Shamrock Museum

The city of Shamrock, Okla. may not be a city for much longer, facing unincorporation and liquidation of its remaining assets, which include the abandoned police cars that used to earn the city enough ticket revenue to keep the doors open.  But fast (and free at the local community center) Internet prevails (with competition, too) in a city with fewer than 100 remaining citizens.  It’s all thanks to a federal broadband grant and an existing Wireless ISP.

Shamrock’s unlucky predicament comes at the expense of the boom-and-bust oil business that launched dozens of small towns in rural Oklahoma, only to leave them largely abandoned when the oil dried up, or the cost to access it becomes too prohibitive.  Once a community numbering 10,000, Shamrock, located nearly halfway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, had recently been surviving on revenue earned from writing traffic tickets in infamous speed traps set up along Highway 16.  Shamrock, along with Big Cabin, Caney, Moffett, and Stringtown, became so notorious for their dependence on traffic ticket revenue to keep the towns afloat, at one point the state government publicly designated them “speed trap towns” and banned them from writing tickets on state and federal highways. When Creek County officials learned the city was using non-commissioned officers to write tickets, they shut down the whole operation.

Soon after, residents found the city hall padlocked, with coffee cups still on the desks and police evidence lockers still stuffed with property from active criminal cases (although seized marijuana and beer has since disappeared.)

In fact, the only service now in operation at the city hall, now converted into a “community center,” is Internet access on 10 computers made possible by @Link Services LLC, an Oklahoma City-based Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) that provides service in rural areas, with the help of a broadband grant from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

The broadband grant, amounting to $536,000, with matching funds of $134,000 kicked in by @Link, covers the costs of running the community center for two years and extending wireless access with the construction of a new wireless radio tower in Stillwater, which allows the company to reach Shamrock residents.

In addition to providing free access at the former city hall, @Link also sells Internet access to area residents (the only remaining business in town is a diner):

“This is going to be the last place anyone would provide Internet without government funding because there is no chance of turning a profit,” Kerry Conn, chief financial officer of @Link Services told The Oklahoman. “But if you don’t have Internet services, your town is going to die.”

@Link CEO Samual Curtis says their wireless Internet access sells itself.

“Broadband is a very easy sell where there is no broadband,” Curtis told the newspaper.

The only problem with that is Shamrock currently does receive service from another Wireless ISP — OnALot, a service of HDR Internet Services, Inc.  OnALot operates from 70 systems in more than 25 cities and communities across rural Oklahoma.  @Link’s arrival in town, with the assistance of a federal broadband grant, came as a surprise to some Shamrock residents who already had Internet service from OnALot.  Now those customers have two choices — both wireless — for Internet service.  OnALot, the incumbent, is often cheaper, too:

OnALot does not sell traditional speed tiers.  Instead customers share access points rated at speeds of 11 and 54Mbps.  Customers do not actually see anything close to those speeds, because they are theoretical maximums and each access point is shared by several users.  But since many residential customers do not have a firm understanding of what different speed levels represent, it has proven workable for HDR Internet to sell services based on price, not speed.

OnALot does sell dedicated, private wireless circuits to customers who don’t want to share, but they are comparatively expensive:

OnALot.com operates both standard Line-of-Sight and Near-Line-of-Sight systems on the 80' tall water tower on the west side of Shamrock.

One Oklahoman reader, Bobbi, wondered why @Link received federal grant money to provide Internet service in a community that already had access.

“Why this company didn’t do their homework before they used government money to provide a service to a town that had that service,” Bobbi asked. “Wouldn’t that be a misuse of the grant money?”

Broadband grant funding has come under criticism at times for funding projects that incumbent providers accuse of duplicating services.  A study funded by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the cable industry’s top lobbyist, found several instances of grants that would deliver broadband service to areas already served by other providers.

“While it may be too early for a comprehensive assessment of the [government]’s broadband programs, it is not too early to conclude that, at least in some cases, millions of dollars in grants and loans have been made in areas where a significant majority of households already have broadband coverage, and the costs per incremental home passed are therefore far higher than existing evidence suggests should be necessary,” the study says.

