Amazon.com today unveiled a new personal online file storage service allowing customers to access and stream up to 5GB of their music collection to their Android phones, tablets, or personal computers for free.

The new suite of services includes Amazon Cloud Drive, an online file storage locker which holds the files, Amazon Cloud Player for Web, a web-based player that accesses MP3 files stored on a customer’s cloud drive, and Amazon Cloud Player for Android, which delivers streams over a wireless broadband connection to an Android-based wireless device.

“We’re excited to take this leap forward in the digital experience,” said Bill Carr, vice president of Movies and Music at Amazon. “The launch of Cloud Drive, Cloud Player for Web and Cloud Player for Android eliminates the need for constant software updates as well as the use of thumb drives and cables to move and manage music.”

“Our customers have told us they don’t want to download music to their work computers or phones because they find it hard to move music around to different devices,” Carr said. “Now, whether at work, home, or on the go, customers can buy music from Amazon MP3, store it in the cloud and play it anywhere.”

Apple's MobileMe service will likely need to dramatically cut prices to compete with Amazon's new cloud storage service.

Those with established Amazon accounts will find their Cloud Drive already activated and ready to store up to 5GB of files.  Customers who buy a digital MP3 album from Amazon will automatically get a free upgrade to 20GB of storage space for the first year.

Those looking for more than 20GB of online storage can purchase it for $1/GB per year, up to 1TB per account.

Although the service was intended mostly as an MP3 storage locker, any file can be saved to a customer’s Cloud Drive, which uses Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).  This means the Cloud Drive could be used to store videos, documents, or even system backups.

“Free” is a good deal for consumers.  Competitor Dropbox only gives out 2GB and Apple’s MobileMe charges a comparatively overpriced $99 a year for 20GB of combined email and file storage and 200GB of monthly data transfer.  Amazon does not limit data transfers.

Online cloud storage moves files off of individual hard drives and makes them available online for immediate access, anywhere.  But Internet Overcharging schemes mean consumers will face the potential of dramatically higher broadband bills if they use these services, which are extremely data intensive.  Using Amazon’s MP3 storage and streaming service is unlikely to put a customer past their usage limit on home broadband accounts, but using the service for regular file backups could.  Usage-capped broadband and so-called “usage-based billing” threatens the viability of business plans that require consumers to use their broadband accounts to send and receive substantial amounts of data.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Amazon Cloud Player.mp4[/flv]

Amazon.com introduces its new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.  (2 minutes)

Bill Shock

Time Warner Cable has redefined bill shock for two of their customers this week as an Ohio man found the cable company trying to bill his credit card $16 million dollars and the Madison County, Ky., Board of Education found their broadband rate going up as much as 1,568 percent.

One of these was a mistake, the other represents a potential nightmare.

Lt. Daniel DeVirgilio received notification from Time Warner Cable his credit card didn’t have a big enough credit limit to sustain the $16,409,107 in charges the cable company tried to get authorized.  The Beavercreek, Ohio resident was taking the billing foul-up in stride, joking with the Dayton Daily News that he probably should have gotten Showtime thrown in at those prices.

Time Warner Cable Southwest Ohio officials on Thursday attributed the $16.4 million figure to human error, according to the newspaper. An employee typed in the wrong number for the amount owed, which caused the company’s automated system to generate the letter.

Unfortunately for DeVirgilio, Time Warner left him on hold for nearly 40 minutes trying to straighten out the billing mess.  No harm was ultimately done to his credit card, but the 26 year old remains concerned Time Warner could have reported the “delinquent” charge to credit reporting agencies.

Madison County, Ky.

The relatively painless resolution DeVirgilio got in Ohio is unlikely to repeated for school officials in Kentucky, reeling from news Time Warner Cable is demanding an enormous rate increase for Madison County Schools’ fiber optic-based broadband network.

The Richmond Register reports local officials were stunned when the cable operator refused to renew their existing contract, which provides service at a cost of $32,000 a year to county residents.  The cable operator instead announced it wanted the school system to pay at least 500 percent more to continue the same level of service in 2011 and beyond: $168,000 a year for county taxpayers with a five year term commitment.

School officials discovered Time Warner Cable was the only provider in the region capable of delivering the type of service the school system requires, and that has given the cable company a safe position to raise prices — dramatically.

Even worse, the Kentucky Department of Education informed the district it could not agree to a five year term even if it wanted to.  Year-by-year service was the only way forward, according to county officials.

