A Philadelphia community group is accusing Comcast of keeping its low-income budget Internet program a secret and denying needy families access for the flimsiest excuses.

Action United, which fights for low and moderate income Pennsylvanians, dropped off complaints with federal officials in Philadelphia from residents who are upset because they never heard of the discounted Internet access program or were disqualified from applying.

Comcast’s Internet Essentials offers families who qualify for the federal student lunch program access to 1.5Mbps broadband for around $9.95 a month.  But an informal survey by the group found scores of residents who never heard of the program and would have applied if they had known it existed.

The group, which says it has 44,000 members in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Allentown, says it could find only two families among its members that actually qualified to sign up for the service.  Some were disqualified because they didn’t participate in the school lunch program, others because they already have Internet service or had a long-forgotten past due bill.

“I feel as though the Internet service will help my son to progress in math, reading, spelling,” Dawn from North Philadelphia told CBS Philadelphia. But she says Comcast refused to sign her up.

“They told me I had a back bill from 10 years ago, so I was not qualified,” Dawn said.

As Stop the Cap! reported in September, Comcast’s program is effectively designed to reap positive publicity for the cable company while discouraging customers from applying and actually obtaining the service.

Action United protests the digital divide in downtown Philadelphia. (Courtesy: Action United)

Action United says area schools, an obvious place to promote low cost Internet for students, knew nothing about the program.

Comcast counters it sent mailings about Internet Essentials to 4,000 school districts, which covers 30,000 schools.

The group originally planned to protest Wednesday in front of Comcast’s corporate headquarters in Philadelphia to draw attention to the problem.  Earlier today, Action United announced it had reached an agreement to meet with Comcast executives to discuss the program and help cut some of the red tape for families experiencing trouble applying.

Comcast’s decision to offer budget Internet service came as a result of negotiations with the federal government to approve its merger with NBC-Universal. Critics contend Internet Essentials is too restrictive and requires applicants to navigate through a cumbersome qualification process.  After approval, the program only provides discounted service for a period of three years and can be terminated if a family falls past due on their account.

From the byzantine terms and conditions for enrollment in the Comcast Internet Essentials program:

The program is only available to households that (i) are located where Comcast offers Internet service; (ii) have at least one child who receives free school lunches through the National School Lunch Program (the “NSLP”) and as confirmed annually while enrolled in the program; (iii) do not have an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment; and (iv) have not subscribed to any Comcast Internet service within the last ninety (90) days (sections 1(i)-(iv) collectively are defined as “Eligibility Criteria”). This program is not available to households that have children who receive reduced price lunches under the NSLP. The program will accept new customers for three (3) full school years, unless extended at the sole election of Comcast. Comcast reserves the right to establish enrollment periods at the beginning of each academic year in which it accepts new customers that may limit the period of time each year in which you have to enroll in the program.

2. In order to confirm your eligibility for the program, Comcast will need to verify that your children receive free school lunches through the NSLP in the initial enrollment year and each subsequent year you are enrolled in the program. In order to confirm eligibility, participants in the program will be required to provide copies of official documents establishing that a child in the household is currently receive free school lunches through the NSLP. Each year you will be required to reconfirm your household’s current eligibility by providing Comcast or its authorized agent with up-to-date documentation. If you fail to provide documentation proving your eligibility in the program, you will be deemed no longer eligible to participate in the program.

3. You will no longer be eligible to participate in the program if (i) you no longer have at least one child living in your household who receives free school lunches under the NSLP; (ii) you fail to maintain your Comcast account in good standing; (iii) Comcast ceases to provide the Covered Service to your location; or (iv) your account opened under the program is closed. A change in address may result in your account being closed, even if you continue to receive Comcast services at a different address. Program participation also may be terminated if the Covered Service is upgraded, altered or changed by you for any reason. If you are no longer eligible for the program, but continue to receive the Covered Service from Comcast, regular rates, and any other applicable terms and conditions will apply to the Covered Service.

Time Warner Cable dropped the ball… right on the heads of temporary customers Alice and Dan Beissel, who signed up for service and canceled just ten days later.