Thus far, much of the funding for rural Oklahoma seems to be directed towards wireless Internet access projects, which typically serve sparsely populated areas cable and phone companies have traditionally ignored.

The NCTA’s criticism, in particular, was directed against its would-be competitors.  The lobbying group suggests the price of competition was too high.

Based on the cost of the direct grants and subsidizing the loans, the NCTA study estimated that the cost per incremental home passed would be $30,104 if existing coverage by mobile broadband providers was ignored, and $349,234 if mobile broadband coverage was taken into account.

Wireless ISP operators have told Stop the Cap! many of their projects are self-financed and do not receive government assistance.  Some WISP operators have accused the government of making broadband grants to wireless operators a cumbersome, if not impossible prospect because incumbent telephone companies are often most likely to meet the government’s grant criteria.

For Shamrock residents, one piece of good news: @Link Services and OnALot both have no Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps.  However, OnALot prohibits the use of peer-to-peer software (torrents) and @Link Services maintains the right to curtail speeds for those who create problems for other users on their shared wireless network.

OnALot’s usage policies are among the most frank (and common sense) we’ve seen, because they are up front with customers about the impact certain traffic can have on their wireless network:

1. You are paying us to download from the Internet. We do not limit you on that. You can download anything you want 24/7. Games, email, web pages, radio stations, and so on – we don’t care, downloading is what you are paying us for. That said, we would prefer that you do not leave an active game un-attended, or run a radio station continuously, as these eat up bandwidth that others could be using. When you’re done with your game, please turn it off.
2. We do have restrictions when it comes to uploading TO the Internet. P2P or Peer-to-Peer programs are NOT allowed. These limitations apply primarily to file sharing programs. We do NOT allow music or video sharing programs, bit torrent programs or other programs where outside users can extract files from your computer with or without your express consent. And seriously, do you actually WANT others to have full access to your computer? That’s what you’re giving to file sharing programs! Please call us if you are unsure if the program you are using is a file sharing program.
3. Yes, you can upload to your favorite website, send big emails, and transfer any size files that are under your control. That’s OK with us – these are intermittent in nature and under your full control. It’s the unattended uploading that sharing programs do that we do not allow.
4. If your computer has a virus and is “spewing” out onto the Internet, we expect you to have it cleaned. Causing others to become infected is wrong, and we may take steps to disable your Internet connection. We will call you first, explain what is going on and ask that you have your machine cleaned. If you decide not to do this, we will then cut you off until you do.

The Chicago Tribune‘s advocacy for the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile leaves the facts far behind, and raises questions about just how much the newspaper understands about telecommunications company mergers.

In this morning’s edition, the newspaper claims efforts by the Justice Department to block the merger will “slow [wireless] progress to a crawl.” That’s a half-baked conclusion, considering AT&T’s own accidentally-public internal documents reveal a willingness to spend $39 billion on a merger while balking at spending one-tenth of that amount to upgrade its own 4G network.  The injury to rural America the Tribune fears most was self-inflicted by AT&T even before the merger was announced.

Access to advanced wireless Internet is the key. A merger of AT&T and T-Mobile would bring an under-served swath of America into the 21st century of high-speed mobile data communication. Much like the rural electrification movement of the 1930s, this deal offers a chance for many Americans to leap ahead technologically.

If Justice gets its way, progress will slow to a crawl. We think the FCC should approve the merger after obtaining appropriate concessions — and Justice should settle its case sooner, not later. Dragging out this proceeding stands to hurt a nation that can ill afford more damage from a government too often hostile to business interests.

Evidently the editorial writers at the Tribune have been drinking AT&T’s Kool-Aid.  There is more to see here than AT&T’s advocacy kit, if one is willing to look beyond lucrative, saturation advertising campaigns and lobbying.

The government got the bright idea of helping wire rural America for electricity when commercial providers refused.

AT&T’s own merger announcement spoke glowingly of the “increased efficiencies” a more concentrated wireless marketplace will deliver, but said very little to investors about T-Mobile’s cellular network being the key to unlock rural wireless.  The reason is simple: T-Mobile doesn’t have a rural wireless network.  In fact, T-Mobile’s long-standing focus on urban markets means considerable duplication of resources in medium and large cities — resources that might help reduce the number of dropped calls in cities like New York, Chicago or San Francisco, but hardly a boon for residents of Ottumwa, Iowa, who barely get a signal today from AT&T, much less T-Mobile.