In response, Time Warner jacked up the price again — this time by 1,568 percent, potentially costing Madison County taxpayers a whopping $504,000 annually.  Telephone ratepayers will also deliver a piece of their monthly phone bill to the cable operator from Universal Service Funds that will be diverted to cover at least another $750,000 in fees sought for an annual contract.

“It’s been a very frustrating situation from the beginning,” Superintendent Tommy Floyd told the newspaper. “This makes it very difficult for us to continue our ongoing commitment to serve children. I’m going to continue on behalf of Madison County Schools to find the lowest cost provider of services.”

Time Warner also knows time is running out for the school district.  The county must sign a new contract by June 30th or lose its fiber network.  That could be a disaster for the school district.

“We use [the network] all day long in each of our buildings,” Floyd said.

State officials wrote a letter to Time Warner Cable demanding an explanation for the rate increase and stating it was unacceptable.

The state and school officials are still waiting for a response from the cable company, which so far has yet to respond.

[Updated 11:30am ET:  Stop the Cap! received a response yesterday afternoon from Cynthia Godby, Communications Manager for Time Warner Cable in Cincinnati.  In the cause of fairness, and with her permission, we are including her response in full, below:]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper

The Conservative government of Stephen Harper technically fell Friday after a no-confidence motion organized by opposition parties forced Canada’s leader to dissolve Parliament Sunday.  Harper announced new elections will be held May 2nd.

While broadband was certainly not a key issue in the take-down of the government, the forthcoming preoccupation with elections comes at the same time the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is revisiting its earlier decision about usage-based billing, dealing with conflicts over increased competition in the wireless market, and fielding controversy over the agency’s newest commissioner and vice-chair.

The government’s latest pick for the CRTC, the eminently unqualified (but well-connected) former politician/talk show host-turned regulator Tom Pentefountas, is scheduled to take his seat at the Commission this April.  The “Pentefountas Matter” threatens to become a political sideshow here in Ottawa as opposition parties feast on a host of missteps from the former president of Action Démocratique du Québec, a Quebec political party that some have called a Francophone ‘mini-me’ version of the Tories inside Quebec.

“Here is a man who comes to a broadband and telecommunications regulatory body with just one telecom qualification on his resume — he was a radio talk show host,” shares François Dumont, a Stop the Cap! reader in Montreal.  “UBB (usage based billing) to this man could be a brand of suntan lotion.  In America, it would be like naming Rush Limbaugh to the FCC.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus, one of Canada’s most vocal, pro-consumer critics of the Conservative Party’s ‘corporate agenda-meets-federal policies’ dismissed Pentefountas as an unqualified mess who lacks credentials for the post and won it only through his friendship with Conservative Senator Leo Housakos and Dimitri Soudas, Prime Minister Harper’s spokesman.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Charlie Angus Pentefountas Affair.flv[/flv]

Charlie Angus on the attack during Question Time in Parliament over the appointment of Tom Pentefountas.  (4 minutes)

Pentefountas made matters worse for himself this week when he declared he deserved to be vice-chair of the CRTC because he “earned it.”

Charlie Angus (NDP)

That reasoning has not impressed Angus, or some members of Canada’s Liberal party, who accuse the government of cronyism for appointing an unqualified candidate to the CRTC as the agency is mired in controversy and generates headlines in the media with every policy decision.  Angus isn’t even sure if Pentefountas even formally applied for the job.  When asked, Pentefountas would only say he “expressed an interest.”

Now, members of several opposition parties are calling on the Conservatives to fire Pentefountas before he gets the keys to his office.

Meanwhile, the CRTC continues to dig in its heels about the parameters of the review of its earlier decisions about usage-based billing.

With the applause of telecom business interests in Canada, the Commission has already fixed the future review around its own preconception of the “facts” about UBB:

The two guiding principles for the review are that “ordinary consumers served by small Internet service providers should not have to fund the bandwidth used by the heaviest retail Internet service consumers”; and that “it is in the best interest of consumers that Small ISPs, which offer competitive alternatives to the incumbent carriers, should continue to do so.”

