As political pressure over Usage Based Billing continues to keep providers from gravitating towards more stringent Internet Overcharging schemes, western Canadians are enjoying significant victories as providers relax usage caps and increase speeds for broadband service.

Weeks after Shaw Communications announced new packages with increased usage allowances and a few unlimited use plans, Telus has now followed Shaw’s lead and doubled usage caps on many of its Internet plans, slashed overlimit fees by more than half for some, and plans to increase upload speeds for one of its premium plans:

Among the major changes are dramatically increased usage allowances and the reduction of overlimit fees.

Telus customers receive their service from the phone company in various flavors of DSL.  Some older suburban and rural areas still receive speeds averaging 3Mbps, but those lucky enough to be served by VDSL can comfortably achieve the company’s fastest broadband speeds.  The increased usage allowances are welcome news, even if Telus has never strictly enforced any of them:

• High Speed Turbo 25 increased to 500GB, was 250GB;
• High Speed Turbo increased to 250GB, was 125GB;
• High Speed increased to 150GB, was 75GB;
• High Speed Lite increased to 30GB, was 13GB;
• The overlimit fee for High Speed Lite has been reduced from $5/GB to $2/GB;
• Unofficial reports suggest upload speed for Turbo 25 is being increased from 2Mbps to 3Mbps, to be rolled out gradually.

Is Telus following Shaw's lead?

The reduction in the overlimit fee for High Speed Lite was predictable in light of recent political events.  It is difficult to sustain the argument that overlimit fees and usage caps are priced to control network congestion when the lightest users face the most draconian limits and penalty fees.

But unlike their cable competitor Shaw Communications, Telus has not seen fit to offer customers a truly unlimited plan, which presents a problem for some.

“Telus needs to remember they cannot win a speed race with Shaw so they should be lowering prices, taking the usage caps off, and competing with something they can actually win — delivering customers the unlimited service they want at a reasonable price,” says Stop the Cap! reader Abel from Burnaby, B.C.

Separately, Telus also quietly introduced a rate increase for basic home telephone service.  What used to be $21 a month is now $25, an increase of four dollars.

The dramatic plan changes underway in western Canada come in response to political pressure and consumer ire against Usage Based Billing (UBB).  Bell, which provides much of Canada with wholesale broadband access, was seeking to force independent providers to abandon unlimited, flat rate pricing in favor of ubiquitous UBB.  The provocation brought a half million Canadians to sign a petition against metering broadband.

For eastern Canada, thus far little has changed as Bell, Rogers, and Videotron continue with business as usual.

Arris' C4 CMTS

In the broadband speed race, no technology can deliver consistently fast upload and download speeds and offer ease-of-upgrades like fiber optics, but most of us won’t have direct access to the technology for years to come.  This week, the cable industry will attempt to suggest fiber upgrades may be unnecessary as it shows off some of the latest broadband technology at the industry’s trade show in Chicago.

Arris, a cable broadband equipment manufacturer, plans to demonstrate just how many “cable channels” it can bond together to build an enormous broadband pipeline, which the company claims will achieve “proof of concept” speeds as high as 4.5Gbps downstream and 575Mbps upstream.

Such a demonstration is impractical for actual use with today’s cable systems, because they lack enough free channel space to construct a pipe that large.  But the cable industry is betting heavily on DOCSIS 3 technology to keep them in the game as other technology threatens to win future online speed races.

At the heart of Arris’ cable broadband platform is its C4 Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS). The latest iteration, called Release 7.4, increases support for bonded channels, allows cable operators to manage the IP video demands of their subscribers, and also includes additional “intelligent network” enhancements to manage different types of broadband traffic.

Cable modem broadband technology is based on a “shared network,” meaning every customer connected to an individual CMTS is sharing the same individual broadband pipeline.  Before DOCSIS 3 technology, the maximum “raw bitrate” of that pipe was generally fixed at around 40Mbps — speed/bandwidth shared with every customer wired into that equipment.  If just a handful of customers used their broadband connection at the same time, speeds were consistently fast and reliable.  But during peak usage, too many customers could place demands on that pipe it could not sustain, and speeds for everyone began to drop.

Since most customers didn’t come close to saturating their broadband connection, hundreds of families safely shared the same pipe without noticeable speed declines.  But as high bandwidth applications like online video and file sharing grew, network engineers had to plan on fewer customers sharing the same connection or regularly split some customers off an overworked CMTS.

DOCSIS 3 technology solves many of these problems by letting cable operators “bond” multiple cable channels together to create a much larger, although-still-shared, pipe.  Arris says design improvements in its latest c4 CMTS also help manage the traffic that crosses it in the most efficient way possible to maintain a consistent user experience.

Because fiber optic competitors routinely win the broadband speed race, cable operators have to counter aggressive marketing strategies they themselves have used against dial-up and DSL service from the telephone company.  Demonstrating high speed results, even when completely impractical to deploy, still helps the industry’s marketing efforts against the competition, and delivers fodder for industry lobbyists used to counter claims by broadband advocates that other countries are deploying more advanced broadband networks that allow North America to fall behind.

