Last week, Stop the Cap! took a look at Virgin Mobile’s new unlimited $40 prepaid wireless broadband service.  Early testing looked promising, with speed test results that were well within economy tier DSL service and better than expected.  But by early this week the story began to change.

We’ve continued testing the service here and have noticed that while Virgin Mobile’s service turned in respectable performance during the business day (East Coast time), once people started heading home, it’s a completely different story.  For the last five days the service has deteriorated to the point of unusability by dinnertime.

It had gotten so bad, we went back to using Cricket’s wireless broadband.

So what’s happening?

First, it’s important to distinguish that these problems are impacting only Virgin Mobile.  Sprint’s postpaid customers can use the same cell tower and backbone network and not experience any performance issues.  Virgin Mobile’s home location on Sprint’s data network is in San Francisco, and until September 2nd, all traffic headed for the Bay Area to what is basically a virtual LAN on Sprint’s network.  The IP address we were assigned was actually an internal address for that virtual LAN.

Our problems started appearing Monday afternoon when we noticed web pages refused to load completely.  Since many web pages are composed of content from a variety of different web hosts (Google Analytics, advertising, embedded content, etc.), if parts of the page refuse to load, the page itself may not appear at all.  Advertising blocks were the worst problem, often leaving one staring at a blank web page waiting for the ad content to render.

By Wednesday, this problem simply made using Virgin Mobile for broadband untenable.  Few pages — even Google’s home page, refused to load reliably.  When pages did appear, they took longer than dial-up in many cases.  We tried to perform some diagnostics but found trace-routing impossible after the third hop and speed tests could not be loaded, much less run reliably.

The fact the worst problems occurred in the late afternoon and evening hours point to a network completely overloaded with customers.

And indeed, Virgin Mobile admitted as much when it replied to some tweets indicating it had quadrupled capacity by the end of this week.  Some users also reported they no longer connected exclusively through the San Francisco (Walnut Creek) location.

As of Thursday, anecdotal reports indicated some service improvements, but the service is still prone to slowdowns during peak usage times.

A few things are evident now that a week has passed:

1. Virgin Mobile Wireless Broadband does not share the better performing Sprint postpaid data network those customers receive.  Virgin Mobile customer traffic shares a much smaller “pool of bandwidth” because of the limitations imposed by its routing.
2. The company needs to either abandon its current routing scheme or dramatically modify it to accommodate the traffic.
3. Refunds for disgruntled customers are often available for the hardware, but don’t expect to get a refund for data usage.
4. The service problems come regardless of the device used or the number of signal bars you receive.
5. New routing cities have popped up since Thursday to supplement San Francisco — Charlotte, N.C., New York, Atlanta, Boston, Southfield (Mich.), Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and a few others.  Feel free to share yours in the comments section.

On Friday, Virgin Mobile suffered a major outage caused by a power failure that has stopped or seriously delayed delivery of text messages.  The outage is also affecting some data connections and customer service availability.  Angry customers have been pelting the company’s Facebook page with hostile remarks since the outage began.

If you signed up for Virgin Mobile wireless broadband, please share your experiences in our comments section!

Pacific Fibre's planned undersea fiber optic cable set to begin service in 2013. (click to enlarge)

Australia and New Zealand remain the two countries most notorious for Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and speed throttles.  The lack of international broadband capacity is routinely blamed for limiting broadband usage for consumers in both southern Pacific countries, and now a major undersea fiber optic cable project seeks to end those Internet Overcharging schemes once and for all.

Pacific Fibre hates usage caps.  The company, which is one of the partners in a planned 5.12 terabits per second undersea cable connecting the United States with New Zealand and Australia, believes limiting broadband consumption is bad for business — theirs and the digital economies of both nations.  Now the company is reportedly willing to put its money where its mouth is, charging broadband providers a flat rate per customer for unlimited access to its backbone network.

The company believes such pricing will force providers into selling more generous, often unlimited broadband service packages for businesses and consumers.  Providers have routinely blamed insufficient international capacity for restrictive data caps.  But increasing capacity, including Pacific Fibre’s new cable set to begin service in 2013, removes that excuse once and for all.

Co-founder Rod Drury believes there will be so much capacity, if providers continue to engage in Internet Overcharging schemes, most of the newly available bandwidth could actually go unsold.

“Why don’t we flip the model around and go to a per-person charging model and then try to give internet providers as much bandwidth as we possibly can for that?,” Drury told BusinessDay.  “The charges could be segmented by customer type; you could do it for mobile connections, home connections, schools, hospitals and businesses, and set a reasonable price.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Interview With Pacnet CEO June-July 2010.flv[/flv]

CNBC talked with Pacnet CEO Bill Barney, one of the partners in the Pacific Fibre project, about bandwidth needs in Asia and how new undersea fiber cables will meet the growing demands.  (Segment one of the interview was done in June, segment two in July.)  (10 minutes)

Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Ernie Newman said Drury’s idea was long overdue. “The way the world is moving is towards all-you-can-eat-type plans and any move like that has got to be the way of the future.”

