Genachowski

On Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said that he generally supports data caps and tiered broadband pricing plans. The chairman’s comments came during an interview at the Cable Show with former FCC Chairman Michael Powell, now the top lobbyist with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Genachowski has remained consistent in his cautious support for “industry innovation” that includes usage-based pricing, with a caveat providers should not exploit that at the expense of consumers.  But consumer groups like Free Press already believe usage caps, particularly on wired broadband services, are already bad for consumers, exploit a marketplace duopoly, and are worthy of investigation by the agency.

“All the evidence shows that caps on wired broadband platforms like cable make no sense. They don’t affect network congestion, even in the rare instances where congestion actually exists on these systems,” says Free Press policy director Matt Wood. “Cable companies use them to penalize their subscribers and discourage them from using innovative services that compete with cable TV.”

Free Press reminded Genachowski of Comcast’s recent actions which exempted its own video content from usage caps, while leaving them in place for competitors.

“Comcast’s recent actions show both the harms of these caps and the lack of any legitimate reason for them,” noted Wood. “[Now] Comcast changed course and suspended caps temporarily in all but a few markets — but promised to start overcharging any users there who exceeded these arbitrary limits.”

“The FCC has turned a blind eye to this competition problem. If it wants to see experimentation in pricing that actually benefits consumers, we need a competition policy that creates more experimenters.”

Verizon encourages customers to pig out on wireless-delivered streaming video.

Despite claims of a looming data usage crisis created by insufficient wireless spectrum, Verizon Wireless is introducing a new app that will encourage customers to find and watch streaming video on their mobile devices.

Viewdini premiers today on the Android platform, and Verizon hopes customers will use it to hunt down their favorite videos from Netflix, Hulu Plus, mSpot, and Comcast Xfinity, all from the Verizon Wireless app.

“We are just seeing a hunger for people wanting to watch video,” Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said in an interview with AllThingsD. “I think this will capture the audience’s imagination.”

If customers use it to stream bandwidth heavy video on a tiered data plan, Verizon will also have the customer’s attention when the bill arrives.

Viewdini, considered one of Verizon’s “key product launches” for the year, does not amount to much on examination. The service does not host videos, it merely indexes them from other videocentric websites. The app will be exclusive to Verizon Wireless, but is not the company’s first foray in the competitive video streaming marketplace.

The Verizon Video app offers streamed video entertainment, but with a twist. Many titles offered by Verizon Video cannot be accessed while on Wi-Fi and require the company’s 3G or 4G network to watch, which counts against your usage allowance.

Mead

There is no indication yet whether Viewdini will have similar restrictions.

While Mead claims the company has several early warning indicators for customers approaching their monthly usage cap, he admits the company hopes to make additional revenue from customers who choose to exceed their allowance and buy additional data.

“We look at it as great flexibility for customers,” Mead called that choice.

While Verizon joins other wireless carriers in calling urgently for additional wireless spectrum, its marketing department does not recognize any wireless data shortage, and continues to introduce new products that encourage their customers to use an increasing amount of data, from which Verizon admits it will earn an increasing percentage of its revenue.

Netflix and consumer groups like Free Press are unimpressed with Comcast’s announcement they plan to experiment with an increased usage cap in some markets and temporarily eliminating it in others.

A Netflix spokesperson issued a statement that says the company has dodged the real issue: discrimination against its traffic, which counts towards whatever Comcast usage cap the company eventually settles on, and doesn’t count towards Xfinity TV, which the cable company owns.

“Increasing the data cap is a small step in the right direction, but unfortunately Comcast continues to treat its own Internet delivered video different under the cap than other Internet delivered video,” says the Netflix statement. “We continue to stand by the principle that ISPs should treat all providers of video services equally.”

Free Press and Stop the Cap! share the belief the company’s usage caps are arbitrary and unnecessary and should be eliminated completely.

“Comcast has never had any legitimate reason to cap its Internet customers, and today’s announcement of new overage charges is just another example of the cable giant’s efforts to discriminate against and thwart online video competition,” said Free Press policy adviser Joel Kelsey. “Data caps are not a reasonable or effective way to manage capacity problems, which are virtually non-existent for Comcast.”

Kelsey also believes Comcast is still trying an end run around Net Neutrality.

“While the move to increase its caps is overdue, the notion that Comcast would charge an exorbitant rate for additional bandwidth — while continuing to exempt its own traffic under its Xbox deal — illustrates that Comcast is really trying to discourage subscribers from experimenting with online video alternatives,” Kelsey said. “We call on Comcast to drop the caps and these exorbitant overage fees entirely.”

