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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Regular broadband users need to hear this story to understand it’s not the “1%” of users as claimed that are getting slapped with overages or having service cut, everyone is affected.
Even with providers like Comcast that’s hundreds and thousands of people having to pay large fees or face assinine policies.
Glad the news team blew up the spot saying this guy is now stealing Internet off a neighbors network. Comcast can now monitor that and charge him with Theft of Service and slap him with a HUGE fine!
Comcast Should adopt ATT Business plan. If you go over 150gig dsl or 250gig vdsl data caps they will charge you $10 for every 50gig. Comcast is missing out in this hugh cash cow, Anyone notice this guy owns one those twitting scales, the same one Leo Laporte owns.
That is 10¢ per GB, a rate at which they still make a significant amount of profit. Ever heard of TekSavvy, a Canadian Internet service provider? They charge $31.95/month for their 300 GB DSL plan at 5 Mbit/s. That’s exactly 10.65¢/GB.
UPDATE: Cheaper by the Cable. At $27.95/month, TekSavvy’s 3 Mbit/s offering includes 300 GB per month. That’s less than 9.32¢/GB, a lower rate at which the company still makes a reasonable profit.
That’s monetizing broadband usage, one of the things we are very much against. They already have a cash cow offering unlimited service. They just want to overmilk the cow.
Well, then here is my beef. If they force “Consumption Based Billing” then the FCC should IMMEDIATELY REQUIRE ALA CARTE CABLE! They can’t have it both ways. They say subs should only pay for what they use – fine. Then we should only pay for what channels we want too.
Brian Roberts makes 31 million while his customers are only supposed to use their internet account for emailing birthday wishes to their relatives
I am still amazed that there is more outcry for netflix raising their prices slightly than there is for ISPs pulling stuff like this. I don’t buy that customers “agreed” to it, as they said. This guy said he had Comcast for 8 years. The cap policy is apparently only something like three years old. So, he was forced into agreeing to it. I’m assuming there are no alternative ISPs or he would have just switched. So, that means that the customer was essentially forced into accepting the caps with no alternative. That’s some crap right there…
It is no surprise to me because even seasoned computer users often have no idea what their usage is like. Take Netflix for example. How do you know if/when they adjust their video quality up or down. What used to consume 150MB for an hour show could quietly run more than 400MB if they increase the quality of the stream without your knowledge. High quality streamed video can be a real bandwidth piggy, and trust me most people have no idea by how much. It used to be people were called pirates and torrent thieves when they consumed a lot… Read more »
If the FCC wants America to survive in the 21st century and they want to keep their lobbyists happy it can be done. Take away all franchise agreements for Comcast et al that impose caps on their users. If they don’t want to share their lines yes this goes for you Verizon FIOS that is fine. Any third party that wants to build fiber networks to compete with them should be allowed to do so. Those networks should be open access and the users should own their own lines even if they don’t pay to have them instaled. I wonder… Read more »
I agree that open access is at the heart of today’s marketplace duopoly. During dial-up days, large telcos had to open their networks and sell wholesale access to the network of dial-in numbers people used to use to avoid long distance access charges. Then, the very-business friendly Bush Administration hearted Big Telecom’s arguments that their broadband networks should be closed to wholesale access. That means AT&T, Verizon, and the cable companies can refuse to sell access to third party resellers. The only exceptions are some minor voluntary agreements with companies like Earthlink, who offer very little (if any) savings to… Read more »
I don’t disagree with Google being one of the few who has the power to directly challenge ISPs on their own turf. I may be wrong but I do believe that Docscis 3 has a 100 mbps symmetric limit per user if it is not oversold. Cut that in half if it is over sold. Time Warner thinks that 20 mbps down 2 mbps up is worth an extra $20, I say hell no. The reason that Google may not want to expand is not only the money involved, but the rules and regulations that the ISPs and government have… Read more »
There’s a long pdf that explains why the communities that are able to deploy ftth muni networks should. We’ll see what happens after our next Presidential election. We’ll see if we head down the path that South Korea et al have taken. Or if we head down the path of Canada and other heavily capped and sensored countries.