Mossberg

Walt Mossberg, a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, delivered some stinging remarks about how large telecom and media companies deliver broadband services and programming to North Americans.

“We really suck at broadband,” Mossberg complained during opening remarks at Beet.TV’s first executive summit held at the Embassy of Finland in Washington.  “We have terrible, terrible broadband.”

“The typical consumer either has been lured into broadband by a DSL service that in Finland would not count as broadband — 768kbps is not broadband,” Mossberg said.  “If [the government] adopted a regulation not allowing Verizon to call that crap broadband, it would help.”

Mossberg added that cable modem service in the US and Canada is so slow, it is the object of pity and pathos in countries like Japan and Korea, and we’re overcharged for it.

[flv width=”480″ height=”388″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Verizon Should Stop Calling DSL Broadband 2-17-11.flv[/flv]

Mossberg’s comments come as part of a discussion about the online video revolution, which he says is being hampered by copyright controls, outdated advertising models, and broadband providers delivering sub-standard service.  (8 minutes)

Shocked onlookers moments after the earthquake struck downtown Christchurch

A major magnitude 6.3 earthquake has devastated the Canterbury region of southeast New Zealand, particularly the central business district of the city of Christchurch, knocking out power, water, sewer, and several telecommunications networks across the region.  The wireless networks that remain have been so overburdened, government officials have declared use of those networks limited to emergency use only.

Two aftershocks — one magnitude 5.6 and another 5.5 — shook Christchurch within hours of the initial 6.3 earthquake, causing damaged buildings to crumble, including parts of the 130-year-old Christchurch Cathedral. Its spire toppled into the city square, falling onto throngs of tourists who ran from the building in terror as the temblor struck.

Dozens are dead, with scores more injured, particularly in the Christchurch city center, where the quake struck just after lunch.  Shocking raw video has appeared on national television showing bloody bodies strewn amongst the rubble, and hearts are broken over stories such as the death of nine month old toddler who survived the quake, but not the large flat panel television that toppled down on him during an aftershock.

Telecommunications services were reduced to a state of virtual unusability following the quake because of cable cuts and congestion, as Prime Minister John Key informed Parliament the government was forced to initially rely on a sketchy satellite link to speak with civil defense officials in the city of 376,000.

The city’s local television station — CTV, was reduced to rubble as the seven-story building pancaked, tossing some employees working on the fifth floor into the middle of Madras Street below.  They were the lucky ones, surviving as astonished onlookers ran up to help.

National media has described the Canterbury earthquake as “New Zealand’s darkest day,” and most radio and television stations still on the air have ceased regular programming to relay the country’s National service from Radio/TV New Zealand, or the country’s national news-talk network Newstalk ZB.

New Zealand’s Internet services are functioning, but sporadic in many locations.  The national public broadcaster, Radio/TV New Zealand, is relying on its international shortwave radio service Radio New Zealand International to get its signal out to the rest of the world as its live Internet streams initially failed.  Many other broadcasters in Christchurch have lost their links to transmitters, or temporarily lacked power to stay on the air.

The region’s landline telephone network remains functional where cable cuts have not interrupted service, but since many New Zealanders rely on cell phones, the country’s wireless networks quickly were overwhelmed with worried callers.  Large parts of New Zealand’s cell phone network in the south is now completely reliant on battery backup power, due to widespread power disruptions.  Keeping those sites operational is critical, as scores of office workers in Christchurch are texting messages indicating they are still alive, but trapped in damaged or collapsed buildings.

Emergency generators are being pressed into service as providers recognize their wireless networks are often the only reliable link residents now have with the rest of the country. Some cell sites operated by Telecom New Zealand (TNZ), Vodafone and 2Degrees equipped with solar or battery backup systems began to fail last night.

“We’re asking our customers in Christchurch to have patience if they lose service. Although we can’t identify which sites will lose battery power or when, we know that they are generally in good shape so can be placed back in service once power becomes available,” says 2degrees CEO Eric Hertz.

TNZ and their biggest competitor Vodafone have set aside their rivalry and are coordinating efforts to keep the country’s networks up and running.  Staff of both companies have been largely ordered to remain home, as technicians on duty at the time of the quake pull overtime duty.  Emergency 111 service, today answered by operators in Wellington 190 miles away, is now prioritized and customers have been told by government officials that cell phone use in the affected region should be limited for emergency calls only.

All public payphones in Christchurch discontinued paid service as of this morning — all calls are now free.

Vodafone reports SMS text messaging service between networks is not functioning at this time.  That means Vodafone customers cannot send or receive text messages to anyone outside of Vodafone’s own network for the time being.

All three carriers are recommending wireless customers across the entire country use text messaging rather than calling to keep congestion to a minimum.  Text messages rarely overload wireless networks.  Most providers are also waiving contract cancellation penalties for customers whose homes or businesses were heavily damaged or destroyed, and will forward calls to functioning phone numbers at no charge.

