Consumer reporters across the country say Verizon’s boasts of savings for consumers on their new “share everything” plans are hardly universal. Many customers face significantly higher cell phone bills switching to Verizon’s new revenue-boosting plans that eliminate voice minutes and texting allowances.

[flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCPO Cincinnati Verizon Savings Not So Much 6-18-12.mp4[/flv]

WCPO in Cincinnati’s John Matarese reports why Verizon’s new pricing plan will cost many customers more. (2 minutes)
 [flv width=”360″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPTV West Palm Beach Verizon Share Plan 6-18-12.mp4[/flv]

WPTV in West Palm Beach talks with CNET about how consumers will need to become better educated to avoid the potential bill shock that comes from expensive, usage-restricted data plans. (2 minutes)
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WWLP in Springfield, Mass. informs consumers how quickly they can burn through Verizon’s new $50 1GB wireless data plan. (1 minute)

While larger cities like Virginia Beach and Richmond have enjoyed broadband service for years, residents in the western half of the state often are not so lucky. The region is home to some serious broadband black holes, where residents have no access to Internet service beyond dial-up, satellite, or borrowing a friend’s expensive DSL connection in town.

Like West Virginia to the northwest, much of this part of the state suffers with very low speed DSL, occasional wireless Internet, and a handful of cable companies trying to provide access. In addition to the rural character of the region, landline networks have deteriorated over the years and large phone companies have focused their efforts on network improvements further east.

Now a series of government-funded broadband expansion projects, regional and local broadband and telephone co-ops, and local providers are working together to expand modern broadband into areas that have never had access before.

The Virginia Tech Foundation and the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative are now working to expand a fiber broadband middle-mile network from Bedford to Blacksburg — the areas surrounding Roanoke that have suffered with difficult Internet access for years.

Among the first clients is PemTel, a telephone cooperative in Pembroke. PemTel still speaks of DSL as a “new technology” in the area, and has speeds that reflect that:

PemTel started with an original plan offering just 256kbps — speed that does not even qualify as “broadband.” But increasing capacity is opening the door for Pembroke residents to get speeds that can at least manage today’s web pages. Customers are also glad to see the back of satellite “broadband” which severely limited usage.

With fiber middle mile networks now stringing through southern Virginia, local providers can access backbone capacity at lower prices, which can, in turn, deliver substantial broadband capacity to new high tech businesses setting up in the area.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WDBJ Roanoke Fiber Through New River Valley 6-11-12.mp4[/flv]

The New River Valley in Virginia is building a multi-county fiber network to act like an interstate highway system for broadband.  WDBJ reports. (2 minutes)

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WSLS in Roanoke explores a new fiber network going in from Blacksburg to Bedford, Va., and what it could mean for broadband-deprived residents.  (2 minutes)

Chattanooga, Tenn. is teaming up with U.S. Ignite to leverage America’s first Gigabit broadband city as the home of super high speed broadband innovation.

Municipally-owned EPB’s fiber to the home network is already attracting big businesses and high tech jobs to southeastern Tennessee, but now it will become an incubator for America’s next generation of broadband applications and services. U.S. Ignite will use EPB Fiber’s network to help foster the creation of new digital applications that will transform health, education, public safety, and manufacturing and help keep America a leader in high tech innovation.

It took a public, community-owned utility with the vision of an American fiber optic future to make this possible. Cable and phone companies have unilaterally decided there is no need for gigabit broadband. Will community broadband and marketplace game-changers like Google ultimately be the salvation of America’s high speed future?

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Chattanooga US Ignite.flv[/flv]

Learn more about Chattanooga’s broadband success story through this video, which also introduces U.S. Ignite’s new project. (3 minutes)

Kuittinen

Forbes Magazine has been pondering Verizon’s radical shift to eliminate buckets of voice minutes and text messages, while increasing prices on wireless data just when mobile broadband is expected to become the new profit center for wireless phone companies. It appears Verizon is well on the way to milking the data cash cow.

