An upstart telecom company has thrown the French mobile market into competitive chaos offering customers unlimited voice, messaging, and certain data services for around $26 a month. Now the company is expanding its footprint by offering free femtocells to customers that can be shared by other customers, according to a report by GigaOm‘s Kevin Fitchard.

France’s Free Mobile is everything North American cell phone providers are not. The company offers dirt cheap, often unlimited service (their backup HSPA+ roaming data network has a 3GB limit), crowdsourced public Wi-Fi networks run by its customers, and soon an even more robust network made possible by handing out network extender devices at no charge, improving indoor reception and data speeds.

Free offers more than just mobile services. Its home broadband service offers 40-100Mbps Internet service, offering plenty of bandwidth to accommodate shared connections.

Freebox home Internet gateway, now including a free femtocell.

Back home in the United States and Canada, cell phone companies ask customers to pay up to $300 for network extender devices to manage reception your provider was supposed to deliver in return for paying them nearly $100 a month. The femtocells connect to a customer’s home broadband connection to make and receive calls. Despite the fact customers are using their own broadband service to power the device, cell phone companies still deduct minutes, texts, and data from monthly usage allowances just as if one was using a nearby cell tower.

Free Mobile customers don’t have to deal with any of that. In return for helping improve the company’s cellular network, customers will get the network extender devices, known as femtocells, free after a nominal shipping charge. New customers will have the femtocell technology built right into Free Mobile’s Freebox Revolution gateway.

Parent company Iliad is depending on its generous customers to help extend the network while keeping prices low for everyone. Considering the costs, few object to sharing a negligible part of their broadband connection with other customers, especially with millions of potential connection points sharing the load.

French cell phone users have a lot to thank Iliad for, even if they are not Free Mobile customers. The appearance of Free Mobile on the scene sparked a massive price war that is delivering savings to every French mobile user.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Free Freebox Server 6-13.mp4[/flv]

Introducing the Freebox Server, a home gateway cool enough to put on your desktop. (1 minute)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Free Designer Starck talks about the Freebox 6-13.mp4[/flv]

Only in France will you find providers spending as much time and attention on the stylish details of a set-top box as they do fretting about its cost. To underline the point, designer Philippe Starck turned up on Free’s website to talk about his design philosophy for the gateway device. (3 minutes, French)

Would you be surprised to learn a company with just a basic, outdated website replete with spelling and grammar errors holds at least 760 television station construction permits and licenses and just wrote a check for $46.5 million to buy 52 more stations from nine different owners, with plans to shut every last one of them down in the future?

That is precisely the business plan of “Landover Wireless Corp.” and its series of limited liability corporate entities, which are grabbing up as much UHF television spectrum they can apply for across the country.

They are not alone.

CTB Spectrum Services, a company associated with Landover 2 LLC, has 356 UHF TV construction permits/licenses. Its website offers slightly more information about its operations, but not much.

DTV America, a mysterious Sunrise, Fla.-based venture with an official mailing address of 12717 W. Sunrise Boulevard (Suite 372) has its headquarters inside a private mailbox at a UPS Store. The company also has countless requests for television licenses on the UHF dial. DTV America manager John Kyle is also listed as chairman and president of The Pharmacy Television Network, which appears to broadcast its programming on video displays inside pharmacies. DTV America has the lowest profile of all three companies, with no apparent website.

And you thought over the air television was dead.

DTV America’s home is inside a mailbox at the UPS Store in Sunrise, Fla.

A number of low power television owners are surprised to see the sudden rush to launch more than 1,000 new television stations across the country, particularly in rural markets that have been considered a financial dead-end for low power television. Being in the LPTV business and making a living at it often depends on whether a local cable company or satellite dish provider will pick up and relay the station to the majority of Americans that do all of their television viewing on a paid platform. Without this carriage, low power television outlets have several strikes against them: challenging reception from operating with relatively low power, the lack of compelling programming — many of these outlets air paid religious, home shopping, music, or infomercial programming 24 hours a day, and the lack of familiarity by viewers who may not realize these stations are on the air.

From information Stop the Cap! has obtained, none of these ventures actually intend to stay in the over-the-air television business. Instead, they are using FCC licensing rules to get valuable UHF spectrum without having to bid for it at forthcoming spectrum auctions. At least two of the companies claim they are raising capital to build a unicast 4G wireless content delivery network. But some critics contend they are actually spectrum squatters — speculators that have no intention of building anything. Instead, critics charge they will conduct minor experiments to effectively stall the FCC, hanging onto their permits and licenses until they can sell their holdings to a wireless provider hungry for 500-700MHz spectrum and willing to pay top dollar to get it.

