Recent Headlines
October 2, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
October 2, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
September 27, 2009
Tweet 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
Tweet 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 […]
September 23, 2009
Tweet 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, […]
September 22, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
September 21, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
September 11, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
September 7, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
September 1, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
August 31, 2009
Tweet 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 […]
August 27, 2009
Tweet 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, […]
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I’m not shocked by this at all.
Also, remember back when Frontier promised 5Mb to some of us in W.Va by February 17th? Well, it’s now June, almost July and nothing has changed.
I’ve emailed the W.Va Frontier reps countless times and just get ignored.
This is seriously the most useless company I’ve seen.
Frontier thinks you’re spoiled if you want to do anything but read text online
Emm… why Time Warner? They offer packages that far exceed the mandatory 6 Mbps requirement for Netflix HD streaming in every market.
This is the dumbest survey I’ve seen. TWC is (for now) one of the remaining ISPs with no bandwidth caps. This really isn’t very reflective on what ISP is truly best for Netflix. Also according to that picture TWC has the 4th highest speed.
It would probably help the Telephone companies out a bit if they offered speeds that went over 3Mbps on their DSL products, along with building out Fiber networks. There’s no getting around the DSL Speed < Distance limitation, which is probably why they have lower speeds, but even then, everyone could do better.
I'm not sure if it's also been mentioned, but often times watching the lowest quality stream tends to skew the results too. I see it with YouTube where super fast connections buffer up a video instantly but get rate throttled on the server end to a very low speed.
Netflix is mostly measuring the quality of ISPs backbone connections. Frontier’s 1-3Mbps rural DSL speeds are part of the problem, but their backbone connections are creating the lousy results you see on that chart.
Welp,
I believe you read the above as “Second Time Warner” and not “Second Time WINNER.” I, too, made this mistake until looking at the graph and realizing my error. While I think Time Warner speeds are disgraceful, especially in my area, you are correct in saying they offer speeds sufficient for
Netflix HD, without caps.
-Brett
I never thought people would read it that way, but I guess now I can see how you could misinterpret Winner for Warner.
My bigger point was to note Frontier has been a flop ever since Netflix began releasing this chart. Time Warner, as the article text notes, does pretty well with Netflix. I have had almost no troubles using them myself.
I for one is really surprised that suddenlink is doin this good, ive never had a problem yet really, i do fear the caps more than anything especially the ones they where thinkin about implimenting 31gb….come on now thats crap
but im glad to see the company stayin on par with the top other companys. AT&T rateing and Frontiers is not surprising at all, of course
[...] backbone network is deemed the worst in the nation for a wired provider, according to statistics collected and analyzed by [...]
[...] noted Netflix, which has itself consistently rated Frontier the worst wired broadband provider in the country for being able to deliver consistent, high quality access to their streaming service, represents [...]