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 […]
Subscribe
Notice the SB6141 pricing is dropping again, though still 30% higher than it was before TWC’s fee announcement. Instead of $100 (pre-fee price), or $200 (late last week, early this), it’s back to about $130.
Hi everyone,
Here’s a link to a change.org petition to stop Time Warner’s modem fee which we all know is nothing but a rate hike.
http://www.change.org/petitions/time-warner-cable-stop-the-internet-modem-lease-fee
I called Time-Warner to cancel service yesterday and they told me that my account was set-up with a free modem code, and only those people that are currently being charged $2.50 a month for a modem would have to pay the new $3.99 fee… I guess I will just wait and see what happens on 11/1.
Paul
Thanks for the heads up. I have a very old modem and I’ll be pissed if I have to start paying $4/month for a $20 modem.
Interesting. My suspicion here is that your region has not yet had the memo from corporate, and since you were already a customer before TWC imposed the $2.50 modem fee on new customers, you were (and still are for the moment) treated as a grandfathered customer.
However, all that changes when TWC rolls the modem fee out across the country. We do not yet have an exact timeline for this, but some areas report 11/1 as their date. We hope to learn more as we get closer to November.
I am in Rochester, Phil.
BTW. Unless you need a DOCSIS 3.0 modem right now, instead of paying way over the odds for one today, you might be better off paying $50 for one of the DOCSIS 2.0 modems in the meantime and upgrading only when you need to. If you keep the 2.0 modem for more than 18 months, you’d still come out ahead of the game, and DOCSIS 3.0 price should have come way down by then.
Also, FWIW, Earthlink is NOT going to be charging a modem fee, at least for now.
I’m Syracuse NY, Earthlink via TWC, nominally no fees, but will likely scarf up a new modem. My current one is an old Motorola DOCSIS 1.X.
If you decide to purchase a modem, make sure the return policy is as long as possible. I have had several Moto SBG6580’s and after a short time, they develop a widespread habit of disconnecting every couple hours. You have to manually restart it as it will timeout and have major dns issues. If you check the reviews online, click on the 1star reviewers and you will see how widespread it is.