Bell this week brought out its saber collection for a little rattling in Ottawa over the Canadian government’s consideration of a plan to set aside certain mobile spectrum for new competitors.

A mobile spectrum auction, expected later this year, will increase the number of 700Mhz frequencies available for wireless communications.

Some of Canada’s largest cell phone companies are well-positioned to outbid the competition, but not if Industry Canada decides it needs to set aside some of the frequencies for an auction among smaller competitors.

BCE, Inc., the parent company of Bell, has little regard for that plan and has now joined Rogers in a lobbying effort for an “open and transparent” sale, which effectively means the highest bidder takes all.

If Canada doesn’t follow Bell’s advice, the company is threatening to withhold advanced mobile Internet services in Canada’s lesser-populated regions.

“An auction for this spectrum that isn’t open and transparent would limit the amount of spectrum available to Bell, forcing a focus on more densely populated centers in order for Bell to compete with new carriers,” the company said in a news release.

In response, Wind Mobile, one of the newest entrants in the Canadian mobile market, said it would sit out of a spectrum auction that favored deep-pocketed incumbents with winner-take-all rules.  In short, it could not afford the prices players like Rogers and Bell will be able to bid for the new frequencies.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis was unwilling to set an exact date or format for the 700MHz spectrum auctions.  Observers suspect if he waits much longer, the auction won’t take place until 2013.

Just three major wireless companies — Bell, Rogers, and Telus, control 94 percent of the Canadian wireless market.

ABC’s Daisy Whitney (New Media Minute) went in search for evidence that Americans really are fed up with their cable TV bill and are cutting the cord.  She collided head-on with an industry still in denial that consumers are fed up with high cable bills and relying on their home broadband connection for video entertainment.

Nielsen reports there are 5.1 million homes in the U.S. that have broadband-only service from their provider, and presumably rely on over-the-air TV for live televised events.  That’s up a huge 23 percent over last year.  But some analysts dismiss that as growth that comes from homes that never had broadband in the first place, a conclusion that needs more evidence to back it up.

Providers admit most of their new customers are coming from other broadband providers, especially as Americans dump slow DSL in favor of faster cable or fiber-delivered service.  In most areas, those who want broadband service already have it.  The primary exception: rural residents just accessing newly-available broadband for the first time.

For 20 years, the cable industry has enjoyed a growth in video subscribers.  That is no longer the case.  While the numbers are not staggering, hundreds of thousands of big cable customers are dropping their cable TV subscriptions every quarter, and they don’t seem to be taking their business to the competition.  Granted, many cancellations are income-related, especially among video-only customers, but it is clear a ceiling has been reached on what Americans will tolerate from the cable company.

With programming rate increases continuing unabated, that bill is only going up.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC Quitting Cable TV Truth or Lie 2-22-12.m4v[/flv]

Daisy Whitney’s New Media Minute explores cord cutting.  (2 minutes)

Nearly one year ago, Google selected Kansas City, Kansas as the first city to “Think Big With a Gig,” a gigabit fiber to the home broadband network that would shatter misconceptions that Americans don’t need lightning-fast broadband speeds.

In the original announcement, early 2012 was slated to be the target date for the service to become available in at least some areas of the city.  After months of wrangling with utility companies and the city government, Google began burying the first fiber lines earlier this month.  This week, it filed for permission with both Kansas and Missouri officials to compliment its forthcoming broadband service with a complete cable-TV package as well.

Google’s fiber project now has incumbent operators on both sides of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers concerned about forthcoming competition from the search engine giant, especially after Google announced it would wire both the Kansas and Missouri sides of the city.

Greater Kansas City is primarily served by Time Warner Cable and AT&T, but smaller cable operators also offer service in some areas.  Google is considering a competitive cable package with video on demand.  It is expected to wrap up licensing negotiations with programmers within a month or two, and some of its contracts allow Google to sell cable service outside of the Kansas City area, a potentially interesting development should Google want to provide an Internet-based cable system to subscribers in other cities.

We have collected several media reports on the Google project in Kansas City to bring readers up to date:

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Gigabit Challenge Offers Google-Friendly Ideas 12-6-11.flv[/flv]

WDAF in Kansas City reports on some of the submissions to Google’s Gigabit Challenge — a competition to consider how to leverage 1,000Mbps broadband. (12/6/11 — 2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDAF Kansas City Why is Google Fiber Set Up Taking so Long 1-18-12.flv[/flv]

WDAF reports on what is holding up the Google Fiber project.  It turns out local utilities have been harder to deal with than originally thought.  (1/18/12 — 3 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KMBC Kansas City Google Begins Fiber Installation In KCK 2-6-12.flv[/flv]

KMBC reports Google is ready to break ground on its new fiber network.  (2/6/12 — 2 minutes)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCTV Kansas City Google Starts Laying Fiber 2-18-12.mp4[/flv]

KCTV says Google started laying fiber this week.  The new service is on the way.  (2 minutes)

Noted online petitioner Change.org will be promoting a petition to stop bandwidth capping this week.

