has if they just surf the web and watch youtube. That’s something a person does/has when they work in an environment where they are required to work/deal with lots of information or information sets. It is very likely that he does indeed need the upload to shift large sets of data not just from his employer, but also… Read more »
The PCG guy did have something to offer if you thought about it a little bit. While FiOS itself is pretty hard to oversubscribe on a node to node basis as you pointed out (GPON doing 2.4Gbps/1.2Gbps), but the problem may people have found lately tends to lay with the CO these days. Verizon isn’t adding enough capacity to the CO itself, whether it’d be backhaul going out to the Backbones or router capacity before it hits the CO’s backhaul. So we can all go ahead and max our connections out. Won’t take out the Fiber Node split amongst 32… Read more »
At the very least the FTC or court needs to block Verizon from advertising in TV, Print, and the Web speeds which it does not provide, whether thats local or national. It needs to be blocked and enforced.
As noted above only delivery 1/8th of the promised service level, or 11.5% is outrageous, no fine print on a product or service should absolve a company of providing a reasonably expected level of service by the consumer. In any other situation the product would be considered defective or not fit for purpose.
I have the same problem: I bought 35/35 and the upload (the important one) is only 10. I just came back from the Apple store and their main tech guy told me he has the same problem with Verizon. I feel Verizon is tricking me.
Verizon is charging high $ and not delivering. Verizon given only 10 and I pay for 35