Cox injected this pop up message when customers launched their web browsers over the weekend, notifying them about the e-mail outage. (Courtesy: Broadband Reports forum reader ‘bb44’)

Our friends at Broadband Reports have been tracking Cox’s near-nationwide e-mail outage that left millions of customers without access to their company-supplied accounts over the weekend.

Customers in Rhode Island, Nebraska, Virginia, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, and beyond began noticing the problem on Friday. Only Cox’s customers in the western and mountain states seemed unaffected.

Cox blamed the problem on a “failing server.” In an effort to reduce calls from complaining customers, Cox used a browser injection notification message alerting subscribers whenever they opened their web browsers. Sending e-mail to all affected subscribers was obviously not an option.

Cox customers, including many small businesses that still rely on their Cox-supplied e-mail addresses were very unhappy about the length of the outage.

By Sunday afternoon customers like Bill Roland of Ocala, Fla. were fed up.

“Heads should roll over this one and we should all get a credit on our bills,” Roland wrote on Broadband Reports’ Cox Forum. “I don’t really care when it’s out for 15 minutes in the middle of the night due to a maintenance window, but going on 48 hours with no end is sight is not acceptable.”

Roland would have to wait until early Monday morning for the queued mail held since the outage to begin slowly arriving in his mailbox.

Cox shared this statement about the outage:

As of 6:30 am ET, access to Cox email has been restored to all customers previously affected by the email outage. All customers should now be able to send and receive email messages.

If you lost access to your email during this outage, we have queued your emails received since Friday. You may continue to receive these queued emails over the course of the next several days. These will arrive gradually and may not be delivered in chronological order.

Now that service is restored we are moving forward with replacing email storage platform equipment and implementing measures to prevent a reoccurrence of these issues. We will remain intensely focused on this effort until all queued email messages are successfully delivered. Technical teams continue to be on high alert and monitoring systems closely.

We deeply regret the impact this outage has had on our customers and truly appreciate their patience as all Cox resources continue to be focused on this restoration effort.

Cox customers can call the company and request a courtesy credit for the outage, which the company is providing to those particularly upset by the e-mail loss.

Among those hardest hit: small businesses like those in Providence, RI which are particularly dependent on answering e-mail from customers during the holiday season. Several made their apologies to customers on their websites.

The best solution to this dilemma is to avoid using ISP-supplied e-mail accounts. Cox customers using Gmail or other web-based e-mail providers never realized there was an outage.

“The best reason not to use your ISP e-mail account is that it ties you down with your broadband provider,” writes Cox customers and Stop the Cap! reader Sam Hernandez. “I bought my own domain name for around $7 and I use Gmail to handle everything and have been able to switch providers or move to another city and never have to change my e-mail address. Gmail has proved to be very reliable as well.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”363″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WJAR Providence Cox reports email outages now fixed 12-16-12.flv[/flv]

WJAR in Providence reports Cox’s near-nationwide weekend e-mail outage caused problems for area small businesses during the critically-important holiday season.  (1 minute)

Enjoy arrest and deportation.

If Time Warner Cable was hoping to attract new customers, allowing employees to arrange for their arrest and deportation is probably not the best way to accomplish that.

But that is precisely what happened to a Burlington, N.C., mom who tried to order cable service for her daughter with a fake Social Security number. An off-duty local police officer working part time as a security guard in the cable office overheard the conversation and arranged for the woman’s arrest.

Now 27-year old Lorena Yanez-Mata faces deportation to Mexico because she is in the United States illegally.

Yanez-Mata tried to use her individual taxpayer identification number to order cable service. The cable company rejected that, insisting on a Social Security number. So she arrived at the cable store with a counterfeit card with a random nine digit number.

When the security officer overheard the conversation, Time Warner Cable says he acted on his own initiative to contact local police, who arrested Yanez-Mata as soon as she left.

Yanez-Mata was charged with obtaining property by false pretense because of the phony Social Security number. But her prospects are likely to be more serious when she arrives in a Charlotte immigration court for possible deportation.

Time Warner Cable tried to distance itself from the debacle, claiming it is against their policy to share personal information with law enforcement and the security officer was not following any company procedure or direction. The cable company has no interest in bringing charges against the woman.

