Space age beekeeping or Total EMF protection? Shielding your head just got easier. Slip this sheer and roomy HeadNet on and it will “provide 99.7% shielding across the frequency range 10MHz – 3GHz and >94% at 5.6GHz,” thanks to its generous use of ‘Silver Supershield’ double Silver-plated nylon, claims its manufacturer. Your price: $80

A Boston area boarding school’s failure to accommodate a 12-year-old student’s allergy to Wi-Fi will force the Fay School to hire attorneys to defend itself in a lawsuit brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

All three plaintiffs have been kept anonymous, but their lawsuit clearly identifies what is responsible for their son’s headaches, itchy skin and rashes — the school’s Wi-Fi system.

The Courthouse News Service:

In spring 2013, the Fay School installed an industrial-capacity WiFi network into the school that was accessible in all classrooms. After the new network went live, “G” began coming home with headaches, itchy skin and rashes that would recede in the evening, and vanish over the weekend and during summer vacation when he was not near the school, the lawsuit claims.

When the child returned to school for the 2014 academic year, his symptoms got worse, resulting in him having to regularly leave school early.

The parents found that their child’s condition may have been caused by exposure to increased electromagnetic activity after learning that, right before their child began suffering the symptoms, the school had installed a new, industrial-strength WiFi network.

“Exposure to Wi-Fi emissions at the levels emitted by the type of Wi-Fi to which the children are exposed in Fay classrooms causes, in those persons affected, most notably children, the symptoms of EHS, which include severe headaches, fatigue, stress, sleep disturbances, skin symptoms such as prickling, burning sensations and rashes, muscle aches, nausea, nose bleeds, dizziness and heart palpitations,” the lawsuit states.

The Omega EMF protector comes in Ethernet or Wi-Fi versions. A similar device opened up by an RF engineer was found to contain plastic beads. A reviewer claimed it was also effective at repelling “the lizard people from touching me in the night.”

People claiming to suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrome, or EHS, claim wireless signals cause them pain and suffering. Others argue the condition also afflicts those exposed to electric lights, juicers, Keurig coffee makers, garage door openers, washing machines, microwaves, laptops, blenders, air conditioners, cotton candy makers, vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, televisions, dishwashers, and fans. Some believe that mountains are effective blockers of radiation and have relocated to the Catskills or West Virginia to escape decent cell phone coverage and high quality broadband.

While medical authorities consider the symptoms reported by sufferers to be credible and believable, most experts strongly doubt electromagnetic activity is the cause. In the 1980s, high tension, high-capacity power lines were usually implicated by sufferers. But as cell phones became common, cell towers became the new targets. The presence of Wi-Fi, especially in public buildings and the classroom, have fueled the fire under a small army of activists dedicated to getting those services shut down, fearing their health impact on children.

To test the science, a 2009 double-blind study conducted by the National Institutes of Health on intolerance to electronic signals quickly found that when test subjects had no knowledge of whether they were being exposed to electromagnetic activity, all the symptoms of hypersensitivity vanished.

The Boston area family sued after claiming school officials had grown hostile over their requests to “test their student’s classroom.” The family also requested the school’s Wi-Fi network be disabled in all classrooms where their child was present and have wired Ethernet Internet access installed instead.

The World Health Organization’s firm conclusion that there is no link between EHS and Wi-Fi signals was not enough to assuage those worried about wireless. The WHO also declared EHS is not a credible medical diagnosis. Now, this does not mean the symptoms of people who think they have EHS are not real. But with no serious evidence wireless signals are the cause, skeptics suggest another environmental cause is more likely responsible for symptoms.

The two best ways to protect your pets from exposure to robust cell phone signals: 1) Become a Sprint customer. 2) Buy this dog collar for $169.

Prior claims of EHS have often turned out to be exposure to mold and mildew, allergies, perfume exposure, poor air quality, or a yet to be diagnosed unrelated disease or medical condition. For reliable defense against mold-related issues and to improve indoor air quality, discover First Defense Insulation services, which offers effective insulation solutions.

But that has not stopped the creation of a cottage industry of companies marketing “EMF protection” devices to a worried public.

