Buying shares in a public company used to be straightforward and simple. Buyers instructed their broker to trade shares with the simple maxim: “buy low, sell high.”
These days, things are more complicated thanks to wealthy investment banks that have created Wall Street’s version of a Las Vegas casino. Today, buyers don’t even need to purchase shares in a company — they can make a killing just by betting at sites like suomikasinot.fi whether they believe a share price will increase or decrease.
The Options Regulatory Surveillance Authority is now investigating a sudden surge in such option trading just before AT&T launched its $1.19 billion cash bid for Leap Wireless, owner of the Cricket-branded prepaid cell service.
The unnamed buyers included investment bank Goldman Sachs, that either traded options for themselves, on behalf of well-heeled clients, or simply processed the trades as part of doing business.
Those who purchased the call options were either clairvoyant, extremely lucky, or had inside knowledge of the yet-to-be-announced deal and were able to buy thousands of lucrative contracts that bet Leap stock would make a sudden recovery and increase in price. Nanex reports an explosive increase of 15,749 Leap “call contracts” trading hands that week, according to a report in USA Today. That well-surpassed that same week’s 1,384 Leap “put contracts” — investors making the safer bet that the always-anemic Leap stock would fall in price even further. That particular week, they were very wrong.
During the last 15 minutes of trading on July 12, 2,536 Leap contracts were executed, and nearly 80 percent of them gave buyers the right to purchase Leap shares for $9 each through Aug. 16, an amazing display of confidence in a stock that traded as low as $6.58 per share a few weeks earlier.
Leap into the big money pool.
Other investors were left scratching their heads over the wisdom of that kind of trading until just after the market closed that day, when AT&T announced its intention to buy the prepaid carrier, boosting Leap’s stock price from $7.98 on July 12 to $17.23 on Monday, July 15.
“Did someone know something early in Leap Wireless?” asked Jon Najarian, co-founder of Option Monster, a provider of options-trading ideas, in a written commentary for TheStreet.com. “The question now is whether someone will end up in prison for insider trading.”
While the unnamed parties likely made a handsome and quick profit, the brokerages that sold the options took a beating.
“We, as market makers … sold these calls,” said Thomas Peterffy, head of Timber Hill and an affiliated group of brokerages. “When the news came out, we had an immediate loss of $1.5 million.”
Goldman $achs
Timber Hill promptly filed a request for an investigation into potential illegal insider trading with the Options Regulatory Surveillance Authority that has since responded it was reviewing the issue “to determine if any exchange or Securities and Exchange Commission rules may have been violated.”
A Nasdaq spokesperson did not respond to messages seeking comment. Goldman Sachs also declined to comment.
Peterffy told the newspaper securities regulators should pursue examples such as the Leap Wireless options trading, “where it’s very clear what happens.”
“This has been going on for 20 years. It happens all the time, happens about 20-30 times a year. And we’ve never seen a penny from this stuff,” said Peterffy.
AT&T has boosted the maximum available broadband speed for its U-verse Internet offering to 45/6Mbps service in 40 cities across 15 states.
The broadband speed boost is part of AT&T’s Project Velocity IP (VIP), a three-year plan to expand U-verse’s capabilities and coverage into more communities within AT&T’s local landline service areas.
Most of the funding for Project VIP is being directed into expanding AT&T’s profitable wireless 4G network, but about $6 billion will be spent upgrading AT&T’s aging copper wireline facilities.
A big priority for AT&T is to retire copper-based distribution networks and replacing that wiring with fiber optics. U-verse depends on a significant amount of fiber to provide enough bandwidth for its television, phone and broadband service. But unlike Verizon FiOS, which delivers a fiber connection straight to the home, AT&T still relies on traditional copper wiring into the home.
Until AT&T replaces that copper with fiber, top broadband speeds are unlikely to keep up with its biggest competitor — cable broadband.
AT&T’s says the 45Mbps speed boost represents an incremental upgrade and plans further speed increases to 75Mbps.
In more rural areas, U-verse will rely on IPDSLAM technology to increase speeds up to 45Mbps. AT&T eventually hopes to further bump download speeds to 100Mbps.
For the most rural communities within its service area, AT&T hopes to offer service exclusively over its wireless network, eventually scrapping rural landlines altogether.
[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTAL Shreveport U-verse Coming to Louisiana 8-23-13.mp4[/flv]
KTAL-TV reports AT&T’s upgraded U-verse could soon be coming to Shreveport, La. as part of Project VIP, which may give Comcast some much-needed competition in the Ark-La-Tex region. (3 minutes)
Bottom line: Verizon is one of the country’s most aggressive corporate tax dodgers.