Meanwhile, Landover’s $46.5 million buys them dozens of low power stations airing 30-minute commercials like “Skin Solutions by Dr. Graf.” The company claims it will keep those stations on the air until their wireless network is ready, and then the infomercials (along with the rest of the television programming) will be gone for good. Landover also managed to acquire larger Class A TV stations as part of the deal, including one each in Las Vegas and Sacramento, and three in Texas. These stations might become part of the company’s 4G network, sold off or compensated to sign-off forever as part of forthcoming “spectrum packing” by the FCC — further shrinking the UHF TV dial and auctioning off the “excess” spectrum to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other cell companies.

CTB’s License Map

CTB also holds multiple TV licenses in several of its markets. The company claims it will combine those stations together in something akin to a high-powered cellular network to create a bigger wireless data pipe using “patent pending multi-frequency cellular terrestrial network technology [that] increases capacity by hundreds of times through frequency re-use, while also enabling full mobility, broadband Internet, and location-based services.”

CTB’s sales pitch claims its TV licenses offer up to 228MHz of bandwidth that is “essentially identical to 700MHz spectrum, but can be acquired at a fraction of the cost.” The company also claims it has exclusive rights to TV “White Space” spectrum via first adjacent channels, which are treated like guard bands to protect against interference from nearby stations.

All of these companies are applying for channels largely in low-interest rural markets, where they face few challenges from competing applicants. CTB calls this part of their rural “corridor” strategy. One such corridor covers stations in a line from Wisconsin west to Idaho.

All three companies are betting the FCC will allow them to eventually convert their over-the-air television licenses into wireless data networks, or let them sell the spectrum to deeper pocketed players in keeping with the Commission’s plan to open up more frequencies for data-hungry users. If the FCC allows it, these three entities will end up with the rights to prime wireless spectrum covering up to 90 percent of the country without having to spend a penny at forthcoming spectrum auctions.

But there are financial risks. The type of low power station licenses held by most of these companies do not get them a seat at the spectrum packing table. LPTV outlets are considered low-priority stations, and in larger communities, many could be forced off the air without compensation to make enough room for more important, full power stations.

No license, no 4G data network for Landover, CTB and others. But the chances of that happening in rural markets, where residents are lucky to have two or three over the air stations, are slim.

The technology might offer unique broadband opportunities for rural areas where conventional low-range cell towers are too expensive, if the technology works. A higher powered transmitter serving a rural, larger geographic area might prove financially attractive in low population density areas. Only time will tell if any of these entities will be able to raise the capital needed to fulfill the FCC’s construction permit obligations, which give owners just a few years to get their stations on the air or face forfeiture of their permit and/or license.

Cablevision broadband customers are likely to see some new, faster upload speeds from the cable operator between now and sometime in July thanks to ongoing competition from Verizon FiOS.

Employees are informally telling Stop the Cap! the cable company has already dropped the “go-away” $300 installation fee for the company’s highest speed Ultra tiers and is set to formally introduce these packages this summer:

• Optimum Online Basic gets an upload speed boost. The 15Mbps download speed stays the same, but the 2Mbps upstream speed increases to 5Mbps;
• Optimum Online Boost will be retired. The 30/5Mbps service was Cablevision’s “turbo” tier, but now customers will be encouraged to consider faster packages;
• Optimum Online Boost Plus will be reintroduced as Optimum Ultra 50. The download speed remains 50Mbps, but upload speed is going up from 8Mbps to 25Mbps;
• Optimum Ultra also gets an upload speed boost. The 101/15Mbps tier becomes 101/35Mbps.

Courtesy: Sutheras

Cablevision did not get back to us in time to confirm the changes, but multiple sources have told us they are imminent.

Customers might appreciate the new speeds, but we’ve also heard from several readers Cablevision is now injecting ad banners into the browsing experience.

“I just started seeing advertisements for Optimum’s new website at the bottom of my screen, regardless of what web page I visit,” writes Dean Portew. “It just started happening and the ads disappear sometimes as quickly as they appear and Cablevision claims to not know anything about it.”

Reviewing the terms of service for Cablevision, the cable company doesn’t call it a web browser ad injection, they call it watermarking and to quote Det. Joe Fontana from the late Law & Order, “we’re authorized.”

32. Watermarking:

Subscriber understands and agrees that Cablevision may use “watermarking” techniques to message you about your account, Optimum services or for other communication purposes while using the Optimum Online Service. These “watermarks” may appear superimposed from time to time over portions of website pages you visit while using the Optimum Online Service, however, you understand and agree that this in no way indicates Cablevision’s approval of or responsibility for the content of such websites, which are solely the responsibility of the website operators and/or content providers. You further agree that you will not seek to hold Cablevision responsible in any way for any third party website content or the operation of any third party website accessed via the Optimum Online Service, or for the appearance of an Optimum “watermark” over a portion of any website.