But one of Pacific Fibre’s competitors, Southern Cross, which currently provides undersea fiber connections for South Pacific Internet Service Providers, said he wasn’t sure Drury’s idea would work.

Southern Cross marketing director Ross Pfeffer said broadband providers haven’t been justified limiting broadband usage for some time, as newly available capacity has already helped ease the bandwidth crunch.  Instead, critics contend existing providers don’t want to give up the massive profits they are earning limiting usage, maximizing revenue from users who think twice before using high bandwidth services, thus reducing required investments in network upgrades.

“New Zealand internet providers [are] using data caps to segment the retail market and maximize their own revenues,” Pfeffer noted.

Both Australia and New Zealand are embarked on National Broadband Plans to take back some control of their broadband futures from private providers many accuse of monopolizing an increasingly important part of both countries’ digital economies.

Drury’s project, and others like it, may become important components of newly constructed national fiber-to-the-home projects proposed in Australia, and dramatically improved service in New Zealand.

[flv width=”480″ height=”292″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Underwater cable laying 1936.flv[/flv]

The history of deploying underseas cables is a fascinating one.  Check out this 1936 documentary showing how AT&T made undersea phone cables to connect the San Francisco Bay area.  Back then, companies didn’t use rubber or plastic cable jackets to keep the water out.  They used jute fiber and paper!  Some other companies used gutta percha, which is today best known for root canal fillings, or tar mixtures.  (5 minutes)

[flv width=”484″ height=”292″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/BBC Cable Under the Sea.flv[/flv]

Before there was telephone service, the challenges of connecting the far flung components of the British Empire were met by underseas telegraph cables beginning in the 1870s.  A fascinating BBC documentary visited Porthcurno, located at the tip of Cornwall, England, where 14 undersea telegraph cables stretched from a single beach to points all around the globe. Then something called “wireless” arrived and threatened to ruin everything.  (8 minutes)

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Fiber Optic Cable.flv[/flv]

But what exactly is “fiber optic cable” and how is it made?  More importantly, how do they store thousands of miles of fiber optic cable on a single ship, ready to drop to the bottom of the ocean?  The answers to both are here.  (12 minutes)

The Consumerist covers a minor bungle by Comcast, which sent e-mail to a whole mess of their customers heralding a 50 percent speed increase in huge, bold print that was not to be:

Customers who waded into the text accompanying the festivities discovered the speed increase was only meant for so-called “Economy Service” customers who were getting upgrades from 1Mbps to 1.5Mbps.  A few days later, the requisite “apology for our error” e-mail was headed out — to the wrong customers:

Virgin Mobile, Sprint’s prepaid wireless division, will introduce big changes to their mobile broadband pricing as early as tomorrow, including an unlimited mobile broadband plan for $40 a month.

While the fine print is not yet available for review, if Sprint defines “unlimited” the way dictionaries do, the introduction of unlimited access for $40 a month represents a major departure among carriers who are increasing mobile data pricing or slapping usage limits or speed throttles on customers.

Virgin Mobile noted some of their customers are replacing their home wired broadband connections with the company’s own wireless broadband option, and the new unlimited pricing plan makes that a realistic option for some consumers who can live with Sprint’s current 3G network speeds.  Virgin Mobile customers currently do not have access to Sprint’s Clearwire 4G network.

Virgin Mobile’s new Broadband2Go price plans were leaked on their Facebook page over the weekend:

Virgin Mobile's Broadband2Go Plans have been simplified into one occasional use budget plan and unlimited service for $40 a month

The new pricing departs from old pricing models that included four tiers of service, none unlimited, sold by anticipated data usage:

Virgin Mobile's old Broadband2Go delivered usage limits and forced consumers to guess at how much of a usage allowance they would need.

Virgin Mobile’s new flat rate mobile broadband data plan reflects increasingly aggressive pricing in the prepaid wireless business.  While other carriers place limits of up to 5GB on usage — typically sold for $60 a month, Virgin Mobile’s plan is fully $20 less per month and offers unlimited access.

The service is sold on a month-to-month basis with no contract requirement or credit check.  If the service does not meet one’s needs, customers can just walk away at the end of the month.

Virgin Mobile uses Sprint’s CDMA network, which offers reasonable coverage in metropolitan areas but is much spottier outside of population centers.

In the northeastern United States, Sprint's data network extends to large communities and major highways, but routinely skips smaller towns and isolated areas. For example, Virgin Mobile offers almost no service in northern New England. In upstate New York, service becomes spotty beyond the cities of Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and the highways that connect them. There's almost no coverage in northern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or eastern Kentucky either.

