Federal Communications Commission chairman Thomas Wheeler this morning defended his forthcoming Net Neutrality policies in front of an audience of cable executives attending the Cable Show in Los Angeles.
“If you read some of the press accounts about what we propose to do, those of you who oppose Net Neutrality might feel like a celebration was in order,” Wheeler told the cable industry audience. “Reports that we are gutting the Open Internet rules are incorrect. I am here to say wait a minute. Put away the party hats. The Open Internet rules will be tough, enforceable and, with the concurrence of my colleagues, in place with dispatch.”
“Let me be clear,” Wheeler continued. “If someone acts to divide the Internet between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ we will use every power at our disposal to stop it. I consider that to include Title II. Just because it is my strong belief that following the court’s roadmap will produce similar protections more quickly, does not mean I will hesitate to use Title II if warranted. And, in our Notice, we are asking for input as to whether this approach should be used.”
Wheeler also used the forum to acknowledge that cable companies are now the “principal provider of broadband” in the United States, a slap at telephone company DSL service that continues to lose market share.
Wheeler’s comments primarily addressed intentional interference with Internet traffic and remained silent about whether the FCC would allow providers to delay network upgrades that gradually allow service to degrade while selling improved “Quality of Service” contracts to content providers like Netflix.
“Prioritizing some traffic by forcing the rest of the traffic into a congested lane won’t be permitted under any proposed Open Internet rule,” Wheeler insisted. “We will not allow some companies to force Internet users into a slow lane so that others with special privileges can have superior service.”
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FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler spoke before the 2014 NCTA Cable Show this morning to speak about Net Neutrality and chat with NCTA president Michael Powell. (39:15)
Wheeler’s remarks in full can be found below the jump:
Cox Communications Inc., the third-largest U.S. cable company, will offer gigabit broadband to residential customers later this year when it begins deploying DOCSIS 3.1 technology across its footprint.
“We’re working on our road map now to bring gigabit speeds to customers this year,” Pat Esser, the president and chief executive officer of Cox, said yesterday in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu at the Cable Show in Los Angeles. Cox customers have asked for faster speeds, he said.
The gigabit speed upgrade is a significant flip-flop for Cox Communications, which last year dismissed the demand for super-fast Internet speeds, suggested they were unnecessary for residential customers and too expensive to offer.
“It would cost multiple billions” to upgrade Cox’s network to offer gigabit speeds to all its customers, Esser said in January 2013. Now Esser tells Bloomberg the estimated cost is closer to “hundreds of millions of dollars to build.”
The leveling off of video subscriptions has made broadband a critical part of Cox’s ongoing business plan. Esser claims Cox will adapt its business network infrastructure to introduce gigabit service to residential customers in some cities.
Last November, Cox’s chief technology officer Kevin Hart toldFierceCable’s Steve Donohue that DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades will be able to handle gigabit speeds without difficulty after analog television channels are switched to digital service.
“We have a five-year roadmap in terms of our video architecture–what we’re doing from an analog-to-digital conversion to free up spectrum on the network for broadband growth,” Hart said. “We’re freeing up spectrum, building out node-splits and then aligning with the [DOCSIS] 3.1 roadmap for 1-gigabit speeds.”
Cable operators are increasingly changing their tune about offering faster speed Internet since Google Fiber arrived on the scene. Recent announcements that Google was planning a major expansion of fiber to the home service in multiple cities around the country has brought a flurry of often vague commitments for expanded fiber networks, particularly from AT&T.
Privately held Cox has maintained a low profile about speed hikes and network upgrades until now. Cox has about six million residential and business customers, with most choosing speeds up to 25Mbps. Esser offered no details about pricing or availability and Hart told an audience at the Los Angeles Cable Show this week Cox was still concentrating on expanding availability of 150-200Mbps service across its footprint. With that in mind, it is unlikely Cox will introduce gigabit service on a widely available basis this year.
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Bloomberg’s Betty Liu talks with Cox CEO Pat Esser about the cable company’s plans for gigabit broadband speeds coming later this year. (2:30)
If you are a Time Warner Cable customer, one of four things will happen by this time next year:
You will still be a Time Warner Cable customer if regulators shoot down its merger with Comcast;
You will be a Comcast customer;
You will be a Charter Communications customer;
You will be served by a brand new cable company temporarily dubbed “SpinCo,” owned partly by Comcast but managed by Charter.
