This week, mobile customers in Bahrain can now sign up for uncongested, ultra-fast 4G LTE broadband packages that include 120GB of usage and a free LTE router or MiFi device, all priced less than what AT&T and Verizon Wireless charge for just 1GB of mobile broadband and the cost of the device to use it.
Zain Bahrain began offering mobile broadband packages this week that start at under $32 a month. For video lovers and downloaders, the company charges $53 a month for up to 120GB of usage at speeds up to 25Mbps, equipment included at no extra charge. Customers upgrading to 250GB or 1000GB usage allowances also get much faster performance on the company’s LTE network — up to 100Mbps.
Customers that exceed those usage allowances are not billed overlimit fees. Their speeds are temporarily throttled to a still-usable 2-4Mbps, depending on the chosen plan. There is a 4GB daily usage limit.
In the United States, AT&T customers pay $50 a month for a DataConnect plan offering up to 5GB of usage, with a $10/GB overlimit fee. A smartphone customer pays a combined $65 a month for a 1GB plan and device fee.
A Verizon Wireless customer pays $50 as month for a shared data plan offering a 4GB data allowance and includes the monthly device fee. A smartphone customer pays $80 a month ($70 if on Verizon’s Edge plan) for a 1GB plan and device fee.
“We are delighted that we are leveraging the investment in our new network to benefit our customers with new offers,” said Zain Bahrain’s enterprise broadband products and services manager Mohammed Al Alawi. “Today’s broadband customers are bandwidth hungry, with diverse connectivity needs; our new 4G LTE broadband packages are custom-designed to meet these needs and enable a digital lifestyle like never before.”
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Why should you switch to 4G LTE with Zain 2014.mp4[/flv]
Zain produced this English language video to introduce its 4G LTE service offering speeds up to 100Mbps in Kuwait. Unlike in the United States, generous usage allowances from Zain make wireless broadband a prospect for Internet users in the home and on the go. (2:20)
Comcast customers in Philadelphia are organizing to stop the cable company from winning a 15-year franchise renewal to continue providing service in the city unless the cable operator changes its ways after years of rate increases and poor customer service.
CAP Comcast! argues Comcast is not paying its fair share and is not a good corporate citizen in the city.
“Comcast has outsized power in a Philadelphia still suffering under economic crisis,” says the group. While the company charges some of the highest cable rates in the country, it has successfully earned $64 billion in revenue and an extremely low corporate tax bill.
“During the last franchise negotiation, Philadelphia elected officials and appointed leaders secured important resources for our city, including funds for public access television, and about $17 million a year for Philadelphia’s general fund,” said Bryan Mercer, co-executive director at Media Mobilizing Project. “But since that time, Philadelphia has shuttered over 20 schools and slashed services that our communities need. Comcast pays less than 4% in corporate tax revenue, in a state where the average is almost 10%. And they’re getting $40 million in subsidies for their new planned building. If Comcast wants a chance to profit from our communities, Philadelphia should ensure Comcast pays their fair share, or invite other communications companies to serve our city.”
Among the group’s key arguments:
The company earned over $64 billion in revenues in 2013, while they lobbied to stop hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians from getting access to paid sick days;
The ratio of CEO pay to average employee pay at Comcast is 370:1;
And they pay little in a city and state that needs much — a nationwide corporate-income tax rate of only 3.4% in a state where our average rate is 9.99%.
“Comcast accesses our streets – our public rights of way – to sell cable and other services in Philadelphia,” said Hannah Sassaman, policy director at Media Mobilizing Project. “At the same time, they are earning huge profits here and nationally, and planning to merge with Time-Warner Cable. Comcast has lobbied to stop City Council from passing bills that would expand paid sick days to hundreds of thousands of workers who don’t have them, and their executives have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Governor Corbett, who has cut over a billion dollars from Pennsylvania education.