America’s broadband ranking has fallen once again, mostly at the expense of other countries who have accelerated service and speed upgrades above and beyond what is available in the United States.  That is the conclusion one can reach after reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s second annual broadband report, delivered to Congress to fulfill obligations under the Broadband Data Improvement Act.

Through a combination of data from OECD broadband rankings and actual speed test results collected by the Commission, the FCC report notes American cities are at risk of losing the broadband speed race.

“This report compares data on average actual download speeds reported by a sample of consumers in a number of U.S. and foreign cities and finds that some large European and Asian cities exhibit a significant edge over comparable U.S. cities in reported download speeds, though reported speeds for some other international cities are roughly comparable to speeds in many U.S. cities,” the report concludes.

“The best currently available data set comparing the United States to other countries appears to be from the OECD, which collects data on various broadband deployment, adoption, and usage metrics and publishes rankings of its member countries. The OECD’s deployment data ranks countries based on particular technologies, rather than overall coverage. The U.S. ranking in these surveys ranges from 27th out of 30 in DSL coverage to 1st out of 28 in cable modem coverage.  The U.S. ranks 6th out of 16 in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) coverage and 8th out of 29 in 3G mobile wireless coverage.”

Broadband Rankings (click to enlarge)

Most of the countries accelerating far beyond the United States in broadband speed and quality are in Asia and Europe, and many are upgrading their networks to fiber-based broadband.  As these fiber networks come online, the United States can be expected to fall further behind.

The cable industry lobby attacked the report's findings.

Just like last year, the Internet Service Providers turning in poor grades are rejecting the report’s conclusions.

“While the Commission’s headline proclaims that 20 million Americans are denied access to broadband, by that measure private investment has fueled the build-out of broadband networks to nearly 300 million consumers and is responsible for the jobs that flow from that investment,” said Michael Powell, president and chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.  Powell used to oversee the FCC as chairman during the first term of the Bush Administration.

Another trade association with ties to the telecom industry, USTelecom, attacked the findings noting most Americans think their existing broadband service is good enough.

Walter McCormick Jr., USTelecom CEO, noted the FCC’s own report found that 95 percent of Americans have access to fixed broadband and 93 percent are happy with their service.

...so did USTelecom, another industry funded group

But McCormick says nothing about the speeds those customers receive, a bone of contention with the Commission.  As part of this year’s report, the FCC is increasingly relying on its own verifiable data about broadband speeds, collected through its SamKnows broadband speed test project.  The Commission has repeatedly noted that broadband speeds marketed by ISPs do not always match the actual speeds customers receive.

Speed tests comparing broadband performance in comparably sized cities found some sizable differences.

The data suggest that mean actual download speeds in some European and Asian cities are substantially higher than in comparably sized U.S. cities (e.g., 24.8 megabits per second (Mbps) in Paris and 35.8 Mbps in Seoul versus 6.9 Mbps in San Francisco, 9.4 Mbps in Chicago, and 9.9 Mbps in Phoenix). Some of the U.S. cities in our sample have higher speeds than some foreign cities (e.g., Chicago with 9.39 Mbps versus Rome with 5.6 Mbps).

The most significant reason for the disparity in speed is the technology used in each respective area.  Fiber to the home service traditionally delivers the fastest broadband speeds.  Cable broadband technology, common in the United States but less so abroad, is responsible for a great deal of speed increases in the United States.  Telephone company DSL and wireless are responsible for some of the slowest speeds, with rural DSL service commonly providing just 1-3Mbps service.  Many European cities still relying on DSL technology have upgraded to bonded DSL, ADSL2+, or VDSL service, which can significantly boost speeds.

Unfortunately, the report concludes, the faster the broadband service delivered, the higher the price — often out of proportion with other OECD countries.

Results […] suggest that U.S. stand-alone residential broadband prices are generally “in the middle of prices in OECD countries,” after accounting for speed, terms of service, data caps, and service delivery technology. Similarly, prices in the United States for business stand-alone broadband services were fourteenth out of 30 among the OECD countries. A paper by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University found prices for U.S. broadband with download speeds of around 768 kbps to be “very good” by international standards. However, as download speeds increase, the paper found that U.S. prices become more expensive than most other OECD countries.

Some providers unimpressed by the independent research accused the FCC of using biased and inconsistent research methods.  AT&T, for example, was unhappy with comparisons among U.S. cities and those of comparable size abroad.  They accused the Commission of not using “a well-defined or consistent methodology for choosing the ‘communities’ or offers.”  In fact, several providers suggested the Commission’s pricing comparisons ignored significant, albeit temporary, discounts some new customers receive, as well as discounts for bundled service packages.  Promotional pricing factors are acknowledged by the Commission, but the report notes the findings do attempt to collect real world pricing paid by actual customers.

For consumers in the United States, broadband envy is as close as the next news report highlighting broadband expansion efforts abroad.  Some countries are deploying 1Gbps broadband networks that deliver consistently faster speeds than American providers, at dramatically lower prices and without a usage cap attached.

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.