Comcast and Charter this week reached an agreement on how to handle the 3.9 million Time Warner Cable customers Comcast intends to spin-off to keep its total subscriber numbers at a level they believe will appease regulators. The transaction will affect Time Warner customers in the midwest the most, particularly former Insight Cable customers.
Charter Communications will say goodbye to customers in California, New England, northern Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and parts of Tennessee. Most of those customers will now be served by Comcast. Among the regions affected: New York, Boston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Northern/Southern California, and Atlanta.
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WISN in Milwaukee reports Time Warner Cable customers there were just getting used to the idea of Comcast and they are not happy service will be provided by Charter Communications instead. (2:03)
Comcast and Time Warner Cable will in turn give up many of its cable systems in the midwest, either transferring them to Charter or the “SpinCo” venture managed by Charter.
Charter will take over directly in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Indiana and Alabama.
If you are a Comcast or Time Warner Cable customer next to a current Charter service area in Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Alabama, Eastern Tennessee, Kentucky or Wisconsin, chances are you will end up a subscriber of the “SpinCo” venture. That will prove a distinction without much difference to customers, because Charter will manage the day-to-day operations of the new cable company and has the right to eventually acquire it outright.
With the exception of a small handful of systems in western sections of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, all of New England, New York, and the mid-Atlantic region will be serviced by Comcast.
With the exception of Cablevision in eastern New York, Comcast will be the dominant cable provider across New York State from Manhattan to Buffalo.
The agreement also includes a commitment by Charter to drop its opposition to the Time Warner Cable/Comcast merger.
“Today’s announcement from Comcast would, in essence, lead to the creation of a three-company cable cartel. Masquerading as subscriber divestitures, the agreement with Charter brings together the three largest cable providers, who account for 38% of cable subscribers and 45% of Internet subscribers,” the Writers Guild of America West said in a statement. “The decision of these three powerful companies to divide markets and share ownership of subscribers through a new publicly traded corporation is unprecedented and adds to the mounting evidence against the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger.”
The transaction is expected to be tax-free and will happen in three stages:
Asset Sale: Charter acquires systems serving around 1.4 million former TWC customers for an estimated $7.3 billion in cash;
Asset Transfer: Charter and Comcast transfer assets in a tax-free exchange involving around 1.6 million former TWC customers and about 1.6 million Charter customers;
Asset Spin-off: Comcast will spin-off a new entity (“SpinCo”) composed of cable systems serving around 2.5 million Comcast customers to its shareholders, with Charter acquiring close to 33% of the equity of SpinCo in exchange for 13% of the equity of a new holding company of Charter.
Charter Communications would become the nation’s second largest cable operator if the deal is approved, owning outright systems with an estimated 5.7 million video customers and managing an extra 2.5 million SpinCo customers, together totaling more than 8.2 million video customers.
Comcast wanted the deal done quickly so it could begin lobbying Washington and other regulators with detailed divestiture plans to keep Comcast’s total subscribers to less than 30% of the national cable market.
Although Comcast will face tough competition in Time Warner Cable territories also served by Verizon FiOS, Charter and its managed SpinCo will compete primarily with AT&T U-verse. Just 1% of Charter’s territory is expected to see competition from Verizon’s fiber network.
Comcast agreed to divest 3.9 million customers to Charter Communications, potentially helping to ease the approval process for its merger with Time Warner Cable. Media Morph Chairman and Chief Strategist Shahid Khan and Bloomberg’s Paul Sweeney speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.” (6:23)
A 2011 state law largely written by Time Warner Cable will likely keep Charlotte, N.C. waiting for fiber broadband that nearby Salisbury has had since 2010.
North Carolina is dominated by Time Warner Cable, AT&T and CenturyLink. Google and AT&T recently expressed interest in bringing their fiber networks to the home in several cities in the state, but neither have put a shovel in the ground.
Fibrant, a community owned broadband provider in Salisbury, northeast of Charlotte, not only laid 250 miles of fiber optics, it has been open for business since November 2010. It was just in time for the publicly owned venture, joining a growing number of community providers like Wilson’s Greenlight and Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius’ MI-Connection. Time Warner Cable’s lobbyists spent several years pushing for legislation restricting the development of these new competitors and when Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2011, they finally succeeded. Today, launching or expanding community broadband networks in North Carolina has been made nearly impossible by the law, modeled after a bill developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
With fiber fever gripping the state, Fibrant has gotten a lot of attention from Charlotte media because it provides the type of service other providers are only talking about. Fibrant offers residents cable television, phone, and broadband and competes directly with Time Warner Cable and AT&T. Although not the cheapest option in town, Fibrant is certainly the fastest and local residents are gradually taking their business to the community alternative.