CAP Comcast! is asking for a five-year rate freeze for Comcast services while increasing broadband speeds and access to all Philadelphians. It also seeks fair treatment for Public, Educational, and Government access channels, expanded affordable Internet access without pre-conditions, involvement in solving local community problems, support of worker rights, and an end to passing along the cost of the franchise fee to customers.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Tell Comcast to Pay Its Fair Share 5-2014.mp4[/flv]
CAP Comcast! produced this video introducing its campaign to prevent another 15 year franchise for Comcast in Philadelphia unless the company changes its ways. (2:51)
Federal Communications Commission chairman Thomas Wheeler this morning defended his forthcoming Net Neutrality policies in front of an audience of cable executives attending the Cable Show in Los Angeles.
“If you read some of the press accounts about what we propose to do, those of you who oppose Net Neutrality might feel like a celebration was in order,” Wheeler told the cable industry audience. “Reports that we are gutting the Open Internet rules are incorrect. I am here to say wait a minute. Put away the party hats. The Open Internet rules will be tough, enforceable and, with the concurrence of my colleagues, in place with dispatch.”
“Let me be clear,” Wheeler continued. “If someone acts to divide the Internet between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ we will use every power at our disposal to stop it. I consider that to include Title II. Just because it is my strong belief that following the court’s roadmap will produce similar protections more quickly, does not mean I will hesitate to use Title II if warranted. And, in our Notice, we are asking for input as to whether this approach should be used.”
Wheeler also used the forum to acknowledge that cable companies are now the “principal provider of broadband” in the United States, a slap at telephone company DSL service that continues to lose market share.
Wheeler’s comments primarily addressed intentional interference with Internet traffic and remained silent about whether the FCC would allow providers to delay network upgrades that gradually allow service to degrade while selling improved “Quality of Service” contracts to content providers like Netflix.
“Prioritizing some traffic by forcing the rest of the traffic into a congested lane won’t be permitted under any proposed Open Internet rule,” Wheeler insisted. “We will not allow some companies to force Internet users into a slow lane so that others with special privileges can have superior service.”
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FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler spoke before the 2014 NCTA Cable Show this morning to speak about Net Neutrality and chat with NCTA president Michael Powell. (39:15)
Wheeler’s remarks in full can be found below the jump:
Last week, advocates for an Open Internet were up in arms over a report in the Wall Street Journal indicating FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler was about to solve his Net Neutrality problem by redefining it to mean the exact opposite of its intended goal to keep Internet traffic out of provider-established toll lanes.
Former FCC chairman Michael Powell created the current definition of the Internet as “an information service” that has been repeatedly invalidated by the courts. Today he is the president of the nation’s largest cable industry lobbying group, the NCTA. (Image: Mark Fiore)
“Regulators are proposing new rules on Internet traffic that would allow broadband providers to charge companies a premium for access to their fastest lanes,” said the report, quoting an unnamed source.
Wheeler’s proposal follows the agency’s latest defeat in the courts in its latest effort to define net policy. The D.C. Court of Appeals objects to the FCC’s rule-making powers under the current “light touch” regulatory framework introduced by former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Since the first term of the Bush Administration, the FCC has avoided reclassifying broadband as a “telecommunication service,” which would place it firmly under its regulatory authority. Instead, it has continued to define the Internet as “an information service,” under which there is little precedent to support Net Neutrality rules.
The Wall Street Journalreported Wheeler was planning to introduce a new Net Neutrality policy that would ban blatant attempts to censor or block access to Internet websites, but would allow providers to monetize access to its broadband pipes by giving preferential treatment to traffic from certain content providers. Wheeler’s proposal would allow any company to pay for faster access to customers, so long as providers charged an undefined fair price to all-comers.
Wheeler said the FCC would have the authority to deal with providers unwilling to maintain a level playing field for content companies willing to pay extra, but was much more vague about how the regulator would protect websites unwilling to pay extra for traffic guarantees.
Net Neutrality proponents contend Wheeler’s proposal is exactly what Net Neutrality was supposed to prevent – an Internet toll lane only affordable to deep-pocketed giant corporations. For everyone else, including startups and smaller companies, customers could experience the type of slowdowns Netflix users experienced earlier this year — congestion-related buffering that disappeared almost instantly once Netflix signed a paid contract with Comcast for a more direct connection.