The company did not explain what would happen to the security officer who apparently disregarded the cable company’s policies when he choose to share potentially confidential, personal information with authorities. Nor did the company say whether it planned to issue new directives to avoid similar situations in the future.

Although Triad area residents and the local media used the incident to debate the issue of illegal immigration, another question remains: should an off-duty police officer working as a security guard act on private information he overhears and initiate a police investigation contrary to the interests of his employer?

[flv width=”604″ height=”424″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFMY Greensboro Burlington Mom Faces Deportation After Trying To Get Time Warner Cable 12-12-12.flv[/flv]

WFMY-TV in Greensboro used the story of the Burlington mom to address the larger issue of why people illegally immigrate to the United States. We are wondering how Time Warner plans to handle employees sharing customer information with the authorities. (2 minutes)

Keeping ISPs honest

Netflix may have the most accurate national broadband speed honesty test around, at least when it comes to streaming video. With 30 million members viewing over one billion hours of Netflix streamed content every month, the company is well-positioned to report the real-world performance of virtually every ISP in the country.

Starting this month, Netflix will publish once-monthly surveys of the best and worst-performing providers.

The results from November are not surprising. Fiber to the home offers America’s fastest and most reliable streamed video experience. Google Fiber, with its 1,000Mbps network, topped Netflix’s list, followed by Verizon’s FiOS fiber service.

Cable providers also performed well. Comcast delivered the best Netflix experience, Suddenlink the worst.

AT&T’s U-verse, which isn’t really a true fiber network but simply an extended form of DSL performed markedly poorer than its cable competitors.

DSL providers also performed poorly, ranging from CenturyLink to Verizon’s now neglected DSL. Frontier Communications made some improvements in its rankings. It used to be dead last.

Watching Netflix on mobile broadband proved to be both expensive (with data caps for most) and slow. Clearwire, which only operates a 4G WiMAX network performed the best. Despite the growing prevalence of HSPA+ and LTE 4G service from many other carriers, more common 3G service dragged performance down considerably. Verizon performed the best of the mixed networks, AT&T performed 40% worse than Verizon, coming in dead last.

Efforts to develop new unlicensed uses for the public airwaves that include high-powered public Wi-Fi may be shelved if AT&T and House Republicans succeed in their joint effort to force those frequencies to be sold in a spectrum auction.

Majority House Republicans on the House Communications & Technology Subcommittee on Wednesday lectured all five FCC commissioners, insisting they have no authority to set aside spectrum specifically for unlicensed use when those airwaves could be sold to private companies.

Sub-Committee chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) criticized FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski for his plans to “give away” scarce airwaves eventually open to the public’s use when they could fetch as much as $19 billion in auction proceeds from large telecommunications companies seeking to own and control those frequencies.

Walden, the House’s second largest recipient of campaign contributions from the same companies likely to bid on that spectrum, insisted federal law only allows the Commission to designate unlicensed uses for so-called “technically necessary guard bands,” which act as a buffer between neighboring frequency users to protect against interference. Walden also criticized the FCC for setting aside too much spectrum for that protection.

Walden, the second largest recipient of telco cash in Congress.

The Oregon congressman has collected more than $84,000 in campaign contributions from telephone companies so far this year. Only House Speaker John Boehner won larger contributions from companies like AT&T.

Other Republican members of the subcommittee agreed with Walden’s sentiment and also received generous contributions from AT&T this year.

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), wanted to be sure the FCC does not impose “value-sapping restrictions” on the use of privately-owned airwaves owned by large telecommunications companies. Terry is the third largest recipient of campaign contributions in the House from those telecom companies, adding $69,400 so far this year to his campaign coffers.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) expressed concerns that spectrum auctions could displace low-power television stations to make way for mobile communications. But Barton did not oppose the auctions generally. His largest contributor: AT&T, which sent him checks for more than $21,000 in 2012.

