Don't bother.

Cox’s ambitious plans to get into the cell phone business were already tempered by the cable company’s decision last spring to simply resell Sprint service under the Cox name.  Now it’s “game over” as the company today quietly stopped signing up new customers and will pull the plug on existing ones March 30, 2012.

Those customers already signed up for Cox’s “unbelievably fair” cell service will officially become Sprint customers next April.

In a confidential memo obtained by Engadget, Cox executives ultimately decided it didn’t make sense for the company to invest in a limited range 3G cellular network.

Cox’s plans to utilize the 700MHz wireless spectrum it acquired in 2008 for 3G-powered wireless service began to go wrong almost from inception.  The wireless business is increasingly in the hands of two super-sized companies, thanks to ongoing mergers and acquisitions.  That leaves smaller, regional companies at a competitive disadvantage unless they heavily discount service.  While Cox was contemplating its first 3G network, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint were well on the way to launching next generation 4G service that would have left Cox behind.

Cox itself is a regularly-rumored takeover target, likely by Time Warner Cable.  No cable industry buyer has much interest in a cell phone service.  Shedding it could make the company more attractive for would-be suitors.

Engadget reader Sal Petrarca observed:

“I always thought it ironic when I [heard Cox’s radio ad asking customers] ‘You wouldn’t order cable from the phone company, would you?’ I guess no one is going to be ordering [cell] phones from the cable company now, eh?”

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission late Tuesday ruled against a revised proposal from Bell that could have effectively ended flat rate Internet service across the country, but also allows the phone company to raise wholesale prices for independent Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The Commission ruled Bell and cable companies like Rogers must sell access to third party providers at a flat rate or priced on speed and the number of users sharing the connection.  The CRTC rejected a Bell-proposed usage-based pricing scheme that would have charged independent ISPs $0.178/GB.

Ultimately, the CRTC came down closest to adopting a proposal from Manitoba-based MTS Allstream, which suggested a variant on speed-based pricing, steering clear of charging based on usage.  Under the CRTC ruling, independent ISPs can purchase unlimited wholesale access based on different speed tiers.  The new pricing formula requires independent providers to carefully gauge their usage when choosing an appropriate amount of bandwidth.  If an independent ISP misjudges how much usage their collective customer base consumes during the month, they could overpay for unused capacity or underestimate usage, leaving customers with congested-related slowdowns.  ISPs will be able to purchase regular capacity upgrades in 100Mbps increments to keep up with demand.  They can also implement network management techniques which may discourage heavy use during peak usage.

The CRTC decision underscores that Internet pricing should be based on speed, not on the volume of data consumed by customers.  That’s a model Stop the Cap! strongly approves because it does not allow providers to monetize broadband usage.

Finkenstein

But that is where the good news ends.  Nothing in the CRTC ruling changes the Internet Overcharging regime already in place at the country’s leading service providers.  Companies like Bell and Rogers are free to continue setting arbitrary limits on usage and charging overlimit fees for those who exceed them.

Konrad von Finckenstein, chair of the CRTC, says the regulator made a mistake in deciding last year to allow Bell to raise its prices for independent service providers.

“Our original decision was clearly not the best one. It was wrong and it was pointed out by a lot of people, including Minister Clement. He was right. We have today fixed it, we have made this new decision,” von Finckenstein said. “The bottom line is that you as a consumer will not face a cap or limitation of use because of anything mandated by the CRTC. Any kind of cap or limit, payment per use, that you will have to pay is because your ISP decides to charge you, not because we mandate it.”

But many independent providers are unhappy with the CRTC ruling because it also allows wholesale providers like Bell to raise prices, sometimes substantially, on the bandwidth they sell.

One independent ISP — TekSavvy, said it faced increased connectivity costs in eastern Canada.

“The CRTC decision is a step back for consumers. The rates approved by the Commission today will make it much harder for independent ISPs to compete”, said TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault. “This is an unfortunate development for telecommunications competition in Canada,” he added.

“Rates are going up,” added Bill Sandiford, president of Telnet Communications and of the Canadian Network Operators Consortium, an independent ISP association.

In addition to whatever rate increases eventually make their way to consumers, some independent providers may end up adopting network management and usage cap policies that attempt to slow down the rate at which they are forced to commit to bandwidth upgrades.  That’s because providers purchase capacity based on what they believe their peak usage rate is likely to be.  Providers will be free to upgrade service in 100Mbps increments.  But with the new, higher prices, providers could overspend on capacity that goes unused or find themselves underestimating usage, creating congestion-related slowdowns for all of their customers.

Angus

Some network management techniques that could reduce peak usage — and the need for upgrades — include speed throttles for heavy users during peak usage times or usage caps that fall away during off-peak hours when network traffic is lower.