“With this proposal, the FCC is aiding and abetting the largest ISPs in their efforts to destroy the open Internet,” said Free Press CEO Craig Aaron. “Giving ISPs the green light to implement pay-for-priority schemes will be a disaster for startups, nonprofits and everyday Internet users who cannot afford these unnecessary tolls. These users will all be pushed onto the Internet dirt road, while deep-pocketed Internet companies enjoy the benefits of the newly created fast lanes.”
“For technologists and entrepreneurs alike this is a worst-case scenario,” Eric Klinker, chief executive of BitTorrent Inc., a popular Internet technology for people to swap digital movies or other content, told the Wall Street Journal. “Creating a fast lane for those that can afford it is by its very definition discrimination.”
It’s even worse than that for consumer groups like Free Press.
Charging another fee to get content on your broadband connection represents a massive business opportunity for broadband companies. But Free Press’ Craig Aaron says it would be a bad deal for Web companies, especially those that can’t afford to pay more for premium service. National Public Radio’s Morning Edition reports. Apr. 24, 2014 (1:58)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Providers love the idea of monetizing the use of their Internet pipes. (Image: Mark Fiore)
“This is not Net Neutrality. It’s an insult to those who care about preserving the open Internet to pretend otherwise,” said Aaron. “The FCC had an opportunity to reverse its failures and pursue real Net Neutrality by reclassifying broadband under the law. Instead, in a moment of political cowardice and extreme shortsightedness, it has chosen this convoluted path that won’t protect Internet users.”
Wheeler, a former industry insider that presided over both the wireless and cable industry’s largest lobbying groups had a friendlier reception from his former colleagues.
One top cable executive admitted, “I have to say, I’m pleased.”
The cable industry claims they need to attract more investment to manage upgrades of their broadband networks now coming under strain from the online video revolution.
“Somebody has to pay for this, and if they weren’t going to let companies pay for enhanced transport and delivery…it just seemed like this was going to come back to the consumer,” said the cable executive.
So far neither Wheeler or the FCC has released the draft proposal for Net Neutrality 2.0 and won’t until just before it votes on it next month.
A day after the story leaked, Wheeler wrote a damage control blog post to correct what he called “misinformation” about the proposed rules:
Wheeler is keeping the exact language of his Net Neutrality proposal to himself until just before holding a vote on it.
To be very direct, the proposal would establish that behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet will not be permitted.
Incorrect accounts have reported that the earlier policies of the Commission have been abandoned. Two points are relevant here:
The Court of Appeals made it clear that the FCC could stop harmful conduct if it were found to not be “commercially reasonable.” Acting within the constraints of the Court’s decision, the Notice will propose rules that establish a high bar for what is “commercially reasonable.” In addition, the Notice will seek ideas on other approaches to achieve this important goal consistent with the Court’s decision. The Notice will also observe that the Commission believes it has the authority under Supreme Court precedent to identify behavior that is flatly illegal.
It should be noted that even Title II regulation (which many have sought and which remains a clear alternative) only bans “unjust and unreasonable discrimination.”
The allegation that it will result in anti-competitive price increases for consumers is also unfounded. That is exactly what the “commercially unreasonable” test will protect against: harm to competition and consumers stemming from abusive market activity.
But Wheeler ignored one glaring change his proposal would make – permitting providers to monetize the performance of select Internet traffic. Currently, customers choose from a menu of available Internet speeds. Under Wheeler’s definition of Net Neutrality, a provider selling “up to” a certain amount of speed is under no obligation to actually deliver that speed. But that same provider could sell “insurance” to content producers promising certain network packets will have a better chance of reaching the customer on a timely basis, while non-paying content might not. That could make all the difference between a watchable streaming movie and one constantly pausing to “buffer.”
As long as everyone is free to pay Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T the same (more or less) for preferred treatment, all is well in Wheeler’s world.
Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University, coined the phrase “Net Neutrality.” He discusses how the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed changes could affect the average consumer and it’s not good news. From NPR’s All Things Considered. Apr. 24, 2014 (3:51)
You must remain on this page to hear the clip, or you can download the clip and listen later.