Cable modem service in Christchurch is disrupted wherever cable cuts exist.  DSL from TNZ is also sporadic for the same reasons.

While power is expected to return across Canterbury as daybreak now arrives, officials warn outages in essential services will persist for days, if not weeks, in some particularly hard-hit areas.

Live Coverage

• NewstalkZB – broadcasting on all FM frequencies in Christchurch controlled by “RadioNetwork”
• Radio Live
• Radio New Zealand (streaming is sporadic/non-functional at this time)
• TV New Zealand (Choose “Live International Stream” when available)

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TVNZ Quake Damage 2-22-11.flv[/flv]

TV New Zealand presented coverage moments after the quake occurred.  Some of these reports and raw video contain extremely graphic and disturbing imagery.  (30 minutes)

Phillip "Swimming Upstream... slowly" Dampier

I spent the better part of today finding, assembling, and finally uploading the audio and video content covering Canada’s ongoing hearings about Internet Overcharging.  Locating and editing the content took about two hours, writing the piece to accompany it took another hour, and then everything  s   l   o   w   e   d  down from there.

Uploading several hundred megabytes of audio and video, included in today’s articles, was by far the most cumbersome part of the operation.  In all, it took nearly four hours to upload a handful of video and audio files, and that saturated our cable modem to the brink of un-usability.

While most providers concentrate upgrades on boosting download speeds, upload speeds have remained remarkably consistent — and painfully slow, for several years now.

Time Warner Cable, which provides our Internet connection, tops out at just 1Mbps for uploads locally, and it is slower during peak usage times.  Contrast that with 2Mbps in more competitive cities (with 5Mbps now common wherever DOCSIS 3 technology has been deployed).  Still, at least it is better than the 384kbps residents in upstate New York contended with for a decade earlier.

Cable modem technology is built on the premise that you will download far more than you will need to upload, and speeds are provided accordingly.  DSL service from some phone companies has managed to keep up with upload speeds… barely, if only because many cable providers have largely ignored the upstream component.

But as the Internet and social media become a more interactive part of our lives, we increasingly need to give as much as we get, and our Internet Service Providers continue to let us down in too many cases.

The one exception is fiber-to-the-home service, which can deliver synchronous (identical upload and download) speeds to their customers.  Community-owned fiber networks continue to be the kindest to their customers, thinking of speed equality as an advantage, not a marketing option that commands a high price.  Many of these networks are owned and operated by local governments — you know, the people we’re told never do anything right.

Yet in many instances they alone have the prescience to recognize broadband speeds have a direct impact on efficiency — at home and at work.  Many are building networks that leverage as many megabits per second they can get.  Why?  Because they can.  Such a response is scoffed at by many cable and phone companies, most of whom claim you don’t need that kind of speed.

For those of us without access to such state-of-the-art networks, we’ll have to continue setting our sights considerably lower.  Time Warner will finally bring 50/5Mbps service to Rochester early this year.  As far as they’re concerned, we should be glad to have it.  It will cost just shy of $100 per month on a standalone basis.  If we lived in Chattanooga, Tenn., home of EPB, the municipal broadband provider would sell us 50/50Mbps service for nearly $20 a month less — $79.99 per month.

"It's like night and day."

Tim pays Time Warner Cable around $45 a month for 10/1Mbps service.  Jake pays Comcast $35 a month for 12/2Mbps service.  Neither reader of Stop the Cap! actually receives those speeds once the sun goes down, however.

Jake, who lives in a neighborhood near Philadelphia populated by loads of college students watches his download speed plummet to 4Mbps in the evening, even lower on weekends.  Tim, a reader in the North Ponds Park region of Webster, N.Y., does even worse — 1.2Mbps evenings and weekends.

Neither reader is alone.  The disparity in marketed speeds vs. actual speeds reveals the truth about cable modem technology — if not properly managed, congestion can bring the broadband party to a sudden halt (or at least rebuffering.)

Both are examples of “overselling,” the practice of piling too many customers onto too small a broadband pipe.  If nobody is using the connection in the neighborhood, speeds are great.  But as students get out of class and mom and dad get home from work, everyone wants to be online.  Soon enough, the pipeline gets filled and speeds drop as the network tries to accommodate everyone.

Most cable companies use fiber optics to bring a limited amount of bandwidth into individual areas of their network.  Some might cover the better part of a town, others only a few city blocks.  Every customer in the area shares that bandwidth.  Cable companies monitor these connections looking for signs they are becoming overcongested during peak usage times.  When those alarms start sounding consistently, companies are supposed to upgrade the area (or divide it up) to keep broadband service working close to advertised speeds.

But some companies are waiting until broadband service becomes practically unusable before spending the money to upgrade their networks.

