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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IF you have not seen it yet, the new Frontier newspaper add is great. They used quotes from TW’s press release, made reference to a cap free internet and changed the Frontier phone number to 54NoCap.
is it online anywhere?
I could not find it anywhere.
Three-card Monte is Time Warner’s favorite game
Article on the TWC stuff on the NY Times Business Section, Its a very good article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/business/20isp.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Interesting article. Thanks for the link.
2016: The future of the Cable/Television/Phone industry – A Consumer’s Dream Feel free to make this into a headline: I don’t really know that it fits as a comment to anything existing. The other day I noticed something peculiar on my DirecTV receiver. They had upgraded my receiver to 1080p resolution overnight (the same resolution used in Blu-Ray DVD’s.) I don’t have a Blu-Ray player, but I can assume the picture is incredible. I went to see what programming was available in 1080p so I could check it out, and I wasn’t surprised to see that right now, it was… Read more »
Just think… if it weren’t for net neutrality, nobody would be able to access this Web site (unless they would wait for it to load at 1kb per minute).
I don’t believe net neutrality even exists as a law at this point. I may be wrong.
I believe you are correct, ‘net neutraility’ was introduced but I believe it was shot down by ‘special interest groups’, (read cable/phone companies.)
The group American Consumer Institute (ACI) helped shoot it down. They’re the ones promoting “usage tiers are good” now on behalf of the telcom industry.
Well, if not “net neutrality”, then the absence of “not net neutrality”. What I meant to get across is that if content providers had to pay bribes to TWC, sites like these would be inconvenient to access and a page load might take a minute or two.
http://billniemeyer.tv/images/cable-share-tv-hhs-2009-04.jpg
Cable TV subscriptions are falling like there’s no tomorrow!!! Check out the graph.
Shouldn’t TWC have release their Q1 report a few days ago? has anyone gotten a hold of it
Not untill the 29th.
http://finance.aol.com/earnings/time-warner-cable-inc/twc/nys
If cable subscribership is on the decline (and it is according to the above graph) that only makes it all the more likely that the Cable companies concerns over free HD video on the web is a factor of consideration in this teired pricing business. They probably see the trend of less cable subscription and the growing shift to the internet and are asking themselves how can we maintain and grow or profits with these new trends?
You must be a rocket scientist.
That’s uncalled for. I was merely pointing out that the graph supports the view that they are worried about lost subscribers to internet.
TWC pee in you Wheaties this morning?
Everyone knows exactly why TWC is doing this. You’re reiterating what everyone has been saying since the dawn of internet streaming of video. It was only a matter of time until someone did it.
Jason’s just upset at the prospect of having to watch porn at work. It’s just not gonna work out in his cubicle, with all those noisy people staring at his screen, you know?
I reported your lame attempt at sarcasm. It serves no purpose to forward our view on this issue.
Here’s an interesting article I saw posted on broadband reports.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/163344/why_metered_broadband_would_work.html
Lets not forget the large drop in cable subscribers is also due in large part to the economy, and not necessarily related to the net. When someone loses their job, cable is often one of the first things to go.
I’m not surprised to see the company regrouping. The gall factor wafting off them is suggestive of somebody high up panicking over Netflix and Hulu, and realizing if they don’t try to implement caps soon they might not get the chance. Frankly I like cable TV and I don’t watch a lot of shows online. It’s tedious to watch stuff chained to the computer. I have a nice TV, and darn it I’m gonna use it. While a Roku sounds vaguely interesting, I don’t want to switch to a rental model for TV. I just like to be able to… Read more »
Bingo! You’re right in saying “realizing if they don’t try to implement caps soon they might not get the chance”. Right on the money. The FTC is looking in to cracking down, so they figure they better jam the price gouging in within the next year, or they’re stuck. Hopefully the FTC starts treating them like a utility. I don’t mind paying per GB; $0.25 per gigabyte is a fair price–not $1.00 over 60 plus $45 flat. Using the Comcast 250 GB cap as an example, at $0.25 a gig, the bill would be $62.50. That sounds fair. A $150… Read more »
I do mind paying per GB, just like I would mind if I had to pay for each mile I drove down the street, or each piece of poop I flushed down my toilet. I don’t mind paying for better bandwidth, but if they’re gonna offer me 10mbps they ought to let me take advantage of it. This is exactly the attitude TWC wants to see from us, they want us to make concessions. They want us to say, well, caps aren’t so bad if they’re a little higher, or we can deal with the overage charges if you reduce… Read more »
Again i guess its going to be time shortly to make a change to Frontier or Earthlink, i am going to cheer as I see customers from Time Warner leave in droves, and I hope WE ALL Stick to our guns and stick it to them hard. They are going to get whats coming to them. I Just need to find another provider for my TV and i will go back to frontier for my phone. So instead of keeping me for 2 services aside from internet they will get NONE of my business because they punish you for dumping… Read more »
“Frankly I like cable TV and I don’t watch a lot of shows online. It’s tedious to watch stuff chained to the computer. I have a nice TV, and darn it I’m gonna use it.” I feel the same way, but I also know that my next TV will accept input from a PC. And that trend is growing strong. I’ll likely build a simple PC that will allow me to interface my current over-the-air signal with streaming internet video. Internet based TV is the way of the future. On demand high def is here. The next step is internet… Read more »
The thing is about Time Warner is they have the resources to make the next set top cable box. Make it Internet capable.
Make it stream Netflix like the XBox 360 for a small price (with the 360 you need to be a gold subscriber to use netflix), make the Hulu channel or the YouTube channel or whatever for a small fee.
They can do it, but they are stuck in their current business model and can’t seem to think outside the box.
No matter how much the TWC talking heads try to convince us otherwise, cable and broadband signals use the same TUBES and should be treated the same. Because they are the same. I just took a look at my router, and it just so happens to be using the cable jack on which I could receive a cable TV signal. (But I don’t… haven’t had cable for at least two years). If you want to price on consumption, you better be willing to price cable TV the same way. Not everyone is happy about subsidizing BET, MTV, VH1, you know???… Read more »
IMHO if I may. A Classic in the making. Everybody is broke. As a poster above pointed out if you’re now making $7 an hour a $150 plan is not in your future. I still think regulation is needed and some will disagree. Ok no problem this is a free speech website. I will never stab somebody in the back but at times I may ask a person what they based their claim on. It’s a big world and that person just may point me to a site that has a good view. We choose what we read and we… Read more »