Frontier Communications has agreed to bring ADSL broadband service to more of its rural customers, in return for collecting $775 per impacted household from the FCC’s new Connect America Fund, designed to help defray expenses associated with expanding broadband access.

Frontier appears to be the first major phone company in the country to sign on to the new broadband subsidy program funded by telephone ratepayers through a surcharge on their monthly bills.

“Today’s announcement by Frontier Communications represents the beginning of that new deployment: approximately 200,000 unserved rural Americans will get broadband for the first time,” said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. “I applaud Frontier Communications for stepping up to the plate with its commitment to accelerate broadband build-out by increasing private investment in rural communities, in partnership with the Connect America Fund.”

The FCC will hand Frontier nearly $72 million in subsidies to help the company deploy DSL broadband in areas currently deemed not profitable enough to serve. Frontier says it expects to bring service to 92,876 new households across their national service area that never had broadband service before. The company specifically mentions expansions in Michigan, Oregon, Washington and West Virginia, but says customers in at least half of the states where it provides service will benefit from the broadband expansion funding.

Frontier claims it currently offers 80 percent of its customers broadband service, in part thanks to an investment of more than $1.5 billion by the company over the last two years, according to Kathleen Quinn Abernathy, executive vice president of external affairs.

Genachowski

Frontier is a major provider of traditional ADSL broadband service in its rural service areas, typically offering customers 1-3Mbps service. Customers in larger communities can purchase DSL service at speeds closer to 10Mbps, and the company also sells fiber to the home broadband over its acquired FiOS network in parts of the Pacific Northwest and Fort Wayne, Ind.

Under the terms of the Connect America Fund, participating providers must offer customers at least 4/1Mbps service, which means Frontier will need to make some upgrades in its rural network — most likely reducing the length of copper wiring between its central offices and customers.

Frontier has faced challenges maintaining broadband service in some areas, especially in states where the company acquired aging infrastructure from Verizon Communications. West Virginia, where Frontier is the dominant telephone company after Verizon left the state, is still suffering the after-effects of a derecho windstorm nearly two weeks ago. Frontier has brought in repair crews from as far away as New York to assist in clearing thousands of outage reports.

The company has also gotten some justice after Boone County authorities arrested two men for generator thefts. Frontier has been using generators to keep phone service up and running in areas without electricity, but has been victimized by generator thefts across the state. At least six other generators were stolen in New Martinsville in Wetzel County yesterday.

Frontier has a tip line for anyone with information about stolen equipment or copper theft: 1-800-590-6605.

Other telephone companies expecting to apply for broadband funding from the Connect America Fund include: Alaska Communications Systems, AT&T, CenturyLink, Consolidated Communications, FairPoint Communications, Hawaiian Telcom, Virgin Islands Telephone, Verizon Communications and Windstream.

Verizon customers can expect to pay more for the company’s fiber to the home service, FiOS, even as promised higher speeds arrive.

Most customers off contract can expect to pay $10-15 more a month under the new pricing regime, or cut back on selected television channels to keep their price the same. Verizon customers currently on a promotional offer will not see any price changes until their promotion expires.

Wall Street analysts call Verizon’s rate hikes a return to “pricing rationality.” The phone company has engaged in years of aggressive pricing, promotions, and rebate offers, especially in the northeast. At one point, Verizon was offering New York-area customers up to $500 in rebates when signing up for a triple play Verizon FiOS package. As Verizon pulls back from aggressive promotions, some analysts predict cable competitors Time Warner Cable and Cablevision will be able to resume more typical rate increases common before Verizon FiOS launched. Cablevision previously announced it would not increase rates during 2012, mostly in response to Verizon’s aggressive pricing.

Verizon has significantly boosted speeds on most of its broadband offerings, with the exception of its standard entry-level 15/5Mbps package, which remains unchanged. Verizon is hoping customers will find that entry level package less and less attractive and be amenable to upgrading to faster speed service at a higher price.

“We’re expecting that 80 percent of customers will want more than 15 megabits per second,” Arturo Picicci, Verizon’s director of product management told Reuters.

Under Verizon’s new pricing, triple play customers with unlimited calling, 15/5Mbps broadband, and 290 television channels pay $109.99. The next step up, for $15 more a month, would upgrade broadband to 50/25Mbps service.

Verizon is also shaming New York area cable operators with speed increases that Time Warner and Cablevision currently cannot match.

The company’s 150/65Mbps service is now priced at $99.99 a month, down from $209.99. Customers in some areas can also sign up for 300/65Mbps service for as low as $204.99 with a two-year contract.

In contrast, Comcast charges $200 a month for 105Mbps, Cablevision prices its 101Mbps service at $104.95 a month.

By 2050 Australian consumers will need a monthly data allowance of more than 100,000 gigabytes to sustain what will, by then, be considered average use of the Internet.

That finding comes in a report, “A Snapshot of Australia’s Digital Future to 2050,” which is measuring the impact of the country’s transformation to a ubiquitous fiber to the home broadband experience for the majority of Australian consumers and businesses.