Virgin Mobile, formerly a reseller of Sprint’s network but now owned outright by them, has repositioned itself to emphasize “worry-free, unlimited service” for consumers who do not want to count calls, minutes, or megabytes.  Their latest marketing campaign pushes “crazy” low pricing, while calling out larger carriers charging up to $99 a month for the same service as “stupid.”

Virgin Mobile’s new pricing is expected to become effective Tuesday and will create a shakeup in the prepaid mobile broadband sector.  Perhaps no carrier is at bigger risk of losing mobile data customers than Cricket Wireless, which recently increased pricing on its mobile broadband service delivered on a far smaller network.

Virgin Mobile’s new pricing represents a far good deal for consumers and dispenses with usage limits.  The only downside is that Virgin Mobile customers will have to buy new modems — an Ovation MC760 for $79.99 or the MiFi 2200 Mobile Hotspot, which lets up to five users share a Virgin Mobile 3G connection over Wi-Fi, for $149.99.  These are available on Virgin Mobile’s website or in Best Buy stores.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/The Crazy Life by Virgin Mobile – Full Version.flv[/flv]

Virgin Mobile’s “The Crazy Life” campaign is certain to be noticed amidst other, more subdued, advertising.  It promotes Virgin Mobile’s embrace of unlimited calling and data plans.  (1 minute)

Qwest, the former-Baby Bell serving the upper midwest, mountain west, and desert states got caught on tape telling customers the company’s intent is to eliminate competition from independent Internet Service Providers by banning them from their network.

One such ISP, XMission, has blown the whistle on the anti-competitive practice, noting they could potentially be run out of business if Qwest manages to keep them from delivering competitive service over Qwest’s upgraded partly-fiber network.

In 1997, XMission first started providing service over Qwest’s DSL.  We have literally paid millions of dollars of revenue to Qwest for the privilege, all the while relieving them of the difficult task of providing excellent customer support.  In 2008, Qwest launched their “Fiber-to-the-Node” product which is usually falsely advertised as just plain “fiber”.  Unlike the UTOPIA system which runs fiber optics all the way to the home, Qwest FTTN runs fiber to a neighborhood, then copper DSL lines to the customer.  Because of the subsequent shorter distances on copper, they are able to attain download speeds of up to 40Mbit to the customer and 5Mbit from the customer.  This is normally referred to “download” and “upload” respectively.

There is one key difference in the FTTN product.  Qwest is not not allowing 3rd party ISPs like XMission to sell their own service over it, as we traditionally have with their first DSL product.  In addition, Qwest has been notorious for disinformation and service problems that motivate customers to drop their current ISP and change over to Qwest.  Technical problems exist, such as radio interference that degrades existing XMission customer DSL speeds, sometimes making their Internet connection unusable.  The solution offered by Qwest was not to shield the radio interference, but to switch customers off XMission and to their own product.  We have also had reports and in one case, a recording, of Qwest sales representatives telling customers that Qwest’s intent is to “eliminate” 3rd party ISPs.   Today, I received an email from a customer who was told by Qwest that XMission’s equipment is “too slow” to handle FTTN service.  Considering that we service customers on fiber and in our data center with up to a gigabit in solid bandwidth, one has to wonder why Qwest feels the need to lie to sell their service.  There is no technical reason why Qwest could not allow 3rd party ISPs like XMission to provide service over their FTTN network.

XMission has been hemorrhaging DSL customers for the past year, and I really don’t blame them for looking for bigger Internet connections.  I personally can only get 3Mbit download and 500Kbit upload to my own home and it is not enough bandwidth for me.  With Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, and other services demanding more and more bandwidth, homes will need larger and larger connections.  Unless they’re in a UTOPIA connected city, chances are that they are going to choose from two companies to buy Internet from in the future, neither of them stellar.

UTOPIA is Utah’s publicly-owned fiber optic platform delivering competitive choice to residents of 16 Utah cities.  Residents enjoy true fiber optic service and can select from 11 different Internet Service Providers, each offering their own speed levels, bundles, and pricing.  How many ISPs can you choose from?

Qwest’s newest network upgrades deliver service somewhat comparable to AT&T’s U-verse — faster broadband through a hybrid fiber, copper phone line-based network.  Qwest also sells traditional DSL service over standard phone lines, including so-called “dry loop” service that delivers broadband service without also buying a phone line.  While competing providers can sell service over many of Qwest’s DSL lines, they have been barred from selling access over these new, faster-speed lines.

Customers have been unimpressed with Qwest’s traditional DSL services which often promises far more than it actually delivers.

Alex Langshall in South Salt Lake was guaranteed 7Mbps DSL service from Qwest, but ended up with only 640kbps.  The reason?  His distance from the central office and the deteriorating quality of Qwest’s landline network.  Qwest’s technicians told Alex even after line conditioning and rehabilitation, he would only get 1.5Mbps service.

XMission publicized this recording between Qwest and one of their customers about the phone company’s intentions for independent ISPs on their network (July 21, 2010) (3 minutes)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.

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