The report found that Verizon enjoyed some $14 billion in federal and state corporate income tax subsidies in the 2008-2010 period, even though it earned $33.4 billion in pre-tax U.S. income during that time. At the federal level, Verizon should have paid about $11.4 billion at the statutory rate of 35 per cent during the three-year period. Instead, it actually got $951 million in rebates, putting its federal tax subsidies at $12.3 billion. Its effective federal tax rate was 2.9 per cent.
The report found that at the state level, Verizon should have paid about $2.3 billion in corporate income taxes during the period but it paid only $866 million. Its aggregate state rate was only 2.6 per cent, far below the weighted state average rate of 6.8 per cent. This gave it state tax subsidies of about $1.4 billion.
Verizon also used a special tax loophole called the Reverse Morris Trust to avoid paying about $1.5 billion in federal, state and local taxes on the sale of its landline assets in various states.
The report found that Verizon also aggressively seeks state and local tax subsidies through credits, abatements and exemptions.
There is no centralized reporting on these subsidies, but the report documents $180 million in special tax breaks and grants Verizon and Verizon Wireless received in 13 states.
In addition to aggressively dodging taxes, Verizon also overtly rips off our federal government.
In April 2011, for example, Verizon paid $93.5 million to settle whistleblower charges that it had billed the government for “tax-like” surcharges it wasn’t entitled to impose on the government. Hidden surcharges on communication services have long been an unwelcome cost to business and consumers, and the General Services Administration had negotiated a firm, fixed-price contract with limited surcharges precisely to avoid being hit with hidden surcharges, the whistleblower alleged.
“Verizon was not only charging the government for the costs associated with communication services, but it also was pumping up its revenues by charging the government for Verizon’s own property taxes and other costs of doing business,” said Colette Matzzie, a Washington, D.C., attorney with Phillips & Cohen LLP, who represented the whistleblower. “Under federal law, Verizon was responsible for paying those costs, not the government.”
The settlement agreement covers the period from 2004 to 2010, when Verizon allegedly billed the government for a variety of surcharges including property tax surcharges, carrier cost recovery charges, state telecommunications relay service surcharges and public utility commission fee surcharges.
Question: why would you allow one of our country’s most aggressive tax dodgers, a company with a track record of overtly ripping off our government, into your country?
What’s bad for the United States will be bad for Canada.
AT&T may soon approach your electricity provider to encourage the introduction of prepaid electrical service, powered by AT&T’s wireless network.
AT&T is looking beyond traditional cell phone service to keep profits flowing into its lucrative wireless business. A growing segment of revenue is anticipated to come from so-called “machine to machine” communications. One application, Meter Data Management (MDM), provides connectivity to wireless-enabled smart utility meters, and is expected to grow 300 percent to $221 million by 2014.
Although now uncommon in the United States, prepaying for electric service is found in many parts of the world where cash-strapped consumers tend to renege on the bill. With late and non-paying customers remaining a consequence of the current American economy, AT&T is encouraging utilities to adopt pay-for-use technology that will cut the 10 percent of late-payers off the grid and save utilities money spent to collect past-due bills.
AT&T argues the next generation of “smart meters” can do a lot more than report meter readings over a wireless network. The technology can be leveraged to offer risk-free utility service, targeting credit compromised customers and those seeking to avoid billing surprises from excessive energy use.
Customers switched to prepaid electric service fill their meter with an allotment of energy usage from prepaid top-up cards sold by area convenience stores, supermarkets and even street vendors. Customers can also use credit cards or authorize checking accounts to be debited on a regular basis. Customers who exceed their allowance quickly find their service shut off automatically, depending on state laws. Making a payment switches the power back on within minutes.
“Nearly 30 percent of people are on a prepay mobile plan in 2013,” said Ed Davalos, lead product marketing manager at AT&T, during a recent Greentech Media webinar. “That cannot be overlooked. The consumer has already changed.”
Getting utilities to adopt the system may require AT&T, in partnership with other vendors, to front some of the costs to switch to smart meter and prepaid billing technology. A study commissioned by AT&T found the biggest hurdle to adopting prepaid electric service is understanding who pays to implement it. One-third of American utility companies would launch prepaid service if it could be done for no or low-cost. Another one-third say they would seriously consider it if someone else put up the money to introduce it.