Dividing traffic on the Internet into fast and slow lanes is exactly what the Federal Communications Commission would do with its proposed regulations, unveiled this week. And no amount of reassurances about keeping competition alive will change that fact.
[…] In this new world, smaller content providers and start-ups that could not pay for preferential treatment might not be able to compete because their delivery speeds would be much slower. And consumers would have to pay more because any company that agrees to strike deals with phone and cable companies would undoubtedly pass on those costs to their users.
The F.C.C. proposal claims to protect competition by requiring that any deal between a broadband company and a content provider be “commercially reasonable.” But figuring out what is reasonable will be very difficult, and the commission will struggle to enforce that standard. The rules would also prohibit broadband companies from blocking content by, for example, making it impossible for users to access a service like Skype that competes with their own products.
[…] Mr. Wheeler is seeking public comment on this option, but he is not in favor of it. Even though the appeals court has said the F.C.C. has authority to reclassify broadband, the agency has not done so because phone and cable companies, along with their mostly Republican supporters in Congress, strongly oppose it.
Michael J. Copps, a former FCC commissioner confirmed big telecommunications companies are spending millions to lobby for rules that would allow them to tilt the scales in their favor.
Wheeler’s “is a lot closer to what they wanted than what we wanted,” Copps told the New York Times. “It reflects a lot more input from them. The courts did not tell Wheeler to take the road that he is reportedly taking.”
That Wheeler would take an approach that coincidentally follows a model heavily favored by the telecommunications companies he used to represent should come as no surprise. Stop the Cap! repeatedly warned Wheeler’s appointment as FCC chairman would likely lead to disaster for consumers. A lifelong industry lobbyist (and investor) is unlikely to develop a world view that strays too far beyond the industry’s groupthink on telecom policy.
Wheeler may actually believe his policies represent the best way forward for the telecommunications industry he now oversees. A lot of supporters of Zeppelin Luftschiffbau used to believe blimps were the future of aviation, until May 6, 1937 when the Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J.
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Mark Fiore uses animation in his editorial cartoon explaining the demise of Net Neutrality and the beginning of the Internet’s Gilded Age. (1:53)
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), in collaboration with the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM), CableLabs, and Cable Europe, today announced the next generation of cable broadband — DOCSIS 3.1 — will be dubbed “Gigasphere” as its public name to demystify the technology for consumers.
Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.1 will be the next standard for delivering broadband service over cable systems. Unlike earlier standards that depended on allocating one or more traditional “channels” for broadband, Gigasphere will use orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), allowing cable systems to bond segments of unused spectrum together dedicated to broadband, delivering the potential of 10/1Gbps service.
Gigasphere will help cable systems compete more effectively with fiber to the home broadband networks, although upstream speeds are still slower than what fiber can offer. By rebranding DOCSIS 3.1, cable operators hope customers will respond to future marketing efforts that promote the viability of cable-delivered broadband in light of growing fiber competition.
The first DOCSIS 3.1 modems will be hybrids that support both DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.0 spectrum, and will be able to handle both simultaneously. The DOCSIS 3.0 side will carry a minimum requirement of bonding 24 downstream QAM channels and 8 upstream QAM channels, alongside a DOCSIS 3.1 minimum that calls for the ability to tie in two channels/blocks orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) at 192MHz-wide each, and two 96MHz-wide channels for the upstream.
Those are the baseline requirments and operators will later decide how and when to turn up that capacity, but when fully-loaded, that 3.0/3.1 mix will be able to handle max downstream speeds of 4 Gbps to 5 Gbps, and 1.5 Gbps in the upstream right out of the chute, Matthew Schmitt, CableLabs’s director of DOCSIS, explained here in an interview.