Tero Kuittinen notes Verizon Wireless has been on a rate increase binge, primarily by eliminating cheaper plans in favor of those with bigger buckets for voice and text services customers simply don’t need. What used to cost $50 a month two years ago for a respectable minute plan jumped to $70 for a smartphone with data, and now will increase another $20 to $90 a month, and give customers a smaller data allowance.

Verizon Wireless argues customers will get more bang for their buck, and for heavy voice, mobile hotspot and texting users, they may be right. But for the average customer who watches their voice minutes and keeps texting to a reasonable level, prices are going nowhere but up, whether you want unlimited voice and texting or not.

Q. Will Verizon Wireless herd all of its customers to unlimited voice calling at a higher price? A. Yes!

Why is Verizon taking the risk of alienating consumers by forcing them into a major price hike?

Sprint Nextel has allowed its majority share in Clearwire Corporation to drop below 50 percent in a strategic move to rebalance its voting and economic interest in the wireless partnership.

Clearwire runs the WiMAX 4G network Sprint sells to its customers, but America’s third largest cell phone carrier shares that 4G network with several other companies that resell access under various brands, including Time Warner Cable Mobile, Best Buy Mobile, and a range of smaller “MVNOs,” which mostly offer prepaid access.

Clearwire’s troubled existence forced Sprint to reduce its involvement and ownership in the company last year, when some analysts predicted the company faced imminent default on its debt. Had that happened, Sprint would have found itself inextricably tied to Clearwire’s fate as a majority owner, and could have been forced to help bailout the enterprise.

Clearwire has been trying to reinvent itself after Sprint declared it planned to construct its own 4G LTE network that would gradually replace the older WiMAX technology Clearwire uses.  That news challenged Clearwire because Sprint in the largest user of the network, providing 9.7 million customers with access. Clearwire’s own retail service, under the Clear brand, has just 1.3 million customers. More than one-third of Clearwire’s income comes from Sprint.

As Sprint customers gradually depart from WiMAX, Clearwire is trying to find new markets reselling access to the older technology to prepaid startups and discount resellers including FreedomPop, NetZero, Simplexity, and most recently Jolt Mobile.

But even Clearwire understands the days of its WiMAX network are limited. The company plans to build its own TD-LTE 4G network to remain competitive, and will resell wholesale access to prepaid services and to larger concerns like Leap Wireless’ Cricket and Sprint as those companies work to gradually expand their own LTE networks.

Clearwire believes their enormous spectrum assets could help smaller wireless companies fulfill demand for 4G service, particularly if those companies lack sufficient spectrum to fully provide the service themselves.

“We believe that, as the demand for mobile broadband services continues its rapid growth, Sprint and other service providers will find it difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy their customers’ demands with their existing spectrum holdings,” Clearwire indicated in its last quarterly report. “By deploying LTE, we believe that we will be able to take advantage of our leading spectrum position to offer offload data capacity to Sprint and other existing and future mobile broadband service providers for resale to their customers on a cost effective basis.” .

Clearwire plans to have 5,000 TD-LTE cell sites functioning by mid-2013 and quickly grow the network to 8,000 cell sites nationwide. Among the first cities expected to get the new LTE 4G service first are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Clearwire 4G LTE Trials Results 1-2011.flv[/flv]

Clearwire holds more wireless spectrum than any other American wireless company, with 150 MHz in the 2.5 GHz band in the nation’s top 100 metro areas. Unfortunately for them, their high frequency spectrum does not penetrate buildings  as well as lower frequencies, such as 700MHz (Verizon & AT&T), making reception problematic indoors, especially in areas where signal strength is lower. Despite that, Clearwire believes its huge swath of spectrum gives it the ability to deploy extremely wideband 4G LTE service, which this video shows can support faster speeds. But the tests were conducted outdoors, where Clearwire’s network typically performs better. (2 minutes)