Since customers can only use energy they already paid to use, there is no payment risk to the utility company. AT&T estimates nearly 10 percent of all utility customers receive disconnect notices every month. The utilities eventually cut service to 3-5 percent of those who still don’t pay, which usually requires a truck to be sent to the customer’s home.
Using prepaid electric service offers utilities the power to switch off service at the office without a costly truck roll and prevent customers from running up an enormous past due balance. If just 10 percent of customers switched to prepaid electric service, AT&T estimates an average utility with 250,000 customers would save $5-15 million per year in costs. Those using prepaid service are so wary of exceeding their power allowance, they use about 11 percent less electricity than non-prepaid customers, reducing demand on electricity generation.
This cellular module is designed to fit within many power meters.
Customers enrolled in prepaid service get to check their energy usage and some utilities offer different rates depending on the time of day. That means cost-conscious customers might hold off doing laundry until rates drop overnight. Others might avoid air conditioning use in the late afternoons, when fluctuating power rates are typically at their highest.
Campbell McCool, chief marketing officer of SmartSynch said the actual costs to the wireless network to manage prepaid was “well under” $0.50 per meter, per month — and SmartSynch executives have offered it can be as little as pennies per meter, per month depending on volume.
Verizon is also involved in the business, announcing a partnership with eMeter to offer cloud-based, scalable MDM for utilities.
Forty-two percent of U.S. electric customers now have digital meters, up from less than 5 percent in 2008. In 2015, more than 50 percent will have them, according to one consultant.
With the introduction of smart meters come risks, warns some consumer advocates.
Last month, the U.S. power market regulator moved towards charging JPMorgan with manipulating higher fluctuating electricity prices with fraudulent trading schemes, impacting customers in California and the Midwest.
Third party electricity marketers have also become a problem in many deregulated power states, with come-ons ranging from rebate checks to introductory rates that expire and leave the customer paying skyrocketing electricity rates well above the cost of buying service direct from the local utility. Many also impose lengthy contracts with steep early termination fees.
Smart meters allow utility providers to conjure up a number of marketing programs, such as a “free power day” offered once per week. Customers signing up for promotions like that typically avoid running the washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher except on days when they won’t pay to use the appliances. Others have to wait until after midnight for savings to kick in from overnight energy discounts.
But many of the programs have been designed to promise more savings than they deliver. Power providers have been criticized for aggressive door-to-door marketing, fraudulent utility switches reminiscent of days when phone customers found their long distance carrier switched without their permission, and tricky promotional checks that, once deposited, commit a customer to several years of service with a provider at whatever rates they choose to charge.
But lack of savings isn’t the only problem. In Texas, utilities can cut power service to customers within 24 hours of warning them they have exhausted their prepaid balance.
[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABS-CBN Regulators promoting use of prepaid electricity 10-25-12.flv[/flv]
In the Philippines, prepaid electric service was introduced to cope with customer complaints about high electricity rates. ABS-CBN News reports the meters don’t cut the price of electricity, they just help customers better manage bills by suggesting ways to reduce usage. (Oct. 2012) (2 minutes)
The three companies that control 90 percent of Canada’s cell phone marketplace have set what they argue is ‘cut-throat’ competition aside to team up in a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign to discourage Verizon Wireless from entering the country.
Bell, Rogers, and Telus have maintained what critics charge is a “three-headed oligopoly” in the wireless business for years, leading to findings from the OECD that Canada is among the ten most expensive countries in the world for wireless service in almost every category and has among the highest roaming rates in the world.
Americans also pay high cell phone prices, and customers of both countries will find somewhat comparable pricing when comparing prices north or south of Lake Ontario. A shopper in Niagara Falls, N.Y. can find the Samsung Galaxy S4 from a Verizon reseller for $120 with a two-year contract. A shared data service plan runs as little as $80 a month for 500MB of data and unlimited domestic calling and global texting. Travel across the Rainbow Bridge to Niagara Falls, Ontario, walk into a Rogers store and the same phone runs $199 with a two-year contract (most Canadian carriers used to offer three-year contracts until the government banned them earlier this year) and a service plan running $80 a month offering the same 500MB of data and unlimited domestic calling and texting. Rogers charges extra if customers want to text a customer outside of Canada, however.
Verizon is no discount carrier. Verizon management has repeatedly stressed it offers premium service and coverage and can charge commensurately higher prices for access to that network. So the idea that Verizon’s interest in entering Canada is to launch a vicious price war is suspect, according to many telecommunications analysts.