A number of customers are not too happy about the intrusion, judging from an active discussion on DSL Reports’ Cablevision forum.

West Virginia has spent nearly three times more than it anticipated for each mile of fiber optics being laid by Frontier Communications as part of the state’s taxpayer-funded broadband expansion project, according to a new report.

The Saturday Gazette-Mail reports that state officials originally planned to spend $17,000 for each mile of fiber cable laid to community institutions including schools and libraries. Instead, it is paying $47,500 per fiber mile, more than double the industry average of $20,000.

Frontier Communications is getting at least $45 million in taxpayer dollars towards construction costs and will end up owning the completed fiber network that won’t directly deliver broadband service to a single home or business in the state.

West Virginia will make use of a 675-mile institutional fiber network when the project is finished, 25 percent smaller than the 900-mile network originally proposed.

State officials including Homeland Security director Jimmy Gianato have come up with some novel defenses for the cost overruns, blaming:

• The 2011 Japanese earthquake/tsunami that allegedly spiked fiber prices to as much as $50,000 per mile;
• Superstorm Sandy which delayed the project and caused $14 million in damage;
• The cost of environmental impact studies.

The state is in a hurry to spend down the remaining funds left over from the $126.3 million taxpayer grant before they expire September 30. The broadband project has been mired in controversy from almost the beginning, including allegations that major telecom company employees serving as consultants steered project managers to invest in expensive, oversized routers intended to serve college campuses that ended up installed in tiny community libraries.

State officials also found many of the institutions slated to receive fiber upgrades already had fiber service. That left officials scrambling to find any schools, libraries, hospitals — even prisons where taxpayer-funded fiber broadband would prove useful.

In the end, Frontier will be the biggest beneficiary of the project and state officials predict $4-8 million will remain in unspent funds when the project is complete.

“If people step back, they can see this monstrosity in all its true glory,” says Jan Huntser. “Private companies like Frontier don’t want taxpayer money building public fiber networks for homes and businesses because that represents unfair competition. Instead, Frontier pockets taxpayer money to build a private fiber network they will end up owning that taxpayers cannot access. Instead, we’ll keep using their slow DSL service.”

Huntser says if taxpayer money is spent to build fiber networks, taxpayers ought to be able to use them.

“None of this makes any sense,” Huntser adds. “Frontier tells friends to buy a satellite dish for broadband because they will never offer it while a library in that town has four terminals and enough broadband equipment to support a business with hundreds of employees. They can’t even understand how to make it work, so they still rely on their DSL service to run the Wi-Fi connection instead.”

The people of Malta will soon have a choice between a cable broadband provider offering 250/20Mbps service or a fiber to the home network now under construction that will be capable of delivering gigabit broadband across the island — all without usage limits or speed throttles.

Starting this month, for €96 per month ($128), customers of Melita can buy a triple play package of phone, broadband, and cable television that includes a free upgrade to 250/20Mbps.

“The FibrePower 250 product leverages the investments Melita has made in the past years and further strengthens the company’s position as Malta’s fastest service provider,” said Michael Darmanin, director of marketing and corporate services at Melita. “We are seeing an exponential growth in demand for higher speeds and capacity. This is driven by more people connected in the same household or business, more devices and more consumption of video over the Internet.”

Darmanin added the Maltese people want fast and unlimited broadband service, and they will deliver it, starting at Tigne Point (Midi) and Fort Cambridge in Sliema. The service will then gradually be rolled out in other Maltese communities.

Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, has a population of around 450,000. The country has two major telecom companies: Melita which delivers cable service and GO, which delivers DSL service over the telephone network. Vodafone used to offer a now-discontinued WiMAX service across the island, which never had a significant market share.

The Maltese government made broadband expansion a national priority and set regulatory policies that would increase competition. But the government also insisted that telecom market improvements also benefit customers, and the country laid the foundation of its broadband policy on encouraging the development of a nationwide fiber to the home network.

The tradeoff: the government would deregulate the broadband marketplace and remove regulatory obstacles and unnecessary red tape governing pole usage and underground trenching, but in return providers must meet government objectives towards enhancing broadband speeds and price competition.

As a result, Melita has aggressively invested in cable broadband upgrades that have delivered broadband speeds faster than what most Americans and Canadians can buy from their cable providers. The cable operator plans to be among the earliest adopters of DOCSIS 3.1 which will support up to 10/1Gbps broadband speeds.

Not to be outdone, GO is rolling out its own fiber to the home network supporting interactive IPTV and faster broadband speeds. It will then be able to retire its DSL service, which now provides respectable Internet speeds up to 35Mbps.