The Corpus Christi, Texas couple decided to cancel service from AT&T and give the cable company a try and, according to them, it was trouble right from the start.

The Beissels say the cable service never worked right, with picture outages and other equipment troubles that came and went.  Frustrations mounted when a service call found nothing wrong, until the Time Warner truck pulled out of the driveway and the picture again went blank.

But the final straw was a conversation Dan Beissel had with the company’s customer service support center.

“What did you do that was wrong,” the representative asked Beissel.

Beissel must have thought the answer was ‘signing up for cable service,’ because the family decided to cancel after that call ended.

Now the couple has been forced to turn to KZTV’s Troubleshooter consumer reporter in an effort to collect an overdue refund check for their service.  The station ran into the same kind of frustration the Beissel family did:

We’ve made several calls to Time Warner Cable in an attempt to speak with anyone who can help the couple.

Unfortunately, there is no customer service contact in Corpus Christi.

Time Warner Cable says refund checks are normally processed within four weeks and mailed from a California office.  A local employee working for the cable company in the Corpus Christi area said he would look into the missing refund check.

KZTV in Corpus Christi is helping one family find a missing refund check owed to them by Time Warner Cable.  (2 minutes)

An increasing number of wireless data users are getting some tough love courtesy of AT&T.

“Your data use this month places you in the top 5% of users,” the text message reads. “Use Wi-Fi to avoid reduced speeds.”  Our regular reader Earl hopes we’ll keep spreading the word.

AT&T’s speed throttle has now moved beyond the pages of tech blogs and into USA Today, where the newspaper explores the trials and tribulations of wireless data management policies at the nation’s largest wireless companies.

Mike Trang, along with at least 200,000 other AT&T customers, has been caught in AT&T’s wireless speed trap.  The result can be speeds punitively reduced to dial-up for the remainder of a billing cycle, leaving customers on AT&T’s “unlimited use” plan waiting up to two minutes for a single web page to load.

While AT&T tells the newspaper it only throttles the speeds of unlimited customers who use an average of 2GB or more per month to ease congestion (if that), the company’s “congestion problems” seem to disappear when customers switch to a usage-billing plan that charges fees based on different usage allowances:

Trang’s iPhone was throttled just two weeks into his billing cycle, after he’d consumed 2.3 gigabytes of data. He pays $30 per month for “unlimited” data. Meanwhile, Dallas-based AT&T now sells a limited, or “tiered,” plan that provides 3 gigabytes of data for the same price.

Users report that if they call the company to ask or complain about the throttling, AT&T customer support representatives suggest they switch to the limited plan.

“They’re coaxing you toward the tiered plan,” said Gregory Tallman in Hopatcong, N.J. He hasn’t had his iPhone 4S throttled yet, but he’s gotten text-messages from AT&T, warning that he’s approaching the limit. This came after he had used just 1.5 gigabytes of data in that billing cycle.

Many customers who have received the text message warning about their usage now think twice about everything they do with their phone, which may be part of what AT&T intended for its remaining customers grandfathered on a now-discontinued unlimited use plan.

John Cozen, a Web and mobile applications designer in San Diego, told USA Today he’s now “almost scared to use the phone.”

Cozen’s complaints to AT&T have been ignored and now he’s shopping for a new carrier.

AT&T’s warning-and-throttle system is the strictest among America’s largest wireless carriers. When customers exceed AT&T’s arbitrary declaration of being among the “top 5% of users,” their speeds are subject to severe slowdowns until their next bill is issued. This leaves customers who may have needed their phone at the beginning of the month for a business trip or vacation suddenly throttled for weeks because of what AT&T calls “congestion,” even if nobody else is using the cell tower.  Even worse, customers not yet deemed to be offending AT&Ts usage manners, or who pay per gigabyte, can overload a cell tower and create the very congestion AT&T claims it hopes to manage.  But only “unlimited use” customers get “time out” in the usage penalty corner.

