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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Our friends at Broadband Reports have managed to get at least one confirmation of a leaked slide from an internal company presentation outlining major changes in Comcast’s broadband service and speeds, but initially only in areas where Verizon’s fiber to the home network FiOS has given the cable operator a run for the money.
“Customers who do not bundle other services will pay a $15 surcharge.”
Hmm, let’s see, if I bundle my high-speed internet ($99 a month), and basic cable ($60 a month), my total bill would be $159 a month. But if I don’t bundle and pay the $15 surcharge, my bill will be $114 a month. Seems like paying the stupid surcharge would be an even better deal than the dumb cable channels Comcast offers. Now I don’t like the idea of this stupid surcharge but i’d rather pay the surcharge and save a little bit of money than be forced into a service that I can’t afford nor would I want.
There are a lot of people who agree with you. The surcharge is a completely artificially-generated barrier to discourage broadband-only customers. For “a few dollars more get a lot more with our bundle” is the mentality at work here, and it works for them, not customers.