Australia and New Zealand are both embarked on a transformative effort to rid themselves of slow speed, copper-based broadband networks. Both are rolling out a combination of fiber to the home service in urban and suburban areas, and fixed wireless networks in rural areas.

The South Pacific region could soon become a global broadband leader for innovation in high speed applications development because neither country will be constrained by broadband networks that deliver the least amount of broadband service for the highest cost.

The report predicts super-fast broadband will literally transform society in Australia, with traditional media as relevant tomorrow as a buggy whip is today.

Market researcher IBISWorld says newspapers, television, radio and the record and film industries are destined for the scrap heap in a new digital world.

The report also predicts the traditional understanding of employment may also radically change, with citizens acting as free agents, pursuing work on individual projects for a variety of employers, leveraging broadband to learn what tasks need to be performed each day. Work will be performed in home offices or on the go using the country’s broadband network.

Universal high speed broadband will transform the information and communications technology sector into a $1 trillion business by 2050 — in Australia alone, predicts the report.

Australia’s PM radio program explores how life in the country will change over the next 38 years with fiber optic broadband a part of virtually everyone’s life.  (June 14, 2012)  (4 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

Won first place nationally for the best 4G LTE network with the fastest overall speeds and best performance.

PC Magazine went to a lot of effort to test the data speeds of America’s wireless providers, traveling to 30 U.S. cities sampling both 3G and 4G wireless networks to see which carrier delivers the most consistent and fastest results.

After 240,000 lines of test data, the magazine declared the results a bit “muddy.”

They have a point.

Depending on which carrier’s flavor of “4G” is being utilized, where reception was strongest, how much spectrum was available in each tested city, and how many people were sharing the cell tower at the time of each test, PC Magazine was able to deliver the definitive results. And it was effectively a draw.

Verizon Wireless achieved victory in 19 cities, AT&T won in ten others, and T-Mobile came in pretty close behind, and that carrier does not even operate an LTE 4G network. But taking all factors into account, including upload and download speeds, whether or not test downloads actually completed, and whether streamed media was tolerable, Verizon Wireless won first prize nationwide.

But by how much?

Not enough to matter, if you are using Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile.

But the results do offer some things to think about.

1. MetroPCS is a mess. Despite the fact this smaller carrier is building its own 4G LTE network, results were simply terrible. Either its backhaul network from cell towers offers lower capacity or its backbone network is screaming for an upgrade.
2. Cricket was not willing to participate in the test. Their network, still 3G, delivers dependably “meh” results in the places where they actually provide coverage. The company has been reducing data allowances on their mobile broadband plans and raising prices on others. In one conference call with investors, company executives admitted they have been losing mobile broadband customers and expect that to continue at the prices they are charging.
3. Sprint needs their forthcoming 4G LTE network more than ever. Their 3G data service turned in mediocre results and their 4G WiMAX network was yesterday’s news a year ago. Sprint’s 3G network is also notorious for dead-end downloads, a situation I have witnessed on friends’ phones for several months.
4. Verizon Wireless remains far ahead of AT&T in covering more cities with their 4G LTE network. But more customers are also starting to use Verizon’s newer network, and the more customers piling on, the slower the speeds get for everyone. AT&T turned in some superior speed results in several cities, but those networks are often used less than the competition, for now.
5. No network is good if you cannot afford to use it. As America’s wireless carriers keep raising prices and reducing usage allowances to keep data usage under control, there will be a breaking point where customers decide the money they spend for wireless data just is not worth it, especially if they live in a place where Wi-Fi is free and easy to find.
6. What you test today will probably be different tomorrow. Wireless networks are constantly evolving and changing, with a wide range of factors contributing to their overall performance. Perhaps a more useful test would have been measuring how wireless carriers respond when their networks need upgrading and how long it takes them to respond to changing usage patterns. Verizon seems particularly aggressive, AT&T less so based on these results. The real surprise seems to be how well T-Mobile’s older technology is performing, and how quickly Sprint is now falling behind. On Cricket and MetroPCS, “you get what you pay for” seems to apply.

Cogeco Cable is mailing flyers to residents in eastern Canada promoting the company’s ‘value’ option:

• 4Mbps download speed
• 12 Month Contract with $75 early termination fee
• Increases to $32.95/mo off contract
• “Generous” 15GB usage cap with $1.50/GB overlimit fee (maximum penalty: $50)

Cogeco calls this plan ideal “for anyone who uses the Internet to exchange emails with friends, search sites and download pictures.”

In other words, it’s barely broadband for those who barely use the Internet.

Many Ontario and Quebec phone companies can offer even faster speeds through traditional DSL service. In Bell Fibe areas, for $6 more a month, customers can get a 15/10Mbps package for $26.97/mo for six months, which includes a safer 75GB allowance. At the end of six months, threaten to walk and Bell will extend the offer an extra six months.

Customers bundling services with either Bell or Cogeco may be able to negotiate for a package with better speeds and a more generous allowance. While Cogeco has cracked down on promotions, Bell has not, so customers served by Cogeco are advised to ask about all available deals before committing to either provider.