Among other carriers:

• Verizon Wireless also uses a network management system that can throttle speeds for exceptionally heavy users, but their speed throttle is engaged only when individual cell towers are overloaded with traffic, and the speed reduction level will vary with the amount of traffic on that tower.  When congestion eases, speeds return to normal for everyone;
• T-Mobile throttles customers after a maximum of 5GB of usage per month, unless other arrangements are made with the company;
• Sprint Nextel does not have usage limits or a throttle on smartphone data plans at this time.

Openmedia.ca's campaign against increased government surveillance

Two weeks ago, Ontario Provincial Police arrested at least 60 people in connection with one of the largest child pornography rings ever seen in the country.

Under current Canadian law, authorities obtained warrants to identify names associated with the IP addresses police say were engaged in the trade of lurid sexual imagery of minors, as well as recruiting potential new victims in online chat rooms and social networks.

Provincial police were able to identify at least five dozen suspects within the province and successfully staged a coordinated raid in Windsor, London, Toronto, Barrie, Niagara, Sudbury and Ottawa, charging them with more than 200 criminal offenses.

But some lawmakers believe existing privacy laws are inadequate and hamper police investigations, and plan to allow authorities new latitude in chasing down online crime.

An “Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other acts” is scheduled to be introduced in Parliament later today, and some of its supporters are attacking online privacy advocates of being “pro-child porn” if they oppose the measure.

“He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said to one government critic of the new privacy bill.

The proposed legislation is nothing new — similar bills have come and gone through Ottawa for a few years now. Most seek to demolish the pesky and inconvenient process of obtaining a warrant to compel service providers to hand over personal information about those police are investigating. If the new legislation passes, providers will be able to track every call you make and every website you visit:

• Require ISPs to provide, on request, your name, IP address(es), device identification numbers that allow authorities to track your cell phone and/or modem, and all contact information including unlisted phone numbers;
• Require manufacturers and Internet providers to install “back door” access, allowing on-demand surveillance without a warrant;
• Allow authorities limitless access to archived data including e-mail and other communications logs providers store;
• Compel other parties to preserve and produce electronic evidence, such as received e-mail, online order histories and other financial transactions.

Together, these new police powers would allow the government to engage in real-time surveillance of your phone calls and online activity without any court supervision or oversight. If it turns out you were unlucky enough to secure an IP address that was formerly used by a subject of an investigation, authorities could begin digging into your background and potentially charge you with an unrelated crime if they happen to find something not part of their original investigation.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC Online surveillance critics accused of supporting child porn 2-13-12.flv[/flv]

CBC News outlines Canada’s latest effort to broaden online surveillance powers and the ensuing controversy. (2 minutes)

Online privacy advocates call the new legislation chilling, and are unpersuaded by supporters who think the process of obtaining a court-issued warrant is too burdensome and time consuming.

When pressed by the media, law enforcement officials have yet to identify a single criminal investigation hampered or delayed by current privacy laws, which require police to obtain sufficient evidence to convince a judge an invasion of privacy is warranted to pursue a criminal investigation. With this new legislation, authorities could launch endless “fishing expeditions” of those they suspect might be involved in a crime, but lack evidence to pursue. Even more concerning is that national security agencies could monitor political opponents, protest organizations, and other groups deemed threatening by the current government.

Proponents say such abuses are unthinkable and the bill is no more threatening than issuing an IP “phone book” for authorities, showing who is using what IP address. But Michael Geist details the legislation is much more than its backers would have you believe.

Without any proof current law is insufficient to handle criminal cases like the one noted above, it is prudent to reject this bill and avoid handing the government unchecked new powers of surveillance. That some in government are willing to play the ‘you are with us or with the child predator’-card as part of reasoned debate is as reprehensible as those in Washington who accused opponents of broad new surveillance powers after 9/11 as being “with the terrorists.”

For more information and to sign a petition opposing the measure, visit Openmedia.ca’s Stop Online Spying website.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Stop Online Spying.flv[/flv]

Openmedia.ca’s campaign against online spying includes three professionally-produced ads that put the bill in terms even technically-unaware Canadians will understand. (2 minutes)

Ethernet over Copper is becoming an increasingly popular choice for business customers stuck in areas where companies won't deploy fiber broadband (Graphic: OSP Magazine)

With Verizon and AT&T effectively stalling expansion of their respective “next generation” fiber and hybrid fiber/coax networks, and independent phone companies fearing too much capital spent improving their networks will drive their stock prices down, telephone companies are desperately seeking better options to deliver the faster broadband service customers demand.