We agree with the Tribune editors when they say improved advanced wireless Internet is important to rural America. But nothing within AT&T’s massive document dump guarantees rural 4G service, especially after four national companies judged it didn’t make much business sense.  Three national carriers hardly strengthens the case.  In fact, investors will expect AT&T to use precisely the same Return on Investment-formulas that have always ruled rural 4G wireless out of bounds.

The Tribune forgets rural electrification came in spite of private power companies, who viciously opposed government electrification projects (unless they benefited from them).  The reason rural Americans went without electrical service until the late 1930s was the same reason rural Iowa doesn’t have lightning-fast 4G service — it doesn’t make much business sense to provide it.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared electricity an essential utility service every American should be able to access at a fair price, government resources picked up where Wall Street left off — financing electric generation projects and encouraging the development of power cooperatives and municipal utilities. It often took more than 20 years to pay off the costs of the infrastructure — at a price (and wait) unwilling to be covered by giant power companies like Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison at the time.

It’s much the same story for AT&T today.  The enormous telecommunications company was provided an estimate of $4 billion to upgrade its network to 4G service nationwide.  Company executives refused, suggesting the time required to recoup that investment was too far out for their tastes.  But a $39 billion dollar merger with T-Mobile, despite the much higher price tag, delivers immediate benefits they can take to the bank: decreased competition and pricing innovation.  T-Mobile delivers both on its own, and even in fourth place influenced the service plans and pricing at other wireless carriers.  By eliminating that competition, the pressure to reduce prices or enhance service is diminished.  The ability to raise prices, or reduce the number of services, is enhanced.

Astonishingly, the Tribune writers completely ignore the biggest reason why AT&T cannot afford to slow progress to a crawl.  Its name is Verizon Wireless, and AT&T ignores its own network at its peril.  That’s why competition, even from America’s #4 carrier, remains critically important.

While the Chicago Tribune seems comfortable rallying for the cause of one of their advertisers — a multi-billion dollar corporation it sees as a victim of government “anti-business” hostility, we’re more concerned about protecting American wireless consumers from the results of AT&T’s efforts to cut competition (and consumer-friendly services) to a bare minimum.  AT&T’s carrot is the illusory promise of enhanced wireless service in rural communities the company routinely ignores.  The Justice Department, thankfully, prefers the stick — recognizing an anti-competitive, anti-trust feeding frenzy when it sees one, and is correct when it gives it a good whack.

So who is for the ABC Plan?  Primarily phone companies, their business partners, and dollar-a-holler astroturf friends:

American Consumer Institute:  SourceWatch called them a telecom industry-backed astroturf group.  Karl Bode from Broadband Reports discovered “the institute’s website is registered to ‘Stephen Pociask, a telecom consultant and former chief economist for Bell Atlantic [today Verizon].”  The group, claiming to focus “on economic policy issues that affect society as a whole,” spends an inordinate amount of its time on telecommunications hot button issues, especially AT&T and Verizon’s favorites: cable franchise reform and opposition to Net Neutrality.

Anna Marie Kovacs:  Determining what is good for Wall Street is her business, as founder and President of Regulatory Source Associates, LLC. RSA provides investment professionals with analysis of federal and state regulation of the telecom and cable industries.

Dollar-a-holler support?

Consumer Awareness Project: A relatively new entrant, CAP is AT&T’s new darling — a vocal advocate for AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile.  But further digging revealed more: the “group” is actually a project of Washington, D.C. lobbying firm Consumer Policy Solutions, which includes legislative and regulatory advocacy work and implementation of grassroots mobilization.

That is the very definition of interest group-“astroturf.”

Randolph May from the Free State Foundation supports "state's rights," but many of them want no part of a plan his group supports.

Free State Foundation: A misnamed conservative, “states rights” group.  Leader Randolph May loves the ABC Plan, despite the fact several individual states are asking the FCC not to impose it on them.

Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership:  Whatever Verizon and AT&T want, HTTP is also for.  The group was embroiled in controversy over its unflinching opposition to Net Neutrality and love for the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.  Its member groups, including MANA and LULAC, are frequent participants in AT&T’s dollar-a-holler lobbying endeavors.

Robert J. Shapiro: Wrote an article for Huffington Post calling the ABC Plan worth consideration.  Also worth mentioning is the fact he is now chairman of what he calls an “economic advisory firm,” which the rest of the world calls a run-of-the-mill D.C. lobbyist firm — Sonecon.  It comes as no surprise AT&T is a client.  In his spare time, Shapiro also writes reports advocating Internet Overcharging consumers for their broadband service.

Indiana Exchange Carrier Association: A lobbying group representing rural Indiana telephone companies, primarily owned by TDS Telecom.  It’s hardly a surprise the companies most likely to benefit from the ABC Plan would be on board with their support.

Indiana Telecommunications Association: A group of 40 telephone companies serving the state of Indiana.  For the aforementioned reasons, it’s no surprise ITA supports the ABC Plan.

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation:  Reuters notes this group received financial support from telecommunications companies, so lining up behind a plan those companies favor comes as little surprise.  ITIF also believes usage caps can deter piracy, so they’re willing to extend themselves way out in order to sell the telecom industry’s agenda.

Internet Innovation Alliance:  Another group backed by AT&T, IIA also funds Nemertes Research, the group that regularly predicts Internet brownouts and data tsunamis, which also hands out awards to… AT&T and Verizon.

The Indiana Exchange Carrier Assn. represents the phone companies that will directly benefit from the adoption of the ABC Plan.

Bret Swanson:  He penned a brief note of support on his personal blog.  When not writing that, Swanson’s past work included time at the Discovery Institute, a “research group” that delivers paid, “credentialed” reports to telecommunications company clients who waive them before Congress to support their positions.  Swanson is a “Visiting Fellow” at Arts+Labs/Digital Society, which counted as its “partners” AT&T and Verizon.

Minority Media & Telecom Council: Tries to go out of its way to deny being affiliated or “on the take” of telecom companies, but did have to admit in a blog posting it takes money from big telecom companies for “conference sponsorships.”  Some group members appear frequently at industry panel discussions, and mostly advocate AT&T’s various positions, including strong opposition to reclassify broadband as a utility service.

MMTC convened a Broadband and Social Justice Summit earlier this year that featured a range of speakers bashing Net Neutrality, and the group’s biggest highlighted media advisory on its website as of this date is its support for the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.  Yet group president David Honig claims he can’t understand why some consumer groups would suspect groups like his of engaging in dollar-a-holler advocacy, telling The Hill, “We’ve seen no examples of reputable organizations that do things because of financial contributions. It’s wrong to suggest such things.”

Mobile Future: Sponsored by AT&T, Mobile Future curiously also includes some of AT&T’s best friends, including the Asian Business Association, LULAC, MANA, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Montana Independent Telecommunications Systems: Primarily a group for Montana’s independent telephone companies, who will benefit enormously from the ABC Plan.

What major corporate entity does not belong to this enormous advocacy group?

The National Grange:  A group with a long history advocating for the interests of telephone companies.  Over the years, the National Grange has thrown its view in on Verizon vs. the RIAA, a request for Congress to support industry friendly legislation, a merger between Verizon and NorthPoint Communications, and USF issues.

The Keep USF Fair Coalition was formed in April 2004. Current members include Alliance for Public Technology, Alliance For Retired Americans, American Association Of People With Disabilities, American Corn Growers Association, American Council of the Blind, California Alliance of Retired Americans, Consumer Action, Deafness Research Foundation, Gray Panthers, Latino Issues Forum, League Of United Latin American Citizens, Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, National Association Of The Deaf, National Consumers League, National Grange, National Hispanic Council on Aging, National Native American Chamber of Commerce, The Seniors Coalition, Utility Consumer Action Network, Virginia Citizen’s Consumer Council and World Institute On Disability. DSL Prime helps explain the membership roster.

Taxpayers Protection Alliance:  One of the tea party groups, TPA opposes higher USF fees on consumers.  The ABC Plan website had to tread carefully linking to this single article favorable to their position.  Somehow, we think it’s unlikely the group will link to the TPA’s louder voice demanding an end to broadband stimulus funding many ABC Plan backers crave.

