The subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet is holding a hearing titled, “An Examination of the Proposed Combination of Comcast and NBC Universal.”

The hearing explores the potential impact on the media marketplace of the proposed joint venture agreement between Comcast and NBC Universal.  It begins at 9:30am EST and is expected to run for several hours.

Participants:

• Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
• Jeff Zucker, President and CEO, NBC Universal
• Colleen Abdoulah, President and CEO
• WOW! Internet, Cable, and Phone
• Mark Cooper, Ph.D., Director of Research, Consumer Federation of America
• Michael J. Fiorile, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Dispatch Printing Company, Chair of the NBC Affiliates Board
• Adam D. Thierer, President, Progress and Freedom Foundation

To watch, click the C-SPAN logo below.  A video player will pop up in a separate window.  Be sure to disable any pop-up blockers in your browser.  If the player does not appear, or you are unsure how to disable your pop-up blocker, you can launch the C-SPAN 3 stream using Flash, Windows Media, or RealVideo format from this direct link.

If you miss any part of the hearing, we anticipate having an archived edition up later today.

Click logo to launch player

[Update 10:23am — The members of the Subcommittee are still making opening statements.  Generally, Democratic members are expressing concerns about the transaction, Republicans are either neutral or favorable towards the merger.  The ranking member, Rep. Stearns (R) from Florida read a statement that could have been drafted by Comcast and NBC.  Net Neutrality and copyright enforcement issues are also coming up.  Members from California, the home base for a lot in the entertainment industry, are the ones usually mentioning copyright.  Republicans who have brought up Net Neutrality are universally hostile to the policy, one warning the Committee the very concept may be overturned by the DC Court of Appeals.  Democrats are in favor.  Both Reps. Markey and Eshoo are on the panel — they co-introduced the Net Neutrality bill in Congress.

Based on the opening statements, it appears the question and answer session will likely bring hardball questions from most of the Democrats, softball questions from most of the Republicans.  But expect a handful of members to occasionally break the trend.  There will also be the usual grandstanding on both sides of the aisle from time to time.]

Providers have a love-hate relationship with fiber optics.  When confronted with a competitor rebuilding their network to provide fiber to customer homes, many providers lampoon and mock fiber’s capabilities, claiming it’s more light than substance.  But when a provider itself wants to do fiber on the cheap, which means not actually providing true fiber-to-the-home service, they’ll bandy about marketing slogans like “100% fiber optic network” or “advanced fiber network.” Fiber is better, and those who have it want to promote it.  Those that don’t want to pretend they do.

Bell has decided it can deliver truthiness in fiber optic broadband by simply chopping a letter off the end of the word ‘fiber.’

Fibe is a close cousin of AT&T’s U-verse system.  It uses fiber optics part of the way, but relies on the same old copper phone wire that’s hanging on those phone poles in your front or back yard.  Because of the shorter distance of copper involved, Bell can use more advanced VDSL2 technology for a faster connection.

That’s certainly an improvement over Bell’s anemic DSL service, difficult to provide to many Canadians spread across the countryside.  But don’t mistake it for Verizon FiOS, or any other true fiber to the home service.  After learning the details, you won’t mistake it for a great consumer value either.

Fibe offers some urban and suburban Canadians new choices in broadband speed: 6/1Mbps, 12/1Mbps, 18/1Mbps and 25/7Mbps at prices ranging from $31.95-52.95 per month ($5 higher for standalone broadband service).  Prices may be slightly lower in some areas depending on what’s on offer from competitors.

But Bell also brings an uninvited guest to the party: Internet Overcharging usage limits.  They also reserve the right to throttle your speeds lower when using high traffic applications.