Until recently, an Amazon seller peddled the EarthCalm Omega WiFi Electromagnetic EMF Protection dongle (USB or Ethernet version, so evidently the plaintiff’s request to move the school to Ethernet-based Internet access would subject their child to additional pain and suffering.) A “Healthy Home Package” containing this and a “Home EMF Protection System” is priced to move at another seller for just $405.

A curious RF engineer received a similar wall unit years ago as a gag gift – one he could not resist opening.

“There was nothing more [inside] than a 1-inch long piece of masking tape folded over,” he wrote. “When I peeled apart the masking tape there were seven tiny plastic beads, like you would use on a necklace. That was it! That is their ‘circuit’.”

With the EarthCalm Omega out of stock, there are plenty of alternatives available from hundreds of websites that raise the alarm on the dangers of wireless signals and then make a living selling very expensive “protection” devices of questionable value.

The EMF meter is claimed to be useful for detecting EMF and for ghost hunting.

Among them:

• The Nova Resonator S-Series (in three fashion colors) — a metallic tube hung from a chain placed around the neck ($239)
• The Quantum Cell: A metallic decal placed on the back of your cell phone, degrading or eliminating any cell phone reception ($129)
• Aulterra the EMF Neutralizer: No it’s not a person, it’s a cheap cell phone signal degrader for the middle class ($29)
• 4 Paws Pet EMF Protector: You wouldn’t let your dog be subjected to harmful Wi-Fi, would you? This dog collar is the “answer.” ($169)

The marketplace has grown so bloated with EMF protection sellers, they occasionally turn on one another. The manufacturer of the EMF Protection SmartShield360 Portable claims it is state-of-the-art, unlike those pushing “passive (not powered) pendants or stickers which claim to protect you.”

“SmartShield technology is light years beyond basic Schumann Resonance devices,” claims the manufacturer. It’s also light years away from the price of your basic Aulterra kit. SmartShield 360 will set you back $249 (plus $4.99 shipping).

In all seriousness, James “the Amazing” Randi believes such stories of wireless woo-woo can have a real cost.

“We do scientific research for a reason – to find out if things like EHS are real entities,” Randi writes. “What’s the use of such research if the results are going to be ignored.”

“Further, if people who believe they have EHS do not, they likely have some other condition – another condition which will go undiagnosed and untreated because they falsely believe EHS is the cause,” Randi adds.

Randi is also concerned the media treats these stories like catnip, sensationalizing the coverage without any sense of skepticism or fact checking.

“Reporters should have some sense of the topic they are covering, and whether or not they have sufficient background knowledge to know they are telling the true story,” he writes. “If you do a Google search for ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity’ [one will easily find] Wikipedia, which includes a decent discussion of the lack of scientific legitimacy. [Another] is for a published review showing that EHS sufferers cannot detect EMF. [A] third is to Skeptoid’s debunking of EHS, and [a] fourth is to the WHO review.”

More than five million Dish Network customers in 36 states can once again watch Sinclair-owned TV stations on the satellite service after the head of the Federal Communications Commission intervened to end the largest TV station blackout in U.S. history.

On Tuesday, Sinclair ordered its 129 stations to pull the plug on Dish subscribers after the satellite company failed to reach terms on extending its carriage agreement.

Dish accused Sinclair of “failing to negotiate in good faith” and noted the two companies had reached an agreement on a price to continue carrying the TV stations. What derailed the deal? Sinclair demanded Dish carry a new cable network focusing on high school and college sports it was planning to eventually launch. The TV station group owner also wanted to right to negotiate carriage contracts for another 23 stations Sinclair does not own, but operates under joint-sales agreements. Last March, the FCC prohibited such agreements but Sinclair believed its stations were grandfathered and not subject to the FCC’s ruling.

The large number of stations involved and the potential subscriber impact of dropping more than 100 stations all at once may have given Sinclair extra confidence to pull off a game of hardball. Dish lost 81,000 pay-TV customers in the second quarter of 2015, compared with a loss of 44,000 a year earlier. Dish is also no stranger to these kinds of disruptive disputes, having been involved in 32 of 74 major programming blackouts since 2013.