Charlotte, N.C. is surrounded by community providers like Fibrant in Salisbury and MI-Connection in the Mooresville area.
“A lot faster Internet speeds, a lot clearer phone calls,” said Sidewalk Deli owner Rick Anderson-McCombs, who switched to Fibrant after 15 years with another provider. His mother, Anganetta Dover told WSOC-TV, “I think we save about $30 to $40 a month with Fibrant and the advantages of having the speed is so much better.”
Julianne Goodman cut cable’s cord, dropping Time Warner Cable TV service in favor of Netflix. To support her online streaming habit, she switched to Fibrant, which offers faster Internet speeds than the cable company.
Commercial customers are also switching, predominately away from AT&T in favor of Fibrant.
“Businesses love us because we don’t restrict them on uploads,” one Fibrant worker told WCNC-TV. “So when they want to send files, it’s practically instantaneous.”
Fibrant offers synchronous broadband speeds, which mean the download and upload speeds are the same. Cable broadband technology always favors download speeds over upload, and Time Warner Cable’s fastest upstream speed remains stuck at 5Mbps in North Carolina.
AT&T offers a mix of DSL and U-verse fiber to the neighborhood service in North Carolina. Maximum download speed for most customers is around 24Mbps. AT&T has made a vague commitment to increase those speeds, but customers report difficulty qualifying for upgrades.
Time Warner Cable is a big player in the largest city in North Carolina, evident as soon as you spot the Time Warner Cable Arena on East Trade Street in downtown Charlotte.
Taxpayer dollars are also funneled to the cable company.
When communities like Salisbury approached providers about improving broadband speeds, they were shown the door.
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WCNC-TV reports that with Google expressing an interest in providing fiber service in Charlotte, Salisbury’s Fibrant has been offering service since 2010. (2:57)
“Our citizens asked for high-speed Internet,” says Doug Paris, Salisbury’s city manager. “We met with the incumbent providers [like Time Warner and AT&T, and that did not fit within their business plans.”
Salisbury and Wilson, among others, elected to build their own networks. The decision to enter the broadband business came under immediate attack from incumbent providers and a range of conservative astroturf and sock puppet political groups often secretly funded by the phone and cable companies.
Rep. Avila, a ban proponent, meets with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable’s top lobbyist (right) (Photo: Bob Sepe)
Critics of Fibrant launched an attack website against the venture (it stopped updating in March, 2012), suggesting the fiber venture would bankrupt the city. One brochure even calls Stop the Cap! part of a high-priced consultant cabal of “Judas goats for big fiber” (for the record, Stop the Cap! was not/is not paid a penny to advocate for Fibrant or any other provider).
Opponents also characterize Fibrant as communism in action and have distributed editorial cartoons depicting Fibrant service technicians in Soviet military uniforms guarding Salisbury’s broadband gulag.
In January of this year, city officials were able to report positive news. Fibrant has begun to turn a profit after generating $2,223,678 in the revenue from July through December, 2013. Fibrant lost $4.1 million during the previous fiscal year. That is an improvement over earlier years when the venture borrowed more than $7 million from the city’s water and sewer capital reserve fund, repaying the loans at 1 percent interest. The city believes the $33 million broadband network will break even this year — just four years after launching.
Fibrant is certainly no Time Warner Cable or AT&T, having fewer than 3,000 customers in the Salisbury city limits. But it does have a market share of 21 percent, comparable to what AT&T U-verse has achieved in many of its markets.
Fibrant also has the highest average revenue per customer among broadband providers in the city — $129 a month vs. $121 for Time Warner Cable. Customers spend more for the faster speeds Fibrant offers.
Some residents wonder if Fibrant will be successful if or when AT&T and Google begin offering fiber service. Both companies have made a splash in Charlotte’s newspapers and television news about their fiber plans, which exist only on paper in the form of press releases. Neither provider has targeted Salisbury for upgrades and nobody can predict whether either will ultimately bring fiber service to the city of Charlotte.
Those clamoring for fiber broadband speeds under the state’s anti-community broadband law will have to move to one of a handful of grandfathered communities in North Carolina where forward-thinking leaders actually built the fiber networks private companies are still only talking about.