Check out the company’s marketing rhetoric next to the limitations:

• “Fibe 6 will light up your online life.” The bulb burns out after 25GB of consumption, and your online life is in the dark until the next billing cycle begins.
• With Fibe 12, “You’re totally cool and connected online.” Unfortunately, after 50GB of usage, -you- are left out in the cold.
• “Digital defines who you are. At any given time, you are networked and on your game.” With Fibe 16, the game is over after using 75GB.  Then you can redefine yourself with a good book for the rest of the month.
• “You’re a master of the digital universe. A power++ online user who blazes through bytes and is always looking for more upload speeds. Nothing less than the awesome power of Fibe 25 will do.” Fibe 25, like Fibe 12, sputters out after 75GB of usage.  Then Bell is the master… of your wallet.  There’s nothing like blazing fast speed that gets a bucket of cold water thrown on it with a usage limit and overlimit penalty.  Nothing else will do… for Bell.

Bell is among the more nervy providers out there.  After creating Internet Overcharging schemes that force customers into low usage allowance plans, the company offers to sell you “usage insurance” to protect you from their own paltry limits!  For an additional $5 per month up front, you get protection from their overlimit penalties for up to 40 additional gigabytes of usage.  Of course, you pay the fee whether exceeding the limit or not.  If you don’t have Overcharging Insurance, look out.  Overlimit penalties start at $1/GB and run to $2 and beyond for some smaller allowance plans.  For now, Bell limits the maximum overlimit penalty to $30 per month, but that can change at any time, as Rogers customers have found out.

Fibe appears to be primarily available in parts of Toronto and the GTA.  Selected customers may also receive a letter offering 50 percent off their IPTV video package for one year.  Expect the service to primarily launch in larger cities.  Living in a rural community in a province like Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba?  Don’t hold your breath waiting for these kinds of services to arrive anytime soon.

[flv width=”640″ height=”405″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bell Entertainment Overview.flv[/flv]

A Bell-produced overview of their new Fibe IPTV service.  (6 minutes)

President Barack Obama reiterated his support for Net Neutrality policies and expressed concern about providers trying to charge higher fees and extract more money from consumers for broadband service.

In a post State of the Union question and answer session held on YouTube, the president responded to a question regarding policies that would forbid broadband providers from tampering with Internet traffic, typically for monetary gain.

“We’re getting push back, obviously, from some of the bigger carriers who would like to be able to charge more fees and extract more money from wealthier customers,” he said. “But we think that runs counter to the whole spirit of openness that has made the Internet such a powerful engine for not only economic growth, but also for the generation of ideas and creativity.”

The reference to charging higher fees and extracting more money from wealthier customers may signal Obama recognizes that Internet Overcharging schemes like usage limits and usage-based billing represent an end run around many Net Neutrality prohibitions.  By charging excessively high prices for broadband traffic, Internet providers can effectively choke off potential competition to both its phone and television programming businesses, as well as higher bandwidth innovations still to come.

The Obama Administration’s support for Net Neutrality dates back to the early days of the presidential campaign, when then-Senator Obama expressed support for Net Neutrality.  The Federal Communications Commission has been tasked to develop a Net Neutrality policy to be enforced by the Commission.

Critics contend the FCC has no authority to enforce such provisions.

Robert McDowell, one of the two minority Republican commissioners at the FCC predicted any attempt by the Commission to enact sweeping Net Neutrality policies would likely face a rapid challenge in the courts. One popular venue for such cases has been the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a track record of deciding cases in favor of providers.

Such a ruling could partially or completely derail an FCC Net Neutrality policy until Congress passed legislation to specifically authorize the Commission to regulate broadband policy.  Congress can also pass Net Neutrality legislation itself.

President Barack Obama answers a question about Net Neutrality policy in his administration.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse Cut Your Phone, Cable and Internet Costs 1-25-10.flv[/flv]

Consumer Reports February 2010 issue rates service providers and gives advice to consumers about where and how to get the best deal for telephone, cable, and broadband service.  WSYR-TV in Syracuse breaks it down.  (2 minutes)

They're in your neighborhood, just waiting to break into your home network, according to WXYZ-TV in Detroit

The biggest security threat most broadband users will encounter doesn’t come from identity thieves or kiddie porn rings roving neighborhoods looking for unsecured computers to exploit — it’s from your neighbors looking for free access to your broadband service.

