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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 5:06pm MDT

Fixed-line broadband not threatened by mobile internet growth, says expert cable.co.uk/
We're trudging down the long road to universal 4Mbps broadband arstechnica.com
The reality of deploying 4G fiercewireless.com
FCC and Title II: All Options Said To Be Still On Table multichannel.com
Huge Push In Brazil To Legalize File Sharing techdirt.com
French ISPs Pushing Back Against Hadopi; Threaten To Ignore Requests techdirt.com
Novatel Wireless Inks Master Purchase Agreement with Comcast tmcnet.com
O2 claims broadband users waste millions on fast connections cable.co.uk
Apple TV: Internet TV is Still a Hobby pcmag.com
Edmonton International Airport offers free Wi-Fi ottawacitizen.com
Could Connectivity And Smartphones Open Your Car Up To Hackers? thecarconnection.com
AT&T speeds up Alltel market switches fiercewireless.com
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Labor Day Weekend Open Thread - Have something to say?

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 5:03pm MDT

Enjoy your holiday! Speak your peace in our comment section below.
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FCC To Vote On White Space Broadband - Will vote on rules governing unlicensed wireless devices in vacated TV spectrum

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 1:41pm MDT

As some tipsters had suggested earlier this week, the FCC will be addressing white space broadband at their upcoming September 23 meeting. According to a meeting agenda (pdf) posted to the FCC website, the FCC's September meeting will focus on the E-Rate program (specifically, letting universities and schools purchase dark fiber directly), some E911 issues, and White Space broadband. The FCC announcement says that by creating rules that will allow "unlicensed wireless devices to operate in unused parts of TV spectrum," they'll "create opportunities for investment and innovation in advanced Wi-Fi technologies and a variety of broadband services." Somewhere, Wally the interference demon and Dolly Parton (aka the National Association of Broadcasters) are really pissed off.
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Wi-Fi War Driving Drone Flying? - The WASP (Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform)

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 12:46pm MDT

If you remember the hysteria that surrounded war driving (people who drive around looking for unsecured hotspots), surely those terrified by the concept will enjoy this. According to Popular Science, a couple of hackers have modified a US Army gunnery target drone, turning it into a flying Wi-Fi sniffer. The WASP (Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform) is guided by an open source auto pilot system that uses Google Earth, and is capable of 1,000 square feet of "sniffing" at an altitude of about 400 feet. Once the drone finds the hotspot the pilot's looking for, it can be put into a holding pattern. The WASP's website has only the basic construction details if you're looking for a holiday weekend project.
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Ripe FCC Data: Our Broadband Is Still Pretty Slow - Only 44% of subscribers meet FCC's new 4/1 Mbps benchmark

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 10:25am MDT

As we've long noted, the FCC has made broadband policy decisions based on flawed and incomplete data for years. Part of the 1996 Telecom Act required that the agency release quarterly reports on the status of broadband deployment. Unfortunately for consumers, that data has always been essentially useless -- with the FCC declaring any zip code that has just one served broadband customer in it to be "wired" for service. This rose-colored glasses mentality is (very) slowly changing.

The FCC this week released their latest report (pdf) on the state of the broadband union, though they're still working with fouteen-month-old data.

According to the FCC, as of June 30 of 2009, there were 71 million residential landline broadband connections, and only 44% of them met the agency's goal for the standard definition of broadband: 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

This report is of particular note because it's astonishingly the first time the FCC has required that ISPs provide details on what speed tiers consumers subscribe to. The FCC's data shows that 5.4% of consumers subscribed to 200-700kbps service, 14.1% subscribe to 768kbps-1.5 Mbps service, and 13.7% subscribe to 1.5-3 Mbps. On the faster end of the scale, 31% subscribe to 6-10 Mbps service, and 17% subscribe to speeds between 10 and 25 Mbps.

Other data of note from the study includes the fact that as of June 2009 there were 4 million fiber to the home connections, 31 million DSL connections, and 41 million cable broadband connections. Wireless Internet subscriptions jumped 40% in the first six months of 2009 to 35 million subscribers, though only 45% of those connections met the government wireless stimulus baseline of 768Kbps downstream and 200Kbps upstream.
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Verizon, Skype Fix Wi-Fi Bug In 'Exclusive' Client - Android users can now turn Wi-Fi on while using Skype over 3G...

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 7:47am MDT

Verizon's "exclusive" agreement with Skype has created a Skype client that has a number of quirky restrictions -- including the fact that it eats your wireless minutes in some instances (conveniently keeping voice minutes relevant in the age of smartphone mobile VoIP). But Skype's specialized Verizon application also had a fairly nasty bug: Android users who used the Skype app over 3G couldn't turn on Wi-Fi -- at all.

In other words, they couldn't use Skype on 3G and browse the Internet via Wi-Fi. At the time, Verizon gave a roundabout explanation, admitting there was a bug, but also insisting that CALEA wiretap restrictions were partially to blame for the problem, as the Verizon-specific app runs over Verizon's traditional voice network. Whatever the cause, Verizon and Skype have apparently figured it out, and Skype for Verizon smartphones now works with Wi-Fi turned on.
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M2Z Free National Wireless Broadband Plan Finally Dies - CTIA pleased you won't be getting 'slow' free 768 kbps service

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 7:23am MDT

You might recall that former FCC boss Kevin Martin and a company by the name of M2Z Networks had been cooking up a plan for a smut-censored free national wireless service with a free wireless component. We had predicted the plan would never actually leave the ground and that wound up being true, the project derailed by both politics and the fact that the plan itself while creative -- simply wasn't very good. After returning from the dead and being bounced around the halls of the FCC in slightly modified form, the FCC has finally dropped the effort completely. M2Z sent Broadband Reports an e-mailed statement lamenting the decision:"The FCC s decision to delay the use of this valuable spectrum forgoes the consumer welfare and economic stimulus that would result from putting new spectrum into the marketplace," said John Muleta, CEO of M2Z Networks. A new nationwide broadband entrant that provided a free broadband service would have created tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs throughout the country while giving all Americans an equal opportunity to participate in the digital economy. Despite the spectrum crisis facing the U.S. as documented by the FCC s National Broadband Plan, the AWS-3 spectrum will continue to lie fallow providing no economic value to American consumers."Of course the plan always faced an uphill battle, and was heavily lobbied against by the wireless industry and their trade group the CTIA, who obviously didn't want the added competition for lower end customers. The CTIA sent us a statement saying they were "pleased" by the FCC's decision:"As we had argued throughout the proceeding, a designer allocation auction that would be tailored for one company was not in the public s interest, especially when that company was offering broadband service that is slow by even yesterday s standards."While 768 kbps is certainly slow, you probably would have a hard time beating the price, and M2Z did show a degree of vision in the plan's development. The plan itself was just always various degrees of bad, initially including a mandate that would require porn filters. Various versions were also based on seemingly unrealistic build out schedules, and the end result was never really going to offer particularly compelling speeds.
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OnLive Adding Wi-Fi To Game Streaming Device - Extends founding fathers deal for second time...

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 6:56am MDT

Back in June broadband streaming video game service OnLive launched, offering users what's essentially a dumb terminal community-driven gaming service for $14.95 a month -- plus the cost of games. Reviews for the service so far have been mixed, and not too surprisingly dependent on the quality and speed of your broadband connection. Currently, the service only operates with an Ethernet connection -- but OnLive's considering adding 802.11n to the unit as a beta product sometime before October. They're also extending their Founding Members program for the second time, offering users a free year of service and a $4.95 monthly rate for life (theirs, or yours) to users who signs up before January 1, 2011.
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Verizon Unveils Limited New Prepaid Options - But they're of course designed to convince you to go postpaid...

