Cox has pulled the plug on its summer trial of flareWatch, an over-the-top virtual cable TV service that works over an existing broadband connection. The sudden end of the trial, now scheduled for Sept. 27, comes several days after new participants found orders for the accompanying Fanhattan-made set-top box canceled without warning. Customers who paid $99.99 for the box, later reduced to $49.99, are supposed to be getting refunds according to Cox Customer Care.

“This limited trial was conducted as part of Cox’s ongoing customer research to determine how to best evolve our offerings to meet customers’ changing needs,” according to a Cox official. “We remain focused on helping customers discover and connect to the things they care about in ways that are easy-to-use and reliable and we will continue to test and explore new products. We will continue to evaluate the flareWatch trial results to determine how this might impact future product plans.”

Peter Litman got confirmation flareWatch has been put out.

Customers visiting Cox’s website dedicated to the IP-based video service found only a “Service Unavailable” message greeting them.

Cox’s flareWatch service offered about 100 channels (many over-the-air) for $34.99 a month, with a cloud-based DVR feature, and was available only to Cox customers in Orange County, Calif., with Preferred Internet service. Use of the service counted against your monthly Cox broadband usage allowance.

Later in the trial, Cox raised the price by $5 a month and bundled Rhapsody’s streaming music service and a small video-on-demand feature. It also cut the purchase price of the hardware in half.

Trial participants report the notification Cox was terminating the service seemed sudden and perhaps unplanned.

Cox says otherwise.

“As planned, the Orange County trial has successfully completed. We collected excellent customer feedback and usage data to inform our broader deployment of Fan TV,” said a Cox spokesperson. “As announced in May, Fanhattan plans to work directly with pay TV service providers to distribute Fan TV. Making sure it’s ready for primetime requires rigorous testing, trial customer feedback and constant iteration. This limited trial was a small, early step in that direction.”

Estonian Internet users are enjoying faster broadband speeds with the announcement cable provider AS Starman has upgraded its broadband packages without a corresponding price hike. Now customers in the Baltic state can get 200/20Mbps service for less than $34 a month.

The cable operator tiers its DOCSIS 3 cable broadband speeds like clothing sizes:

• Small (2Mbps/500kbps): $13.37/mo
• Medium (10/2Mbps): $25.40/mo
• Large (60/10Mbps): $30.75/mo
• X-Large (200/20Mbps): $33.43/mo

The Tallinn-based company was founded in 1992 and offers cable television, phone, and broadband service to about 45 percent of Estonia.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Starman Internet service 8-26-13.mp4[/flv]

Selling broadband in Estonia isn’t much different from selling service in North America. But broadband prices are far lower than what the average customer in Canada or the U.S. pays for equivalent service. Here is a typical ad for Starman service. (1 minute)

EastLink customers in Nova Scotia are getting three things from their local cable company: slightly faster Internet speeds, a higher bill, and insulted.

EastLink has mailed letters to subscribers in certain parts of Atlantic Canada notifying customers they are now getting speed boosts on the company’s lower speed tiers.

Basic Internet customers subscribing to 1.5Mbps service will now see 5Mbps, while those at 5Mbps are getting upgraded to 10Mbps service.

EastLink said the upgrades target its budget-minded customers who are also getting pelted with competing mailers from Bell Aliant, which sells fiber service in the region. But the speed upgrades don’t come for free. In a move EastLink denies is tied to the broadband speed improvements, the company is also notifying customers of its annual general rate increase.

Atlantic Canada enjoys some of the fastest Internet service in the country, often without any usage caps. EastLink offers, in addition to its budget Internet tiers, service at 20, 40 and 80Mbps. Their primary competitor is Bell Aliant, which operates its FibreOp broadband at speeds of 50, 80, and 175Mbps.

“Our customers have told us that they want and need faster internet service,” Isabelle Robinson, media relations with Bell Aliant said about the company’s higher Internet speeds. “Things like file sharing, uploading, video streaming have really become commonplace. The demand for both speed and bandwidth has been exploding.”

Nonsense, responds Jordan Turner, EastLink’s public relations coordinator. He said subscribers often have no comprehension about the broadband speeds they get now, and certainly don’t need anything faster than what EastLink now provides.

“Frankly, that is plenty of speed and all the speed customers need,” Turner told Halifax NewsNet. “When you read what they suggest people are going to do with the Internet, you can already do that with our standard Internet offering. It’s not like, because you have faster Internet, you’re going to watch a three-hour movie in half an hour.”

Verizon is “redefining the power of the Internet” in select FiOS areas with the introduction of a new 500/100Mbps speed tier that blows away Time Warner Cable and leaves Cablevision and other competitors woefully behind.

Just weeks after Cablevision boosted upload speeds, Verizon has responded with service offerings up to a half gigabit in speed, telling customers FiOS Quantum 150/65Mbps, 300/65Mbps, and 500/100Mbps plans will “radically change everything you do online right now – and in the future.” It is ten times faster than the fastest service available from Time Warner Cable in the northeast: 50/5Mbps.