Earlier this month, Sinclair executives also told investors during an earnings call that the retransmission consent contracts with 75% of its distribution partners (cable, telephone and satellite companies) were up over the next year, giving Sinclair the chance to reset renewal rates higher to boost revenue.

Sinclair owned television stations (the numbers show the number of TV stations Sinclair owns and operates in a region.)

In a research note, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said Sinclair’s “greed” was likely to backfire on the company.

“Sinclair’s actions vis-à-vis Dish look to us like lighting a match in a dry brush field,” Greenfield wrote. “The government is looking for reasons to get more involved to help consumers. Sinclair may have finally given them a blatant enough excuse.”

Greenfield was right.

The dispute attracted the attention of FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler who requested “an emergency meeting” with the two companies yesterday to focus on the dispute. Wheeler had previously warned the FCC was taking a closer look at the growing number of station and network interruptions that anger paying customers. So far this year, there have been 145 station and network blackouts according to the American Television Alliance. Last year there were 107. In 2010, there were 12.

While most carriage disputes are about a disagreement over the fair value of a network’s programming, this high-profile battle already reached a settlement on that issue.

“At first blush, Sinclair’s actions sound crazy,” says Greenfield. He is convinced Sinclair has blatantly violated FCC rules by demanding to negotiate for stations it does not own. He also thinks demanding fees for a future cable network could run afoul of federal antitrust laws.

In this latest standoff, and under pressure from the FCC, Sinclair appears to have blinked first and programming was restored for Dish subscribers beginning late Wednesday, as an agreement between Sinclair and Dish was reached. The terms were not disclosed.

“On behalf of more than 5 million consumers nationwide, I am pleased Dish and Sinclair have agreed to end one of the largest blackouts in history and extend their negotiations,” Wheeler said before a final agreement was announced. “The FCC will remain vigilant. Use of the public airwaves is a public trust.”

Broadband for America is a front group funded by the telecom industry.

The Boston Globe has asked an industry-funded columnist to stop writing about broadband issues because he failed to disclose his conflicts of interest.

John E. Sununu is a former Republican U.S. Senator from New Hampshire and the son of former New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu. Since leaving office, he has earned a significant sum representing the interests of large telecom companies while assisting the Republican presidential primary campaign of Ohio Governor John Kasich. He has used his column in the influential newspaper to help both, without any disclosure to readers he has direct financial and personal conflicts of interest.

Media Matters criticized the paper after it allowed the former Republican senator to complain about the “unnecessary regulation of the internet” without disclosing he has been paid over $750,000 by corporate interests.

Sununu: “Honorary co-chair”

In an August 17 column, Sununu attacked the Obama administration for reaching “ever deeper into the economy, pursuing expensive and unnecessary regulation of the Internet, carbon emissions, and even car loans.”

The editors of the Globe failed to tell readers Sununu has a dog in the fight over broadband regulation, serving as a board member for Time Warner Cable and a paid “honorary co-chair” for Broadband for America. As Stop the Cap! first reported in 2009 in an extensive two-part expose, almost every member of Broadband for America is either a cable or phone company, a lobbyist for the telecom industry, an equipment supplier relying on the industry to stay in business, or a non-profit group that receives direct financial contributions from cable and phone companies.

Sununu also failed to mention he serves as the chair of John Kasich’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire when he wrote a column on June 22 claiming Donald Trump was “running a race where both the chance of winning and the risk of losing are zero.”

The lack of proper disclosure of conflicts of interest is not limited to the Globe. Shills for AT&T’s interests routinely appear in “guest editorials” in newspapers across AT&T’s service areas. Newspapers rarely disclose the authors have direct financial ties to AT&T, appearing to the uninformed as “independent voices.”

Dan Kennedy, an associate professor of journalism at Northeastern University, wrote that Globe Editorial Page Editor Ellen Clegg stated “Sununu has told me he will avoid writing about issues pertaining to cable and internet access because of his seat on the Time Warner Cable board.” Clegg reaffirmed that the Globe is “posting bios for our regular freelance op-ed columnists online and linking those bios to their bylines” to provide “more transparency.”

One down, countless more to go.

Before regulators, the media, and elected officials, Comcast’s executive vice president David Cohen has repeatedly told all who can hear that there are no usage caps on Comcast’s broadband service.