Posted: September 3rd, 2010, 6:45am MDT

Just yesterday we were discussing how analysts believe Verizon wasn't truly competing in the prepaid space because they were concerned with diminishing the perceived value of the Verizon brand, and having to engage in price competition with smaller carriers. With a flood of recent new prepaid offers, Verizon has announced a new unlimited data package for select smartphone users priced at $30 per month, and a $10 plan with a 25MB monthly cap and 20 cent per megabyte overage fee. As PC World notes this is a mixed bag on value (see chart), with users paying more for their phone, voice minutes and monthly total bill than postpaid, but with no ETF. By restricting qualified phone models and making users pay a monthly premium for voice and data, Verizon's trying to actually discourage users from going prepaid.
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 4:58pm MDT

Cisco to Service Providers: Get Moving on IPv6 lightreading.com
Have we seen the last of M2Z? fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Rumor mill: AT&T could move to acquire C&W Worldwide fiercetelecom.com
U.S. Broadband Starts To Speed Ahead forbes.com
Former UK Communications Minister: Government was wrong to axe broadband tax pcpro.co.uk
Verizon Wireless Adds $30/Month Prepaid Unlimited Data Plan foxbusiness.com
90% of UK consumers confused by broadband advertising theregister.co.uk
Skype updates Android app for Verizon users, lets you keep the WiFi on engadget.com
FCC Gets Earful On Further Inquiries On Net Neutrality multichannel.com
IBM Introduces World's Fastest Processor: 5.2GHz Enterprise Chip hothardware.com
Wireless charger standard released electronicsweekly.com
Sony Shows Prototypes of a Planned 3-D VAIO Laptop mobile-tech-today.com
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Sonic.Net Treats Customers Well, Earns Praise - Carrier gets oodles of link love for new network build, customer service

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 3:50pm MDT

Sure, incumbent lobbyists and dysfunctional regulators may have crushed the majority of major, independent, residential broadband ISPs in the United States, but California-based ISP Sonic.net not only survived the indie ISP-pocalypse, but they're busily building their own network. As we've covered for years, Sonic's offering ADSL2+ (bonded, when possible) capable of providing speeds up to 40 Mbps downstream. Sonic's suddenly getting a lot of love this week, with Ars Technica profiling the company and their "bandwidth-hog friendly" policies:The new network, called Fusion, allows Sonic.net to offer ADSL2+ service along with its own telephone service (this isn't VoIP, but actual POTS). The company currently sells one offering to residential users through Fusion: for $50 a month, they get uncapped ADSL that runs as fast as their line can handle (up to 20Mbps) along with free nationwide phone service. Users who want more bandwidth can order up a second telephone line and "bond" the two for speeds of up to 40Mbps by simply paying another $50.Analyst Dave Burstein also doled out some Sonic love in his widely-read broadband industry newsletter: Dane Jasper's Sonic.net is (finally) bringing the same "low price, maximum speed, high volume" model to California. Sonic.net is offering 100's of thousands of Californians "up to 20 megabits" + unlimited national phone service for $56, about the same price as Verizon is charging for the 10-15 megabit DSL service alone. Verizon charges about $75 for similar and AT&T probably $84, about 50% more. Unless you live far from the exchange, Sonic.net offers a better deal than any large U.S. carrier.The man behind the plan, CEO Dane Jasper, is a regular here in our forums often helping customers personally. As we've seen with other, customer-service-focused ISPs (like Canada's TekSavvy) that kind of personal touch is welcome in an industry dominated by giants, and is helping fuel Sonic's fairly steller reviews by our users. Meanwhile, Yankee Group analyst Benoit Felten this week conducted an very interesting review with Dane on their new network, and life as a modern independent U.S. ISP in a sector dominated by giants.

Jasper (who you can follow on Twitter) is a breath of fresh air as a broadband industry CEO that understands the repercussions of putting quarterly investor satisfaction ahead of your network, your company, and the satisfaction of your customers. The result is an ISP that speaks to the fact that staying small -- and focusing on what's important -- isn't necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that the drive to get increasingly bigger (and go public) is an all-pervasive presence, and as an ISP grows -- customer service is usually the first thing lost in translation.
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Google Sued Over Nexus One 3G Bugs - Suit alleges Google made misleading claims, failed to provide adequate support

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 2:10pm MDT

While Google's Nexus One phone was supposed to rattle the wireless status quo by offering users unsubsidized phones via a Google store, the promised revolution never arrived. That was due to a number of factors, including the fact that the phone was initially only available via T-Mobile. However, the Nexus One also came with fairly awful 3G connectivity bugs and annoying fees -- but not with phone support (Google fixed the latter two eventually). But those 3G bugs never quite got fixed, and Google's now being sued for it:On Tuesday, Google was slapped with a breach of contract class action lawsuit alleging that its Nexus One smartphone failed to maintain 3G connectivity and that the Mountain View company not only made misleading claims about the product's capabilities but also failed to adequately support customers in search of answers. . . The suit says Google basically failed to warn customers they would not receive faster 3G connectivity, even in areas where T-Mobile USA said such coverage was available.The suit (correctly) also alleges that those who called either T-Mobile or Google for support got passed around like a hot potato, with the problems never really getting fixed. Google recently announced that the Nexus One experiment was over and there wouldn't be a Nexus Two, though Google considered the whole affair a success. Of course it was in the sense that it provided traction for Google's Android mobile OS -- Google just didn't make a very good phone retailer or a phone that could hold a reliable 3G signal.
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Samsung Unveils 'Galaxy Tab' Tablet - Will have embedded phone capabilities, likely sold through Verizon

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 11:56am MDT

Samsung today unveiled their response to the Apple iPad: the Galaxy Tab. Unlike the iPad, the Android-powered device has two cameras, is a bit smaller (7.5 by 4.7 by .5 inches) and lighter (13.4 ounces), and actually operates as a phone. As such, the device will be offered through a phone partner, rumored to be Verizon. It's not clear yet if it's exclusive, given specs indicate it supports HSDPA and HSUPA (which could mean AT&T/T-Mobile, or it could simply mean European carrier support). Much like the recent netbook craze, you can expect this to be the opening salvo in a wave of subsidized tablets tied to carriers aimed at locking users into long-term contracts. Motorola and HTC are also rumored to be developing Android tablets for use on Verizon's network.
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AT&T Forgets They Began The Network Neutrality Debate - Calls people conspiracy theorists for remembering this fact...

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 10:08am MDT

Consumer group Free Press is apparently hitting some of AT&T's buttons this week, if this missive from AT&T lobbyist Hank Hultquist is any indication. Hultquist this week attacked the consumer group as a purveyor of "Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories" for a recent letter the group wrote to the FCC that points out how AT&T's long-standing dream of "paid prioritization" could be bad for consumers. In it, Free Press notes they don't oppose intelligent network management, just paid prioritization:In a network where congestion is a somewhat rare occurrence, paid-priority treatment holds little value for third parties. Allowing ISPs to abuse their terminating access monopoly power by charging for paid prioritization directly produces the incentive to create scarcity. Policies that reward and encourage a steady state of scarcity are of course not a recipe for closing the digital divide through buildout and network expansion.AT&T retorted by trying to conflate QOS network management (which, especially in more intelligent modern incarnations, few if any oppose) with paid prioritization, or an ISP charging content companies an extra surcharge if they wish to have their content reach AT&T customers more quickly. AT&T also accuses the group of being inconsistent conspiracy theorists -- simply for pointing out AT&T's long-documented ambitions on this front:One sometimes hears...that the introduction of paid prioritization would enable ISPs to turn best effort Internet transmission into a "dirt road" and force virtually the entire Internet ecosystem to "pay extra" for prioritized transmission. Why would ISPs require such an elaborate scheme to raise rates if they have the market power attributed to them by the CoENN? Yet now Free Press seems to suggest that ISPs would restrict prioritization to only a few "deep-pocketed Internet giants." While I enjoy the Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories as much as the next blogger, I do expect at least some superficial consistency.Why would an entrenched, incredibly powerful duopoly carrier impose an "elaborate scheme" to milk more money out of consumers and businesses that already pay for bandwidth? To make more money, of course. While the Free Press is certainly known for occasional hyperbole, suggesting that AT&T could abuse their market position using paid prioritization certainly isn't conspiracy material. It's not even controversial.

