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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Frontier Communications, the telephone and broadband provider in Rochester, New York, is now positioned for consolidation, according to StreetInsider.com, a financial news and investor information site.
The background buzz continues to focus on some sort of deal between Windstream Corporation and Frontier. Analysts spoke last year of Frontier being the likely target of Windstream for a buyout, but the economy then took a nosedive.
Now is the time Verizon! Buy out Frontier and bring us FiOS!
Exactly. We don’t want no Windstream…we want Verizon. Now.
Please Verizon. Please please please!!!
Would get FiOS in a heart beat if available in Rochester!
Maybe Verizon will purchase them. Maybe we would finally see FIOS available in Rochester.
I pray for Verizon.
We don’t want any takeover – we want real competition. Verizon should compete with Frontier… not buy it out!!! The more options available, the better the product that is passed on to us.
We want a takeover. Inititally, Verizon will have to get some sort of DSL and phone service up and running. They would have to use Frontier’s existing infrastructure at first in order to do this. And running fiber all around the Rochester metro area will cost them $$$ millions to do and this will take time.
And then they’ll be a phone monopoly, like Frontier is now. And the lack of competition will keep prices high. We should not be decreasing the number of companies that provide services, we should be increasing this number. Personally, I think Verizon is almost as bad as Time Warner. Sure, they haven’t started capping for anything, but they’re just as big and they’re doing too much. I dislike them very much as my cell phone provider, and once my contract is up, I am gone. I don’t want to be in a place where I would have to get my… Read more »
Frontier is not a phone monopoly. I am willing to bet that the Time Warner telephone is doing quite nicely as far as the number of subscribers. I do not think that if Verizon came to town that they would be the only game in town. I think that the stronger competition would force Time Warner to upgrade the services that they currently are offering. Remember, there were no caps proposed anywhere where there is strong competition for Time Warner. I would welcome FIOS and I would be quite interested in seeing what Verizon would offer in terms of TV… Read more »
I would be fine with them coming, but not at the expense of Frontier. Replacing one company with another isn’t an actual increase in competition, it’s just swapping one out for another. Frontier could die out on its own if they weren’t able to compete, but I don’t like buyouts. They reek of consolidation.
So here is the real deal. Verizon needs a system to deliver phone service, internet and TV or whatever to greater Rochester…heck, any community … so of course, they are going to want to utilize the delivery system that is in place and this includes thousands and thousands of poles that are owned either by an existing phone company or power company ( ie: RG&E ). The existing copper network is already in place and Verizon is not going to want to just use fiber. They are going to have to use the copper lines also because I do believe… Read more »
From my understanding, the reason we’re in this mess with one provider for cable, one provider for “traditional” phone, etc. is because the government originally granted them monopolies in return for laying down the infrastructure. I just don’t think we should allow the process to repeat itself. I’m assuming that other cities that have good competition also have redundancy in infrastructure. Why shouldn’t we aim for this as our goal?