The options over a copper-based landline network are not the best:

• ADSL has been around for more than a decade and is highly distant dependent. Get beyond 10,000 feet from the nearest switching office and your speeds may not even qualify as “broadband;”
• DSL variants represent the second generation for copper-broadband and can deliver faster speeds, but usually require investment to reduce the amount of copper between the customer and the switching office;
• Fiber networks are more expensive to build, and some companies are using it to reduce, but not eliminate copper wire in their networks. But companies traditionally avoid this solution in rural/suburban areas because the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t work for shareholders;
• Ethernet Over Copper (EoC) is increasingly the solution of choice for independent phone companies because it is less expensive to deploy than fiber and can quickly deliver service at speeds of up to 50Mbps.

Unfortunately for consumers, EoC is typically way above the price range for home broadband.  Most providers sell the faster service to commercial and institutional customers, either for businesses that have outgrown T1 lines or where deploying fiber does not make economic sense.  Some companies have tried to improve on DSL by bonding multiple connections together to achieve faster speeds, but Ethernet is quickly becoming a more important tool in the broadband marketing arsenal.

With phone companies pricing EoC service from several hundred to several thousand dollars a month, depending on the speed of the connection, they hope to remain competitive players against a push by the cable industry to more aggressively target business customers.  In more rural areas, phone companies lack cable competition, so they stand a better chance of success.

Fierce Telecom‘s Sean Buckley published an excellent series of articles outlining the current state of EoC technology and what phone companies are doing with it:

• AT&T: Inherited EoC from its acquisition of BellSouth, and barely markets it. Instead, AT&T uses it as a quiet solution for challenging customers who cannot affordably be reached by fiber.  AT&T will either deliver the service over copper, copper/fiber, or an all-fiber path depending on the client’s needs.
• CenturyLink: No phone company is as aggressive about EoC as CenturyLink. When CenturyLink acquired Qwest, interest in the technology only intensified. EoC is a CenturyLink favorite for small businesses that simply cannot get the speeds they need from traditional DSL.  Most EoC service runs up to 20Mbps.
• Verizon: Verizon’s network is the most fiber-intense among large commercial providers, so EoC is not the first choice for the company. However, it does use it to reach multi-site businesses who have buildings and offices outside of the footprint of Verizon’s fiber network/service area.
• Frontier: In the regions where Frontier acquired Verizon landlines, EoC has become an important component for Frontier’s backhaul traffic. EoC has been deployed to reach cell tower sites and handles broadband traffic between central office exchanges and remote D-SLAMs, used to let the company sell DSL to a more rural customer base.  Frontier looks to EoC before considering spending money on fiber service, even for commercial and institutional users.
• Windstream: EoC is the way this phone company gets better broadband speeds to business customers without spending a lot of money on fiber. Small and medium-sized customers are often buyers of EoC service, especially when DSL can’t handle the job or the company requires faster upstream speeds.  Windstream markets upgradable EoC capable of delivering the same downstream and upstream speeds and can deliver it more quickly than a fiber project.
• FairPoint: Much of this phone company’s EoC efforts are in territories in northern New England acquired from Verizon.  FairPoint targets small and medium sized companies for the service, especially those who have remote offices or clinics that need to be interconnected. FairPoint has also gotten more aggressive than many other companies working with ADSL2+ or VDSL2 to deliver faster broadband to office buildings and complexes more economically than fiber.
• SureWest: This company is strong believer in fiber to the premises service, so its interest in EoC has been limited to areas where deploying fiber makes little economic sense. In more out-of-the-way places, EoC is becoming a more common choice to pitch businesses who need more than traditional broadband.
• Hawaiian Telcom: HawTel uses copper-based EoC to provide connectivity across the diverse Hawaiian Islands.  Speeds are generally lower than in mainland areas, partly because HawTel still relies heavily on traditional copper-based service. But fiber-based EoC is increasingly available in more densely populated areas.