AT&T enjoys ignoring this fact: AT&T started the entire network neutrality debate in 2005 by proclaiming that they were going to charge content companies (who already pay for bandwidth) an extra, nonsensical toll to reach AT&T customers quickly. Thanks predominantly to lobbyist distortion, the debate has grown into a ridiculous, often-incoherent monster since then. However, it should be remembered that it was AT&T's vocalized desire to act as a bridge troll that began the network neutrality debate, and the original goal of network neutrality rules was to prevent AT&T from abusing its duopoly/monopoly power to extort passers by.

Update: The IETF also thinks AT&T's conclusions are misleading:The current chair of the IETF, Russ Housley, disagrees with AT&T's assessment. "AT&T's characterization is misleading," Housley said. "IETF prioritization technology is geared toward letting network users indicate how they want network providers to handle their traffic, and there is no implication in the IETF about payment based on any prioritization."
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Virgin Mobile's New $40 Prepaid Data Plan Has Huge Issues - Fluctuating speeds, page load issues...

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 8:02am MDT

While that new Virgin Mobile $40 unlimited prepaid data plan looks great on the surface, users in our forums note that they're having a lot of problems not only ordering the plan, but actually using the plan for web browsing. Not only did Virgin Mobile botch the initial launch, but users are reporting inconsistent and often pathetic speeds with the service (as in, sometimes struggling to best dial-up era speeds). One consistent complaint by users is that routing or caching server overload is resulting in incomplete page loads during browsing:There are definitive problems with Virgin Mobile's unlimited offering now. I can confirm the problems exist whether you use their usb modem or their mifi. I bought the usb modem, and I had trouble, so I exchanged it for a mifi, and I continue to have trouble. Pages will not load at times. When they do load, it is usually after having to refresh several times. Images do not load well, and Flash-heavy sites bog down. I have Millenicom, too, and I am not having any of these issues with Millenicom. Seriously, the Virgin service is so poor, that I am considering cancelling after only two days.A consistent complaint among Virgin Mobile users is that despite running on Sprint's network, Virgin Mobile service is immeasurably poorer than using Sprint's network directly. Many users in the same location find no performance issues when using Millenicom, another Sprint-powered no contract prepaid operator. We've dropped a line to Virgin Mobile to inquire about some of these problems. Impacted users (many of whom complain the company does not respond to e-mail support requests) may find some help by contacting Virgin Mobile's Twitter representative.
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Thursday Morning Lnks -

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 7:19am MDT

Google Sued Over Nexus One 3G Connectivity Issues ubergizmo.com
Should public Wi-Fi access be 'free'? zdnet.com
Global broadband cost disparity must be addressed itpro.co.uk
NJ Transit hoping to add Wi-Fi to commute northjersey.com
Apple's iOS beats Android 6:1 on the Web networkworld.com
Is Falsely Being Accused Of File Sharing With An Automated Pre-Settlement Letter A Form Of Harassment? techdirt.com
AT&T calls net neutrality advocate a conspiracy theorist theinquirer.net
Intel goes all in on wireless with Infineon deal, but will it pay off? fiercewireless.com
Rumor Mill: Verizon bringing prepaid to Blackberry. Android phones fiercewireless.com
(Not so) Crazy Microsoft Rumors: A new Zune HD? zdnet.com

Can't Get Verizon 15 Mbps DSL? You're Not Alone. - That 7,000 foot drop off is a real doozy

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 7:03am MDT

For many people in our forums, Verizon's new announcement of 15 Mbps ADSL2+ service doesn't mean a whole lot, given they're beyond the 7,000 foot range the service is restricted to. Many are already barely able to get 1.5 Mbps downstream; Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post tested the addresses of thirteen friends in the DC area, none of which are able to get the upgrade. Sector analyst Dave Burstein reiterates that those who can't get these faster speeds -- probably shouldn't hold their breath:Given that the majority of customers are beyond the 7,000 foot cutoffs for the 10-15 meg service, that means they have ADSL2+ to about a third of the network. Most of the rest are behind remote terminals or connected to DSLAMS 5-12 years old, neither of which are scheduled for volume upgrades. . .Experience from Britain, France and the UK has been that almost no one gets the 20 & 24 megabits possible with ADSL2+ and only a minority can even get 10 megabits down.So with no DSL upgrades planned, and FiOS deployment halted with the exception of several large cities, 1.5-7 Mbps DSL is as good as it's going to get for millions of Verizon customers. If you're in a FiOS neighborhood, or are able to get 10 Mbps downstream via Verizon ADSL2+, consider yourself lucky.
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Verizon's Stubborn Refusal To Compete In Prepaid Space - Competing on price would apparently be beneath their station...

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 6:45am MDT

Verizon has so far shrugged off the idea of offering unlimited, pre-paid broadband service, and their recently unveiled $80 for 5GB prepaid plan looks ridiculously uncompetitive next to new offers from Virgin Mobile, Clearwire's new Rover prepaid brand, Millenicom and soon, MetroPCS' looming prepaid LTE services. One analyst tells Light Reading that Verizon's reluctance to compete in the space is because once they begin competing on price -- they'll have to continue to do so:"When you lump Verizon and AT&T together, and you own 60 percent of the mobile market, and there are these little companies with 10 percent of your subscriber count who are coming in with lower pricing plans, you can't afford to drop your prices," Bluestein says. "It will be a world of hurt when you have that kind of share. Strategically it makes sense that they would do anything to avoid competing pricewise and valuewise.As such, Verizon will be throwing a limited number of prepaid-fueled Droid, Palm and Blackberry handsets at the problem. Verizon and AT&T have been able to avoid taking a hit from this prepaid space because of coverage -- and because they've generally had a better selection of handsets, though this is slowly changing. As handset availability broadens and Verizon and AT&T make their hard turn toward the postpaid low caps and high overage plan pricing model, a growing number of users may find prepaid appealing.

Update: Of course if you're Verizon, you might not need to bother competing in the space, given the kinds of problems users are having with Virgin Mobile's newest prepaid offer.
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FCC Delays Neutrality Rulemaking - Given they'd have no authority to enforce said rules...

Posted: September 2nd, 2010, 6:24am MDT

The FCC yesterday issued a public notice today (pdf) that claims to be looking to clarify several definitions in the network neutrality debate. Of course what the agency is really doing is delaying any real decision on new network neutrality rules -- given they lack the proper authority to enforce them after their court loss to Comcast. Instead, the FCC's working hard behind the scenes on their effort to partially reclassify ISPs as common carriers, after which (assuming they can navigate the gauntlet of deep-pocketed carrier lobbyists fighting the idea) they'll be able to craft traffic non-discrimination rules they can actually enforce. In other words, sometime around 2027.
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 5:19pm MDT

FCC Strikes Down M2Z Free Broadband Plan pcworld.com
U.S. weighing wireless Web traffic rules reuters.com
Portable Hotspots are the Future of Mobile Broadband pcworld.com
Comcast Takes 100-Meg Internet Down Jersey Shore; DOCSIS 3.0 Priced at $369.95/Month multichannel.com
Cable's set-top duopoly rose to the top by doing the things cable operators want fiercecable.com
EBay To Ban Google s Checkout Service From Its Sites investors.com
Dissecting wireless carriers' capex fiercewireless.com
Hardware hackers defeat quantum crypto theregister.co.uk
Rumor Mill: T-Mobile USA to eliminate $5 fee for adding a line fiercewireless.com
Microsoft releases FixIt for critical flaw in 100 apps theregister.co.uk
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T-Mobile Confirms 42 Mbps In 2011 - HSPA+ 'dual-carrier' technology should make it fairly inexpensive...