Yesterday’s decision will provide some small relief to wholesale buyers of bandwidth in Quebec, where’s Videotron’s sky-high wholesale prices are set to be reduced.  But the unusual divide in Internet pricing between eastern and western Canada will remain.  Western Canadians will continue to enjoy much larger usage allowances, and lower wholesale pricing, than their eastern neighbors in Ontario and Quebec.

The CRTC’s ruling did not go far enough for NDP Digital Issues critic Charlie Angus. Angus notes only 6 percent of Canadians purchase Internet service from independent providers.  The rest will still be stuck with what he calls “unfair billing practices and bandwidth caps.”

Angus is convinced the CRTC just gave the green light to force rate hikes for the minority of consumers who found a way around companies like Bell, Shaw, Videotron, and Rogers.

“Allowing big telecom companies to reach into the pockets of struggling families and ask for even more money is just plain wrong,” Angus said.

Bell’s senior vice-president for regulatory and government affairs, Mirko Bibic, still believes the company’s proposal to charge just under 20c per gigabyte to wholesale users was appropriate, but the CRTC’s permission to allow Bell to increase wholesale rates was a nice consolation prize.  Bibic tried to frame the decision as forcing ‘independent ISPs to pay their fair share.’

Independent ISPs “are going to have to lease more traffic lanes,” he told CTV News. “I think the philosophy is [to] put the independent ISP in a position of responsibility. If usage goes up, you’re going to have to buy more lanes – it’s the same decision that we have to make.”

Days after the citizens of Longmont, Col. turned their backs on an expensive lobbying and astroturf campaigned fueled (not by choice) by Comcast ratepayers, the so-called “community activists” opposed to the community using its own fiber network as it sees fit evaporated into dust, but not before one celebrating citizen took out a giant ad in the local Times-Call newspaper:

As Christopher Mitchell from Community Broadband Networks discovered, “citizen activism” has an expiration date when the industry money stops flowing:

If there had been a shred of local legitimacy among the “Look Before We Leap” group that was run by Denver-based strategists, it probably would have kept its website up for longer than a few days after the election. If I were them, I would want to keep a record for the future.

But they don’t. Because they were just a bunch of paid public relations people working a job. They didn’t oppose Longmont’s initiative, they didn’t know anything about it. They were collecting a paycheck.

And when the money ran out, the days of their website were numbered in the single digits.  The only thing left of lookbeforeweleap.org is a cached copy courtesy of Google.  (And by the way, Squarespace, the hosting company, wants the site owner to contact them.)

Americans for Prosperty's Phil Kerpen on Glenn Beck's show opposing Net Neutrality

Comcast’s propaganda campaign fooled no one.  Borrowing from the cable industry’s bag of old tricks, Look Before We Leap conflated Longmont’s fiber optic network with a few failed Wi-Fi projects run years earlier in concert with Earthlink in other states.

The editors at Times-Call had to respect Comcast and its merry band of dollar-a-holler followers for at least being bold.  After all, they tried to convince voters “that the city having control over its own property was somehow ‘risky.‘”  But of course the cable company would prefer Longmont stay out of the comfortable duopoly it has with phone company CenturyLink.

The newspaper had little time and patience for the antics of “Americans for Prosperity” either.  The hilariously misnamed group funded by large corporations to convince people to vote against their own best interests considers Net Neutrality and community broadband self-empowerment evidence of Marxism — at least that is what policy director Phil Kerpen said on Glenn Beck’s now defunct paranoia festival on Fox News Channel.

Longmont doesn’t put out the welcome mat for corporate influence peddlers.  Voters believe local government can be an effective steward of community resources, something Comcast subscribers don’t believe applies to a cable company that shovels hundreds of channels most people never watch and expects annual rate increases to help pay for them.

Times-Call’s Tony Kindelspire:

Ask a local businessperson how Longmont having its own electric utility is working out for them. We have some of the cheapest rates in the country.

It takes leadership to stand up against big business lobbyists to act on behalf of what you think is right, not what’s going to raise you the most amount of campaign cash the next time around. How very, very refreshing it was to see, and I hope it’s a lesson that spreads far and wide.

So do we.

Last month, Stop the Cap! shared with you the inside story of the ABC Plan — a self-serving attempt by large phone companies to reform the Universal Service Fund (USF) in ways that would raise phone bills and deliver favored treatment for slow speed telephone company DSL service.  The FCC elected not to adopt the industry plan and cobbled together one of their own.  It will still raise the cost of telephone service, and likely won’t bring broadband to every rural American who wants it, but it could have been worse.

