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come as part of a discussion about the online video revolution, which he says is being hampered by copyright controls, outdated advertising models, and broadband providers delivering sub-standard service.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

Slaterville Springs is a hamlet in the town of Caroline, N.Y.

Frontier Communications issues press releases promoting the expansion of low speed DSL service into new areas, but for many existing customers, extended service outages ruin their broadband experience.

Just ask Stop the Cap! reader Paul from Slaterville Springs, just outside of Ithaca, N.Y.  Much of his hamlet was without Frontier’s DSL service for more than two weeks, leaving dozens of families with poor-to-non-existent access to broadband for the better part of January.

It Was Supposed to Be Restored in Two Days — But Three Weeks Was More Like It

“It was supposed to be restored in two days, but after repeated calls, they told me it was a “common cause” failure impacting a large number of subscribers,” Paul told us. “Later, we were told Frontier was waiting for parts to fix some equipment at the central office.”

Paul heard the same excuse a week later, as he and other local residents remained cut off from the Internet.

Paul has been underwhelmed by the attention Frontier has given to the town of Caroline, which includes Slaterville Springs.  He has complained to the town supervisor and the New York Public Service Commission.  Frontier has already offered him a refund for the extended interruption in service, but Paul would really like a stable Internet connection that performs well with today’s bandwidth-intensive Internet.

“Before the outage, I got about two-thirds of the promised 3Mbps speed from Frontier, which means any interactive applications can be difficult, and YouTube videos require lengthy buffering before one can watch,” Paul says.  “I think being able to watch YouTube without painful slowdowns should be a key metric for today’s broadband.”

At the end of January, Paul reached out to Ann Burr, Frontier’s regional president of operations.  She called up Claudia Maroney,  the general manager of Frontier’s Central New York division.

“I was told right away that I’d get a service credit for two months and that the problem would be dealt with quickly,” Paul said. “The technician in the central office contacted us and said the solution was to further reduce my speed, because he thought we were too far away from the central office to sustain even the slow speed we had before.”

That turned out not to solve the problem either.

Finally, Frontier brought Paul a new DSL modem which, in concert with repairs in the central office, finally resolved his problems.

Frontier claims it will also increase capacity in his area, which apparently also suffers from evening congestion.

Poor Internet service is not just limited to Caroline.  The entire Southern Tier region between Corning and Binghamton is hard-pressed to access high-speed service.

Eleven towns in Tompkins and Cayuga County have jointly applied for a federal grant to create the infrastructure needed to make high speed wireless or fiber optic-to-the-home service available throughout the area.

The Case of Proctor Creek and Coffield Ridge, W.V.

Wetzel County, W.V.

One of the most challenging areas to provide DSL service is in the Panhandle section of West Virginia.  Hilly terrain and large distances between neighbors assure a challenging broadband environment.  Cable television is out of the question in many areas, and Verizon’s legacy network was in decrepit condition before selling operations to Frontier and fleeing the state.

So it was with great excitement Frontier announced incremental progress in expanding DSL service to two small sections of Wetzel County.  Proctor Creek, close to the West Virginia-Ohio state line, and the relentlessly hilly Coffield Ridge area was finally getting DSL from Frontier — three years after Verizon promised to make the service available.

Wetzel County EMS President Jim Colvin and Del. Dave Pethtel joined Frontier’s Bill Moon at the Grandview EMS Squad station on Jan. 4, to learn more about Frontier’s expansion plans, as the Wetzel Chronicle reported.

Moon informed customers that DSL was now available in both areas and it’s only the beginning of Frontier’s plans to deliver expanded broadband service across West Virginia.  He said Frontier aims to “do things right the first time,” taking more time to establish service in efforts to prevent customers from dealing with the inconveniences of repeat visits from technicians.

“We want to bring the feel of a local company with the advantages of a big company,” Moon said. He went on to say that being a manager specifically for one region meant day-to-day decisions could be made at the local and personal level. “A lot of the red tape is gone,” he told the Chronicle. “We can make things happen directly and get things resolved quickly.”

“There is nothing quick or personal about Frontier Communications,” Shirley tells Stop the Cap! from her home in Proctor.  Her sister signed up for Frontier’s broadband service Jan. 15, and it has worked for exactly three days.  “She has never dealt with a more disorganized company.”

Shirley says nobody from Frontier ever marketed DSL to her sister’s family.

“I read the story in the Chronicle and called her right away, because they have been waiting for broadband for at least 10 years,” Shirley says.  “Calling Frontier was the first mistake — the company couldn’t bring up her account for 15 minutes.”

Shirley says her sister finally succeeded in ordering the service after her line was “qualified.”  She specifically told Frontier “no thanks” to a heavily pushed big package of services from the company, and she did not want to get into a term contract.  But Frontier signed her to one anyway.

“Installation turned out to take almost two weeks because the installer never showed up and she actually got her first bill with DSL charges on it before they installed the service,” Shirley says.  “She called me right away — they signed her up for a calling plan she didn’t want, a hard drive backup service she never ordered, and a one year contract she won’t accept.”

Frontier took all of the extra services off her bill without a fight, even as she still waited for the installer to show up.

“It worked for three days — three days,” Shirley reports.  “Ever since the last heavy rain, the modem lights just blink and Frontier tells her it must be a line problem, but she’s still waiting for someone to come fix it.”

Frontier is charging Shirley, and her neighbors, nearly $40 a month for 1.5Mbps DSL service.  It was supposed to be 3Mbps, but Moon admitted to residents the farther a customer is from a hub, the slower the connection will be.

Common Congestion Symptoms?  Frontier Promises Relief

National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank

Meanwhile, residents in Pocahontas and Webster counties in eastern West Virginia have DSL service, but intolerable congestion has made it practically unusable since last Thanksgiving.