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 4:25pm MDT

Back in July, slides shown at a T-Mobile manager's meeting suggested the company wanted to push their 3G HSPA network toward downstream speeds of 42 Mbps. T-Mobile today confirmed those ambitions. T-Mobile's busily deploying HSPA+ upgrades capable of 21 Mbps downstream speeds (though users see half that), and 42 Mbps speeds will arrive sometime in 2011. While technically still just 3G, the company will be offering speeds as fast as fourth-gen services, including Verizon's upcoming LTE service (5-12 Mbps) and Clearwire (3-6 Mbps). Granted, many users are more interested in coverage and reliability above of a few extra megabits per second.
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Apple TV Mark II - Smaller. No Hard Drive. Still not particularly interesting.

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 2:30pm MDT

Apple today unveiled their new Apple TV device, which as rumors had suggested costs $99, tops out playback at 720p, and is focused on renting TV episodes for a dollar or new films for five dollars. There's no hard drive in this incarnation, with everything streamed via either 802.11n Wi-Fi or Ethernet connectivity. The unit also comes with Netflix streaming service embedded. As rumors also suggested, broadcasters are still afraid of cannibalizing their traditional TV cash cow, so Apple scrapped a more interesting subscription-based TV service for this fairly standard rental model, which only features content from ABC and Fox.
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MegaPath, Covad, Speakeasy Merger Closes - Megaspeakovad? Speak-o-path?

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 12:38pm MDT

Back in June Megapath, Covad and Speakeasy announced their plan to merge, a deal that would have been a revolution for residential broadband customers back in 2001. But in 2010, all three companies have turned a cold shoulder on the residential broadband market, and instead primarily focus on the small business market -- making the news less compelling for many users. Still, the newly fused company dropped us a line today to note they've completed their merger, creating a "next generation Managed Services Local Exchange Carrier (MSLEC)." Combined, the company (which will retain the Megapath brand) serves 85,000 business customers.
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AT&T U-Verse Pulls Plug On Hallmark Channel - Insists they're fighting for the little guy...

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 9:22am MDT

In the latest in what seems like an endless line of carriage fee disputes, AT&T overnight pulled the plug on the Hallmark Channel and the Hallmark Movie Channel after negotiations between AT&T and Hallmark broke down. AT&T has issued a press release insisting that U-Verse users "have been denied a fair deal." As with Time Warner Cable's noisy disputes with several broadcasters, AT&T's running a new PR campaign that tries to put the consumer right in the middle of the dispute as a negotiation tactic. However, as we've noted repeatedly, TV rates go up no matter which side "wins" in these retransmission disputes. The only real loser winds up being the consumer, who gets higher rates and service interruption, while being jerked around by frequently misleading ad campaigns.
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T-Mobile May Get Stake In Clearwire - Though some Sprint board members oppose making T-Mobile stronger

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 7:19am MDT

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Sprint is seriously considering letting T-Mobile have a stake in the Clearwire joint venture, a move that would infuse the effort with needed cash -- while giving T-Mobile a 4G upgrade path once beyond their aggressive HSPA+ upgrade ambitions. The deal isn't a given, with the Journal claiming that some Sprint board members are "adamantly opposed to the idea," largely due to competitive concerns:Some Sprint directors are fighting hard against a T-Mobile USA investment in Clearwire, one person familiar with the matter said. Giving T-Mobile a big Clearwire stake means "making a competitor stronger in an area of competitive advantage" for Sprint, this person said. Directors "are still struggling" with choosing their Clearwire investment strategy and haven't set a deadline for a decision, another person familiar with the matter said. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has yet to endorse a particular approach, people familiar with the matter said.Of course if Sprint doesn't partner with T-Mobile, T-Mobile may decide to partner with Harbinger Capital Partners, who is building a new wholesale LTE network of their own named "Lightsquared."
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T-Mobile HSPA+ Upgrades Keep On Rolling - Boston, Topeka, Miami, Richmond...

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 6:42am MDT

T-Mobile continues their HSPA+ upgrades, which offer T-Mobile users speeds around 10 Mbps downstream. The company announced this week that they're launching the service in nine new cities, including Boston; Erie, Pennsylvania; Fresno, California; Palm Springs, California; San Diego; Miami; Richmond, Virginia; Spokane, Washington; and Topeka, Kansas. With those launches, the T-Mobile HSPA+ upgrades will cover 55 major markets and approximately 100 million people. T-Mobile says they'll be offering the service to an additional 100 million people by the end of the year. You can see T-Mobile's full HSPA+ coverage map here.
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More Closed Door Neutrality Deals Struck - Without pesky public input into the process

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 6:32am MDT

We've already seen how the Goorizon deal is little more than an empty shell, solely designed to keep tougher consumer protections away from wireless networks, while leaving plenty of loopholes open for anti-competitive behavior over wired networks. Now a group of companies including Microsoft, the NCTA, Verizon, AT&T and Skype have "reached an agreement" on network neutrality behind closed doors, with no public, government, or objective expert input. As Mike Masnick at Techdirt notes, such a deal is a blend of hubris and pointlessness:I'm still at a loss as to how this actually matters. The companies can agree to whatever they want, and none of it makes a difference if Congress acts (or the courts say that the FCC is allowed to act). I guess the idea is to think that an "industry agreement" will stave off legislation, which perhaps might work for some time, but still reeks of collusion without consumer input or review.Again, the hope is that by proposing a set of weak, voluntary principles (this one also doesn't address wireless), weak regulators will buckle and avoid imposing tougher consumer protections -- something that frequently works in a country where a responsible regulatory presence is considered on par with puppy torture. While it's certainly not a given for an FCC that's often intimidated by such massive companies, it's not clear it's going to work in this instance, since the FCC truly wants neutrality rules that cover wireless -- and they're fairly set on their plan to partially reclassify ISPs under Title 2 of the Communications Act.
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Aircell Offers Broadband On 1,000 Planes - A Delta Air Lines DC-9 from Detroit...

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 6:19am MDT

The majority of this country's belated in-flight broadband service is now being provided by a company named Aircell. Aircell offers the service via the GoGo brand, which charges flyers $7.95 for smart phone access on flights of any length, $4.95 for flights 1.5 hours or less, $9.95 for flights between 1.5 and 3 hours, $12.95 on flights of more than three hours, or a $34.95 monthly auto-renewing unlimited access plan. Yesterday Aircell announced that they've now wired 1,000 planes with the EVDO-fueled service. Of course companies are still struggling with pricing models and finding users actually willing to pay for Wi-Fi, even at 30,000 feet.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: September 1st, 2010, 5:24am MDT

Why Offer A Lifetime Price Guarantee? cable360.net
Wireless service plans tailored on subscribers, not on devices fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Companies Reach 'Deal' On Net Neutrality... But What Does That Mean? techdirt.com
AT&T, Free Press Trade Punches Over Paid Priority multichannel.com
No speed limits for international broadband providers fiercecable.com
Comcast Launches 4G Version of High-Speed 2go Wireless Data Service in Boston Area prnewswire.com
Evolving Wireless Technology Drives Growth in the Test Services Market cellular-news.com
Scottish school forswears books, pencils, pens, and paper; will now educate its students solely via Apple iPad theregister.co.uk
Netgear delivers first PowerLine Wireless N Extender ubergizmo.com
iPhone 4.1 soon? Apple to fix antenna problems, blabs exec. computerworld.com

Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 6:01pm MDT

US Commerce Secretary Sides With RIAA: Warns ISPs To Become Entertainment Industry Cops techdirt.com
Hypocrisy in the Name of the "Public Interest" huffingtonpost.com
Industry Minds Appear To Be Meeting Over Net Neutrality multichannel.com
Telstra launches world s fastest mobile broadband service rcrwireless.com
Canada telcos told to add rural broadband, pay rebate yahoo.com
Minneapolis may get new wireless broadband player Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal
T-Mobile USA Promises 42-Mbit/s 3G in 2011 lightreading.com
Sprint expands Common Cents Mobile at Wal-Mart fiercewireless.com
Motorola Upgrades Software To Manage 'Multiscreen' Home multichannel.com
Game-addicted man scores rare win over software lawyers theregister.co.uk
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FCC Nearing Vote On White Space Broadband? - Years later and not a whole lot to show for it...

