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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And I’ve made up my mind already. I’m moving soon and I will no longer subscribe to Cable TV. That’s $80 a month loss revenue for them.
Take that, TWC!
TWC see themselves as the Seven Sages of Greece and we’re a bunch of bumpkins
No offense, but the language in the subject line is a little, well, strong. If I were them I wouldn’t read it either. Greedy? Even though I agree with you on that, they are going to say, “Whatever dude, delete.” Don’t get me wrong, I do agree with your subject. I think the SOB’s are greedy little pinheads that would upend their customers so they could shake every dime out of their pocket if they could get away with it.
I too received the same responses to my messages sent to realideas, and I belive that their subject and contents were objective:
Your message
To: RealIdeas
Subject: In response to Landel Hobbs 4/9 Statement
Sent: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 23:39:36 -0400
was not readTue, 26 May 2009 01:38:19 -0400
Final-Recipient: RFC822; [email protected]
Disposition: automatic-action/MDN-sent-automatically; deleted
Hmmm, interesting….
I’ll add that your evidence points to whoever was assigned this e-mail address just simply didn’t decide to check it. So that’s pretty crappy.
The only possible explanation that’s not due to laziness, mismanagement, or a stupid mistake (like not routing [email protected] to anyone’s actual address) is that the box got so swamped with mail due to an overwhelming response that it was just impossible to read everything.
Either way, it’s not a good indicator.
I did receive the following respons (around 4/30) multiple times to earlier emails sent to realideas on (4/9). The thing that got m was they referenced the statement from 4/9, even though they abandonded the trials on 4/16. Hello, Thanks for taking the time to provide us with your feedback. We really appreciate hearing from you. Although this is an automated response, please know that your e-mail is being read and your thoughts are being discussed as we continue to research the tiered pricing program. As you may have already heard, TWC’s Chief Operating Officer, Landel Hobbs, issued a statement… Read more »
Ah hah! Well, that explains what happened. They gave it a mailbox on the Exchange Server but no one checked it. An autoresponder was set up.
The number of e-mails hit whatever limit they set for it (probably something low like 5MB–just a guess). After that it just started deleting FIFO.
Someone dropped the ball: Either the person who was supposed to check these, or the person who was supposed to assign this responsibility to someone.
There is a lot of ball dropping going on lately with this company.