Rogers Communications has following up its “Next is Now” corporate video from 2010 with a sequel: “Next is Now… More Than Ever,” which highlights how Canadians are increasingly relying on mobile communications for news, entertainment, social life, work, and education.

While Rogers wanted the video to promote how the company would be a part of that telecommunications transformation, many of their customers can’t help but reflect on the fact the revolution is well-tempered with Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps.

Stop the Cap! reader Alex is among them, noting the video says nothing about the company’s restrictive usage limits on home broadband and the even harsher caps on its mobile services.

Rogers, like most telecommunications companies, repeatedly tells investors there is real money to be made attaching meters to monetize megabytes.  Charging for broadband usage is a growth industry, and with the company’s own projections for data growth, they are well-positioned to be in the money for years.

With broadband dependency being as pervasive, if not more so, in Canada as in the United States, the barely regulated services on offer in both countries often come at a steep (and increasing) price — all for something even Rogers hints is becoming a utility — one as important as electricity, gas, and clean water.

Rogers Communications’ “Next is Now… More Than Ever” has broader implications than the company realizes. (3 minutes)

Growing questions are being raised about whether Comcast is violating FCC and Department of Justice policies that prohibit the cable company from prioritizing its own content traffic over that of its competitors.

Comcast’s Xfinity Xbox app offers Comcast customers access to Xfinity online video content without eating into their monthly 250GB Internet usage allowance. Netflix has called that exemption unfair, because its content does count against Comcast’s usage cap. New evidence now suggests Comcast may also be prioritizing the delivery of its Xfinity content over other broadband traffic, a true Net Neutrality violation if proven true.

Bryan Berg, founder and chief technology officer at MixMedia, believes he has found proof the cable company is giving its own video content preferential treatment, in this somewhat-technical finding published on his blog:

What I’ve concluded is that Comcast is using separate DOCSIS service flows to prioritize the traffic to the Xfinity Xbox app. This separation allows them to exempt that traffic from both bandwidth cap accounting and download speed limits. It’s still plain-old HTTP delivering MP4-encoded video files, just like the other streaming services use, but additional priority is granted to the Xfinity traffic at the DOCSIS level. I still believe that DSCP values I observed in the packet headers of Xfinity traffic is the method by which Comcast signals that traffic is to be prioritized, both in their backbone and regional networks and their DOCSIS network.

Berg also contends Comcast’s earlier explanation that its Xfinity content should be exempt from its usage cap because it travels over the company’s private Internet network is also flawed:

In addition, contrary to what has been widely speculated, the Xfinity traffic is not delivered via separate, dedicated downstream channel(s)—it uses the same downstream channels as regular Internet traffic.

Berg

Broadband traffic management is of growing interest to Internet Service Providers, who contend it can be used to manage Internet traffic more efficiently and improve speed and time-sensitive online applications like streamed video, online phone calls, and similar services. But manufacturers of traffic management equipment also market the technology to ISPs who want to favor certain kinds of content while de-prioritizing or even throttling the speed of non-preferred content. The technology can also differentiate traffic that counts against a monthly usage cap, and traffic that does not.

Quality of Service (QoS) technology can be used to improve the customer’s online experience or help a provider launch Internet Overcharging and speed throttling schemes that can heavily discriminate against “undesirable” online traffic.

Berg further found that when he saturated his 25Mbps Comcast broadband connection, traffic from providers like Netflix suffered due to the bandwidth constraints.  Because he flooded his connection, Netflix buffered additional content (slowing his stream start time) and reduced the bitrate of the video (which can dramatically reduce the picture quality at slower speeds). But when he launched Xfinity video streaming, that traffic was unaffected by his saturated connection. In fact, he discovered Xfinity traffic was exempted from his normal download speed limit, allowing his connection to exceed 25Mbps.

While that works great for Xfinity fans who do not want their videos degraded when other household members are online, it is inherently unfair to competitors like Netflix who are forced to reduce the quality of your video stream to compensate for lower available bandwidth.

According to the consent decree which governs the merger of the cable operator with NBC-Universal, prioritizing traffic in this way is a no-no when the company also engages in Internet Overcharging schemes, namely its arbitrary usage cap:

“If Comcast offers consumers Internet Access Service under a package that includes caps, tiers, metering, or other usage-based pricing, it shall not measure, count, or otherwise treat Defendants’ affiliated network traffic differently from unaffiliated network traffic. Comcast shall not prioritize Defendants’ Video Programming or other content over other Persons’ Video Programming or other content.”

This graph shows Berg's artificially saturated 25Mbps Comcast broadband connection. The traffic in red represents Xfinity Xbox traffic, which is given such high priority, it allows Berg to exceed his usual download speed limit.