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 4:53pm MDT

"White space" broadband technology could use unlicensed and partially vacated spectrum created by the shift to digital television to create a new wireless broadband delivery system. You'll recall that in 2008 the National Association of Broadcasters was busy bickering with the companies pushing white space usage (Dell, Google, Microsoft), and the FCC began fielding comments on possible rules for the technology. According to the Wall Street Journal, the FCC may vote on final white space rules at their upcoming September meeting, though the agency has a mountain of unresolved issues already on their plate.
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Rover: Clearwire's New Prepaid Broadband Brand - Roll over. Fetch. Lure the 18-24 demographic. Good boy.

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 2:14pm MDT

As we predicted, Clearwire's surprise announcement this week was a new prepaid wireless broadband product offering under the umbrella of a new brand. That new branding is "Rover," and appears aimed at a younger target market that loves blue hues and sexual puns. As for the pricing? Rover offers users $5 daily, $20 weekly, and $50 monthly prepaid service without a contract, though you'll need to either buy the company's $100 4G USB modem "Stick," or their $150 mobile 4G hotspot "Puck":Rover's flagship device is the Rover Puck: an ergonomically designed portable Wi-Fi hotspot that lets you share broadband access, or "Puck", with up to eight devices at home, out on the town or nearly anywhere the feeling strikes you. . .The Rover Stick(TM) is a personal 4G USB modem that connects any notebook, laptop or desktop to the Rover 4G Service.You'll of course want to check out Clearwire's coverage map before you go "pucking" around in markets where Clearwire doesn't have coverage yet. Clearwire/Rover/CLEAR 4G service is currently available in 49 markets across the United States, with the largest markets like New York, Los Angeles, Boston and San Francisco slated for launch before the end of the year.

Note that this is an unlimited service with no caps, though the Rover Acceptable Use Policy notes, the company will throttle users that engage in "excessive utilization of network resources" -- though what is considered "excessive" is not defined.
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Lightsquared LTE Deployment Schedule Leaked - 20 cities by 2012, including NYC, LA and San Fran

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 12:11pm MDT

As we mentioned in March, Harbinger Capital Partners owns a satellite subsidiary by the name of SkyTerra -- who just so happens to have the spectrum necessary to build a national LTE network. The network, now officially named "Lightsquared," won't begin construction until December. Bloomberg has unearthed some inside information on the project's planned launch:The closely held venture, backed by Falcone s Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, will extend its network to Dallas, Chicago and Minneapolis in 2011, according to documents sent to potential partners. The company s network may grow to 20 cities in 2012, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.Back in July it was revealed that Nokia had won the $7 billion contract to build the LTE network. Harbinger wants to go wholesale, proposing conditions to the FCC that would prevent AT&T or Verizon from using the new company's spectrum without FCC approval, or consuming more than 25% of the new network's total traffic. AT&T, of course, isn't a fan of that idea.
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Canada Embraces Open Access - Independent ISPs get access to faster incumbent networks

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 10:02am MDT

Canadian regulatory authority the CRTC hasn't exactly been a friend to Canada's smaller, independent ISPs over the last few years. As such, it's interesting to see users in our Canadian forums direct our attention to the fact that the CRTC has ruled in favor of small operators, and is forcing larger carriers to offer wholesale access to services at the same speeds they themselves offer. As the CBC notes, the ruling reinforces a 2008 ruling Canada's incumbents had been lobbying to derail. Popular independent Candian ISP TekSavvy issued this statement (pdf):"This decision ensures that competitors of the incumbent telephone and cable companies obtain access to the same speeds that the telephone and cable companies provide to their own retail customers. It also removes some important shortcomings in the high-speed wholesale services known as Third Party Internet Access ("TPIA") required by competitors.Like here in the States, smaller independent ISPs weren't being allowed access to faster fiber-based networks, meaning they had to offer slower service via DSL. Now, carriers are being told to share their networks at a 10% markup over cost. Here in the States incumbent carriers have lobbied and threatened regulators away from the concept, but studies have shown that countries with "open access" regulatory policies do ultimately see more competition -- and as a result, lower prices. Of course the CRTC still has to enforce this policy.
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Verizon 15 Mbps Could Be 'Last Copper Upgrade' - Notes FTTH upgrade still makes more financial sense than VDSL

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 7:29am MDT

Yesterday we reported Verizon is now offering 15 Mbps ADS2+ service to about 4 million of their DSL customers. The new 15/1 Mbps tier costs $50 for users who bundle Verizon voice service, or $60 standalone. Light Reading's Carol Wilson offers additional technical detail, including the fact the faster speeds are being offered at customer central offices already equipped with Alcatel-Lucent or Adtran ATM Subscriber Access Multiplexers that can support ADSL 2+. Verizon's John Schommer puts it rather bluntly:"If we knew we had the proper type of equipment to support higher speeds, we turned it up," Schommer says. "Through the end of the year, we are investing a little bit in some preferred locations. But compared to the investment in FiOS, this is a very small amount of money being spent on DSL." This could be the last copper upgrade, unless something new comes along, he adds. "You never say never," Schommer says. "Every time before, when we thought we were at the end of the road, we found something else."It's not entirely clear where Verizon plans to go from here. The company says they won't be upgrading these users to VDSL, because the costs of building out fiber nodes closer to the customer "aren't favorable versus a complete fiber build." That of course is in contrast to the position held by AT&T, who recently insisted they still believe their decision to nurse copper and use more bandwidth-constrained VDSL was the more prudent option.

Meanwhile, Verizon's stated "complete fiber build" has been put on hold with the exception of large cities locked into franchise agreements (NYC, Pittsburgh, DC) with no statement from Verizon on when they'll be restarted.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 6:55am MDT

Canada allows 10% mark-up on wholesale fibre services telecompaper.com
Why the FCC can't do its job on broadband access washingtonpost.com
Gogo Inflight Internet Reaches 1,000 Aircraft; Offering Wi-Fi to Millions of Travelers Every Week prnewswire.com
India, after giving BlackBerry a reprieve, eyeballs Google, Skype theregister.co.uk
Death, taxes, power, water ... and broadband? Poll says yes fiercecable.com
BT Passes 15 Million Broadband Milestone cbmagazine.co.uk
New Zealand's commerce commission wants to deregulate wholesale market fiercetelecom.com
Samsung ships 1 million Galaxy S smartphones in US totaltele.com
Motorola Droid X will soon receive upgrade to Android 2.2, but if you've installed a leaked upgrade you're not eligible for official Android upgrades infosyncworld.com
MS hits refresh on Windows 7 SP1 for select few theregister.co.uk
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Hulu Well Aware Hulu Plus Is Underwhelming - Insists ads are necessary to lower subscription cost...

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 6:41am MDT

The other day we directed your attention to a new study that found that Hulu Plus really wasn't worth the $10 a month (yet), given that 88% of the content available on the subscription service was already available for free. Responding to a complaining Hulu Plus user, Hulu seems well aware that the Hulu Plus value proposition is underwhelming, and insists they're working on it. Hulu explains that licensing restrictions are part of the problem, and justifies the inclusion of ads in a subscription service in order to "reduce the monthly subscription price of the service." Of course if most of Hulu Plus content is already available for free, there shouldn't be much additional incurred cost there to reduce.