Despite the reforms, the challenges to deliver rural broadband remain serious.  In these out of the way communities, cell phone service is hit or miss, cable television is nowhere to be found, and the community looks to their independent local phone company for just about every telecommunications service they can buy.

In areas deemed unprofitable for even voice telephone service, co-op phone companies are commonplace.  So are family-owned and operated private providers.  These small providers don’t just exist to make money.  They are one-part community service, one part cover-your-costs to keep the lights on.  Without support from the USF, many of these companies could never have sustained their operations, much less expand into broadband.  So in a world of AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink, there are rural phone companies like Bevcomm, Valley Telephone Cooperative, Volcano Communications, Blackfoot, and Grand River Mutual Telephone that are expanding broadband in places larger companies would never think of serving.  While some of these companies supported the ABC Plan, the rural telephone associations that helped underwrite the Save Rural Broadband campaign also had a plan of their own to protect these small phone companies.

Over the next several days, you can get an inside look at each of these communities and the providers that serve them.  They are the rural phone companies that deliver the innovation so many larger phone companies forgot.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Save Rural Broadband California.flv[/flv]

Learn how people in Amador County, California rely on broadband services from Volcano Communications.  Cell phone service is non-existent and without telecommunications service like broadband, economic growth in the community would be seriously challenged.  (6 minutes)

Canadians will learn at 4PM whether their Internet future will be unlimited or rationed with usage-based-billing (UBB) plans that could potentially charge consumers for every website they visit.

The much-anticipated decision from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) comes months after last winter’s hearings on how Internet service is priced in Canada.  It pits the largest phone company in the country — Bell — against small independent providers that are fighting to stay in business offering customers unlimited usage plans.

Most independent Internet Service Providers in Canada ironically buy wholesale access directly from Bell.  These upstart competitors like Primus and TekSavvy deliver unlimited DSL service at attractive prices.  In fact, some Bell customers have found them attractive enough to switch providers.  Bell’s wholesale division indirectly competing with its own retail business has proved unsatisfactory to Bell management, who proposed repricing wholesale access to resemble what Bell charges its retail customers.  But more importantly, Bell would demand that their competitors impose usage-based billing themselves, which would make unlimited Internet service in Canada a thing of the past.  The CRTC initially agreed with Bell, which sparked outrage among independent providers and consumers who faced the prospect of paying inflated prices for Internet service with no unlimited usage options in sight.

The backlash brought a half-million Canadians together to demand an end to unfair Internet pricing through a petition from Openmedia.ca.  That in turn attracted the attention of Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government’s Industry Minister Tony Clement.  Clement told reporters on Feb. 3 if the CRTC didn’t reverse its approval, and fast, the government would probably overrule the commission.

A day later, outgoing CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said the commission would review its decision, the first in a series of backpedals in response to government pressure.

Even Bell, accustomed to having its way with the CRTC, has backtracked, now offering a compromise proposal that would charge independent ISPs 17.8c per gigabyte.  Many providers consider that excessive, too.

The CBC explains how Internet access is sold by independent providers in Canada.

Since the hearings, several marketplace changes have deflated some of Bell’s arguments that UBB was necessary to control over-eager users congesting their network.  Providers in western Canada — Shaw Cable and Telus, have dramatically boosted their respective usage caps, which call into question just how much of a congestion problem exists on Canada’s Internet networks.  The Canadian Network Operators Consortium, the voice of independent service providers, has offered its own proposal to charge wholesale customers based on peak network traffic.  MTS Allstream, itself a smaller player in Canadian telecom, proposed wholesale service be sold much like retail Internet in the United States — based on the speed/capacity of the service level selected.  If an ISP underpredicted usage, traffic would slow for everyone until the line was upgraded.

What ultimately gets approved by the CRTC may still be subject to government review, especially if the decision proves unpopular with consumers.  In a CBC online poll being conducted this afternoon, consumer sentiment is clear.  More than 91 percent of voters want the option of unlimited Internet access.

Whatever the CRTC decides will be reviewed by new Industry Minister Christian Paradis, who has managed to keep his head down and views to himself since he replaced Clement.  He may be hoping more than most that the CRTC will ultimately placate everyone, just so he doesn’t have to weigh in on the thorny issue.  But the CRTC’s track record representing consumers has been pretty dismal over the last few years, so we will not be surprised if the commission ultimately acquiesces to Bell’s substitute plan unaffectionately dubbed ‘GougeLite’ by Bell critics.

[flv width=”640″ height=”388″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC Internet pricing ruling expected from CRTC 11-14-11.flv[/flv]

The CBC reports on today’s expected ruling from the CRTC and what it means for Canadian Internet consumers.  (3 minutes)