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WSOC-TV in Charlotte reports Salisbury customers are happy with Fibrant service and the competition it provides AT&T and Time Warner Cable. (2:12)
Last week, advocates for an Open Internet were up in arms over a report in the Wall Street Journal indicating FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler was about to solve his Net Neutrality problem by redefining it to mean the exact opposite of its intended goal to keep Internet traffic out of provider-established toll lanes.
Former FCC chairman Michael Powell created the current definition of the Internet as “an information service” that has been repeatedly invalidated by the courts. Today he is the president of the nation’s largest cable industry lobbying group, the NCTA. (Image: Mark Fiore)
“Regulators are proposing new rules on Internet traffic that would allow broadband providers to charge companies a premium for access to their fastest lanes,” said the report, quoting an unnamed source.
Wheeler’s proposal follows the agency’s latest defeat in the courts in its latest effort to define net policy. The D.C. Court of Appeals objects to the FCC’s rule-making powers under the current “light touch” regulatory framework introduced by former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Since the first term of the Bush Administration, the FCC has avoided reclassifying broadband as a “telecommunication service,” which would place it firmly under its regulatory authority. Instead, it has continued to define the Internet as “an information service,” under which there is little precedent to support Net Neutrality rules.
The Wall Street Journalreported Wheeler was planning to introduce a new Net Neutrality policy that would ban blatant attempts to censor or block access to Internet websites, but would allow providers to monetize access to its broadband pipes by giving preferential treatment to traffic from certain content providers. Wheeler’s proposal would allow any company to pay for faster access to customers, so long as providers charged an undefined fair price to all-comers.
Wheeler said the FCC would have the authority to deal with providers unwilling to maintain a level playing field for content companies willing to pay extra, but was much more vague about how the regulator would protect websites unwilling to pay extra for traffic guarantees.
Net Neutrality proponents contend Wheeler’s proposal is exactly what Net Neutrality was supposed to prevent – an Internet toll lane only affordable to deep-pocketed giant corporations. For everyone else, including startups and smaller companies, customers could experience the type of slowdowns Netflix users experienced earlier this year — congestion-related buffering that disappeared almost instantly once Netflix signed a paid contract with Comcast for a more direct connection.
“With this proposal, the FCC is aiding and abetting the largest ISPs in their efforts to destroy the open Internet,” said Free Press CEO Craig Aaron. “Giving ISPs the green light to implement pay-for-priority schemes will be a disaster for startups, nonprofits and everyday Internet users who cannot afford these unnecessary tolls. These users will all be pushed onto the Internet dirt road, while deep-pocketed Internet companies enjoy the benefits of the newly created fast lanes.”
“For technologists and entrepreneurs alike this is a worst-case scenario,” Eric Klinker, chief executive of BitTorrent Inc., a popular Internet technology for people to swap digital movies or other content, told the Wall Street Journal. “Creating a fast lane for those that can afford it is by its very definition discrimination.”
It’s even worse than that for consumer groups like Free Press.
Charging another fee to get content on your broadband connection represents a massive business opportunity for broadband companies. But Free Press’ Craig Aaron says it would be a bad deal for Web companies, especially those that can’t afford to pay more for premium service. National Public Radio’s Morning Edition reports. Apr. 24, 2014 (1:58)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Providers love the idea of monetizing the use of their Internet pipes. (Image: Mark Fiore)
“This is not Net Neutrality. It’s an insult to those who care about preserving the open Internet to pretend otherwise,” said Aaron. “The FCC had an opportunity to reverse its failures and pursue real Net Neutrality by reclassifying broadband under the law. Instead, in a moment of political cowardice and extreme shortsightedness, it has chosen this convoluted path that won’t protect Internet users.”
Wheeler, a former industry insider that presided over both the wireless and cable industry’s largest lobbying groups had a friendlier reception from his former colleagues.
One top cable executive admitted, “I have to say, I’m pleased.”
The cable industry claims they need to attract more investment to manage upgrades of their broadband networks now coming under strain from the online video revolution.
“Somebody has to pay for this, and if they weren’t going to let companies pay for enhanced transport and delivery…it just seemed like this was going to come back to the consumer,” said the cable executive.
So far neither Wheeler or the FCC has released the draft proposal for Net Neutrality 2.0 and won’t until just before it votes on it next month.
A day after the story leaked, Wheeler wrote a damage control blog post to correct what he called “misinformation” about the proposed rules:
Wheeler is keeping the exact language of his Net Neutrality proposal to himself until just before holding a vote on it.