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Cisco Rumored To Be Buying Skype - Before Skype's planned $100 million IPO

Posted: August 31st, 2010, 6:40am MDT

After somewhat untangling itself from eBay's grasp last fall, Skype is now poised to go public, with an estimated $100 million IPO now in the works (their registration statement with the SEC is here). However, Techcrunch is floating a rumor that Cisco may try to buy Skype before the company's IPO can take place, with an initial valuation of around $5 billion or so. Investors Place dissects the financials of a possible Skype acquisition by Cisco, thinks $5 billion is too high. and suggests competitors may want to get a move on under pressure from Skype/Google (Yahoo for instance buying VocalTech, and AT&T/Verizon cooking up a PC phone service of their own).
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 5:03pm MDT

India Delays BlackBerry Ban for 60 Days pcmag.com
WiMAX evangelist Intel to embrace LTE fiercebroadbandwireless.com
FTC drops LimeWire ID theft investigation reuters.com
Surprise! Community Wi-Fi Models Inexpensive Alternative To Cable Broadband informationweek.com
MetroPCS Launching LTE In Dallas, Las Vegas informationweek.com
Another (Small) ISP Fighting US Copyright Group Subpoenas; Why Aren't More ISPs Protecting Your Privacy? techdirt.com
Technology Aside, Most People Still Decline to Be Located nytimes.com
Will satellite broadband crash as part of NBN? businessspectator.com.au
Frontier Announces Ohio Broadband Commitment And Capital Investment Plan thestreet.com
Apple QuickTime backdoor creates code-execution peril theregister.co.uk
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Verizon Bumps Max DSL Speeds To 15 Mbps - 10-15 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up for $60 standalone, $50 voice bundled

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 3:29pm MDT

After coming off of their worst quarter for DSL losses ever, Verizon last week started offering a new bundle targeting users that are still on dial-up. This week the company announced a significantly more compelling shift for their DSL business: they're now offering users within range a new speed tier that clocks in between 10 and 15 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Verizon tells Broadband Reports this is ADSL2+, and the service requires that users be at most 7,000 feet from the central office.

"The distance to get these speeds maxes out at about 7,000 feet," Verizon's Kevin Laverty tells us. According to Laverty, the new tier is available to about 4 million Verizon DSL subscribers. "We've invested tens of millions to upgrade central offices where ADSL 2 is currently available and expect to add more in the months ahead," he says. "Nationwide locations run the gamut from Barstow, CA in California's Mojave Desert to Lynchburg, VA."

Of course Verizon's "rewarding" those who bundle (or punishing those who don't, depending on your point of view), charging $50 a month for users that have Verizon phone service, or $60 for those without. The new tier isn't available yet on Verizon's website, but you'll notice that in response to recent FCC criticisms, Verizon has eliminated the "up to" marketing term, and instead is giving a general range of downstream speeds you can expect.

Verizon hopes that these faster speeds will keep customers in legacy DSL markets from defecting to faster cable speeds and VoIP triple play bundles. Of course this 10-15 Mbps upgrade comes too late for the millions of DSL customers in fourteen states that Verizon just offloaded to Frontier Communications.
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U.S. Consumers Continue To Hate Offshore Support - And it continues to erode customer satisfaction rankings

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT

While offshore support is less expensive, that cost savings continues to come at a significiant hit for customer satisfaction ratings, according to a new study by the CFI Group (pdf). According to CFI, call support satisfaction is only 58 out of 100 when the call is handled by an offshore agent, compared to 79 for U.S.-based agents. The study also found that U.S. support reps are 34% more likely to resolve the problem on the first call than those handled offshore. "If a customer hangs up mad, it isn't the agent they are going to blame, it s the company that put them in that position in order to save a buck by sending their call overseas," warns the study author.
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Verizon Cooking Up 3G Femtocell - Hopefully it won't be as awful as the last one

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 11:07am MDT

We recently noted that Sprint is now giving subscribers new 3G-capable Airave femotocell devices, which allow users with poor cell coverage indoors to route calls over their home broadband connection. We've confirmed with Sprint that they are giving these units away to customers who call in to complain about coverage. Indications are that Verizon is busy working on their own upgraded femtocell unit with EVDO functionality. Verizon's first $250 femtocell was a fairly unimpressive offering, which ate user voice minutes (despite using the user's broadband connection) and suffered from the inability to prohibit other nearby wireless users from consumer the user's bandwidth. Sprint seems to understand that these devices need to offer the consumer value, while Verizon (and AT&T) appear to still be struggling with the concept.
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Clearwire Will Be Unveiling Prepaid Pricing Today - New prepaid brand, new mobile hotspot...

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 7:48am MDT

Last week Clearwire dropped a few cryptic hints that the company today would be announcing plans to "serve a new customer segment." As we noted at the time, it seemed likely that the company's secret was that they would be announcing new prepaid pricing options -- and that appears to be precisely the plan according to SEC filings. The announcement will come with a new brand for the prepaid service, all of which will be tied to a new small Mobile-WiMax to Wi-Fi portable router. You can of course keep your eye on Clearwire's website later today for specific pricing and additional details.
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DOJ Investigating Internet Video Antitrust Issues - Above and beyond Comcast/NBC impact on Hulu

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 7:30am MDT

While there's a lot of pretense from a few reporters and consumer advocates to the contrary, Comcast and NBC Universal's $30 billion deal to merge will see approval with minimal meaningful conditions. According to the Wall Street Journal however, a nine-month investigation into the deal by the DOJ's antitrust division has been exploring whether Comcast and other cable companies have been trying to lock up distribution rights to video licensing in order to keep Internet video competition at bay:During its eight-month review of the roughly $13.75 billion deal, the agency's antitrust division has become interested in finding out whether Comcast and other cable and satellite giants are trying to lock up distribution rights to television programming on the Internet, which would block potential competition, according to people familiar with the matter. . . .The people familiar with the matter have suggested that the agency will continue to investigate whether cable operators are acting to thwart emerging competition from the Web. If so, they could file a suit under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which targets anticompetitive behavior by dominant companies.Granted, it's very likely that nothing whatsoever comes from this inquiry. For its part, Comcast has insisted that their ownership of Hulu isn't anything to worry about because the company would only have a minority, non-controlling interest in Hulu.
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Google Prepping Pay-Per-View Films - $5 per film, by the end of the year...

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 7:00am MDT

According to a report in the Financial Times (reg. required, visit CNET as an alternative), Google is working on a pay per view system that would allow users to stream films for about five dollars each. According to the Times, Google is currently in negotiations with Hollywood studios, and the service could go live before the end of the year. The service of course would compete with a similar service being developed by Apple. and would likely find some kind of integration with Google's looming Google TV platform, which is supposed to embed Google search functionality in a myriad of TVs and video devices made by companies like Sony and Logitech.
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Sorry Debunkers, Cord Cutters Are Very Real - They're just not being driven by Internet video yet...

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 6:42am MDT

The New York Times recently issued yet another story that aims to downplay the slow but steady rise of Internet video and "debunk" cord cutting, noting that 88% of those surveyed still pay for TV service. But while Internet video is certainly on a slow trajectory, it's silly to downplay the disruptive technology when nobody's really offered the perfect, inexpensive, and Luddite-proof broadband-driven living room solution yet. NewTeeVee notes that there is shift going on, illustrated by last quarter's cable subscriber losses:cable companies lost 711,000 subscribers, which represents the biggest quarterly loss in cable TV's history. Six out of eight cable TV operators also reported their worst subscriber losses ever last quarter. Telcos and satellite TV providers were able to pick up some of those customers, posting combined gains of 495,000 subscribers. That still leaves 216,000 subscribers who cut the cord entirely.Cord cutting is very real, though right now it's being driven primarily by the economy, not broadband video. What happens when Apple, Google, or an unknown upstart finally creates a broadband TV service that provides an inexpensive, simple, a la carte alternative to those annoying bi-annual cable rate hikes? Several studies have shown there's a very significant number of TV watchers who are prepared to make the leap.