“There isn’t a cap anymore. We’re out of the cap business,” Cohen began saying in May 2012 after the cable company dropped its nationwide 250GB usage cap. But in several markets, mostly in the southern and western United States, Comcast snuck the caps back on residential Internet customers, only this time they claim it isn’t a usage cap at all.

“We effectively offer unlimited usage of our services because customers will have the ability to buy as much data as they want,” says the cable company these days.

But if the “usage caps” are actually gone, why is Comcast issuing executive-level memos to its customer service representatives and supervisors that repeatedly state the company does, in fact, have “data caps” in about a dozen cities across the country — part of an ongoing market trial that suggests Comcast is considering extending a new 300GB usage allowance nationwide.

Stop the Cap! reader Joe, an AT&T U-verse customer in Woodstock, Ga. — 30 miles north of downtown Atlanta — was offered a deal to switch to Comcast for 75Mbps Internet service at an attractive price. All Comcast had to do was convince Joe he would never have to deal with Comcast’s 300GB cap that is being tested in Atlanta. Joe, like many Internet customers, will not sign up with a company that imposes usage allowances on its wired broadband customers. He isn’t interested in checking a usage meter and considers broadband usage overlimit fees a deal-breaker.

So Joe called Comcast to get some straight answers. Does Comcast impose its usage cap on customers in Woodstock, which is part of Comcast’s greater Atlanta service area? Current Comcast broadband customers in Woodstock tell Stop the Cap! the company absolutely does impose a 300GB usage cap on Internet service, and some have the overlimit fees to prove it. But Comcast’s customer service representative insisted it just was not true. To back her up, not one but two Comcast supervisors also swore Woodstock is not affected by “data caps.”

Joe knew enough to record the call. Because if he did sign up for service and maintained his current usage, often in excess of 400GB a month, that “good deal” offered by Comcast would be replaced by nightmarish overlimit fees of $10 for each 50GB increment he exceeded his allowance.

Stop the Cap! reader Joe recorded his Aug. 22, 2015 conversation with Comcast — a company that really, really, really wants to convince potential customers in Georgia there are no Internet data caps on its broadband service outside of the city of Atlanta. Except there are, including in Joe’s city of Woodstock, Ga.

Comcast executives repeatedly claim Comcast doesn’t have “usage caps” on its Internet service anywhere, but you will quickly lose count adding up the number of times Comcast’s representative specifically refers to Comcast’s “data caps” and its official “data cap document.”

(This recording has been edited for brevity and clarity. Tones indicate where significant edits were made, during the time Joe was left on hold and as the representative moves towards a last ditch sales pitch. At the end of the clip, Joe shares his first impressions after he hung up with Comcast. (8:28)

You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

“What makes me laugh is the fact she is so uncertain. Obviously Comcast doesn’t properly train their employees,” Joe writes. “Comcast reps spreading bad information like this is negligent [when they tell] unsuspecting customers that there is no data cap. I honestly cannot tell if this woman was flat-out lying, or was just poorly trained.”

Joe isn’t the only one being misinformed by Comcast.

“I’ve been lied to so many times about this,” Jamil Duder wrote. “Sometimes I will get in touch with their online support just to see what they will tell me this time for my own amusement. I’ve been told everything. It has been removed, it never existed, it’s actually 600GB not 300GB, etc.”

In fact, Comcast’s enforcement of its data cap has spread well beyond the city limits of Atlanta. Despite claims from Comcast to the contrary, customers around the state report they are now limited to 300GB of usage before overlimit fees kick in.

“Absolutely unacceptable, and you wonder why they have the reputation as the worst company in America,” Joe writes.

So why would Comcast blatantly misinform customers about usage caps. The company is in an unenviable position in several of the cities where they are testing their caps. Most of Comcast’s competition in the usage cap trial markets comes from AT&T U-verse, which itself claims a 250GB usage cap — one that customers also know isn’t being enforced.

For Joe, sticking with AT&T’s slower Internet speeds in return for peace of mind his usage is not being limited is a better prospect.

