By 2050 Australian consumers will need a monthly data allowance of more than 100,000 gigabytes to sustain what will, by then, be considered average use of the Internet.

That finding comes in a report, “A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital Future to 2050,” which is measuring the impact of the country’s transformation to a ubiquitous fiber to the home broadband experience for the majority of Australian consumers and businesses.

Australia and New Zealand are both embarked on a transformative effort to rid themselves of slow speed, copper-based broadband networks. Both are rolling out a combination of fiber to the home service in urban and suburban areas, and fixed wireless networks in rural areas.

The South Pacific region could soon become a global broadband leader for innovation in high speed applications development because neither country will be constrained by broadband networks that deliver the least amount of broadband service for the highest cost.

The report predicts super-fast broadband will literally transform society in Australia, with traditional media as relevant tomorrow as a buggy whip is today.

Market researcher IBISWorld says newspapers, television, radio and the record and film industries are destined for the scrap heap in a new digital world.

The report also predicts the traditional understanding of employment may also radically change, with citizens acting as free agents, pursuing work on individual projects for a variety of employers, leveraging broadband to learn what tasks need to be performed each day. Work will be performed in home offices or on the go using the country’s broadband network.

Universal high speed broadband will transform the information and communications technology sector into a $1 trillion business by 2050 — in Australia alone, predicts the report.

Australia’s PM radio program explores how life in the country will change over the next 38 years with fiber optic broadband a part of virtually everyone’s life.  (June 14, 2012)  (4 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

An 85-year-old woman with dementia and her ailing 90-year-old husband in Rockaway were left without telephone service for three weeks because Verizon could not contact them on their out-of-service phone line.

The couple’s daughter, Rita Burgess, made at least 13 calls to Verizon Communications trying to get the couple’s phone line back up and running, but to no avail. A Verizon spokesperson later told the New York Daily News the company couldn’t get the line repaired because they couldn’t call the couple… on the phone line that was out of service.

“You people put me through hell,” Burgess thought after Verizon finally reached out to get the phone line repaired.

By then it was too late. Burgess took matters into her own hands and switched the family to Time Warner Cable’s phone service.

The incident has turned into a cause célèbre for consumer advocates, who claim Verizon continues to neglect its landline network in favor of its limited fiber optic FiOS service. New York consumer groups want the state to more aggressively regulate Verizon’s landline network to make certain extended outages like this cannot happen.

Burgess, who lives on Long Island, found herself cut off from her parents at a time when her father was hospitalized. Both father and daughter were unable to reach Mrs. Burgess, who requires regular attention because of dementia.

Bob Master, legislative and political director for the Communications Workers of America, told the Daily News the couple’s ordeal is not unique.

“They’re diverting resources from basic phone services,” Master said of Verizon. “That’s the business model, to divert resources to the most lucrative areas.”

Verizon counters the union is in dispute with the phone company over stalled contract negotiations and points to a 2012 first quarter report from the state Public Service Commission showing Verizon is meeting standards for reliability and repair times.

But Verizon has also lost half of its landline customers in New York State, which could also account for a declining number of complaints.

The Burgess family has decided to stick with Time Warner Cable for phone service.

Beahn’s booking photo

A competitor to dominant cable provider Mediacom has been accused of stealing the cable company’s broadband service and reselling it as its own in a bizarre Georgia case that also includes a feud between Albany’s Water, Gas & Light Commission and the defendant.

Back in December, a Georgia Power representative alerted Mediacom about unauthorized equipment placed on a utility pole. When Mike Donalson, Mediacom’s regional security manager arrived at the location off McCollum Drive in Albany, he was surprised to discover a residential Mediacom cable modem powered by a standard car battery sealed in a weatherproof enclosure. Tracking the wiring that exited the box, Donalson eventually found himself at the front door of Addtran Logistics, Inc.

Mediacom immediately launched an investigation and discovered that L2Networks had allegedly contracted with Addtran to provide Internet service. Mediacom alleges in its lawsuit L2 provided the service through a cable modem originally assigned to Beahn’s mother-in-law for residential broadband service at her home.

The company called the Dougherty County Police Department, who arrested Beahn on felony charges for theft of service.

Mediacom is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in its civil suit.