Representative Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio) suggested auctioning off airwaves intended for public use to large mobile broadband companies would help America’s competitiveness, alluding to his belief unlicensed, free use of the airwaves for new wireless applications would not. Latta cashed $10,500 in AT&T checks so far this year — his fourth largest contributor. Latta added he wanted there to be transparency and openness in the entire spectrum process. He did not disclose his significant contributions from AT&T at the hearing, despite being a chief stakeholder in the debate.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) agreed with large telecommunications companies that the maximum amount of available spectrum should be sold off to private companies to sell mobile broadband services to the public. Blackburn’s third largest campaign contributor this year is Verizon Communications, who sent her $15,400. AT&T, her ninth largest contributor, handed her $13,250, together adding up to $28,650.

The Democrats on the panel roundly criticized Republican plans to sell off spectrum intended for unlicensed, public use applications to large wireless companies, which already own and control frequencies they still have not put into service.

Terry, worried about “value-sapping” regulations.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) called unlicensed spectrum an incredible economic success story.

“Innovative services like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are now ubiquitous parts of our communications system,” he said in his opening remarks. “They came about because of the use of unlicensed spectrum.”

Waxman suggested eliminating or limiting unlicensed spectrum would destroy innovation and further concentrate wireless communications in the hands of a handful of companies. Waxman said Congress’ original intent in passing laws that permitted the FCC to move forward with spectrum auctions also authorize the agency to protect competition and prevent unnecessary concentration of spectrum ownership to the detriment of smaller providers.

“I am troubled by attempts by some to relitigate issues that were resolved earlier this year, when the bill passed Congress with widespread support,” Waxman added. “After-the-fact-spin that unfairly twists the language of the law deserves little weight by the Commission or the courts.”

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) noted the FCC by statute is prohibited from considering the amount of revenue possible from spectrum auctions when drafting auction rules. She found Republican efforts to recast those rules to raise as much money as possible by selling off as much spectrum as possible “interesting.”

Many Republicans also complained the FCC must not set rules that either limit the maximum amount of spectrum owned by one company or set aside certain frequencies exclusively for smaller competitors. The Republicans want auctions to maintain a more straightforward “highest bidder takes all” format. Critics say that gives the advantage to larger, deep-pocketed existing providers and dissuades the entry of new competitors.

Some Republicans were also upset with FCC meddling over when and how private companies begin providing service on the airwaves they won at auction. Current FCC rules prohibit warehousing unused spectrum. The rules were designed to ensure large companies don’t invest in airwaves just to keep them off the market and unavailable to competitors.

Cisco 3945 router

The saga of West Virginia’s use of $126.3 million in federal stimulus funds to build better broadband is coming under increasing scrutiny this week as the state’s legislative auditor demanded to know who approved the controversial purchase of $24 million for Internet routers many institutional users say are incompatible or too costly to run.

Aaron Allred has given Homeland Security director Jimmy Gianato, administering the broadband project, until Dec. 21 to provide answers.

More than 1,000 Cisco routers valued at $22,600 each were purchased with taxpayer funds for “community anchor institutions” including schools, public safety, and library users. Why those specific routers were chosen and who approved the purchase have gone unanswered. The Charleston Gazette reports just one router model was considered — one designed for hundreds of concurrent users, despite the fact many rural libraries and other institutions maintain as few as three computer terminals. The auditor also wanted to know why they were purchased all at once, forcing the state to store them for an extended period.

“How come representatives of WVNET [the state’s Internet services agency] were not consulted?” the auditor asked. “How come the Cisco 3945 routers were not right-sized for the areas they were to be installed? Who made the suggestion to buy one size, and who made the decision?”

The auditor also wanted to know why the state appears to be vastly exceeding its budget to upgrade a wireless emergency communications network. The state is on track to spend $50 million for an upgrade it budgeted $30 million to complete.

The newspaper continued to receive word the costly routers are being rejected by a growing number of institutions.

• The West Virginia State Police can’t use 70 routers assigned to detachments because the devices aren’t compatible with the agency’s voicemail system;
• More than 160 libraries have declined to hook up the routers to a new high-speed fiber-optic network because the state Library Commission can’t afford to pay for faster Internet service;
• An additional 175 routers remained boxed up in storage – more than two years after they were purchased.

The state is hurrying to spend the remaining grant funds available to it before the federal government’s Jan. 31 deadline. One state official planned to appeal to the federal government for an extension, blaming the impact of storm damage from Hurricane Sandy.