Eric Ravenscraft suspects Comcast isn’t too happy with complaints it is getting about data caps from its customers either. He recently received a call from Comcast seeking feedback on what customers would like to see changed about the caps. But in typical Comcast fashion, getting rid of the caps does not seem to be an option. Instead, the representative claimed “obviously, the plans are outdated,” which suggests Comcast will adjust your allowance, not get rid of it.

Ravenscraft believes the most effective force to convince Comcast to ditch its caps altogether might be the Federal Communications Commission.

“If you want to do something about it, rope the FCC in. Let them know how you feel about this,” Ravenscraft writes. “Not only does this give the FCC another complaint to add to the pile, Comcast is required to respond to your complaint—by contacting you directly—within 30 days after the FCC forwards your complaint along.”

Several readers are doing exactly that every time they are charged an overlimit fee by Comcast. Within 30-60 days, Comcast has reportedly credited back the overlimit charges to complaining customers.

“I’ve filed 10 complaints with the FCC each time I get an overlimit fee on my bill, and I always get the overlimit fees credited back,” reports Stop the Cap! reader Jeff in Atlanta. “It takes about five minutes to fill out the complaint form — a minor nuisance, but now I effectively don’t have a Comcast usage cap and I am costing them more money dealing with my complaints every month than they would ever get charging me extra in the first place. Imagine if we all did that.”

“Comcast sucks but we might actually have a shot at making things better if we all do this,” Ravenscraft adds. “Most cities aren’t subject to these restrictive data cap trials, but they’ll eventually roll out nationwide if customers here don’t speak up loudly enough. We’ve got a weirdly unique opportunity to actually change how the internet works in the U.S.”

Phillip Dampier: A cable trade publication is lecturing its readership on better broadband the industry spent years claiming nobody wanted or needed.

Remember the good old days when cable and phone companies told you there was no demand for faster Internet speeds when 6Mbps from the phone company was all you and your family really needed?

Those days are apparently over.

Multichannel News, the largest trade publication for cable industry executives, warns cable companies gigabit broadband speeds are right around the corner and the technological transformation that will unleash has been constrained for far too long.

Say what?

Proving our theory that those loudest about dismissing the need for faster Internet speeds are the least equipped to deliver them, the forthcoming arrival of DOCSIS 3.1 technology and decreasing costs to deploy fiber optics will allow cable providers to partially meet the gigabit speed challenge, at least on the downstream. Before DOCSIS 3.1, consumers didn’t “need those speeds.” Now companies like Comcast claim it isn’t important what consumers need today — it’s where the world is headed tomorrow.

Comcast 2013:

Comcast executive vice president David L. Cohen writes that the allure of Google Fiber’s gigabit service doesn’t match the needs or capabilities of online Americans.

“For some, the discussion about the broadband Internet seems to begin and end on the issue of ‘gigabit’ access,” Cohen says, in a nod to Google Fiber. “The issue with such speed is really more about demand than supply. Our business customers can already order 10-gig connections. Most websites can’t deliver content as fast as current networks move, and most U.S. homes have routers that can’t support the speed already available to the home.” Essentially, Cohen argues that even if Comcast were to deliver web service as fast as Google Fiber’s 1,000Mbps downloads and uploads, most customers wouldn’t be able to get those speeds because they’ve got the wrong equipment at home.

Comcast 2015:

“We’ve consistently offered the most speeds to the most homes, but with the current pace of tech innovation, sometimes you need to go to where the world is headed and not focus on where it is today.”

“The next great Internet innovation is only an idea away, and we want to help customers push the boundaries of what the Internet can do and do our part to inspire developers to think about what’s possible in a multi-gigabit future.  So, next month we will introduce Gigabit Pro, a new residential Internet service that offers symmetrical, 2-Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) speeds over fiber – at least double what anyone else provides.”

Nelson (Image: Multichannel News)

Rich Nelson’s guest column in Multichannel News makes it clear American broadband is behind the times. The senior vice president of marketing, broadband & connectivity at Broadcom Corporation says the average U.S. Internet connection of 11.5Mbps “is no longer enough” to support multiple family members streaming over-the-top video content, cloud storage, sharing high-resolution images, interactive online gaming and more.