Comcast sent GigaOm a statement that denies the company is doing any such thing:

“It’s really important that we make crystal clear that we are not prioritizing our transmission of Xfinity TV content to the Xbox (as some have speculated). While DSCP markings can be used to assign traffic different priority levels, that is not their only application – and that is not what they are being used for here. It’s also important to point out that our Xfinity TV content being delivered to the Xbox is the same video subscription that customers already paid for and is delivered to their home over our traditional cable network – the difference is that we are now delivering it using IP technology to the Xbox 360, in a similar manner as other IP-based cable service providers. But this is still our traditional cable television service, which is governed by something known as Title VI of the Communications Act, and we provide the service in compliance with applicable FCC rules.”

Our View

Comcast, as usual, is talking out of every side of its mouth. In an effort to justify their unjustified usage cap, they have pretzel-twisted a novel way out of this Net Neutrality debate by paving their own digital highway on a Comcast private drive.

Comcast argues their 250GB usage cap controls last-mile congestion to provide an excellent user experience. That excuse completely evaporates in the context of its new toll-free video traffic. In fact, their earlier argument that its regionally-distributed streaming traffic should not count because it does not travel over the “public Internet” at Comcast’s expense does not even make sense.

Berg provides an example:

A FaceTime call from my house to my neighbor’s—which never leaves even the San Francisco metro area Comcast network, given that both of us are Comcast customers—goes over the “public Internet.”

Yet Comcast’s Xbox streams, which pass from Seattle to Sacramento to San Francisco through all of the same network elements that handle my video call (and then some!) are exempt from the bandwidth cap?

You can’t have it both ways, guys.

DOCSIS 3 technology has vastly expanded the last mile pipe into subscriber homes. If Comcast can launch their own private pipe for unlimited IPTV traffic that travels down the same wires their Internet service does, they can comfortably handle any additional capacity needs to support their “constrained” broadband service without the need to limit their customers’ use.

Usage caps remain an end run around Net Neutrality. Consumers given the opportunity to view content under a usage cap on the “public Internet” or using the “toll-free” traffic lane Comcast created for content from their “preferred partners” will make the obvious choice to protect their usage allowance. Comcast is certainly aware of this, and it is a clever way to discriminate through social engineering. It’s also less obvious. You don’t have to de-prioritize or block traffic from your competition to have an impact, you just have to limit it. Customers who repeatedly exceed their usage allowance face suspension of Comcast broadband service for up to one year. That’s a strong incentive to follow their rules.

Netflix is fighting to force Xfinity traffic to fall under the same arbitrary usage cap regime Netflix endures — a truly shortsighted goal. The real issue here is whether Comcast should be capping any of its Internet service.

Comcast has given us the answer, launching the very bandwidth-intense video streaming it used to decry was contributing to an Internet traffic tsunami.

It’s time for Comcast to drop its usage cap.

HughesNet customers unjustly cut off from their Internet service for violating the company’s “Fair Access Policy,” or who paid an early termination fee when they realized satellite Internet was not for them may qualify for a settlement payment ranging from $5-40, or “tokens” that can provide a temporary free pass from the company’s usage caps as part of a class action lawsuit settlement.

Broadband Reports‘ readers who subscribe to the satellite provider first mentioned receipt of the settlement paperwork, which provides cash payments for ex-HughesNet customers who subscribed to any of the following Hughes Consumer Service Plans between May 15, 2005 – March 2, 2012:

Home, Pro, Pro Plus, Small Office, Business Internet, Elite, ElitePlus, ElitePremium, Basic, Power 150 and Power 200

Customers who canceled service are qualified to receive the cash payments. Those who paid an early termination fee prior to Dec. 6, 2010 will receive $40. Those who canceled as of March 2, 2012 and did not pay an early termination fee will receive $5. HughesNet also promised to implement a new sliding scale for their early termination fee. Each month you remain a customer under a service contract will reduce the amount of the fee by a proportional amount.

Current customers do not receive a cash settlement. Instead, they will be provided with a minimum of one “Restore token” per calendar month for the next 18 months. That may be nothing special — HughesNet already provides one token per month to every customer.

The HughesNet Fair Access Policy includes a download allowance. Users who exceed their allowance will have their service speeds reduced during the “Recovery Zone” for about 24 hours, after which speeds return to normal. Customers can apply their Restore token as a “get out of jail free” card, instantly restoring normal speeds.

HughesNet was sued for misleading customers about the company’s onerous usage limits and expensive early termination fee policy.

The lawyers bringing the case will receive fees, costs and expenses of up to $630,000. Up to $5,000 will be paid to each of the three Class Representatives that were part of the original lawsuit. Those seeking relief under the settlement have until September 28, 2012 to apply.