The agency plans hearings for July, but few broadband observers expect the Commission will depart much from its original conclusion Canadians need to pay significantly higher broadband bills for the good of the providers delivering the service.  Industry Minister Tony Clement continues his efforts to soothe angry Canadian consumers with a promise to overturn the agency’s decision if it continues to give a thumbs-up to UBB.  But government critics say the mandate given to the CRTC is the real problem — so long as the Conservatives insist the CRTC take a deregulatory approach to telecommunications, the longer the green light on higher prices and less competition will continue to shine.

With most observers predicting the Conservatives are on track to win the spring elections, it is unlikely any major changes in telecom policy are forthcoming.  Technology columnist Michael Geist suggests voters across Canada can upset conventional wisdom by making telecom issues a major focus of the forthcoming campaign, urging candidates to “vote for the Internet,” supporting consumer-friendly positions like a rejection of UBB and embracing forward-looking broadband policies.

Paul-Andre Dechêne is Stop the Cap!’s correspondent based in Ottawa, Ontario.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Charlie Angus on UBB.flv[/flv]

Charlie Angus in another exchange in Parliament with Industry Minister Tony Clement over the issue of usage-based billing.  (2 minutes)

AT&T’s support forums are being censored to stop a free and open discussion about the company’s elimination of an unlimited Internet experience.

We received word this morning from Stop the Cap! reader Roger, who tried to post a message including a link back to one of our stories exposing the myth of AT&T’s “congestion problems” to share with the large community of readers angry with AT&T about its Internet Overcharging scheme on its support forum.

“AT&T will not allow people to post links to your website,” Roger writes.  “Both myself and a friend of mine tried on two separate occasions to write messages that quoted from your facts and figures and linked back to them for readers looking for additional information, and AT&T removed them within minutes.”

Stop the Cap! can confirm AT&T is actively engaged in censorship on its support forum when I tried posting a message myself to test the theory, under my real name, including three links to three individual stories, and signed with a link back to our website’s home page.  Sure enough, within the hour, AT&T stripped out the links and implied we “revealed personal information” (about myself in the form of my name, which still appears as my ‘handle’) and were “spamming” the forum — a stretch when the only links were back to the content referenced in the piece.  A few other linked sites, including Broadband Reports, are not suffering the same fate when users link back to their content, at least for now.

(click to enlarge)

AT&T followed up claiming it does not allow messages that support the work of third-party groups, even if that “support” comes only from links back to content referenced in the forum.

“At least your message remained partially intact,” Roger adds.  “Ours were deleted completely.”

“With AT&T’s heavy handed ‘editors’ at work, no wonder there are concerns about Net Neutrality.  AT&T censors first, asks questions later.”

Q.  What moves faster than North Carolina’s cable and DSL service?

A.  Legislation to make sure the state’s telecom companies can continue to provide slow, expensive, and hit or miss service for years to come.

Big Telecom money has greased the process as H.129, the Telecom Monopoly Preservation and Protection Act is rushed to the House floor before North Carolina consumers know what is happening.

Residents have until Monday evening at 7pm to make their feelings known on this anti-consumer nightmare for cities and small towns:

• H.129 will shut down the digital economies of small cities like Wilson and Salisbury just as they are primed to sell themselves as a great home for high-tech, high-paying jobs.
• H.129 guarantees rural North Carolina will resemble the 21st century equivalent of Oliver Twist — begging for whatever limited broadband the state’s phone companies refuse to deliver.

The appalling truth is that the companies pushing for this bill only want broadband service on their watch, under their control, with their high prices and virtually no competition or choice.  And now AT&T is prepared to limit your broadband usage as well, establishing usage caps and overcharging customers who exceed them.

Do you want your broadband choices limited to these phone and cable companies?  Considering North Carolina broadband is ranked 41st out of the 50 states, it’s clear they don’t consider the state a priority.

But it does not have to be this way.  Where providers drop the ball, communities should have the choice to pick it up and run with it.  That is what Wilson and Salisbury did, and the result is the best broadband service in the state.  That’s a threat Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink can’t afford to ignore, which is why they want these networks stopped at all costs.

Defeating H.129 is critical to the state’s broadband future.  As written, it delivers no new broadband connections, does not promote or provide any competition, or help any individual or community.  It was written by the state’s telecom companies to benefit them, and them alone.  It guarantees you will be stuck paying ever-increasing bills for limited service indefinitely.

Tell House members they must do what is right for the voters, not what is right for the cable and phone companies.  Tell them to VOTE NO ON H.129.  The broadband saved may be your own.

You can find your individual representative and their contact information below the jump.  Please get writing and calling today!

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