Verizon FiOS has upped the ad war against Comcast, one of its competitors in several northeastern cities. In a new series of ads, Verizon is taking on Comcast’s “name change” to Xfinity, implying it’s the same old Comcast just using a new name.
Comcast may be fighting back, but not with a response ad. Today, Broadband Reportshears word from a Comcast insider the company is planning on boosting broadband speeds later this year.
According to the source, the new Comcast tiers will be 12/2 Mbps, 20/4 Mbps, 50/10 Mbps, and 100/25 Mbps. Current 22/5 customers will be grandfathered, according to the source, and Comcast apparently hopes to get that 100 Mbps tier into about 20% of their footprint this year.
Comcast’s current speeds differ depending on whether you’re in a DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded market or not. Non DOCSIS 3.0 market customers currently have the choice of three tiers: 6/1 Mbps, 8/2 Mbps, and 16/2 Mbps. DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded markets have their choice of 12/2 Mbps, 16/2 Mbps, 22/5 Mbps, or 50/10 Mbps. Much later this year it looks like Comcast users will also start seeing some faster upstream speeds.
Verizon FiOS has the capability to beat Comcast’s broadband speeds over its entirely-fiber-based network, but not everyone can sign up for FiOS. Comcast may not want to give away the broadband speed store in areas where the now indefinitely-grounded FiOS service will never go.
[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/FiOS Takes On Xfinitiy.flv[/flv]
Comcast’s new Xfinity brand is the target of a new round of advertising from Verizon FiOS. (2 minutes)
At least 1,100 Hawaiian Telcom customers were left without service Sunday when vandals cut a cable providing the community northwest of Honolulu with phone and broadband service.
“Sunday night we learned that two of our cables in the Waipahu area had been cut in several places,” said Hawaiian Telcom’s Ann Nishida.
It took nearly three days to restore service to every affected customer because each cable required splicing 3,600 individual copper wires back together. The company says all 1,100 customers had service as of 1:00pm Wednesday afternoon.
Vandals sliced apart this cable. (Courtesy: Hawaiian Telcom)
Customers reported experiencing no dial tone and having no access to the Internet.
Even as service restoration work was underway, several residents reported broadband service remained intermittent until the repairs were completed Wednesday.
Although HawTel claims vandalism to their lines is uncommon, residents in Waipahu say vandals have struck repeatedly in the community, especially when street lights aren’t working in the neighborhood.
Customers subjected to the outage should contact HawTel customer service to verify a credit for the lost day(s) of service appears on their next bill.
The company filed a police report and asked Waipahu residents who may have witnessed the vandalism to report it to local authorities.
Hawaii has had several disruptions in phone service, the most recent happening in February when a damaged AT&T fiber cable cut off long distance service to HawTel and T-Mobile customers.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KHON Honolulu Vandals Leave Hundreds in Waipahu with No Phone or Internet Service 4-7-10.flv[/flv]
KHON-TV Honolulu reports many Waipahu customers are going for the third day without phone or Internet service. (2 minutes)
Jesse and his nearby neighbors on the west side of Milton are frustrated. They live just 20 minutes away from Burlington, the largest city in the state of Vermont. Despite the proximity to a city with nearly 40,000 residents, there is no cell phone coverage in western Milton, no cable television service, and no DSL service from FairPoint Communications. For this part of Milton, it’s living living in 1990, where dial-up service was one’s gateway to the Internet.
Jesse and his immediate neighbors haven’t given up searching for broadband service options, but they face a united front of intransigent operators who refuse to make the investment to extend service down his well-populated street.
“After many calls to Comcast, they eventually sent us an estimate for over $17,000 to bring service to us, despite being less than a mile from their nearest station,” Jesse tells Vermont Public Radio. “They also made it very clear that there was no plan at any point in the future, 2010 or beyond, to come here unless we paid them the money.”
Jesse and his neighbors want to give Comcast money, but not $17,000.
For at least 15 percent of Vermonters, Jesse’s story is their story. Broadband simply remains elusive and out of reach.
Three years ago, Vermont’s Republican governor Jim Douglas announced the state would achieve 100 percent broadband coverage by 2010, making Vermont the nation’s first “e-State.”
Vermont Public Radio reviewed the progress Vermont is making towards becoming America’s first e-State. (January 20, 2010) (30 minutes)
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Gov. Douglas
In June 2007 the state passed Act 79, legislation that established the Vermont Telecommunications Authority to facilitate the establishment and delivery of mobile phone and Internet access infrastructure and services for residents and businesses throughout Vermont.
The VTA, under the early leadership of Bill Shuttleworth, a former Verizon Communications senior manager, launched a modest broadband grant program to incrementally expand broadband access, often through existing service providers who agreed to use the money to extend service to unserved neighborhoods.
The Authority also acts as a clearinghouse for coordinating information about broadband projects across the state, although it doesn’t have any authority over those projects. Lately, the VTA has been backing Google’s “Think Big With a Gig” Initiative, except it promotes the state as a great choice for fiber, not just one or two communities within Vermont.
Vermont used this video to promote their bid to become a Google Fiber state. (2 minutes)
Some of the most dramatic expansion plans come from the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. ECFiber, a group of 22 local municipalities, in partnership with ValleyNet, a Vermont non-profit organization, is planning to implement a high-capacity fiber-optic network capable of serving 100% of homes and businesses in participating towns with Internet, telephone and cable television service. In 2008, the group coalesced around a proposal to construct a major fiber-to-the-home project to extend broadband across areas that often don’t even have slower speed DSL.
The ECFiber project brought communities together to provide the kind of broadband service private companies refused to provide. Vermont Public Radio explores the project and the enthusiasm of residents hopeful they will finally be able to get broadband service. (March 8, 2008) (24 minutes)
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ECFiber's Partner Communities
The Vermont towns, which together number roughly 55,000 residents, decided to build their own network after FairPoint Communications and local cable companies refused to extend the reach of their services. Providers claim expanding service is not financially viable. For residents like sheep farmer Marian White, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that means another year of paying $60 a month for satellite fraudband, the speed and consumption-limited satellite Internet service.
White calls the satellite service unreliable, especially in winter when snow accumulates on the dish. Unlike many broadband users who vegetate for hours browsing the web, White actually gets an exercise routine while trying to get her satellite service to work.
“I open a window and I take a pan of water and, a cup at a time, I launch warm water at the satellite dish until I have melted all the snow off the dish,” Ms. White says. “It works.”
Other residents treat accessing the Internet the same way rural Americans plan a trip into town to buy supplies.
Kathi Terami from Tunbridge makes a list of things to do online and then, once a week, travels into town to visit the local public library which has a high speed connection. Terami downloads Sesame Street podcasts for her children, watches YouTube links sent by her sister, and tries to download whatever she thinks she might want to see or use over the coming week.
A fiber to the home network like ECFiber would change everything for small town Vermonters. The implications are enormous according to project manager Tim Nulty.
“People are truly afraid their communities are going to die if they aren’t on the communications medium that drives the country culturally and economically,” he says. “It’s one of the most intensely felt political issues in Vermont after health care.”
Despite the plan’s good intentions, one obstacle after another has prevented ECFiber from making much headway:
The VTA rejected the proposal in 2008, calling it unfeasible;
Plans over the summer and fall of 2008 to approach big national investment banks ran head-on into the sub-prime mortgage collapse, which caused banks to stop lending;
An alternative plan to build the network with public debt financing, using smaller investors, collapsed along with Lehman Brothers on September 14, 2008;
An attempt by Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) to insert federal loan guarantees into the stimulus bill in February 2009 was thwarted by partisan wrangling;
Attempts to secure federal broadband grant stimulus funding has been rejected by the Commerce Department;
Opposition to the plan and objections over its funding come from incumbent providers like FairPoint, who claim the project is unnecessary because they will provide service in those areas… eventually.
For the indefinite future, it appears Ms. White will continue to throw warm cups of water out the window on cold winter mornings.
Vermont Edition takes a comprehensive look at where the state stands in broadband and wireless deployment. (April 8, 2009) (46 minutes)
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For every Tunbridge resident with a story about life without broadband, there are many more across Vermont living with hit or miss Internet access.
Take Marie from Middlesex.
Most residents in more rural areas of Vermont get service where they can from FairPoint Communications
“I am in Middlesex, about a half-mile off Route 2, and five minutes from the Capitol Building. Yet up until just recently, we had no sign of high-speed Internet. I understand that my neighbors just received DSL a few weeks ago, but when I call FairPoint, they tell me it’s still not available at my house, which is a few hundred yards up the hill. Hopefully, they’re wrong and I’ll see DSL soon,” she says.
Marie is pining for yesterday’s broadband technology — FairPoint’s 1.5Mbps basic DSL service, now considered below the proposed minimum speeds to qualify for “broadband” in the National Broadband Plan. For Marie, it’s better than nothing.
Geryll in Goshen also lacks DSL and probably wouldn’t want it from FairPoint anyway.
“We have barely reliable landline service. A tech is at my house at least three times per year. I was told the lines are so old they are decaying. Using dial-up is impossible. I use satellite which is very expensive and is in my opinion only one step up from dial-up. I am limited to downloads and penalized if I reach my daily limit,” he says.
Many Vermonters acknowledge Douglas’ planned 100-percent-broadband-coverage-by-2010 won’t come close to achievement and many are highly skeptical they will ever see the day where every resident who wants broadband service can get it.
Chip in Cabot is among them, jaded after six years of arguments with FairPoint Communications and its predecessor Verizon about obtaining access to DSL. It took a cooperative FairPoint engineer outside of the business office to finally get Chip service. His neighbors were not so lucky, most emphatically rejected for DSL service from an intransigent FairPoint:
“I laughed when Governor Douglas announced his e-State goal “by 2010” three years ago. Now I’m thinking I should have made some bets on this claim. It took years of legal battles and a zoning variance to obtain partial cell coverage here in Cabot. Large parts of the town still do not have any cell coverage. Governor Douglas can perhaps be forgiven – he has no technical knowledge, and as a politician would be expected to be wildly optimistic about such “e-State” claims. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority and the Department of Public Service should know better however. We’re talking about rural areas where there is no financial incentive to provide either DSL or cell service. It will take a huge amount of money to provide service to those remaining parts of the state. I’m not optimistic.”
[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Wall Street Journal Vermont Broadband Problems 03-02-09.flv[/flv]
The Wall Street Journal chronicled the challenges Vermonters face when broadband is unavailable to them. ECFiber may solve these problems. Some of the stories in our article are reflected in this well-done video. (3/2/2009 — 4 Minutes)
AT&T had to pay considerably more in taxes last year than Verizon did
One of the most common talking points among pro-business tax cutting advocates is the claim that companies in the United States face the highest corporate tax rate in the world. But that assumes corporations actually pay taxes at that rate, which few do. In fact, this week Forbes discovered that many of the country’s biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do–that is, if they pay taxes at all.
While the biggest tax savings were grabbed by the bailed-out banks, the nation’s two largest telecommunications companies — AT&T and Verizon didn’t do too badly for themselves.
Of the two, AT&T had the higher tax bill, paying an effective tax rate of 32.4 percent. But AT&T is still prone to avoid paying corporate taxes wherever it can. In Connecticut, AT&T’s maneuvers are fueling a campaign for state tax reform to close the loopholes.
This morning, the Hartford Courant slammed AT&T:
AT&T Corp. has emerged as the poster child for these shenanigans.
A state Department of Public Utility Control audit found AT&T to be engaging in a tax-avoidance scheme sometimes called the Las Vegas Loophole. Over a period of 2.5 years, AT&T shifted about $145 million in Connecticut earnings to a subsidiary in Nevada, ostensibly paying licensing fees for the right to use the company’s own name and logo. Nevada has no corporate income tax, so the shifted earnings went untaxed and Connecticut lost out. If it sounds fishy, that’s because it is. AT&T is not alone. Many large corporations use sham transactions designed to move profits generated in Connecticut to a different state where they won’t be taxed.
AT&T’s executives benefit from creative tax accounting themselves, earning a stipend of up to $14,000 a year to hire high-priced accountants that specialize in finding ways to reduce their own personal tax bite. But no matter — AT&T covers the taxes CEO Randall Stephenson has to pay on some of his benefits anyway.
While the rest of the country plods through a jobless recovery, Stephenson decided the time was right to get a base salary increase and resume taking a bonus — a big one, too. His effective compensation package rose by a third in 2009.
Among Stephenson’s compensation and perks:
$1.45 million in base salary, up two percent over 2008;
$12.1 million in options and performance-based stock incentives;
$216,000 in rebates to cover his club membership dues;
$200,000 to cover his life insurance premiums;
$140,576 to cover any taxes he is forced to pay on his benefits package.
Verizon gets to use partner Vodafone's British address to help reduce exposure to U.S. corporate taxes. It reports much of its income through its British partner, which helps reduce its American tax liability.
Meanwhile, over at the nation’s 12th largest company, Verizon has managed to cut its tax rate to just 10.5 percents. That’s because on paper, Verizon’s British partner Vodafone gets much of the income, while the U.S. side gets lots of expenses. That dramatically reduces the corporate taxes incurred by the company in the United States. That tax rate is even lower than Steve Forbes’ much-promoted 15 percent flat tax.
Verizon’s compensation to Uncle Sam calls out the myth of America’s corporate tax rate. With creative accounting work, companies can slash their tax obligations.
That gives Verizon more money to spread around to top executives at the company, all while Verizon lays off thousands of workers and leaves retirees wondering how long the company will stand behind its pension and health coverage benefits.
Some shareholders are rankled by news CEO Ivan Seidenberg is on track to receive an $11 million stock grant if the company makes it as low as 25th among 34 similar Dow Jones-ranked companies, and a doubling to $22 million, if the company ranks among the top four. That’s hardly a high hurdle to achieve an $11 million bonus.
That kind of compensation raises the ire of former employees of Verizon, who launched the Association of BellTel Retirees to protect the pension and health care benefits of retirees.
“Large payouts for below-median performance does not adequately align pay with performance,” said Bill Jones, the retiree group’s president, a former managing director at NYNEX, now a part of Verizon.
The group is well known for its high profile pressure on Verizon to stop providing a largess of benefits for top management for merely doing their jobs.
This year, the Association will demand a vote on a resolution to better tie stock awards to stock performance and limit executive compensation. It also wants to stop expensive windfall golden parachute packages, such as Seidenberg’s $33.1 million dollar bon voyage, which he receives if he’s fired or retires.
While a handful of Verizon executives fight to preserve their generous compensation packages, Verizon retirees are fighting to get their doctor bills paid. Jones’ group is strongly advocating new legislation to stop companies from walking away from their agreements with retired employees.
Bill Jones appeared on WOCA-AM Ocala, Florida in February to discuss the threat retirees face when companies walk away from their pension and health care plans for former employees. (28 minutes)
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H.R. 1322, the Emergency Retiree Health Benefits Protection Act, was introduced into the 111th Congress by Rep. John Tierney and would:
Prohibit group health plans from making post-retirement reductions in retiree benefits;
Require plans to adopt provisions barring post-retirement cuts in retiree health benefits;
Require employers to restore benefits reduced after retirement;
Provide an exemption for employers who are unable to restore benefits because they would experience substantial business hardship to be determined by the Secretary of Labor; and,
Create a loan guarantee program to assist employers in restoring retiree health benefits.
[flv width=”560″ height=”336″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/The Association of BellTel Retirees Inc.mp4[/flv]
Bill Jones discusses his organization’s battles to protect pensions and health care benefits for Verizon retirees. (5 minutes)
Time Warner Cable may be robocalling you any day now with news that your set top box is getting what the cable company is calling an upgrade.
Time Warner Cable is making this robocall to customers with set top boxes announcing an upcoming upgrade. (1 minute)
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Calls are being made to customers with set top boxes in Buffalo and Rochester notifying them an upgrade to the new Mystro platform begins as early as April 13th, depending on the box being used. Syracuse and southern tier residents can expect their upgrade to commence in May. The company maintains a website that will let you find the exact schedule for the Mystro upgrade in your area.
Time Warner Cable’s Navigator software displays the electronic program guide, helps you program and control your DVR, and also includes the setup menu for the box.
The upgrade will result in a dramatic change in the look and feel of the box’s on-screen graphics, change how you navigate through the program guide, and provide more options for hooking up today’s HDTV sets. If you have a DVR box from Time Warner Cable, the upgrade sets the stage for an upcoming feature that will let you remotely program your DVR while away from home.
Not everyone is thrilled with the upgrade, however. In fact, a Google search for “Time Warner Navigator upgrade” reveals a large selection of websites and forums filled with complaints. Regularly reported problems include:
Sluggish performance, especially on older set top boxes;
Poor responsiveness on fast forward/rewind functions for DVRs, making it difficult to land precisely where you want to be;
The loss of “virtual HD” channels which some boxes passed through to even standard analog-only TV’s (albeit not in HD of course);
DVR bugs that made recording reliability inconsistent;
A DVR menu that makes it difficult to record only new episodes of series that repeat regularly on the channel lineup;
Box crashes, lost program guide data, and issues with the box retaining settings, especially for more complex HDTV setups;
Time Warner Cable began testing Mystro at least two years ago in selected markets, and the company believes it has worked out a number of the bugs noted above along the way. Time Warner plans to systematically upgrade their customers to the new platform nationwide now that testing has been completed.
This customer was so bemused with the Time Warner Navigator upgrade, he made a video illustrating the absurd journey he took to find a science-fiction movie to watch.
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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