Bright House Networks Thursday switched on a huge network of free Wi-Fi hotspots for its broadband customers across central Florida.  Concentrated on coastal beach communities in eastern Florida and in the cities of Orlando, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, the new Wi-Fi service can be found on beaches and parks, inside malls and shopping destinations, downtown business districts, and medical facilities across their Florida service area.

Existing Bright House broadband customers can log in and use the service for free:

• Most wireless devices will display available networks. If the device doesn’t show networks, open the network options and select My BrightHouse or Bright House Networks.
• Open the Internet browser of your choice.
• When the WiFi HotZones page opens, click ‘log in’ under Bright House Road Runner Customer.
• Log in using Road Runner email and password or My Services credentials.
• Agree to the terms of use and connect to the WiFi network.

Non-customers can purchase access with a credit card in increments of as little as three hours.  Stop the Cap! readers in central Florida report speed test results of around 5/1Mbps from many of the Wi-Fi locations, which is much better than many other publicly available Wi-Fi networks.

Bright House says it has launched the Wi-Fi service to help customers hang on to their usage-limited mobile broadband allowances.

“We’re trying to save our customers money, time and energy,” Bright House spokesman Donald Forbes said.  “Plus, Wi-Fi is so much faster and such a better connection.”

Cable provider-delivered Wi-Fi is often used by the industry as a customer retention tool and goodwill gesture.  It typically uses the company’s pre-existing broadband infrastructure, which keeps costs low.

Bright House is soliciting customer feedback about possible new locations for future Wi-Fi hotspots.  The company plans to add at least 2,000 additional hotspots by the end of this year.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bright House launches major Wi-Fi initiative 1-12-12.flv[/flv]

Bright House produced this informational video introducing its Wi-Fi service.  (2 minutes)

Would-be customers of Time Warner Cable’s broadband service in Vienna, a small town in Oneida County, N.Y. are confused about why the cable company will not provide them with broadband service, even though cable company lines pass right over their respective driveways.

Pete Rauscher sees neighbors within a mile away happily using Time Warner’s Internet service, even though he cannot buy it for himself.

“I’d like to get the service…so do [my neighbors],” Rauscher told WSYR-TV in Syracuse. “It isn’t right that somebody within a mile of us has the same cable service, but we don’t.”

Rauscher and his neighbors are victims of a de-facto cable industry standard that says wiring fewer than 35 homes within a mile is not financially viable.  Rauscher might understand this, if a Time Warner-owned cable line didn’t pass straight over his driveway.

The cable company says it would cost at least $17,000 to provide Rauscher with broadband service, an installation fee way out of his budget.

Parts of Oneida County are still without any broadband service, except for those lucky (and wealthy enough) to receive and pay for a wireless 3/4G broadband connection from Verizon Wireless.  That company charges $80 a month for up to 10GB of usage, much more expensive than what Time Warner would charge.  DSL is not provided in that section of Vienna.

Time Warner says it regularly re-evaluates expansion into currently unserved sections of its service area.  Two sections of nearby Camden now receive cable service from the company, partly thanks to new housing developments in the rural region.  But for now, the cable company remains resolute in not serving customers who do not meet its population density test.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSYR Syracuse Fight for High Speed Internet 1-12-12.mp4[/flv]

WSYR-TV tells the story of rural Oneida County residents who cannot get Time Warner Cable broadband service, even though the cable company lines cross their driveways.  (2 minutes)

Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is questioning whether Comcast misled the federal agency when the cable company acquired wireless spectrum it now says it had no intention of ever using.

McDowell was reacting to Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis, who admitted this week his company really never had any interest in competing in the wireless space.

“Were they purchased under false pretenses?” McDowell asked.

Comcast has since sold their acquired spectrum to Verizon Wireless, which in Angelakis’ view makes sense.

“We never really intended to build that spectrum, so therefore it’s a really good use of that spectrum,” Angelakis said.

That admission puts Comcast in a difficult position, because FCC rules mandate that companies acquiring scarce wireless spectrum make a good faith effort to use it.  In McDowell’s view, had Comcast never intended to put the frequencies to use, the FCC probably would have disallowed the acquisition.

Verizon Wireless also plans to pick up unused spectrum originally acquired by Time Warner Cable in a deal that would let both companies cross-promote cable and wireless products and avoid head-on competition.

Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable have warehoused unused spectrum for several years.  Neither company appeared serious about building competing wireless networks, and with the spectrum off the market, would-be competitors couldn’t launch service either.

Verizon agreed to pay $3.6 billion to acquire the cable industry-owned spectrum, which it intends to use to bolster its LTE 4G network.

The FCC is now seeking public input on whether it should approve the spectrum sale. The Justice Department is also considering its antitrust implications.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/BBC News Will 4G be faster than home broadband 1-9-12.flv[/flv]

The BBC produced this mini-documentary about 4G LTE wireless broadband’s impact in Europe and the United States.  Providers in the UK and northern Europe see wireless 4G as the solution to rural broadband scarcity, but consumers in urban and rural settings won’t put up with stingy usage caps and ridiculously high prices.  Sweden pioneered 4G wireless, running the oldest and most robust 4G network in the world.  In Sweden, TeliaSonera delivers wireless broadband at speeds of up to 84Mbps — many times faster than what Verizon Wireless offers.  But even with those speeds, just 9,000 Swedes have signed up — rejecting the company’s “very high priced” service — $50US a month for 10GB.  (Verizon Wireless charges $80 a month for the same amount of data usage, a testimony to the price sensitivity of a much-more regulated and competitive European wireless marketplace.)