Local newscasts have recently been running sensationalist stories of mysterious cars parked on neighborhood streets driven by ne’er-do-wells barging onto unsecured home wireless networks.

In fact, the most common threat isn’t from drive-by crime rings, but right next door.  With most broadband accounts providing flat rate service, the occasional uninvited guest ‘borrowing access’ probably goes unnoticed.  But should Internet Overchargers have their way, the consequences of account sharing in a world with paltry usage limits and usage-based-billing could show up on your monthly bill.

In countries where these overcharging schemes already have taken firm root, reports of customers receiving enormous broadband service bills are common.  In Australia, rarely a week goes by without someone reporting a hacked wireless network incident.  Consumers have been forced to become watchdogs, constantly checking usage statistics to ensure someone in the neighborhood hasn’t been “borrowing” their Internet account and blowing through their monthly usage allowance.

One customer, who lives in an apartment complex, shares a too-common story:

Over the past 24 hours someone (or something?) has been sucking the life out of my internet connection and chewed up 10Gb of my quota. How do I troubleshoot the cause of this? I have a Buffalo WHR-G54S Wireless Router and my network is secured.  I live by myself in a small block of apartments; I have had no visitors either.

Another customer discovered when it’s your word against your provider’s, the provider wins:

Yesterday, I was checking my broadband bill and was surprised to find out that they had charged me for downloading an extra 4 GB of data. I checked my usage online for the current month and it was already 8GB! This is despite the fact that I have been on holiday for ten days, and my normal usage involves casual browsing and downloading e-mails.

Furthermore, I never exceeded my download limit since I started with my ISP. My ISP also confirms that this is quite unusual and against my normal usage pattern. I have asked them to provide me some usage statistics but they can only give me the data that I already see on my account online.

The cost of exceeding the limit can be enormous.  BigPond in Australia, for example, has a few Internet plans that charge a $0.15 per megabyte overlimit penalty.  That’s $150AUD per gigabyte.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXYZ Detroit Open Wi-Fi Risks 1-26-10.flv[/flv]

WXYZ-TV in Detroit ran this sensationalist report on drive-by hackers breaking into wireless networks. (3 minutes)

The solution suggested by most Internet Service Providers is to enable built-in wireless security.  How much protection that provides and whether customers will be able to understand how to configure security remain open questions.

Some phone companies providing DSL service have plenty of older equipment still in customer homes that only supports the older WEP security standard.  That’s insufficient to protect consumers from intrusion because WEP security has been seriously compromised.

“WEP as a security measure is so broken that your (and everyone else’s) kid sister can easily circumvent it,” computer security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann told the BBC.  Weinmann is co-author of the aircrack-ptw tool that can crack WEP in minutes.

Anyone caring about their privacy, said Weinmann, should not use WEP to stop others using their wi-fi hotspot.

Current generation wireless routers typically provide both WEP and the more secure WPA standard. But now there is evidence WPA can also be compromised, with a little help from “cloud computing,” which puts several high powered computers together to quickly work on cracking your password. A service has even been launched to let would-be crackers rent time on the “cloud” to “test” network security passwords, starting at just $17. In as little as 20 minutes, those with relatively simple passwords will find their network security compromised.

You can protect yourself by at least making sure your router is “secured” with a password.  Most every router comes with instructions or software that make this process as simple as possible.  When you have a choice of security standards, aim for WPA2, if available.

Thus far, most reported WPA network break-ins occur because the user is relying on a simple password — often a common word, name, series of numbers, or something similar that is much easier to break. Try to use a password that is not a word in a dictionary, doesn’t correspond to information anyone could mine off your Facebook page (city/town, school, birthday, parents or siblings names, etc.), and would be impossible to guess off-hand.

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How to secure your wireless network (6 minutes)