– See more at: http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/first-docsis-31-modems-will-have-4-5-gbps-potential/261067#sthash.iuXwADeI.dpuf
The first generation of Gigasphere modems will cover both DOCSIS 3.1 and DOCSIS 3.0 spectrum simultaneously when they arrive later this year. Models will support the current DOCSIS 3 standard with up to 24 bonded QAM channels for downloading and up to 8 channels for uploading. The modems will also cover two 192MHz OFDM channels for downloading and two 96MHz wide OFDM channels for uploading under DOCSIS 3.1 — potentially delivering up to 4-5Gbps downloading and 1.5Gbps uploading speeds.
Residential customers should not expect to see those kinds of speeds anytime soon. To date, no North American cable operator has taken full advantage of the speeds available under the current DOCSIS 3.0 standard. In Europe, however, some operators including Com Hem in Sweden are using DOCSIS 3 to deliver 500/50Mbps service ($138/month) to customers.
Be Sure to Read Part One: Astroturf Overload — Broadband for America = One Giant Industry Front Group for an important introduction to what this super-sized industry front group is all about. Members of Broadband for America Red: A company or group actively engaging in anti-consumer lobbying, opposes Net Neutrality, supports Internet Overcharging, belongs to […]
Astroturf: One of the underhanded tactics increasingly being used by telecom companies is “Astroturf lobbying” – creating front groups that try to mimic true grassroots, but that are all about corporate money, not citizen power. Astroturf lobbying is hardly a new approach. Senator Lloyd Bentsen is credited with coining the term in the 1980s to […]
Hong Kong remains bullish on broadband. Despite the economic downturn, City Telecom continues to invest millions in constructing one of Hong Kong’s largest fiber optic broadband networks, providing fiber to the home connections to residents. City Telecom’s HK Broadband service relies on an all-fiber optic network, and has been dubbed “the Verizon FiOS of Hong […]
BendBroadband, a small provider serving central Oregon, breathlessly announced the imminent launch of new higher speed broadband service for its customers after completing an upgrade to DOCSIS 3. Along with the launch announcement came a new logo of a sprinting dog the company attaches its new tagline to: “We’re the local dog. We better be […]
Stop the Cap! reader Rick has been educating me about some of the new-found aggression by Shaw Communications, one of western Canada’s largest telecommunications companies, in expanding its business reach across Canada. Woe to those who get in the way. Novus Entertainment is already familiar with this story. As Stop the Cap! reported previously, Shaw […]
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian equivalent of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, may be forced to consider American broadband policy before defining Net Neutrality and its role in Canadian broadband, according to an article published today in The Globe & Mail. [FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s] proposal – to codify and enforce some […]
In March 2000, two cable magnates sat down for the cable industry equivalent of My Dinner With Andre. Fine wine, beautiful table linens, an exquisite meal, and a Monopoly board with pieces swapped back and forth representing hundreds of thousands of Canadian consumers. Ted Rogers and Jim Shaw drew a line on the western Ontario […]
Just like FairPoint Communications, the Towering Inferno of phone companies haunting New England, Frontier Communications is making a whole lot of promises to state regulators and consumers, if they’ll only support the deal to transfer ownership of phone service from Verizon to them. This time, Frontier is issuing a self-serving press release touting their investment […]
I see it took all of five minutes for George Ou and his friends at Digital Society to be swayed by the tunnel vision myopia of last week’s latest effort to justify Internet Overcharging schemes. Until recently, I’ve always rationalized my distain for smaller usage caps by ignoring the fact that I’m being subsidized by […]
In 2007, we took our first major trip away from western New York in 20 years and spent two weeks an hour away from Calgary, Alberta. After two weeks in Kananaskis Country, Banff, Calgary, and other spots all over southern Alberta, we came away with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Good Alberta […]
A federal appeals court in Washington has struck down, for a second time, a rulemaking by the Federal Communications Commission to limit the size of the nation’s largest cable operators to 30% of the nation’s pay television marketplace, calling the rule “arbitrary and capricious.” The 30% rule, designed to keep no single company from controlling […]
Less than half of Americans surveyed by PC Magazine report they are very satisfied with the broadband speed delivered by their Internet service provider. PC Magazine released a comprehensive study this month on speed, provider satisfaction, and consumer opinions about the state of broadband in their community. The publisher sampled more than 17,000 participants, checking […]