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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Ive been following this blog for a while now, and seeing a post like this makes me lose credibility for the information it posts. Are all stopthecap posts this shallow, inaccurate, and assuming? It is very misleading. Several comments on other sources have pointed out that this is common practice and the line gets buried at a later date. The only issue here is that the neighbor was not asked and or notified (in cases where the fence was not actually on the property line). I doubt this is a permanent and complete install, and it should not be reported… Read more »
You are absolutely correct. I worked for Time Warner, and this is standard procedure. You run a temporary orange drop until construction gets out there within 2 weeks usually to bury it, bore under driveways, or whatever is needed. I expected better from you Mr Dampier, for posting this, inaccurately, because you have a vendetta.
Nice try, guys.
It is not “standard procedure” for Time Warner Cable to place, without permission, its drop line on another person’s personal property without permission, which was never given.
The issue isn’t the drop line, it’s where it was haphazardly placed.
If you were regular readers here during more than a year of debate about the Charter-TWC merger, you would know how silly it is to accuse me of having a “personal vendetta” against Time Warner Cable. 🙂
Tell them to talk to my neighbors then. TW routinely leaves cables laying across streets for months on end. One poor guy they replaced the cable 3 times before they finally burred it. Funny how cars running over it ruined it. Think that was about 6 months. When I first moved into this house the cable was across my yard for 2 months. I have no problem with a temp cable. It is the ‘when we get around to it’ burring of the cable that gets me.
It probably depends on the area and crew.
This seems to be standard practice because it happened to me 2 months ago when I moved into my new house. They had to run a new bright orange line from my house all the way across my back yard and under a fence and onto my neighbor’s property where the above ground cable box sat. It took about a week, but the line finally got buried.
I don’t believe utilities need permission for this since its a public utility. The neighbors didn’t complain, I’m sure they’ve seen this happen before. I really don’t see a story here.
Either the neighbor’s house is built right on the property line (in which case his downspout and gutter are also dumping into Jacob’s yard, or Jacob’s “yard” actually encroaches on his neighbor’s property somewhat because of the way the fences are built. I’m no fan of most cable install jobs, but this one doesn’t seem all that bad to me. I think Jacob’s making a mountain out of a molehill, and in fact, I’m not sure he even has a legal right to complain unless the neighbor’s house truly is the property line (in which case I don’t see why… Read more »
We had at least a dozen drop lines put in over the years when my parents house was built in the late 1970s. The cable company used a Ditch Witch to bury the line a few inches down. That always lasted about a year before the cable would get damaged somehow and another one had to be placed. And yes, when this happened during winter the cable would stick around all winter long on top of the lawn. They finally dug a trench in the late 1980s, threw the cable a few feet down, and never had an issue again.… Read more »
Back in 2003, GrandeCom.Com did this to us. The cable originated at a utility pillar in the yard of the neighbor behind and diagonal to us. It *coiled* across their yard to the fence, poked through a knothole about 4 feet above the ground, then down to the ground again on our side. From there, it went diagonally across the yard to the utility box on the back of our house. It was buried in a groove an inch or two deep, and our big, active dog had it dug up in no time. I’m not even sure GrandeCom put… Read more »
Its a utility company they don’t have to ask you
It is a common practice to warn someone so
They dont run it over with a lawn mower but thats
Why its ORANGE