Nelson credits Google Fiber with lighting a fire under providers to reconsider broadband speeds.

“Google’s Fiber program may have been the spark to light the fuse — Gigabit services have fostered healthy competition among Internet and telecommunications providers, who are now in a position to consider not ‘if’ but ‘when and how’ to deploy Gigabit broadband in order to meet consumer’s perceived ‘need for speed’ and maintain their competitive edge,” Nelson wrote.

But the greatest bottleneck to speed advances is spending money to pay for them. Verizon FiOS was one of the most extravagant network upgrades in years among large American telecom companies and the company was savaged by Wall Street for doing it. Although AT&T got less heat because its U-verse development costs were lower, most analysts still instinctively frown when a company proposes spending billions on network upgrades.

Customer demand for faster broadband is apparent as providers boost Internet speeds.

The advent of DOCSIS 3.1 — the next generation of cable broadband technology — suggests a win-win-win for Wall Street, cable operators, and consumers. No streets will have to be torn up, no new fiber cables will have to be laid. Most providers will be able to exponentially boost Internet speeds by reallocating bandwidth formerly reserved for analog cable television channels to broadband. The more available bandwidth reserved for broadband, the faster the speeds a company can offer.

Many industry observers predict the cable line will eventually be 100% devoted to broadband, over which telephone, television and Internet access can be delivered just as Verizon does today with FiOS and AT&T manages with its U-verse service.

The benefits of gigabit speeds are not limited to faster Internet browsing however.

Nelson notes communities and municipalities are now using gigabit broadband speeds as a competitive tool selling homes and attracting new businesses to an area. According to a study from the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council, communities with widely available gigabit access have experienced a positive impact on economic activity — to the tune of more than $1.4 billion in GDP growth. Those bypassed or stuck in a broadband backwater are now at risk of losing digital economy jobs as businesses and entrepreneurs look elsewhere.

The gigabit broadband gap will increasingly impact the local economies of communities left behind with inadequate Internet speeds as app developers, content producers, and other innovative startups leverage gigabit broadband to market new products and services.

The Pew Research Center envisioned what the next generation of gigabit killer apps might look like. Those communities stuck on the slow lane will likely not have access to an entire generation of applications that simply will never work over DSL.

But before celebrating the fact your local cable company promises to deliver the speed the new apps will need, there is a skunk that threatens to ruin your ultra high speed future: usage-based pricing and caps.

At the same time DOCSIS 3.1 will save the cable industry billions on infrastructure upgrade costs, the price for moving data across the next generation of super high-capacity broadband networks will be lower than ever before. But cable operators are not planning to pass their savings on to you. In fact, broadband prices are rising, along with efforts to apply arbitrary usage limits or charge usage-based pricing. Both are counter-intuitive and unjustified. It would be like charging for a bag of sand in the Sahara Desert or handing a ration book to shoreline residents with coupons allowing them one glass of water each from Lake Ontario.

Cox plans to limit its gigabit customers to 2TB of usage a month. AT&T U-verse with GigaPower has a (currently unenforced) limit of 1TB a month, while Suddenlink thinks 550GB is more than enough for its gigabit customers. Comcast is market testing 300GB usage caps in several cities but strangely has no usage cap on its usage-gobbling gigabit plan. Why cap the customers least-equipped to run up usage into the ionosphere while giving gigabit customers a free pass? It doesn’t make much sense.

But then usage caps have never made sense or been justified on wired broadband networks and are questionable on some wireless ones as well.

Stop the Cap! began fighting against usage caps and usage pricing in the summer of 2008 when Frontier Communications proposed to limit its DSL customers to an ‘ample’ 5GB of usage per month. That’s right — 5GB. We predicted then that usage caps would become a growing problem in the United States. With a comfortable duopoly, providers could easily ration Internet access with the flimsiest of excuses to boost profits. Here is what we told the Associated Press seven years ago:

“This isn’t really an issue that’s just going to be about Frontier,” said Phillip Dampier, a Rochester-based technology writer who is campaigning to get Frontier to back off its plans. “Virtually every broadband provider has been suddenly discovering that there’s this so-called ‘bandwidth crisis’ going on in the United States.”