TechAmerica: Guess who is a member?  AT&T, of course.  So is Verizon.  And CenturyLink.  TechAmerica call themselves “the industry’s largest advocacy organization and is dedicated to helping members’ top and bottom lines.”  (Consumers not included.)

Tennessee Telecommunications Association: TTA’s independent phone company members stand to gain plenty if the ABC Plan is enacted, so they are happy to lend their support.

Rep. Terry's two biggest contributors are CenturyLink and Qwest.

Representative Greg Walden (R-Oregon):  His top five contributors are all telecommunications companies, including CenturyLink, Pine Telephone, and Qwest.  He also gets money from AT&T and Verizon.  It’s no surprise he’s a supporter: “We are encouraged by the growing consensus among stakeholders as developed in the ‘America’s Broadband Connectivity Plan’ filed with the Federal Communications Commission today, and we hope that consensus will continue to grow.”

Representative Lee Terry (R-Nebraska): He co-signed Rep. Walden’s statement.  Rep. Terry’s two biggest contributors are Qwest and CenturyLink.  Now that CenturyLink owns Qwest, it’s two-campaign-contributions-in-one.  And yes, he gets a check from AT&T, too.

Representative Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana): “Today’s filing of the ‘America’s Broadband Connectivity Plan’ is welcomed input on the intercarrier compensation and Universal Service Fund reform front,” Scalise said.  Now Scalise is ready to welcome this year’s campaign contribution from AT&T, which he has not yet reportedly received.  In 2008, Scalise received $13,250.  In 2010, $10,000.  This cycle, so far he has only been able to count on Verizon, which threw $2,500 his way.  Scalise voted earlier this year to overturn the FCC’s authority to enact Net Neutrality.

USTelecom Association: The only news here would be if USTA opposed the ABC Plan.  Included on USTA’s board of directors are company officials from: Frontier Communications, AT&T, CenturyLink/Qwest, Windstream, FairPoint Communications, and Verizon.  That’s everyone.

Wisconsin State Telecommunications Association:  Their active members, including Frontier Communications, are all telephone companies inside Wisconsin that will directly benefit if the ABC Plan is enacted.

A new proposal from the nation’s six largest telephone companies would double or triple Universal Service Fund (USF) fees on many telephone lines, extending them to wireless, broadband-based phones, cable TV “digital phone” products, and potentially even Internet accounts, providing billions from consumers for the companies proposing the plan.

Universal Service Fund reform has been a hot topic this year in Washington, as regulators attempt to reform a long-standing program designed to help keep rural landline telephone service affordable, subsidized with small charges levied on customer phone bills that range between $1-3 dollars, depending on the size of your community.

The original goals of the USF have largely been achieved, and with costs dropping to provide telephone service, and ancillary services like broadband DSL opening the door to new revenue streams, some rural phone companies don’t need the same level of support they received in earlier years.  As a result, USF funds have progressively been disbursed to an increasing number of projects that have little to do with rural phone service.  Several funding scandals over the past decade have underlined the need for USF reform, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has been a strong advocate for directing an increasing amount of USF resources towards rural broadband deployment projects.

But now some of America’s largest phone companies want to establish their own vision for a future USF — one that preserves existing funding for rural phone service –and– levies new fees on ratepayers to support broadband expansion.

The ABC Plan's chief sponsors are AT&T...

America’s Broadband Connectivity Plan (ABC), proposed jointly by AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Windstream, Frontier Communications and FairPoint Communications, departs markedly from Genachowski’s vision for a revised USF that would not increase the overall size of the Fund or its cost to consumers.

That’s why some ratepayer consumer groups and utility regulators have taken a dim view on the phone companies’ plan.

Colleen Harrell, assistant general counsel to the Kansas Corporation Commission says customers would find USF fees doubling, if not tripling on their home phone bills under ABC.  That could mean charges of $6 or more per month per phone line.

While the plan substantially benefits the companies that propose it, critics say ABC will do little to enhance service for ordinary consumers.  In fact, some language in the proposal could open the door for landline companies to discontinue universal landline service, a long time goal of AT&T.