Nate in Marlinton has had DSL service since Verizon ran it, and believes Frontier has successfully run DSL straight into the ground in the state.

“Frontier actually managed to achieve slower speeds than my neighbor’s satellite Internet service, which is simply amazing,” Nate tells Stop the Cap! “He had Frontier DSL as well, but he went back to the satellite because it was actually better in the evenings.”

Nate’s in a good position to know he has a good quality line to Frontier’s central office — he can see the building from his house.

“When Verizon ran DSL, I actually got better speeds than they promised because you can count the line length between me and the central office in yards, not tens of thousands of feet,” Nate says.  “Now the problem is with Frontier’s own pipeline to the rest of the Internet, which has become hopelessly congested.”

Nate criticizes Frontier for claiming their network has loads of fiber optics for their broadband service.

“Not for ordinary West Virginians they sure don’t,” Nate says.

The Pocahontas Times covered Frontier’s molasses-slow broadband speeds, getting promises that better broadband was on the way late last week.

“But you have to read further down in the story to find the company is spending its time, attention, and money on a fiber network connecting the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank with West Virginia University in Morgantown,” Nate complains. “Although that fiber travels down the same phone poles and streets our phone lines do, that sure doesn’t mean we’ll be able to access it.”

Reed Nelson, Frontier’s Director of Engineering for West Virginia, vaguely offered the $5.9 million, 66-mile fiber project will indirectly benefit consumers through fiber loops installed along the way.  He was joined by an apologetic Dana Waldo, Frontier’s senior vice president for West Virginia.

“We know we’ve had some bumps in the road,” Waldo said at the outset of the meeting.

“This is very much like being on the Interstate highway at rush-hour,” he said. “It gets congested. What we’re trying to do is look for paths where we can reduce that congestion. That’s the short-term fix.”

Nate remains unimpressed.

“This is a residential broadband improvement project through osmosis — somehow Frontier’s congested network problems in the area will be resolved by an institutional network we cannot access,” Nate says. “The fact the company turned up at the Observatory to make these announcements before an audience of NRAO technical and executive staff, Pocahontas County Commissioners and representatives of the local schools and libraries, tells you all you need to know — this is an institutional, not residential network.”

Pocahontas County's Cranberry Glades: Go for Nature's Mountain Playground, but don't stay for Frontier's broadband.

Our regular reader DJ, also in the affected area, says speeds have been downright terrible since Thanksgiving, and despite Frontier’s “new capacity” coming online last week, his service is as slow as ever.

“I’m getting anywhere between 0.5Mbps – 2Mbps if I’m lucky,” he shares.

For most customers in eastern West Virginia, Frontier’s ironically-named High Speed Max service delivers a whopping 1Mbps broadband experience.

“Customers have been paying for value not received,” Pocahontas County Commissioner Martin Saffer told Nelson.

Constituents in both counties regularly complain to elected officials about the dreadful broadband service Frontier delivers.

“This company got more than one hundred million in broadband stimulus funding and it sure isn’t helping people in eastern West Virginia,” Nate says.

Another part of Frontier’s problems is an overcongested access point in Bluefield, where Frontier exchanges traffic with the Internet’s national backbone.  Sending the majority of the state’s traffic through one data center has proved untenable, so the company plans additional access points in Charles Town, Charleston, and Clarksburg.

Frontier promises speed boosts are forthcoming, bringing 5Mbps service in the days ahead, according to the Times.

John Mutscheller, Frontier’s Technical Supervisor in Marlinton, told the Times local crews are working to increase capacity whenever they go out to service equipment in Pocahontas County.

“When we put in a new site or we augment an existing site, if they’re at one meg–we have some at three–we’re jumping them up to 5 megs,” he said. “That’s the company policy.”

An installation at Thornwood will be the first 5 Mbps site to come online in Pocahontas County, Mutscheller said. Eventually, all sites in the county will be upgraded to that level, he said.

But as the newspaper points out, not everyone will get those speeds. Generally, with the copper lines that connect customers to Frontier’s equipment, connection speeds drop off as the distance from the equipment increases. Nelson said advances in modems, like those Frontier provides customers for connecting to its network, could fix that in coming years.

Frontier continues to navigate political minefields in the state with the help of employees hired from county governments. Reta Griffith, a former county commissioner today is Frontier’s General Manager for the territory that includes Pocahontas County.

Reporters pressed Griffith on the question of refunds for beleaguered customers experiencing very un-broadband speeds from Frontier:

“We will take those concerns into consideration,” Griffith responded.

Frontier’s service agreements with customers state that speeds received are not guaranteed, but rather will be ‘up to’ the specified speed, she added.

Frontier’s own marketing materials have added to the billing headaches of the company and its customers.

“‘High Speed Max’ doesn’t mean the same thing every place,” Griffith explained.

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.

The telephone landline business is hardly a growth industry, as an average of 5-7 percent of customers disconnect their home phone service every quarter, but you wouldn’t know that from the dividends being paid to stockholders.

From AT&T, Bell Canada, Frontier to Qwest — the companies that speak in terms of keeping their customer defection rates down are paying dividends that often exceed earnings.

Among the worst of all — Frontier Communications, whose outsized dividend is expected to reach 75 cents a share.  That, despite the fact analysts predict the phone company will earn only 40 cents a share or so this year.

Where do these phone companies expect to make their money?  Their broadband and wireless divisions.  AT&T and Bell Canada are able to cover landline losses with enhanced profits from their IPTV services like U-verse and Fibe.  Frontier and Qwest expect to survive on providing cheap-to-deploy DSL service in rural areas avoided by cable operators.