Complete information on the settlement and how to apply is available at: Satelliteinternetsettlement.com

Shaw Cable has pulled the plug on its complimentary cable radio service on Vancouver Island, which used to provide enhanced FM reception of radio services from across the province and from the United States.

Listeners in the Vancouver area never received notification the service was being terminated, and a Shaw spokesman said the company did not bother because it was a free service delivered to cable customers.

Some listeners called the loss of more than 20 FM stations devastating, leaving them with as few as three clear stations, and no reception of CBC Radio 2 from Canada’s public radio network.

Kerry Hunt, Shaw’s regional manager for Vancouver Island, said the company is phasing out the FM radio service in order to increase Internet speeds and make room for additional digital cable channels.

“Nobody is installing FM anymore,” Hunt told Canada.com. “It’s just a service that is very rarely even being used.”

Gone for some B.C. listeners

Hunt called cable radio anachronistic in the digital and Internet age, and those customers who value the service are now being pushed to use Internet streaming services, offered by many of the stations listeners lost. But those streams count against the company’s Internet Overcharging usage caps, and with many of cable radio’s fans among the less-computer-savvy elderly, the expense to add broadband service to continue listening to radio stations they used to receive for free is a hardship.

Cable radio service is a legacy service, originally introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to provide enhanced radio service to cable-TV subscribers over cable-wired FM receivers. Some cable systems delivered national radio superstations, college stations not available over the air, or distant regional radio signals not well received by cable subscribers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission used to require all Canadian cable operators provide the service, converting all area AM signals for FM reception. Those rules have been considerably relaxed, and today most cable operators deliver the bare minimum, including one CBC Radio service, over its set top cable boxes.

Shaw says it plans to gradually discontinue cable radio service across its entire coverage area.

Cox Cable has slammed its phone company competition in a series of new TV commercials that call out antiquated and slow DSL. But customers switching to Cox have to endure that company’s unjustified Internet Overcharging schemes.  Cox arbitrarily limits your Internet usage in an effort to maximize profits and reduce costs.  Watching the online video Cox advertises could put you perilously close to your monthly allowance. Exceed it once too often and you may find your account shut off.

Cox executives promise they’ll listen to customers and what they want. Stop the Cap! urges you to participate in our pushback against Cox usage caps. Tell the cable company it does no good selling their broadband service for online video when the company threatens to shut it down if you watch “too much.”  (2 minutes)

Bell Canada has boosted speeds of its fiber-to-the-neighborhood and fiber-to-the-home Fibe Internet services in Ontario.  But our regular reader Alex notes Bell’s Internet Overcharging usage cap scheme remains firmly in place, which leaves customers taking the company’s fastest offerings out for little more than a test drive before the overlimit fees kick in.

But no worries, Bell says.  The company has invented the concept of Internet Usage Insurance, selling you extra usage allotments ranging from 20GB ($5) to 125GB ($25) per month for usage that costs Bell just pennies per gigabyte.

The new speeds are admittedly very fast, but their value is well-tempered by the usage allowances that accompany them.

Can we have 90 seconds of your time, please?

Christopher Mitchell at Community Broadband Networks has put together some compelling evidence about how some of the most advanced broadband networks in the country are being built by and for the communities they ultimately serve.

You may think the best broadband around can be found in the biggest cities in America, but you’d be wrong.

“It may surprise people that these cities in Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana have faster and lower cost access to the Internet than anyone in San Francisco, Seattle, or any other major city,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. “These publicly owned networks have each created hundreds of jobs and saved millions of dollars.”

The fact is, public broadband is convincing some of the country’s biggest tech companies, including Amazon.com, to locate enormous distribution centers right in the middle of fiber-plentiful cities like Chattanooga, and that means job growth — a lot of it.

Unfortunately, too often today’s “broadband innovation” comes only from how to extract more money for less service from some of America’s top providers. Usage caps, overcrowded networks, and speed constraints conspire to help America lose the global speed race.  But some communities are fighting the good fight themselves, even as big phone and cable companies like AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and CenturyLink are trying to smash those networks through special interest corporate welfare legislation.

Mitchell and his team have assembled the facts: BVU Authority’s OptiNet in Bristol, Virginia; EPB Fiber in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and LUS Fiber in Lafayette, Louisiana — all built by publicly-owned utilities, demonstrate the public sector can deliver effective, innovative service at prices consumers can afford.  Better yet, they’re doing it in places big telecommunications companies decided were unworthy of getting world-class service.

Watch this video and learn why community broadband networks represent America’s most innovative broadband, and then learn more about how you can get involved and support better broadband in your community.  (2 minutes)