In fact, protection for incumbent phone companies seems to be the highest priority in most of the ABC’s framework:

1. The proposal provides a right of first refusal to the incumbent phone company, meaning USF grant funds effectively start at the landline provider, and are theirs to accept or reject.  This has competitors howling, ranging from Wireless ISPs, mobile data providers, cable companies, and even fiber networks.  The ABC proposal ignores who can deliver the best broadband most efficiently at the lowest price, and is crafted instead to deliver the bulk of funding to the provider that has been around the longest: phone companies.
2. Provisions in the ABC Plan provide a convenient exit door for landline providers saddled with providing service to some of America’s most rural communities.  An escape clause allows “satellite service” to be provided to these rural households as a suitable alternative to traditional wired service, sponsored by an annual $300 million Advanced Mobility/Satellite Fund.  This, despite the fact consumer ratings for satellite providers are dismal and existing providers warn their services are often unsuitable for voice calls because of incredibly high latency rates.
3. Provisions in the ABC Plan adhere to a definition of acceptable broadband well within the range favored by telephone company DSL providers — 4Mbps.  Setting the bar much higher could force phone companies to invest in their networks to reduce the distance of copper wire between their offices and customer homes and businesses, allowing for faster speeds.  Instead, lowering the bar on broadband speeds assures today’s deteriorating rural landline network will make-do, leaving a rural/urban speed divide in the United States.
4. To “resolve” the issue of the increased fees and surcharges that could result from the plan’s adoption, it includes a subjective cap of $30 a month on residential basic landline home phone service (without calling features).  But since most ratepayers pay substantially less for basic home phone service, the maximum rate cap provides plenty of room for future rate increases.  Also, nothing precludes phone companies from raising other charges, or creating new “junk fees” to raise rates further, ignoring the “cap.”

...and Verizon

Rural states seem unimpressed with the phone companies’ proposal.  The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) called various provisions of the plan “a train wreck.”  Kansas is one of several states that developed their own state-based Universal Service Fund to help the state’s many rural agricultural areas receive acceptable telecommunications services.  Kansans initially paid one of the highest USF rates in the country when their state plan was enacted in 1996.  But Kansas phone companies used that money to modernize their networks, especially in rural communities — some of which now receive fiber-based phone service, and the rates have fallen dramatically as upgrade projects have been completed.  Today, most Kansans pay just $1.45 in USF fees to rural phone companies, while AT&T customers in larger Kansas towns and cities pay an average of $2.04.

If the ABC Plan is enacted as-is, Kansans will see phone bills spike as new USF fees are levied.  That’s because the federally-based USF Fund reform program would require today’s 6.18% state USF rate double or triple to sustain various programs within its scope.

And forget about the $30 ‘smoke and mirrors’ “rate cap”, according to the KCC:

[…] The ceiling will not preclude carriers from increasing the basic rate beyond $25 or $30 through higher state USF surcharges or higher local rates.  Multiple states including Kansas  have partially or totally deregulated basic local phone service rates, and the only component of retail  local service pricing that the FCC regulates is the federal Subscriber Line Charge.  Thus, a carrier may face no constraint whatsoever in increasing basic local rates to the point that total local rates are well above the illusory ceiling.

The state of Wyoming was also unimpressed with a one-size-fits-all national approach advocated primarily by big city phone companies AT&T and Verizon, the chief sponsors of the ABC Plan.

The Wyoming Public Service Commission filed comments effectively calling the ABC Plan boneheaded, because it ignores the plight of particularly rural states like Wyoming, chiefly served by smaller phone and cable companies that face challenges in the sparsely populated, mountainous state.

First among the Wyoming PSC’s complaints is that the plan ignores business realities in rural states.  No matter how much USF funding becomes available or what compensation schemes are enacted, dominant state phone companies like CenturyLink are unlikely to “invest in broadband infrastructure unless it is economically opportune to do so.”

The PSC points to the most likely outcomes if the ABC Plan is enacted:

• Phone companies not challenged by a broadband competitor will make due with their current copper wire wireline infrastructure the PSC says has been deteriorating for years.  The PSC fears broadband expansion funds will be used to improve that copper network in larger areas where cable competition exists, while the rest of the more-rural network gets ignored;
• In areas like larger towns or suburbs where phone companies suspect a cable (or other) competitor might eventually expand or launch service, USF funding could be spent to bolster the phone company’s existing DSL service to deter would-be competitors from entering the market;
• 

  We'll pass, too.