That year, Frontier claimed most of its 559,300 broadband subscribers consumed less than 1.5 gigabytes per month, so 5GB was generous. Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter trotted out the same excuses companies like Cox and Suddenlink are still using today to justify these pricing schemes: “The growth of traffic means the company has to invest millions in its network and infrastructure, threatening its profitability.”

Just one year later, Frontier spent $5.3 billion to acquire Verizon landline customers in around two dozen states, so apparently Internet usage growth did not hurt them financially after all. Frankly, usage growth never does. As we told the AP in 2008, the costs of network equipment and connecting to the wider Internet are falling. It still is.

“If they continue to make the necessary investments … there’s no reason they can’t keep up” with increasing customer traffic, we said at the time.

We are happy to report we won our battle with Frontier Communications and today the company even markets the fact their broadband service comes without usage caps. In many of Frontier’s rural service areas, they are the only Internet Service Provider available. Imagine the impact a 5GB usage cap would have had on customers trying to run a home-based business, have kids using the Internet to complete homework assignments, or rely on the Internet for video entertainment.

So why do some providers still try to ration Internet usage? To make more money of course. When the public believes the phony tales of network costs and traffic growth, the duped masses open their wallets and pay even more for what is already overpriced broadband service. Just check this chart produced by the BBC, based on data from the Organization for Economic Co‑operation and Development. Value for money is an alien concept to U.S. providers:

The usual method of combating pricing excess is robust competition. With a chasm-sized gap between fat profits and the real cost of the service, competitors usually lower the price to attract more customers. But the fewer competitors, the bigger the chance the marketplace will gravitate towards comfort-level pricing and avoid rocking the boat with a ruinous price war. It is one of the first principles of capitalism — charging what the market will bear. We’ve seen how well that works in the past 100+ years. Back in 2010, we found an uncomfortable similarity between broadband prices of today with the railroad pricing schemes of the 1800s. A handful of executives and shareholders reap the rewards of monopolistic pricing and pillage not only consumers but threaten local economies as well.

The abuses were so bad, Congress finally stepped in and authorized regulators to break up the railroad monopolies and regulate abusive pricing. We may be headed in the same direction with broadband. We do not advocate regulation for the sake of regulation. Competition is a much more efficient way to check abusive business practices. But where an effective monopoly or duopoly exists, competition alone will not help. Without consumer-conscious oversight, the forthcoming gigabit broadband revolution will be stalled by speed bumps and toll booths for the benefit of a few giant telecommunications corporations. That will allow other countries to once again leap ahead of the United States and Canada, just as they have done with Internet speeds, delivering superior service at a lower price.

China now ranks first in the world in terms of the total number of fiber to the home broadband subscribers. So far, it isn’t even close to the fastest broadband country because much of China still gets access to the Internet over DSL. The Chinese government considers that unacceptable. It sees the economic opportunities of widespread fiber broadband and has targeted the scrapping of every DSL Internet connection in favor of fiber optics by the end of 2017. As a result, with more than 200 million likely fiber customers, China will become the global leader in fiber infrastructure, fiber technology, and fiber development. What country will lose the most from that transition? The United States. Today, Corning produces 40% of the world’s optical fiber.

Global optical fiber capacity amounted to 13,000 tons in 2014, mainly concentrated in the United States, Japan and China (totaling as much as 85.2% of the world’s total), of which China already ranked first with a share of 39.8%. Besides a big producer of optical fiber, China is also a large consumer, demanding 6,639 tons in 2014, 60.9% of global demand. The figure is expected to increase to 7,144 tons in 2015. Before 2010, over 70% of China’s optical fiber was imported, primarily from the United States. This year, 72.6% of China’s optical fiber will be produced by Chinese companies, which are also exporting a growing amount of fiber around the world.

John Lively, principal analyst at LightCounting Market Research, predicts China could conquer the fiber market in just a few short years and become a global broadband leader, “exporting their broadband networking expertise and technology, just like it does with its energy and transportation programs.”

Meanwhile in the United States, customers will be arguing with Comcast about the accuracy of their usage meter in light of a 300GB usage cap and Frontier’s DSL customers will still be fighting to get speeds better than the 3-6Mbps they get today.