Keep Verizon out of Canada at all costs!
They are coming.
In June, the Globe and Mail reported Verizon had shown serious interest in acquiring Canadian cellular upstart Wind Mobile with an early bid of $700 million. Wind Mobile, one of the three significant new “no-contract” entrants vying for a piece of the country’s cell phone market, has limped along since opening for business in 2009, unable to attract much interest from customers concerned about coverage gaps and the poor choice of mobile devices.
More recently, Wind Mobile’s new owner — the Russian mobile giant Vimpelcom — has expressed an interest in selling off the carrier because it cannot gain traction against the biggest three, which also control 85 percent of mobile wireless spectrum.
News that Verizon had taken an interest in the carrier leveled shock waves across the Canadian financial markets. Shares in the three largest telecom giants fell sharply on the news. Earlier this month, Bell CEO George Cope reported that Bell, Telus and Rogers have taken a $15-billion cumulative hit on the capital markets since Verizon hinted interest in Wind Mobile.
[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC Verizon takes aim at telecom Big 3 with possible Wind Mobile bid 8-19-13.flv[/flv]
The CBC reported earlier this summer that Verizon Wireless was interested in acquiring the 600,000 customers of independent wireless provider Wind Mobile, which has an insignificant share of the Canadian wireless market. (2 minutes)
Spending a few million, or even a billion dollars, to keep Verizon south of the Canadian-U.S. border is well worth it to the three big players who have launched an expensive campaign to block the proposed transaction and are willing to pay premium prices to keep struggling carriers from being sold to deep-pocketed American telecom companies.
Telus had already done its part, attempting to scoop up another scrappy upstart carrier that wanted out of the wireless business. But the Canadian government rejected Telus’ proposed acquisition of Mobilicity, claiming it would harm efforts to expand Canadian wireless competition. Not to be deterred, Rogers is now attempting a cleverly structured deal to acquire Wind Mobile out from under Verizon with a proposed buyout worth more than $1 billion.
To avoid the anticipated rejection of the deal by Canadian regulators on competition grounds, Rogers has reportedly joined forces with Toronto-based private equity firm Birch Hill Partners that would make that firm the owners-in-name. Although Rogers wouldn’t get a direct equity stake in Wind, it would finance a good part of the deal and win access and control of Wind’s mobile spectrum for its own network. More importantly, it could keep Verizon out of Canada.
“The government is handing out loopholes to Verizon to beg them into Canada”
Cell phone companies in Canada are particularly angry that the government has set aside certain spectrum and guaranteed access for upstart providers to successfully establish themselves without having to outbid the cash-rich big three for wireless frequencies or have to build a nationwide network from scratch. Bell, Rogers and Telus have consistently opposed spectrum set-asides for small carriers, deeming them “unfair.” They argue Canadians’ voracious needs for more wireless service are unending, and it would be unfair not to sell the spectrum to benefit their larger customer bases. But hearing that Verizon, a company larger than Bell, Rogers, and Telus combined, could get preferential treatment and spectrum to enter the country has them boiling mad.
Bell’s CEO George Cope appeared on “The Lang and O’Leary Exchange” to debate the fairness of Verizon’s possible entry into Canada’s wireless market. Cope argues Verizon is getting special favors. (9 minutes)
Cope
The idea of luring a company to move or begin offering service in a barely competitive marketplace is hardly new. Cities have offered preferential policies to airlines to fly in and out of particular cities, local governments have offered tax abatements to get companies to set up shop, and providing exemptions for zoning and infrastructure have been familiar to telecommunications companies for decades.
In 1880, the National Bell Telephone Company had incorporated, through an Act of Parliament, the Bell Telephone Company of Canada (today also known as BCE), which was given the right to build telephone lines over and along all public property and rights-of-way without compensation to the public or former owners. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, Bell would later become the dominant monopoly provider of telephone service across much of eastern Canada.
When the phone companies were handed wireless spectrum to launch their wireless businesses in the 1980s, they didn’t have anything to complain about either.
None of that history impressed Bell’s current CEO George Cope, who took to the airwaves to complain Verizon was being given preferential treatment:
Verizon could bid on two blocks of Canadian spectrum set aside for new entrants to the market in auction later this year. Because the big three Canadian firms are not permitted to bid on these blocks, they are likely to be sold at a lower price.
Verizon would not have to build its own networks to remote or rural communities, but would be able to piggyback on existing networks.