While Europe enjoys faster speeds at lower prices, providers in the United States are treating 4G as a luxury item.  With that in mind, plans by some U.S. carriers to create a home broadband replacement service for rural America that relies on 4G wireless networks will likely face strong consumer resistance because of the extremely high prices and low usage caps.  (The abrupt end of the video is intentional.) (10 minutes)

 

ViaSat, the parent company of satellite Internet service provider WildBlue, will introduce new pricing and speed packages Tuesday for its satellite broadband service.

WildBlue has offered satellite-based Internet access for several years, but the speeds and heavily-restricted “fair access policy” have left many customers looking for something better.  But for many satellite Internet customers, DSL or cable broadband is miles away and will be indefinitely, so any improvement in satellite broadband is good news.

“Are the days of satellite fraudband finally over?” asks Stop the Cap! reader Madeline who lives in rural Idaho. “I was a customer of WildBlue and Hughes in the past and both were not worth bear spit.”

Madeline and her family are potato farmers, and have been for three generations.  She remembers when the phone company started selling dial-up Internet access and got hooked on the Internet to get updated weather reports, trade farming information, and stay in touch with relatives.  But as the web has grown more multimedia-oriented, dial-up has progressively become an intolerable way to experience it.

“In the 1990s, web ads and pages were simple and they’d load quick,” she says. “Now it’s all video ads and other things that take five minutes or more to appear, so you become stuck waiting until you give up.”

WildBlue’s new satellite, ViaSat 1, may change the perception of a satellite Internet experience that is only slightly more tolerable than dial-up.  With speeds up to 12Mbps, WildBlue’s new speed packages will finally deliver something more than the 1.5Mbps “Pro” service the company currently sells for $80 with a 17GB usage cap.

“The key words with satellite are ‘up to‘ because you never get the speeds they promise, especially at night when everyone is on,” Madeline says. “If you use what they consider to be ‘too much,’ your speeds are cut further.”

ViaSat 1 has a total capacity of 140Gbps, double that of the company’s other satellite — KA-SAT.  That wireless pipeline will eventually be shared by commercial, government and residential customers.  With several hundred thousand anticipated users, WildBlue will continue to restrict usage even with the new capacity.  No word on what specific limits will be put in place, but it is likely customers will at least enjoy a speed boost from the new satellite.  ViaSat hopes to economize using web compression technology and other traffic management techniques to make efficient use of the satellite’s broadband capacity.

Madeline remains unconvinced, however.

“You don’t choose satellite Internet because you want to, you choose it because you have to,” she says. “My guess is WildBlue will continue the same low caps — especially to make sure we steer well clear of web video — and will still charge us a lot of money for service you can’t use all you want.”

Madeline went back to dial-up and frequently visits some nearby relatives who receive Internet from a Wireless ISP.

“While everyone else in the country is talking about Netflix and making video calls to relatives, we are still sending e-mail and setting egg timers to make sure we don’t stay online too long and get throttled before the month is out.”

WildBlue’s Existing Packages (Company-supplied information)

PACKAGES	VALUE	SELECT	PRO
Features	Good for e-mail and basic web browsing only.	Better for frequent e-mail use, web surfing, music downloads, online shopping, and sharing photos.	The current top of the line plan delivers slightly better speed, but more importantly, a more generous usage allowance.
Download Speed	up to 512 Kbps	up to 1.0 Mbps	up to 1.5 Mbps
Upload Speed	up to 128 Kbps	up to 200 Kbps	up to 256 Kbps
Email Addresses Powered by Google — more than 7GB each	5 email addresses	5 email addresses<	10 email addresses
Spam & Virus Filtering	Included	Included	Included
Thresholds*	7,500 MB download 2,300 MB upload	12,000 MB download 3,000 MB upload	17,000 MB download 5,000 MB upload
24/7 Technical Support	Included	Included	Included
Equipment Limited Warranty	Included	Included	Included
Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware Software	Free during your first 12 months of WildBlue service ($2.95/month thereafter).
WildBlue.net Portal	Your WildBlue.net home page will bring you a mix of news, weather, sports, and entertainment, plus powerful features that you can customize, all brought to you through a single web page powered by Google. You’ll have access to more than 2,000 Google Gadgets that you can add to your customized home page.
Dial-up Access (optional)	10-hour package of remote-access dial-up for $7.95/month.

WildBlue’s Acceptable Use Policy.

*A “threshold” (a/k/a “usage cap”) is the amount of data that you can upload or download in a 30-day period before WildBlue’s Fair Access Policy (speed throttle) applies.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Wildblue Demo.flv[/flv]

WildBlue produced this demonstration to show off web browsing over its new ViaSat 1 satellite.  Keep in mind this browsing session took place before the satellite was available for general customer use and the company avoids mentioning its usage limits, which are extremely small in comparison to wired broadband.  (3 minutes)