Beahn first came into national prominence in May when he filed the first formal Net Neutrality complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against the Albany Water, Gas & Light Commission claiming the local authority was refusing to allow L2 employees 24-hour access to utility-owned facilities where L2 has placed equipment.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFXL Albany Mediacom Files Suit Against L2 6-8-12.flv[/flv]

WFXL in Albany, Ga. reports L2 Networks is headed to court to face charges it used to a Mediacom residential cable modem to deliver business class service under L2’s name.  (1 minute)

When the Oasis Therapeutic Foster Care Network in Albany, Ohio opened their April bill from Frontier Communications, they had the shock of their lives.

It totaled $177, 423.

The multi-page phone bill had pages of international calls, all to the same number in Taiwan, most lasting 120 minutes.  A two hour phone call to Taiwan runs Frontier customers $607.20 each, and with more than 450 calls listed on April 22, the agency’s bill ran up fast.

A subsequent bill added another $16,000 in calls to Taiwan the first day of the next billing cycle.

Kay Wheeler, the administrator of the non-profit care network, said that phone bill could have put the agency in financial peril. Oasis almost never makes international calls, and their usual bill runs an average of $250 a month.

Frontier, to its credit noticed the unusual calls, many of which ran simultaneously on that single evening in April, and was able to eventually block them. Frontier also called the agency alerting them to the unusual calls, but that did not stop the company from initially billing Oasis nearly $194,000.

Frontier initially told Wheeler they were willing to negotiate the long distance charges down to $3,000, but the company later credited the non-profit the entire amount.

The company suspects the PBX business phone system Oasis uses was hacked. The system, installed by a third party provider, still had its default password in place. With that password, a hacker could reprogram the phone system in a myriad of ways, including diverting calls abroad.

Unfortunately for Wheeler, and other business customers that wish to avoid international long distance fraud, blocking calls to international numbers does not come free. The price of peace of mind with an international call block: $195.

Wheeler considers it a small price to pay to prevent fraud like this from happening again, but Jim Barnet, a Stop the Cap! reader in Ohio who shared the story, wonders why anyone needs to charge such a high amount to block potentially fraudulent calls.

“It’s a software block, enabled with a few commands on their computer, and it stops fraudulent long distance calls Frontier often has to eat,” Barnet writes. “So why in the world discourage business customers from signing up with a ridiculous $200 fee?”

Frontier has released a comprehensive guide to help companies avoid this kind of fraud.

[flv width=”640″ height=”358″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ONN Fraudulent Bill 6-19-12.f4v[/flv]

The Ohio News Network covered the enormous phone bill and talked with Frontier Communications about how this kind of calling fraud happens.  (2 minutes)

Time Warner Cable and other Texas cable operators are now free from their obligations to Texas towns and cities after winning a victory by default in the U.S. Supreme Court that invalidates local cable franchise agreements across the state.

By refusing the hear a case filed by the Texas Public Utility Commission, the court let stand a lower court ruling that found Texas franchise laws discriminated against cable operators by holding them to local agreements its competitors never had to sign.

At the behest of AT&T, in 2005 the Texas state legislature passed a statewide franchise law that would allow the phone company to apply at the state level for permission to operate its U-verse cable system anywhere in Texas. But the law also compelled incumbent cable operators to remain committed to their existing local franchise agreements until they expired.

The Texas Cable Association, a statewide cable lobbying group, and Time Warner Cable filed suit in federal court challenging the law, winning their case when it reached a federal appears court in New Orleans. The appeals court judge ruled the Texas law discriminated against “a small and identifiable number of cable providers.”

Under the court’s ruling, Time Warner and other cable operators are free to tear up their franchise agreements in cities like Irving, Dallas, and Corpus Christi. In practical terms, the court ruling could allow cable operators to stop supporting local public, educational, and government access channels, reduce franchise fee payments to local communities, and stop providing discounted service to public institutions.

The “statewide video franchise” is a concept heavily pushed by both AT&T and Verizon because it reduces the number of communities phone companies have to negotiate with to provide video service. It also allows company lobbyists to specifically target a handful of state officials that end up with the responsibility of monitoring cable systems in the state. That is much easier to manage than dealing with dozens, if not hundreds, of individual community governments to win permission to serve different areas on different terms.

Unfortunately, critics contend the agreements remove local control and oversight of cable operations, and also cuts into franchise fee payments to local communities, because many states routinely keep up to half of all franchise fees for state government coffers.

The cable operators involved in the case did not blame the state for the provision in the law that kept them “hobbled” under their pre-existing local franchise agreements. Their court papers instead put the blame at the feet of lobbyists for AT&T, which they say has continued to heavily lobby officials to enact policies that disadvantage cable companies like Time Warner Cable in Texas.