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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Since when has a Copy flag on a Paid TV Service stopped anything from being copied? Maybe it prevents 1080p recording or 1080i recording from other devices, but the solution to ensure the device you use to record acknowledges the flag but ignores it, defeating the purpose of the flag in the first place. There’s plenty of HTPC software that can be set up as long as the software itself isn’t blocked from being able to open the content somehow.
It does seem odd to punish their own customers restricting recording to only a single DVR in the household, I’m not seeing the point behind that unless this is just another move to try and kill off CableCard devices that the cable industry has been trying to not comply with or support for years. Just makes it convenient that they make it sound like a government requirement. You’re right about not preventing it from being copied, pirates just take the stream via any analog hole they can find, or someone eventually just copies the DVD/Bluray and shares that. All this… Read more »
I agree with Scott. Preventing copying of recorded content from premium channels is going to backfire on Verizon FiOS and hurt business. After all, they aren’t the only telecom company that offer services through fiber optic cables. The broader the market your product appeals to, to more more you make. This just doesn’t make any sense to me. To learn more about fiber optic cables and the global impact it’s making, go to http://fiberoptics.shopbuynenjoy.com/blog/
I don’t think this is going to work at all. It’s going to hurt and customers will end up bailing out of their contracts, return equipment and start to go somewhere else. And yes I do agree with Scott you will be seeing more consumers move to the satellite system or their old cable company. What are they trying to impress? Most of the movies on the movie channels are very hard to find and most our OUT OF PRINT! So before flagging anything FiOS do your research on how many movies are available on DVD before punishing your consumers.… Read more »
Maybe we should all copyright our voices and charge people to hear us speak.
Same with posted items.
You are all now on notice. If I catch you using these words without my express permission, I will sue you internationaly.
What a silly notion in this day and age.
By the way, watch this and have a nice day: