One of the more far out there arguments against Net Neutrality has consistently come from conservative astroturf groups, who receive plenty of corporate funding to advocate a pro-business agenda using arguments that appeal to a conservative audience.

Newsmax, one of the more widely-read conservative websites, has gone all out on the theory that Net Neutrality is an attempt by President Barack Obama to take control of the Internet, potentially even leading to censorship.  In an unconvincing video segment, Newsmax.TV reporter Ashley Martella interviews Ryan Radia, an Information Policy Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-business think tank.

Newsmax TV: Net Neutrality is a "regulatory power grab" (4 minutes)

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p style=”text-align: center;”>(Note: Because Google video ads auto-play without your consent, which we do not agree with at Stop the Cap!, clicking the image will launch a new browser window to take you to Newsmax’s site to play the video there.)

A number of conservative blogs and news sources have latched onto one echo chamber claim: “CBS News recently reported that a cyber security bill would give Obama the emergency powers he’d need to control the Internet.”  When a link to the actual report is not provided, that should ring warning bells in your head.  Unfortunately, too many people simply accept statements as fact and never bother to check them out.  If Katie Courac is warning the country about an Obama power grab online, I want to know about it.

Stop the Cap! is one of the few, the proud, the fact checkers.

As with most of the memes attacking Net Neutrality on political grounds, there is considerable exaggeration at work here.  We could find two references on CBS News’ website to the aforementioned claim, and both turned out not to be news reports, but one blog entry and a reprinted news article from a conservative news site¹:

• Senate Proposal Gives President Authority Over Internet, by Declan McCullagh, a senior correspondent for CBS News’ Web site.  (August 28, 2009)
• An Unconstitutional Internet Power Grab, by Bruce Henderson, reprinted with permission from The New Ledger, a conservative news site founded by Ben Domenech of RedState blog fame. (September 1, 2009)

An Associated Press wire story this past weekend covering proposed legislation also appears on CBS News (and thousands of other websites).

At issue is S.773, The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, a Senate bill introduced by Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to establish an effective defense against cyber attacks on the United States.  Some early drafts of the proposed bill had some language, long since discarded, that could have raised privacy concerns, but it’s disingenuous at best to suggest this bill’s language, known to Newsmax and others propagating these near-hysterical conspiracy theories, would give any power to the Obama Administration to silence dissent and “control the Internet.”

In fact, this legislation does not even originate with the White House.  Jena Longo, deputy communications director for the Senate Commerce committee, de-fanged the hysteria back in late August in a statement:

The President of the United States has always had the Constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the President’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shut down or takeover of the internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false. The purpose of this language is to clarify how the President directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.

Radia, for his part, illustrates the effort to co-opt conservatives who distrust the Obama Administration into coming along for the ride for an industry friendly snowjob opposing Net Neutrality, with helpful prodding from Martella:

Martella: Could this lead to censorship?

Radia: There is the possibility of that.  What we have seen lately is the Obama Administration and agency officials attempt to increase their power over government networks.  Just a few weeks ago, CBS News reported that a cyber security bill would give Obama emergency powers to control the Internet.  Under a Net Neutrality regime, we could see the FCC tell companies what data they can and cannot prioritize.

Martella’s wild “censorship” reference was jarring because it comes out of the blue with no supporting preposition.  In fact, it’s pro-Net Neutrality advocates that fear providers could engage in censorship, because there have been instances where providers have done just that.  Net Neutrality impacts private Internet providers by demanding they do not block, impede, or interfere with third party website content.

Radia plays mix ‘n match with two different issues to create a magical blend of nonsense — the cyber security bill which conservatives fear is an Obama power grab and Net Neutrality’s consumer protections against abusive broadband network management.

The Obama Administration’s advocacy of Net Neutrality is not about increasing power over government networks.  CBS News did not report that a cyber security bill would give Obama emergency powers to control the Internet — it printed a blogger’s opinion and a reprint from a conservative news site that hypothesized such a bill, if it existed, would do that.  Radia defines Net Neutrality as the FCC telling companies what data they can and cannot prioritize.  Actually it just preserves the open network that has made the Internet so unique.  But on behalf of his provider friends, that issue is force-merged into the Obama “Internet takeover” theory, with the hope it will energize conservatives to also oppose Net Neutrality.

Radia’s arguments are hardly convincing.  He repeats the unpersuasive and undocumented fears that “Net Neutrality … is a rule that would stifle innovation, would reduce network investment, and it would decrease consumer choice in the broadband market.”  It sounds like he also bought a ticket to OppositeLand, where reality is defined as the exact opposite of the truth.  As is the case in Canada, it is the lack of Net Neutrality protection which stifles innovation from new high bandwidth applications that cannot succeed in a marketplace rich with Internet Overcharging schemes and speed throttles.  Online video for Canada is just one of several applications that have been stifled by provider controls.  There is no evidence Net Neutrality would reduce investment in networks.  Customers clamoring to use those networks and the diversity of online content is much more likely to stimulate network upgrades to maintain quality of service.  How consumer choice in the broadband market (which most consumers believe is hardly robust) would be impacted negatively is never explained.

Radia accidentally justifies why FCC policy alone is not enough to guarantee Net Neutrality protection when he points out Congress has not specifically authorized the FCC to get involved in the network management of service providers.  A bill in the House of Representatives would do just that, however.

Radia’s assumptions that consumers are pleased with the competitive marketplace, particularly for wireless, are dubious at best, particularly when he makes this stunning statement:

“If you want a walled garden, a device where a company controls and helps guide the user experience, you can get an iPhone.”

Of course, many iPhone users have complained openly and loudly about the fact they are stuck with AT&T — AT&T retains an exclusive arrangement with Apple in the United States to sell the phone for use on AT&T’s network.  They also aren’t too happy being limited by both companies in selecting applications to run on the phone, something managed by Apple and AT&T unless the customer “jailbreaks” the phone to bypass the restrictions.  The result is a stifled iPhone user experience on an overloaded AT&T wireless network, higher pricing on service plans for the iPhone, and consumer choice limited to deciding whether to live with these restrictions or go without.

Radia suggests Net Neutrality is being pushed just by a handful of “so-called consumer groups that believe that since their preferences are not being matched in the market, that they should use the hand of government to force these rules upon the private sector.”  His problem with that is that he believes (along with the providers who spend millions lobbying) that consumers are well served by today’s marketplace filled with proprietary business models.

Of course, real consumer groups can’t exist without consumers that actually support them, and as we’ve documented since this site launched, consumers are not well served by the limited competitive marketplace, and the abuses that come from that, and they’ve complained loudly and regularly to those providers about those practices.  They aren’t listening.  So consumers are turning to the public officials who regulate and oversee such markets to attempt to force them to listen.

Newsmax’s efforts to give mainstream media credibility to a sensationalized claim was only outdone by Radia himself on his own bio page:

Ryan is a frequent contributor to the Technology Liberation Front, the technology policy blog dedicated to preserving freedom and liberty in the information age. His ideas have been referenced by technology writers including Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic’s Daily Dish, Karl Bode of Broadband Reports, and Mike Masnick of Techdirt.

Karl Bode found it ironic Radia would reference a piece he wrote, because Bode’s article trashed Radia and his friends for claiming a cable price war was resulting in consumer savings.  The Techdirt piece Radia links to didn’t exactly give him a seal of approval either:

Last month, we mocked some mainstream press reports claiming both a broadband price war and the fact that broadband prices were rising. There doesn’t really seem to be much of either, as broadband prices have remained pretty constant, even accounting for promotional pricing. However, with Comcast getting ready to significantly boost speeds (yes, with its broadband caps, Ryan Radia is wondering if the actual “price war” is hidden by the fact that it’s in price per megabit.

In other words, if prices remain constant, but your speed doubles, isn’t that something of a price decrease? Radia chalks this all up to competition in the market, but it should at least be admitted that the speeds (even these higher speeds) still pale in comparison to other countries where there is much greater competition than in the US, where most people still are limited to only two real choices. Either way, as someone who’s still stuck on a home connection that runs around 500k (below the new 768k cutoff for “real” broadband) despite being in the center of Silicon Valley, I’m still not convinced that these greater speeds are so readily available yet.

We invite Radia to link to our spanking as well.

¹Using search terms “obama emergency internet” and “emergency internet” on the CBS News website.

AT&T: 'Google is violating the Net Neutrality tenets we spend millions to make sure don't become law.'

AT&T sent a letter late last week to the Federal Communications Commission calling out Google Voice, the free adjunct Voice Over IP service being tested by Google, for blocking calls to certain high cost telephone numbers.  Robert W. Quinn, Jr., Senior Vice President of AT&T’s Federal Regulatory office complained that AT&T has been forced to complete those calls while Google Voice does not, suggesting that might be the equivalent of a Net Neutrality violation, if not an outright violation of call completion requirements established by the Commission.

These days, almost anything can be defined as a Net Neutrality violation.  If I was a vegetarian and I blocked meat products from my home, I’d probably get a letter from AT&T’s counsel too.

At issue here is the exploitation of a loophole that was established by telecom regulators to provide extra financial support to rural community telephone companies.  When a person places a long distance call, part of the charge is paid to the company that connects the call from the long distance network to the recipient’s telephone line.  The fees long distance companies pay vary depending on the size of the community and the length of the call.  Small rural areas enjoy a higher call completion fee than urban areas do.

Some enterprising individuals discovered the fees being paid to rural phone companies were higher than the actual costs to provide the service.  Traditionally, that extra money was used by rural phone companies, often independent or customer-owned cooperatives, to keep their service costs down and to maintain their equipment.  Long distance carriers didn’t care because the number of calls to these rural communities was comparatively small.

But what would happen if a company set up a telephone number to receive lots of calls that would otherwise never be made to such rural communities?  The result could be a financial windfall.  That possibility persuaded a few rural phone companies to let third parties offer international calling, conference calling and adult phone chat services for no charge beyond whatever the customer has to pay to make the long distance call.  In return, the phone company kicks back a significant portion of the extra income they earn from “call completion fees” to the service providers.

AT&T, among others, got wind of this arrangement and flipped out, complaining they were paying an ever increasing bill from rural phone companies hosting these services.  Anyone with an unlimited long distance plan could call these numbers for free and stay connected for hours at a time.

Unsurprisingly, AT&T blocked calls to these services for a period in 2007, refused to pay for some prior charges, and sued several phone companies.

AT&T/Cingular spokesperson Mark Siegel told Ars that the reason the company has decided to start blocking these services is because high volumes of calls to similar services are costly, and the cost of those calls aren’t passed on to the customer. “We have to pay terminating access for every minute the person is on the line,” Siegel explained. “Typically these companies run them through local exchange companies that charge high access rates, so we end up paying high access charges.”

The FCC intervened and said phone companies cannot arbitrarily block customer access to phone numbers, and the blocks were removed.  Today, the free international long distance calling services are basically gone, but free conference calling lines and adult sex chat services remain, and Google Voice has now discovered the perils of connecting calls, for free, to these services.  So now they have blocked access as well.  Google Voice beta testers report calling blocked numbers results in perpetual busy signals.

AT&T pounced in a letter to the FCC:

Numerous press reports indicate that Google is systematically blocking telephone calls from consumers that use Google Voice to call telephone numbers in certain rural communities.  By blocking these calls, Google is able to reduce its access expenses. Other providers, including those with which Google Voice competes, are banned from call blocking because in June 2007, the Wireline Competition Bureau emphatically declared that all carriers are prohibited from pursuing “self help actions such as call blocking.” The Bureau expressed concern that call blocking “may degrade the reliability of the nation’s telecommunications network.” Google Voice thus has claimed for itself a significant advantage over providers offering competing services.

But even if Google Voice is instead an “Internet application,” Google would still be subject to the Commission’s Internet Policy Statement, whose fourth principle states that “consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.” This fourth principle cannot fairly be read to embrace competition in which one provider unilaterally appropriates to itself regulatory advantages over its competitors. By openly flaunting the call blocking prohibition that applies to its competitors, Google is acting in a manner inconsistent with the fourth principle.

Ironically, Google is also flouting the so-called “fifth principle of non-discrimination” for which Google has so fervently advocated (Net Neutrality). According to Google, non-discrimination ensures that a provider “cannot block fair access” to another provider. But that is exactly what Google is doing when it blocks calls that Google Voice customers make to telephone numbers associated with certain local exchange carriers. The Financial Times aptly recognized this fundamental flaw in Google’s position: “network neutrality is similar to common carriage because it enforces non-discrimination . . . Google is arguing for others to be bound by network neutrality and, on the other hand arguing against itself being bound by common carriage,” which leaves Google with an “intellectual contradiction” in its argument.

Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel for Google, fired back a response on the Google Policy Blog countering AT&T’s arguments:

Google Voice’s goal is to provide consumers with free or low-cost access to as many advanced communications features as possible. In order to do this, Google Voice does restrict certain outbound calls from our Web platform to these high-priced destinations. But despite AT&T’s efforts to blur the distinctions between Google Voice and traditional phone service, there are many significant differences:

• Unlike traditional carriers, Google Voice is a free, Web-based software application, and so not subject to common carrier laws.
  
• Google Voice is not intended to be a replacement for traditional phone service — in fact, you need an existing land or wireless line in order to use it. Importantly, users are still able to make outbound calls on any other phone device.
• Google Voice is currently invitation-only, serving a limited number of users.

AT&T is trying to make this about Google’s support for an open Internet, but the comparison just doesn’t fly. The FCC’s open Internet principles apply only to the behavior of broadband carriers — not the creators of Web-based software applications. Even though the FCC does not have jurisdiction over how software applications function, AT&T apparently wants to use the regulatory process to undermine Web-based competition and innovation.

The HissyFit is on, and it’s almost entirely beside the point.  Once again, Net Neutrality is being used as a convenient flogging tool, this time by a company that spends millions to oppose it, yet sanctimoniously demands others should comply with its founding principles.  While the systematic blocking of telephone numbers may echo the kinds of concerns Net Neutrality protection is designed to address, it’s not as on point as AT&T would have you believe.

Google Voice isn’t even close to being a replacement for telephone service.  It’s not even openly available to the public.  AT&T would have had a stronger argument complaining about MagicJack, the dongle that lets you make unlimited long distance calls for $20 a year.  They go beyond just blocking some of the conference calling services — they actually redirect calls to a recording encouraging customers to instead use one of their own partners instead.

Dan Borislow, inventor of MagicJack says “it is not illegal for us to block calls to [conference calling numbers.]  We have invited other conference calling companies to interconnect to us for free, so we can complete our customers’ calls to them.”

Google’s public policy response isn’t as satisfying as it could have been either, and uses some weak arguments in rebuttal.  Much more important and on point is finding a way to address call completion fee loopholes through a change in telecommunications policy.  The telecommunications landscape has fundamentally changed in ways that existing rules could not have anticipated.  Addressing that issue would provide immediate relief to both AT&T and Google Voice without dragging consumer interests into a telecom policy cat fight.

Unfortunately, that’s a point far too fine for many media types, bloggers, and the sock puppets to understand (or desire to), and the campaign of Waving Shiny Keys of Distraction will carry on, and may have been AT&T’s intention in making such an argument in the first place.

Now that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has put the issue of Net Neutrality on the front burner, the often-ludicrous reasons some people give to oppose Net Neutrality are coming out all over the place.  When you find one that is particularly preposterous, use the Contact Us link at the top of the screen and drop us a summary and a link.  We’ll be calling out the silliest and debunking those that might sound good on the surface but have a soft, squishy, logic-free center.

To get us started, this letter to the editor turned up last week in The Seattle Times:

The recent Seattle Times editorial on net neutrality seemed logical on the surface [“Protecting net neutrality,” Opinion, Sept. 22], but in reality was a Robin Hood-style regulation.

Let me pose a question: What would The Times’ opinion be if the Federal Communications Commission mandated The Times’ facilities were open to anyone who wants to use it as they wished?

I suspect the company would probably make an argument that it made the huge capital investment, and therefore should have control over who can or cannot use it.

So explain, what is the fundamental difference between the management of this capital asset and that of a company such as Comcast or any other Internet provider?

I suspect nothing other than another example of government intervention into a business and technology they do not understand. The Times should be thankful they are not focused on the newspaper industry.

I’ve long accused the Federal Communications Commission of being out of touch and not understanding (‘broadband over power lines’ advocacy being a particularly stupid idea on their part), but rest assured, they are well acquainted with the arguments the broadband industry makes to preserve its position.  Providers spend tens of millions of dollars to hire lobbyists to advocate just that.

To use Robin Hood as an analogy puts us squarely in OppositeLand, where ‘up is down’ and ‘right is left.’  Robin Hood was a story about robbing from the rich to give to the poor.  This writer seems to think the “poor” are Comcast and AT&T, and the individual customers most at risk from Net Neutrality abuse are somehow the “rich.”

Perhaps it would have been more apt to suggest the Seattle Times would be guilty of Net Neutrality abuse if it openly refused to print ‘letters to the editor’ or interview people for stories who did not have a home delivery subscription to the newspaper.

A newspaper, of course, is not the equivalent of the global Internet.  It’s just one of countless content creators that use the Internet to make their content more accessible to an online audience, one that might choose to read what they publish.  That’s an important distinction, because Net Neutrality does not interfere with content creators and tell them what they can and cannot say.  It helps protect their independence.  The Seattle Times can print whatever they see fit, and you and I make the individual decision to read or not read what they publish.

More importantly, and why the writer’s analogy misses the mark:  If you or I don’t like The Times and think we can do a better job, we can start our own website and publish our own content.  We don’t need the imprimatur of establishment media to make our own content available to the masses.  Individual readers will judge the quality and value of our content individually, and determine its importance and relevance accordingly.  So you or I don’t need to demand The Seattle Times open up their presses to our content — we can simply publish our own content independently, enjoying the exact same global reach, and have the potential to be just as successful as they are.

But let’s get back to the writer’s premise and adjust it slightly.  The Times pays a web hosting company to make their articles available online.  They have a business relationship with that hosting company, which uses part of that hosting fee to pay for their own pipeline to the Internet.

Meanwhile, you and I pay a monthly fee for an Internet Service Provider (ISP).  We pay them every month to provide unencumbered connectivity to the Internet, which happens to include the website for The Seattle Times.

One day, our ISP mails a letter to The Times and tells them that unless they pay to become a “preferred content partner,” they can no longer guarantee that the newspaper’s web pages will always reach you and I on a timely basis.  In effect, our ISP now wants to be paid twice — once by us to access the Internet, and once by the newspaper for “assurances” their content will reach us at broadband speeds.

The Times doesn’t have a business relationship with our ISP, but you and I do — specifically to provide the connectivity they suggest may soon no longer be guaranteed to those who “use their pipes for free.”

Now the problem becomes clearer to understand.  Even more concerning is that some of these ISPs own and manage news content sites.  Will they charge themselves the same price they ask from others?

Net Neutrality in its entirety protects content producers, like this website, from having its reach impacted.  Remember, one of the biggest strengths of the Internet is that anyone, anywhere, can reach this website or The Seattle Times on equal terms just by typing in the address.  No Internet user or content producer should have to face a blockade from providers that don’t like the message, had their content moved to the “slow lane” for not paying an unprecedented fee, or had their website overshadowed because a competitor leveraged favorable treatment from their “preferred content partner” status.

HK Broadband offers 100% Fiber Optic service to residents of Hong Kong

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 Kong” for its dramatically faster broadband speeds.

Hongkongers have had several choices for broadband service over the years, most offering traditional DSL service throughout the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong is a territory of the People’s Republic of China). Priced around $32 a month, the most popular service choice offers residents 6Mbps downstream speeds and 0.6Mbps upstream. Some modern residential multi-dwelling units have a more advanced from of DSL service offering up to 18Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream.

HK Broadband represents a major competitive threat for traditional DSL service in Hong Kong, because the fiber optic network provides customers with faster speeds ranging from 25Mbps-1000Mbps.  The company also offers a bundle including broadband, a Voice Over IP telephone service, and IPTV (cable television) service with 80+ channels. HK Broadband offers symmetrical speeds on their network, which means your upload speed is as fast as your download speed. The company has pummeled its telephone network-reliant competitors with humorous ads that call out DSL’s slower speeds, particularly for uploads.

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p style=”text-align: center;”>[flv width=”450″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN Ad – Ants.flv[/flv]
HK Broadband “Ants” Advertisement: Ten Kung-Fu-Fighting-Ants, representing the downstream speed of a traditional DSL broadband connection, are shown ganging up on a single helpless ant, who represents the weaker upstream speed, demonstrating how traditional DSL services typically offer upload bandwidth that is only a 10th of the download speed.

HK Broadband offers 100Mbps service for $35 per month, just a few dollars more than DSL. But there is an interesting catch. HK Broadband, like other providers in Hong Kong, cope with inadequate international broadband connections. Instead of engaging in Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps, such as those found in Australia and New Zealand, the company has instead capped the speed for websites located abroad at 20Mbps for both uploads and downloads. The 100Mbps speed is reserved for domestic websites. Some subscribers note they couldn’t get speeds much faster than that when accessing overseas sites regardless of the cap, so it has not presented a major problem. As connectivity improves, so should the speeds, according to company officials.

The company also has a unique residential service guarantee — they promise that you will receive at least 80% of the speed you subscribe to, or they refund double your money back. Of course, this applies only to connections made to websites within Hong Kong.

When you’ve got it, flaunt it, and HK Broadband’s fiber speeds are the hallmark of their marketing campaigns.

[flv width=”480″ height=”284″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HKBN 100Mbps Ad.flv[/flv]

HK Broadband “Fat Pipe” Advertisement: Real life characters representing Internet content force themselves into a tiny pipeline, representing DSL, but are later liberated by a wide open fiber optic pipeline they can run through with room to spare.

The investment by City Telecom in their fiber optic broadband network has brought impressive financial results to the company, with customers taking more of their telecommunications business in HK Broadband.  That increases the average revenue per subscriber.  The company has also aggressively increased the level of investment to build out its network, producing an economy of scale that has reduced the costs to wire new subscribers.

Traditional Wall Street investors have often been unimpressed with expensive technology upgrades undertaken by telecommunications companies.  Notably, Verizon Wireless’ FiOS fiber to the home network was pummeled by several investor groups who complained Verizon was spending too much on their fiber network, even though their costs to wire each new customer has dramatically decreased with time.  City Telecom has turned that criticism on its head.  Among many of its competitors, City Telecom is the second most profitable, earning an 11% profit margin.

China Securities has showcased the company, noting it enjoys subscriber growth at levels greater than industry growth, is positioned with technology that assures it of long term stability in revenue and income growth, and despite all of the investments the company has made, retains a strong free cash flow.  Most of all, it has very happy subscribers who enjoy a well regarded broadband service, available at fast speeds and a reasonable price.

The incumbent telephone company’s network of copper wire, supporting lower speed DSL service, is not in the same position.  HK Broadband brought Alexander Graham Bell back to life to chastise the notion that a network more than 100 years old is appropriate for 21st century broadband.

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/HK Broadband Bell Ad.flv[/flv]

HK Broadband “Alexander Graham Bell” Advertisement: The inventor of the telephone makes a “special-guest” appearance pointing out the fact that the 100 year old telephone network wasn’t designed for today’s broadband connections. This is set in a traditional Chinese Hell-like environment to imply the hellish experience of surfing the Internet with a slow connection.

<

p style=”text-align: left;”>HK Broadband has not escaped the attention of its competitors, of course.  PCCW Limited, Hong Kong’s dominant telephone company, has been aggressively marketing its own fiber, DSL, and wireless broadband products, not allowing HK Broadband to win without a fight. PCCW has had to play catch-up with HK Broadband’s aggressive fiber deployment, which focused on residential and business customers from the outset.  PCCW’s fiber network was primarily intended for business customers, and now the company has been rapidly expanding their fiber network to residential customers.  Today, where PCCW fiber is available, customers can choose from 18Mbps, 30Mbps, 100Mbps, or 1000Mbps service plans.  Many PCCW customers will also be aggressively marketed a wireless mobile Netvigator add-on, one of PCCW’s more successful product lines.

[flv width=”294″ height=”240″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/PCCW Fiber Optics Ad.flv[/flv]

PCCW “Fiber Optics” Advertisement: Lampooning HK Broadband’s fiber optic network, PCCW says it had their own extensive fiber optic network laid before HK Broadband came around.  Its tagline, “…the real fiber optics broadband.”

A detailed presentation of HK Broadband and its potential attractiveness to investors was produced by China Securities and features an interview with NiQ Lai, the Chief Financial Officer of City Telecom.

[flv width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Chinasecurities-City Telecom Presentation September.flv[/flv]

[13 minutes]

The advancement of Net Neutrality by the Federal Communications Commission was the topic of this week’s Mixed Media, a feature from WXXI-AM, a public radio station in Rochester, New York.  Scott Fybush, who has been known to drop by Stop the Cap! from time to time, talked with WXXI’s Rachel Ward about Net Neutrality and the Stop the Cap! movement, and why Rochester is such an activist community when it comes to preserving reasonable and fair pricing for Internet access.

A Federal Communications Commissioner comes out strong for net neutrality. WXXI’s Rachel Ward and media and technology reporter Scott Fybush have more. (5 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

If you have any interest in radio or television, Scott’s Northeast Radio Watch is a must-read every week. WXXI’s Mixed Media does a good job of explaining technology stories and their impact on us in a way everyone can understand.