To be very direct, the proposal would establish that behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet will not be permitted.
Incorrect accounts have reported that the earlier policies of the Commission have been abandoned. Two points are relevant here:
The Court of Appeals made it clear that the FCC could stop harmful conduct if it were found to not be “commercially reasonable.” Acting within the constraints of the Court’s decision, the Notice will propose rules that establish a high bar for what is “commercially reasonable.” In addition, the Notice will seek ideas on other approaches to achieve this important goal consistent with the Court’s decision. The Notice will also observe that the Commission believes it has the authority under Supreme Court precedent to identify behavior that is flatly illegal.
It should be noted that even Title II regulation (which many have sought and which remains a clear alternative) only bans “unjust and unreasonable discrimination.”
The allegation that it will result in anti-competitive price increases for consumers is also unfounded. That is exactly what the “commercially unreasonable” test will protect against: harm to competition and consumers stemming from abusive market activity.
But Wheeler ignored one glaring change his proposal would make – permitting providers to monetize the performance of select Internet traffic. Currently, customers choose from a menu of available Internet speeds. Under Wheeler’s definition of Net Neutrality, a provider selling “up to” a certain amount of speed is under no obligation to actually deliver that speed. But that same provider could sell “insurance” to content producers promising certain network packets will have a better chance of reaching the customer on a timely basis, while non-paying content might not. That could make all the difference between a watchable streaming movie and one constantly pausing to “buffer.”
As long as everyone is free to pay Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T the same (more or less) for preferred treatment, all is well in Wheeler’s world.
Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, coined the phrase “Net Neutrality.” He discusses how the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed changes could affect the average consumer and it’s not good news. From NPR’s All Things Considered. Apr. 24, 2014 (3:51)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Dividing traffic on the Internet into fast and slow lanes is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission would do with its proposed regulations, unveiled this week. And no amount of reassurances about keeping competition alive will change that fact.
[…] In this new world, smaller content providers and start-ups that could not pay for preferential treatment might not be able to compete because their delivery speeds would be much slower. And consumers would have to pay more because any company that agrees to strike deals with phone and cable companies would undoubtedly pass on those costs to their users.
The F.C.C. proposal claims to protect competition by requiring that any deal between a broadband company and a content provider be “commercially reasonable.” But figuring out what is reasonable will be very difficult, and the commission will struggle to enforce that standard. The rules would also prohibit broadband companies from blocking content by, for example, making it impossible for users to access a service like Skype that competes with their own products.
[…] Mr. Wheeler is seeking public comment on this option, but he is not in favor of it. Even though the appeals court has said the F.C.C. has authority to reclassify broadband, the agency has not done so because phone and cable companies, along with their mostly Republican supporters in Congress, strongly oppose it.
Michael J. Copps, a former FCC commissioner confirmed big telecommunications companies are spending millions to lobby for rules that would allow them to tilt the scales in their favor.
Wheeler’s “is a lot closer to what they wanted than what we wanted,” Copps told the New York Times. “It reflects a lot more input from them. The courts did not tell Wheeler to take the road that he is reportedly taking.”
That Wheeler would take an approach that coincidentally follows a model heavily favored by the telecommunications companies he used to represent should come as no surprise. Stop the Cap! repeatedly warned Wheeler’s appointment as FCC chairman would likely lead to disaster for consumers. A lifelong industry lobbyist (and investor) is unlikely to develop a world view that strays too far beyond the industry’s groupthink on telecom policy.
Wheeler may actually believe his policies represent the best way forward for the telecommunications industry he now oversees. A lot of supporters of Zeppelin Luftschiffbau used to believe blimps were the future of aviation, until May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J.
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Mark Fiore uses animation in his editorial cartoon explaining the demise of Net Neutrality and the beginning of the Internet’s Gilded Age. (1:53)
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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Cox Communications Inc., the third-largest U.S. cable company, will offer gigabit broadband to residential customers later this year when it begins deploying DOCSIS 3.1 technology across its footprint.
The leveling off of video subscriptions has made broadband a critical part of Cox’s ongoing business plan. Esser claims Cox will adapt its business network infrastructure to introduce gigabit service to residential customers in some cities.
If you are a Time Warner Cable customer, one of four things will happen by this time next year:
Charter will take over directly in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Indiana and Alabama.
A 2011 state law largely written by Time Warner Cable will likely keep Charlotte, N.C. waiting for fiber broadband that nearby Salisbury has had since 2010.