Verizon’s fastest broadband does not come cheap, however. The 500Mbps package starts at $294.99 a month for new customers with a two-year contract. Verizon Voice service is required to get the promotional price and a $165 early termination fee applies (reduced by $7.50 for each month a customer maintains service). A $59.99 activation and other fees, taxes, charges, and terms apply. Customers must also pass a credit check to avoid a deposit. Skip the contract and other requirements and the rate is only slightly more: $304.99 a month.

Verizon is charging nearly four times more than what Google charges for its twice as fast gigabit service. But analysts believe that Google will never venture into Verizon FiOS territory so price competition is unlikely in the near term. Cable operators that compete with Verizon would have to dedicate a considerable amount of bandwidth to best Verizon’s download speeds, and matching upstream speeds will be even more problematic unless and until cable operators transition their systems to all digital video to free up bandwidth.

But Verizon’s fastest Internet speeds are not available in all FiOS areas. The company warns “500/100Mbps service availability may be limited in your area based on network qualification requirements.”

Verizon’s competitors, which don’t have the benefit of an all-fiber network, continue to stress consumers simply don’t need any speeds faster than what they now offer. Frontier Communications believes most consumers do just fine with 6Mbps DSL. Verizon’s larger cable competitors range from Time Warner Cable, which does not even try to match its competitor’s fiber speeds, to Bright House, which competes with Verizon FiOS in Florida, to Comcast, which offers faster Internet service but regularly threatens to cap how much customers can use each month. Verizon FiOS has, in practical terms, no usage caps.

“For some, the discussion about the broadband Internet seems to begin and end on the issue of ‘gigabit’ access. The issue with such speed is really more about demand than supply. 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.” — David Cohen, chief lobbyist, Comcast Corp., May 2013

“Residential customers, at this time, do not need the bandwidth offered with dedicated fiber – however, Bright House has led the industry in comprehensively deploying next-generation bandwidth services (DOCSIS 3.0) to its entire footprint in Florida – current speeds offered are 50Mbps with the ability to offer much higher. We provision our network according to our customers’ needs.” – Don Forbes, Bright House Networks, February 2011

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon FiOS Introduces 500Mbps 7-22-13.mp4[/flv]

Verizon FiOS introduces faster broadband speeds to help customers accomplish more of what they want to do online. Verizon’s Fowler Abercrombie says ‘it’s only the beginning’ as Verizon continues to innovate on its fiber to the home network. (2 minutes)

The Lifeline program became campaign fodder last fall when the Drudge Report released a video showing a minority voter praising Obama for “free phones.”

Two competing philosophies to address the digital divide will clash in Congress this week as Democrats introduce legislation to subsidize Internet access for the poor and Republicans hold hearings critical of the FCC’s existing Lifeline program, which provides low-cost phone service for those on public assistance.

The Broadband Adoption Act, introduced by California Democrat Rep. Dorris Matsui, would reform and expand the Lifeline program to allow participants to choose between a discounted landline, cell phone, or broadband Internet access.

“In today’s digital economy, if you don’t have access to the Internet you are simply at a competitive disadvantage. For example, more than 80 percent of available jobs now require online applications,” Matsui said. “The Internet is increasingly the economic engine for growth and innovation.”

Matsui has introduced similar legislation in the past, but it has never been taken up by the Republican-controlled House.

The bill is co-sponsored by ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), communications subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and five other Democrats.

The thought of discounted Internet access is about as popular with some House Republicans as Lifeline-subsidized cell phone service, which some conservatives have derided as “Obamaphones.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to look at Lifeline and consider its future. Members are expected to share stories of waste, fraud, and abuse, particularly over the controversial subsidized cell phone service.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is a regular critic of the program and offered the House committee anecdotal reports that some subscribers have eight or more subsidized cell phones with one subscriber saying that to get one, “she just goes across the street and gets it.” Coburn claimed to have evidence in one case where a man kept a “bag full of subsidized phones that he sells for about 10, 15, 20 bucks each.”

Still seen by some as a luxury, a program that subsidizes cell phones was likely to attract critical attention among politicians.

Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and David Vitter (R-La.) both drafted amendments that would end the Lifeline subsidy in its entirety, calling it a waste and abuse of resources.

The program and providers have admitted there have been lapses in eligibility verification and there was fraudulent participation in the program.

Last year, the FCC modified the program to tighten eligibility requirements:

• Required all subscribers to recertify their eligibility and to do so annually by providing documentation of income or program participation;
• Confirmed the program’s restriction of one subsidy per household;
• Started a process to create a State-by-State and/or a National Lifeline Accountability Database to prevent multiple subsidies to the same household;
• Eliminated Link-Up support except for recipients on tribal lands that are served by ETCs that take part in both the low-income Lifeline and high-cost support programs;
• Imposed independent audit requirements on carriers receiving more than $5 million in annual support;
• Directed the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Company staff to take action no later than December 31, 2013, to offer an automated means of determining enrollment in the Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Supplementary Security Income programs, the three most common criteria for Lifeline eligibility;
• Set an interim base subsidy amount of $9.25 per month for non-tribal subscribers.

Lifeline was first enacted by Congress in 1985, during the Reagan Administration. In 2005, the Bush Administration expanded the program to include cell phone service.