“I knew they were overselling this area when I noticed downloads speeds fell off the cliff, but the upload speed was near normal,” Jake writes. “The time of day also tells the story.  Starting after 4pm, speeds begin to drop and become downright terrible after dinner and on weekends.  Sunday night is always the worst.”

It’s a similar story in west Webster, near Lake Ontario, where neighborhoods several miles apart all watch their Road Runner speeds slow to a crawl.

“Browsing is slow, downloads are painfully slow, latency is very high and streaming any sort of video online is impossible,” Robert, another Webster resident, told Time Warner Cable (and us).  “I have been a customer since 1998 and for me to not even be able to download at a 1 Megabit speed when this service is supposed to be 10 megs (and more with PowerBoost) is inexcusable.”

The problem of overselling is also common in larger cities like New York and Philadelphia, where some neighborhoods endure “broadband” speeds that resemble “dial-up” when customers pile on the network.

“Comcast says they never see a problem and have repeated that to me over and over, even when they send a truck out,” Jake tells Stop the Cap! “Of course, their truck rolls in the daytime when there isn’t a problem.”

Time Warner customers in eastern Monroe County have been told the cable company is well aware of the congestion problems, and technicians dispatched to area homes candidly admit the company has not kept up with the growth of new housing developments.  Several customers have asked for, and won, several months of service credits for broadband they simply cannot use.

Tim says the entire affair has left him with doubts about Time Warner’s reputation to provide quality broadband service.

“At one time, I considered myself a candidate to upgrade to Time Warner wideband when it became available,” he tells us. “My thinking on that has changed and I am looking into viable alternatives to Time Warner. Money has become of less importance to me than principle, and I may end up with a higher cost solution than staying with Time Warner.”

Ground Zero Bandwidth: The impacted area of Webster, N.Y.

With our encouragement, these customers (among others) have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and have tried to get attention focused on their neighborhoods.

A broadband speed test in Webster, N.Y.

A representative of Time Warner today told Robert the company has confirmed Webster has a problem and it is being worked on, but no specific date has been offered when things will return to normal.  He received a credit for one month of service.

Jake wants answers about how a company the size of Comcast can ignore a problem of this magnitude.

“Is it really about the money,” he asks.  “This company just bought NBC and doesn’t have the resources to sell Internet service that at least comes close to the speeds they advertise?”

Stop the Cap! advises customers with speed problems to make your feelings known.  The squeaky wheel gets the upgrade.  Start with customer service and work your way up.  Demand service credits, an in-person repair visit to check your lines, and then escalate complaints to supervisors and social media networks like Twitter and Facebook.  Also consider contacting local media “consumer reporters,” and file complaints with the Better Business Bureau.  Sooner or later, a manager will escalate your case to a department that is empowered to authorize upgrades without red tape.

Considering the enormous amount of revenue earned from selling broadband service, it is only fair to expect you will have access to something close to the speeds offered when you signed up.

Two years after Time Warner promised upgraded speeds for Rochester, they finally arrive this spring.

After much of upstate has already been upgraded for DOCSIS 3 service, New York’s second largest economic center — Rochester, will finally see speed upgrades for cable broadband service this spring.

Time Warner Cable, which promised Rochester would be among the first cities to see faster speeds if they accepted the company’s Internet Overcharging experiment instead took their upgrades elsewhere (like Watertown) when the community collectively said “no.”

Two years later, the upgrade other cities including Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, and New York received last year will finally make its way to the Flower City this spring.

“Time Warner Cable delivers cutting-edge products that speak to the growing needs of both the tech-savvy user and multi-media families who simply want the fastest speeds right now,” said Terence Rafferty, Regional Vice President of Operations for the Northeast communities of Time Warner Cable.

That “right now” part may true as long as you don’t live in Rochester.  With anemic (at best) competition from also-ran Frontier Communications, which delivers DSL service that long since forfeited its position in the broadband speed race, Time Warner wasn’t exactly pressed by market conditions to deliver upgrades in a hurry, and they didn’t.

Instead, Verizon service areas where FiOS, the company’s fiber-to-the-home network loomed got the fastest service, without threats of Internet Overcharging schemes hanging over their heads.

As elsewhere, Time Warner will bring two tiers of DOCSIS 3 service: 30/5 service for $20 more than Road Runner’s Standard service (10/1Mbps) or 50/5Mbps service for $99.  The “sweet spot” will be 30/5 service, which is just $10 more than Road Runner Turbo customers currently pay.

Rochester and Finger Lakes area customers interested in the service can pre-register and get notified when the service becomes available in your area.  A new cable modem is required, but since Rochester area customers do not own their own (the modems are provided free with the service), the swap is a minor inconvenience.

The new cable modems include wireless connectivity, so up to five devices can share your broadband connection without wires.