Verizon can bid to acquire small Canadian companies such as Mobilicity or Wind, but Bell, Telus and Rogers are forbidden from bidding on them.
“A company of this size certainly doesn’t need handouts from Canadians or special regulatory advantages over Canadian companies,” Bell said in a full-page newspaper ad. “But that is exactly what they get in the new federal wireless regulations. We’re ready to compete head to head, but it has to be a level playing field,” Cope said in a TV interview, echoing Rogers CEO who also called for a “level playing field.”
[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC Is Verizon really the bogeyman Canada’s telecom giants claim 8-19-13.flv[/flv]
Bell, Telus, and Rogers have launched a lobbying campaign designed to make life difficult for Verizon Wireless if it chooses to enter Canada. The CBC reports Verizon will be able to bid on more spectrum than Canadian carriers and will have the right to roam on Canada’s incumbent wireless networks. (2 minutes)
Industry Minister Moore
Telus went further, claiming Verizon’s entry into Canada would result in a “bloodbath” for Canadian workers, laid off by the three largest Canadian providers to cut costs to better compete with Verizon.
But Cope said at least one Canadian carrier won’t be able to compete at all, because preferential treatment for wireless spectrum will result in at least one of the big three to lose at a forthcoming spectrum auction, guaranteeing degraded wireless broadband speeds and worse service.
The three companies have found little sympathy in Ottawa, particularly from Industry Minister James Moore, now on a road tour across Canada to promote the government’s wireless competition policies. He called the big three’s loud campaign self-serving and announced a new website sponsored by the Conservative Party of Canada to prove it.
“I think that the public instinctively knows that when they have more choices that prices go down and more competition they’re well served by that,” he told CBC News in Vancouver on Monday. “The noise that we’re hearing is about you know companies trying to protect their company’s interest. Our job as a government is larger than that, our job is to serve the public interest and make sure that the public is served in this so that’s one of the reasons why I’m pushing back a little bit.”
Industry Minister James Moore appeared on CBC Radio this morning to contest the wireless industry’s claims that Verizon is getting special treatment and will bring unfair competition to the Canadian wireless market. (7 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Oppose Verizon Wireless. Do it for Canada!
But the wireless companies show no signs of backing down and have turned towards appealing to Canadian nationalism and fairness.
“The U.S. government is not giving Canadian wireless carriers any special access to the U.S. market,” says a website launched by the big three cell providers to drum up support for a “level playing field.” “Then why is it that our own government is giving American companies preferential treatment over our own companies?”
This week, a Reuters report citing unnamed sources suggests Bell, Telus, and Rogers are about to target Verizon directly with a new campaign warning Canadians the American giant has been implicated in allowing the U.S. government open access to network and customer data, which would represent a profound privacy threat to Canadian customers.
[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bell Rogers Telus Ad 8-13.flv[/flv]
Bell, Telus, and Rogers paid to produce this ad calling on Canadians to protest unfair competition from an American wireless company. (1 minute)
So far, Canadians’ hatred of their telecommunications providers has trumped the companies’ public relations and scare tactics. The Conservative government in Ottawa is winning support for its wireless competition war, even from unlikely places.
“Someone mark the date,” Tweeted one Halifax woman not inclined to vote Conservative. “Stephen Harper has done something I mostly support.”
“Eat it Telus/Bell/Rogers,” wrote a Calgary man fed up with the lack of competition in Canadian wireless.
John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa, says opposition from the big three telecom companies is obvious because they don’t want to face a fourth, powerful competitor.
“They should be scared because chances are they’re going to have more competition in the Canadian market if Verizon comes in and they are going to have to lower their prices and compete harder,” Lawford told CBC News. “It’s pretty rich of them to be talking about unfairness” when they already control 90 per cent of Canadian spectrum, he added.
Iain Grant of the SeaBoard Group, a telecommunications consultancy, said government policies to open up more competition are designed to shake things up.
“[The new rules weren’t] meant to be a level playing field,” said Grant. “[They were] meant to give a leg up [to new competitors].”
“To talk of loopholes, as some do, is to not understand that the same companies who complain most loudly about loopholes in 2013 were the recipients of even greater public largesse in 1985 when the government gifted their initial spectrum as an incentive to build a wireless business in Canada,” said Grant.
Few companies have taken on the Canadian big three telecom providers because of their enormous market share, at least inside Canada.