Perhaps best known for hosting an appeal which influenced Bank of America to drop their proposed $5 monthly ATM card fee, Change.org will be presenting the ‘no data capping’ petition on various social media sites in an attempt to gain signatures.

The petition’s letter, directed to AT&T, Comcast, the Federal Communications Commission, and all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who practice data capping, demands that they return to a billing model of unlimited access for a reasonable monthly fee.  Telecommunication providers have a responsibility to improve service, not lower it, the authors argue, particularly in light of the fact that taxpayer-funded broadband pipelines already exist, which the providers are not using.

Petition author David K. Smith argues that data caps contradict the Internet’s inherent purpose.  In the petition page’s linked article, “Why Data Caps Are Censorship,” he states that as the Internet is exponentially growing, one can always access more information than any data cap could allow, resulting in censorship from “the Big Picture.” The article maintains that exclusion from the total amount of information available results in “leashed” users having an incomplete perspective due to restricted access, and that incomplete, fragmentary information is useless.

“Now is a great time to be signing and sharing this petition,” said Smith.  “We have Change.org’s attention, and more and more articles are appearing to protest bandwidth injustices.  I feel this is a critical fight for our freedom to information.”

Change.org online help assets suggest that one of the most effective ways to gain signatures is for advocates to place a link to the petition under appropriate news and technical articles, along with a paragraph describing its relevance to the subject discussed.

[Stop the Cap! encourages readers to sign this (and other) petitions which declare the practice of Internet Overcharging unacceptable.  Whether it’s data caps or throttled speeds, customers deserve an unlimited, unthrottled Internet experience they pay good money to receive.  As financial reports show, today’s unlimited pricing formula delivers enormous profits to broadband providers, even as their costs to provide the service continue to decline.]

Ever wonder why cell phone companies are upset about new regulations that would warn customers when they are about to face mobile usage overlimit or roaming fees?  Rogers Communications explains why in their latest quarterly results:

Nadir Mohamed, CEO:

There was, however, a sequential slowing in the wireless data revenue growth rate, and that’s primarily attributable to new outbound data roaming plans that we put in place. With these new plans, we put in place automated customer notification mechanisms that had a net effect of slowing usage versus stimulating it to the degree that we expected it to. We’re in the process of modifying how these plans and notifications work, which I expect will have a more stimulative effect and help restore the trajectory we had for wireless data growth.

In simpler terms, Rogers began notifying their customers through text messaging when they were about to start data roaming — the most expensive data usage around, incurred when you leave Rogers’ service area and roam on another provider’s network.  With Canadians visiting the United States and elsewhere, using a cell phone while traveling can get expensive fast.  Rogers created new roaming data plans for customers likely to need the service while abroad.  But their roaming data plans come at steep prices:

Unintended consequences: When subscribers know they are about to pay more, they stop using.

U.S. Data Passes

Day Pass: $5 for 2MB
Day Pass: $10 for 10MB
Day Pass: $20 for 40MB
Week Pass: $25 for 15MB
Week Pass: $50 for 60MB
Week Pass: $100 for 250MB

The warnings that customers were about to incur even higher a-la-carte roaming fees or start to consume their day or weekly data pass had the unintended, but highly predictable effect of getting people to think carefully about using data while roaming.

Bruce

While good for consumers, that is bad for Rogers’ bottom line, so the company’s formerly frank warnings to customers are “being modified” to help the company “stimulate” revenue and restore the predicted revenue growth from the high-priced roaming plans.

“We tried to create real transparency about when people and how people could get on data packages as they went overseas,” admits Robert Bruce, president of Rogers Communications Division. “We put in a fair number of reminders to let people know that they were on à la carte pricing, and we think that these dissuaded significantly customers from using it and possibly created some confusion along the way.”

Rogers Cable customers are also finding some of the company’s newest innovations a challenge to their monthly broadband usage allowances, among the lowest in Canada:

• Rogers Remote TV Manager: Enables cable subscribers to search programming and manage PVR recordings anytime on any device;
• Rogers Live TV. This service lets cable customers stream live TV channels on their tablets and watch shows anywhere they are in the home;
• Rogers On Demand TV app on Microsoft’s Xbox 360 LIVE platform, bringing Rogers On Demand TV to the gaming console;
• A refresh of the digital cable user interface, improving ease of use for the Whole Home PVR and a better program guide and search function.

In the long term, Rogers is moving towards an IP-based delivery system for its video programming, allowing the company to deliver video across different platforms more efficiently.  As Rogers converts the rest of its cable systems to digital cable, it is opening up new broadband capacity — a critical part of the company’s revenues.

Rogers admits it uses data caps to drive revenue.  By moving customers into higher usage, more expensive tiers, Rogers is able to drive revenue upwards as well.

“As customers continue every quarter, in and out, to consume more and more and spend more and more time on the Internet, we think it’s both a great opportunity for us and a welcome addition to the product offering from a customer perspective,” Bruce said.