  The Wyoming PSC believes phone companies will spend broadband funds only where it would improve the phone company’s competitive position with respect to cable competitors.  Providers are unlikely to expand into currently-ignored rural areas for two reasons: lack of ongoing return on investment and support costs and the ABC Plan’s willingness to abandon rural America to satellite providers.  “We are familiar to a degree with satellite service at it presently exists in Wyoming markets, and we are not particularly enamored of the satellite solution,” the PSC writes.  But if adopted, no rural phone company would invest in DSL service expansion in areas that could be designated to receive federally-supported satellite service instead.

Wireless competitors are not happy with the ABC Plan because it ignores Wireless ISPs and sets ground rules that make them unlikely to ever win financial support.  Many also believe the ABC Plan picks technology winners and losers — namely telephone company provided DSL service as the big winner, and everyone else a loser.

The Fiber to the Home Council also heaped criticism on the ABC Plan for the low bar it sets — low enough for any phone company to meet — on broadband speeds.  The FTTH Council notes the ABC Plan would leave rural America on a broadband dirt road while urban America enjoys high-speed-rail-like service.

Coming Next… Who Really Supports the Phone Companies’ ABC Plan.

In what Netflix is characterizing as a technical fault, those who experienced a limit of one-stream-per-“Unlimited Streaming”-Account can now watch at least two streams at the same time once again.

Stop the Cap! broke the story on Netflix’s streaming crash diet on Labor Day after being contacted by several readers reporting the apparent new limitations.  Stop the Cap! confirmed them ourselves several times over the past three days, and so did Mashable‘s Ben Parr, who ran into the same error message we did after trying to stream multiple movies at the same time (although he had no trouble watching one movie and one television show concurrently.)

Netflix’s spokesman Steve Swasey called it a big misunderstanding this morning, telling us “no Netflix member is limited to less than two concurrent streams. A few Netflix members have heard differently from us, which is an error that we are correcting.”

Perhaps, but the errors continued straight through until early this afternoon, when we were finally able to confirm the launch of two concurrent streams without an error message.

Netflix has always maintained streaming limitations in their terms of service and in their Frequently Asked Questions.  The company, to this day, still proclaims “you may watch [Netflix streaming on] only one device at a time” if you are a stream-only customer.  Their terms of service emphasize this point in all-capital letters:

YOU WILL BE ALLOWED TO INSTANTLY WATCH SIMULTANEOUSLY ON ONLY ONE SUCH DEVICE AT ANY GIVEN TIME. For certain membership plans in the United States, you may instantly watch simultaneously on more than one Netflix ready device within your household. Click here to view the number of devices on which you may simultaneously view movies & TV shows that are associated with your plan. The number of devices and concurrent streams may change without notice to you. For certain limited membership plans in the United States, your available Netflix ready device may be limited to personal computers.

While those clearly are the policies of Netflix, the reality has been customers could easily stream two or more concurrent shows over their Netflix streaming account from different devices without provoking an error message.  But that changed this past weekend, when we began to receive news tips from frustrated customers.

Some consumers never realized they could watch multiple streams at the same time, and were unconcerned with Netflix potentially limiting this feature.  For them, it was tantamount to abusing their Netflix account.  It is a fact some customers have shared their accounts with friends and family members, something that streaming restrictions would go a long way to discourage.  But there are legitimate uses as well, especially in large families with different viewing habits.

We feel it’s important for Netflix to convey exactly what their policy is regarding concurrent video streaming.  If Steve Swasey wants customers to feel assured they can watch two streams concurrently, their FAQ and terms of service should be updated to reflect that.  It’s clear Netflix reserves the right to change the number of devices and concurrent streams without notice, something our readers obviously feel very strongly about.

Whether this was truly a technical fault or a trial balloon that came crashing down under negative customer reaction, the message is clear: most customers are very glad to have concurrent streaming back, and hope it remains a part of the Netflix experience.