TV operators seem prepared to do everything possible to prevent that -- except reduce prices. Lodged in a dance of death between investors who want continual returns, and broadcasters who demand ever-increasing programming fees, the cable TV industry will likely continue to raise prices even as these disruptive upstarts start to seriously nibble at subscriber totals over the next decade.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: August 30th, 2010, 5:17am MDT

Cisco May Be Making A Run For Skype Before IPO techcrunch.com
Senate To Sneak Through Internet Kill Switch Bill prisonplanet.com
Google in talks with major studios to rent movies via YouTube arstechnica.com
Is The US Caving On ACTA? Or Is It Just A Trick? techdirt.com
Australia Once Again Decides You Have No Freedom To Tinker With Your Gaming Console techdirt.com
Without fast broadband, towns and schools find selves withering chron.com
Intel s $1.4 billion Infineon mobile chips purchase: 2G, 3G, LTE & WiMAX gomonews.com
DoJ double eyes Google flight data play theregister.co.uk
Mysterious Verizon-bound HTC handset appears mysteriously on the internet engadget.com
Porn and pirates hide Android's money maker theregister.co.uk
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 5:07pm MDT

Is Harbinger's $3B bet on LightSquared scaring investors? fiercewireless.com
Virginia Repairs SAN Failure That Caused Statewide Outage informationweek.com
USDA Responds to Bloomberg Story "Broadband Trumps Farmer Payments in Rural Aid" usda.gov
ISPs - beware of paranoid bloggers theregister.co.uk
RCN officially under new management fiercecable.com
Gmail Phone Calls Are All About Facebook, Not Skype wired.com
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen sues Apple, Google, Facebook, AOL, eBay, Netflix, Yahoo!, YouTube over patents engadget.com
Verizon Rolls Out Android 2.2 to Droid Incredible yahoo.com
Kaspersky Lab spots new breed of IM worm v3.co.uk
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Weekend Open Thread - Speak your mind...

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 4:28pm MDT

The weekend is here. Drop your thoughts in our comment section below.
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Dish Network Launches Their Broadband Video Alternative - 150,000 clips, movies and shows via their version of 'TV Everywhere'

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 1:50pm MDT

Like their cable and telcoTV competitors, Dish Network is hoping that by offering a limited selection of paywalled broadband video content to paying customers, they can prevent customers from cutting the cord and going with Internet video alternatives. Dish this week launched their version of "TV Everywhere", which the company says will include 150,000 video clips, full-length episodes and movies made available via broadband through DishOnline.com. Currently there's no ads, but the company tells Multichannel News that "someday we'll look into that."
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88% Of Hulu Plus Content Already Available For Free - $10 doesn't really net you all that much. Yet.

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 11:55am MDT

Back in June Hulu announced Hulu Plus, a $10 a month broadband video subscription service that is supposed to allow users to access entire back catalogs of TV shows above and beyond what's available on free Hulu -- albeit still with commercials. According to an analysis of the offering by One Touch Intelligence however, about 88% of the content available through Hulu Plus is already available via vanilla Hulu for free. In other words, of the 28,418 full-length TV episodes available via Hulu, just 3,564 of them are hidden behind a paywall. Obviously Hulu Plus is young, many people are still getting invites, and in game console land it's a Sony PS3 exclusive for the rest of this year, but the firm notes that for now, Hulu's not living up to their "stated value proposition."
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Google Sees A Million Calls On First Day Of GMail/VoIP - Multicolored cannon aimed squarely at Skype

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 7:51am MDT

Despite a few hiccups, Google's launch of VoIP integration for Gmail has gone rather smoothly, with the company stating they placed over one million phone calls (about one out of every 3,000 phone calls made that day) the first day the service was live. According to Google, more than 200 million people worldwide are active Gmail users, and all of the company's users in the U.S. now have access to this new functionality. Google is allowing users to make free calls to either the U.S. or Canada at least until the end of the year, hoping to ramp up adoption quickly as they take aim at Skype and Skype's 560 million registered (124 million active) users.

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Blockbuster Bankruptcy In September - Failure to adapt to broadband age a large reason...

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 7:33am MDT

It has been interesting watching Blockbuster video adapt to the broadband age, with the company seemingly not trying very hard -- either out of fear of cannibalizing their brick and mortar revenue, or just a general fear of losing control. Early efforts to mirror Netflix's success at broadband video delivery have seemed relatively lackluster, and the company's CEO, when announcing such broadband initiatives, seems to almost expect them to fail. Rumors of an impending bankruptcy have been around for a while, but a Blockbuster filing is now expected in September.
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Newsflash: Cable/Telcos Write Telecom Law - But it's a rare politician that's proud of that fact...

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 7:16am MDT

Three times now, AT&T and Time Warner Cable have tried and failed to pass laws aimed at stopping towns in North Carolina from building fiber networks. Such networks offer symmetrical fiber at higher speeds and lower prices than either company's willing to offer. The politicians that pass these carrier-written laws (without even understanding them) pretend the bills were their idea, though Ars Technica notes NC Senator David Hoyle seems rather proud of his well-heeled compliance:In the last legislative session Sen. Hoyle tried to put a moratorium on any more local governments expanding into municipal broadband. When the I-Team asked him if the cable industry drew up the bill, Senator Hoyle responded, "Yes, along with my help." When asked about criticism that he was "carrying water" for the cable companies, Hoyle replied, "I've carried more water than Gunga Din for the business community -- the people who pay the taxes."Hoyle apparently couldn't get his Time Warner Cable's law passed directly, so he then tried to bury it within another bill designed to help fund broadband expansion in the State. Using figures from Connected Nation (which is a lobbying and policy extension of major carriers designed specifically to downplay coverage and competitive issues), Hoyle recently proclaimed that broadband availability issues in the state were "bullshit." Luckily for locals in Wilson, North Carolina, Hoyle failed to "protect" consumers from symmetrical fiber speeds of up to 100 Mbps.
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MetroPCS LTE To Launch Next Month - Still no word on pricing, speed...

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 6:57am MDT

Like Boost Mobile and Cricket, Prepaid cell phone carrier MetroPCS has seen some early success in the mobile market by offering discount unlimited prepaid wireless plans with no contracts, and by, refreshingly, making the advertised price the real price. The company enjoys injecting disruptive pricing and no contract service into the wireless voice market, and has stated they hope to do the same thing for LTE wireless broadband service soon. Samsung, who is providing much of the hardware to MetroPCS, says the company's LTE offering will go live next month -- though there's still no word on pricing or speeds.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: August 27th, 2010, 5:21am MDT

First commercial LTE network operator TeliaSonera plans LTE in 218 Swedish communities in 2011 fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Ereaders, tablets are early winners in embedded device category fiercewireless.com
MetroPCS to launch LTE service next month totaltele.com
Fiberlight takes network into Charlottesville, Va. fiercetelecom.com
Intel To Purchase Infineon's Wireless Business For $2B This Week? ubergizmo.com
India hopes to resolve BlackBerry access issue in next few days totaltele.com
Will internet kill the video store? Not just yet abc.net.au
Ford plant to fit SUVs with Wi-Fi suntimes.com
iPhone hackers look to iOS 4.1; Version 4.0.2 stumps them reghardware.com
Xbox Live audio upgrade promises end to crackly voice slashgear.com

Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 5:43pm MDT

A new push for a nationwide cell phone directory fiercewireless.com
Google: 1 million Gmail calls during first day cnet.com
xG searching for a market for its cognitive radio network that really works fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Verizon Wireless looks to roll out LTE in Alaska fiercewireless.com
UK broadband use ahead of the US, says expert cable.co.uk
Apple, Google TV: Does Pay as You Go Make Dollars and Sense? zdnet.com
Prices Down, Coverage Up, But is Wireless Competitive? yahoo.com
Cloud Computing: Google Versus Microsoft pcmag.com
Faster broadband wouldn't boost web-TV numbers digitalspy.com
Study: Home Wi-Fi Important for School Success yahoo.com
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GAO: Wireless Consolidation Good, Bad, Wait, We're Not Sure - GAO lacks the data to study competition, tries anyway