Nine out of ten Canadian wireless users are subscribed to Bell, Telus or Rogers. Trying to convince a banker to extend capital loans to effectively confront a wireless oligopoly in a country with an enormous expanse of land but not people and find enough airwaves among the 15% not controlled by the big three is an uphill battle.
[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC Wireless war heats up 8-19-13.flv[/flv]
CBC reports Industry Minister Moore believes increasing competition is the best way to cut Canadian cell phone bills. Regardless of whether Verizon enters Canada, the current government will continue to push for more competition. Even the threat of Verizon coming to Canada has already reduced prices. (2 minutes)
Why does Verizon want to enter Canada?
Analysts suspect Verizon’s interest in Canada has little to do with wooing Canadians to Big Red. Many suspect Verizon’s true interest is to make life easier for its traveling American customers who head north for business or pleasure.
Chief among the possible benefits is the elimination of roaming charges for Verizon customers.
“Verizon’s customers come into the country every day through all the bridges and ports of entries and they want to roam where they want to roam, whether that’s fishing in Saskatchewan or hunting in northern Ontario or wherever,” said Grant.
There are other apparent impediments that could limit the usefulness of Wind’s mobile network to Verizon. In addition to only operating in the largest Canadian cities, Wind’s infrastructure is built by Chinese firm Huawei and is not compatible with Verizon’s technology.
Huawei has been the subject of significant controversy because of its reported ties to the Chinese military. Fears that data could be intercepted by the Chinese government have kept many North American firms from doing business with the company.
Verizon also lacks bundling options for Canadian customers. The biggest three Canadian providers can offer telephone, television, and wired broadband service to their customers. Verizon can only offer wireless service.
Verizon has second thoughts
Perhaps most remarkable are late reports that Verizon may be having second thoughts about jumping into Canada’s wireless market.
Desjardins analyst Maher Yaghi said Verizon may have delayed its plans until after Ottawa’s auction of 700MHz spectrum planned for January to better understand the potential spectrum costs it will incur entering Canada.
Others speculate incumbent providers may be attempting to end the rationale for Verizon to enter Canada in the first place. One major development includes a much more favorable roaming deal for Verizon that could dramatically cut the costs for Verizon customers to roam on Canadian networks.
Regardless of what Verizon does, Industry Minister Moore says Canada’s goal of getting increased competition will continue.
CBC reports Verizon may be having second thoughts about entering Canada. Verizon may not be interested in entering a political battle to win licenses to provide service and may want to acquire its own spectrum before considering buying either Wind Mobile or another competitor like Mobilicity. (2 minutes)
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to […]
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to […]
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of Hong […]
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be […]
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw […]
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail. [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s] proposal – to codify and enforce some […]
In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario […]
Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment […]
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by […]
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good Alberta […]
A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling […]
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking […]
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Buying shares in a public company used to be straightforward and simple. Buyers instructed their broker to trade shares with the simple maxim: “buy low, sell high.”
AT&T has boosted the maximum available broadband speed for its U-verse Internet offering to 45/6Mbps service in 40 cities across 15 states.
“Nearly 30 percent of people are on a prepay mobile plan in 2013,” said Ed Davalos, lead product marketing manager at AT&T, during a recent Greentech Media webinar. “That cannot be overlooked. The consumer has already changed.”
The three companies that control 90 percent of Canada’s cell phone marketplace have set what they argue is ‘cut-throat’ competition aside to team up in a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign to discourage Verizon Wireless from entering the country.
contracts until the government banned them earlier this year) and a service plan running $80 a month offering the same 500MB of data and unlimited domestic calling and texting. Rogers charges extra if customers want to text a customer outside of Canada, however.
Telus had already done its part, attempting to scoop up another scrappy upstart carrier that wanted out of the wireless business. But the Canadian government rejected Telus’ proposed acquisition of Mobilicity, claiming it would harm efforts to expand Canadian wireless competition. Not to be deterred, Rogers is now attempting a 
“The U.S. government is not giving Canadian wireless carriers any special access to the U.S. market,” says a website launched by the big three cell providers to drum up support for a “level playing field.” “Then why is it that our own government is giving American companies preferential treatment over our own companies?”
“Someone mark the date,” Tweeted one Halifax woman not inclined to vote Conservative. “Stephen Harper has done something I mostly support.”
Analysts suspect Verizon’s interest in Canada has little to do with wooing Canadians to Big Red. Many suspect Verizon’s true interest is to make life easier for its traveling American customers who head north for business or pleasure.