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 4:45pm MDT

A new report (pdf) on the U.S. wireless market from the Government Accountability Office includes data collected on the sector since 1990. The GAO found that network expansion continued at a fairly solid pace, with prices dropping by 50% since wireless service appeared nearly two decades ago (not surprising considering the high costs of early gear). On the other hand, the report warns that consolidation has resulted in just four companies controlling 90% of the market. Though the GAO concedes this may -- or may not be -- entirely a bad thing:...by enabling large national carriers to exploit economies of scale, consolidation can create greater productivity and economic efficiency. This industry consolidation may have especially improved the efficiency of the large national carriers, allowing them to offer more wireless services for similar or lower prices. . .A few stakeholders with whom we spoke noted that national wireless networks, which some carriers have developed through mergers and acquisitions...can provide smoother, more uninterrupted service.On the one hand, some very large carriers (specifically Verizon and AT&T) are using their power (especially on the special access side) to help drive competitors out of business. On the other hand, these giant carriers (aka "a few stakeholders" whispering in the GAO's ear) create "greater economic efficiency," though exactly how is only loosely defined. The report seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test, given people seem to see what they want to see. The wireless industry of course thinks this highlights the intense competitive perfection of the industry:"In finding that wireless consumers are seeing 'lower prices and better coverage,' today s GAO report confirms what we ve been saying for a long time - that the U.S. wireless industry is extremely competitive and continues to respond to increasing consumer demand by delivering real benefits for American consumers.Consumer group Public Knowledge of course sees things drastically differently:"The report shows the large companies continue to pile up advantages in gaining more spectrum, in exclusive deals for handsets and in locking in consumers with high termination fees. At the same time, there is the equally disturbing trend that the investments larger carriers are making in their networks are a smaller proportion of their service revenue than the expenses of smaller carriers. High special access rates imposed by the wireline affiliates of the larger carriers also hamper competition.Of course if you read the GAO report, they go on to note that they lack the full volume of data necessary to fully analyze the competitive impact of this consolidation, so they urge the FCC to ramp up their wireless industry data collection. If you've watched the ridiculously-overdue effort to map available broadband here in the U.S., you'll notice this isn't the first time the GAO has concluded that government really doesn't have enough real-world data to make policy conclusions. Not that this has ever really stopped them.
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Carriers Intent On Sucking All Value Out Of Femtocells - AT&T not sure you deserve that free, congestion-easing Microcell, sorry.

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 2:30pm MDT

We've repeatedly noted that femtocells (which allow you to route mobile calls over your broadband connection) would probably take off if carriers stopped sucking all the value out of them. Carriers like Verizon seem intent on making users over pay for the hardware on top of monthly fees, in addition to having usage eat away at user minutes. Consumers correctly observe that this is ridiculous, since they're paying extra money to reduce strain on local carrier towers, while using their own bandwidth to fuel the devices.

Sprint for one kind of gets it, and is giving away their new EVDO-capable Airave femtocells to anybody who calls in to complain about shoddy indoor cell coverage. In contrast, AT&T seems confused with the recent launch of their Microcell femtocell device, giving away the unit to some users but not others -- with no discernible way to determine if you're worthy of their free femto blessings. Worse perhaps, the Consumerist notes that some users are being promised a free Microcell, only to have AT&T turn around and change their mind:I asked about a Microcell, but informed him that I shouldn't have to pay to make up for AT&T's poor coverage in my area. Larry agreed that the MicroCell would be a great idea for getting me coverage in my home and said he would have to get approval from a superior, but that it shouldn't be a problem at all. This conversation occurred end of business day on a Friday, and Larry informed me he would follow up on Monday confirming that my MicroCell would be coming at no charge.The user got a call back a few days later to be told that even though there were Microcells in stock, he couldn't get a free one because managers wouldn't approve it. He did get a $50 credit, but that obviously didn't help his coverage problem. Of course given some of the activation and glitches users at the AT&T forums continue to experience, it's not clear if getting one (for free or paid) would cure his coverage problems anyway.

At the very least, femtos should be used as a customer retention and added value proposition. There's a world of innovation and value that's possible here too, were companies like AT&T interested. What about a Fon-esque mesh network of femtocell-loaded home gateways tied to AT&T's 20,000 strong hotspot network (AT&T would have to upgrade to FTTH, of course)? Instead, they're being used to milk consumers in already-troubled coverage areas even further, which is par for the mega-carrier executive mindset, and of course doesn't win AT&T any new consumer friends.

Update: Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal today also explores how AT&T's Microcell works best in total dead zones, but gets flummoxed if you're in a "sorta kinda" coverage area.
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Verizon, Time Warner Bicker Over NYC HD Channel Counts - TWC has 150 to Verizon's 133...

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 12:33pm MDT

Time Warner Cable hasn't exactly set land speed records with their deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 technology, only deploying faster services "tactically," in markets where the company competes with Verizon FiOS. In New York City, where Time Warner Cable competes with FiOS, they have upgraded -- and are now bragging that they have 150 HD channels to Verizon's 133. Verizon was quick to fire back, insisting that Time Warner Cable only has more channels due to Cablevision's vise-like grip on local sports programming:"Time Warner Cable can make a claim of having a few more HD channels than Verizon FiOS, but our service still blows them out of the water with more VOD, more HD VOD, more interactive features, better picture quality, faster Internet speeds, the only place to get Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on TV - the list goes on." In addition, the cable operator's claim of having all nine New York sports teams in HD "is only possible because of an FCC loophole used by Cablevision Systems through which they share the HD feeds for some of these channels with their cable brethren, but withhold the channels from us."Of course new FCC rules will eventually force cable operators to stop hoarding access to local sports programming, though regulatory progress on this front seems typically glacial. Meanwhile, since only about a third or less of Time Warner Cable markets see FiOS competition, most Time Warner Cable markets aren't seeing this kind of fighting for consumer affection whatsoever.
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Verizon: Please, Only We Can Lie About Network Neutrality - Our made-up facts are the undeniable truth.

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 9:43am MDT

We've explored how the Goorizon alliance is the regulatory equivalent of a bobble-head doll: cute and stuffed largely with air, but primarily designed to pre-empt tougher consumer protections. Worse perhaps, Google and Verizon's defense of their proposal has been one distortion after another, the companies insisting the weak-kneed framework is solely about empowering the consumer, and has nothing to do with keeping wireless consumer protections away from their tablet/smartphone Android partnership.

With both Verizon and Google being immensely and documentably full of crap on this issue (and in Google's case they're now in full disagreement with Google circa 2007), it's fairly cute to see a Verizon lobbyist (whose job we can all agree is, in part, to lie whenever necessary) "setting the record straight." In a new Verizon blog post, Verizon's David Fish sets forth a new set of "facts" on the Goorizon proposal in response to "factually challenged" critics like consumer group Free Press. The only problem? Not a single one of them is true. One by one:

Here's a real fact: Verizon wants what any massive, government-pampered duopolist wants: more strings-free taxpayer money, a lazy regulatory body with no consumer protection authority whatsoever, government protection from competition, and the ability to engage in any business practices they like, no matter how unethical or anti-competitive.

Fact: Our proposal enforces a tough non-discrimination requirement and promotes and protects Internet access.No, it doesn't. The proposal is about as "tough" as year-old cardboard in a highway rainstorm, excluding wireless from consumer protections entirely, while the landline non-discrimination requirements are packed with absurd loopholes.Fact: It includes a presumption against all prioritization on Internet connections.No, it doesn't. It completely frees wireless from consumer protections, while leaving gaping loopholes for a myriad of managed wireline services. If you actually read the proposal (pdf), it claims prioritization might be considered unacceptable discrimination, then proceeds to vaguely insist this "presumption could be rebutted." The entire framework is intentionally ambiguous.Fact: The non-discrimination provision and presumption against any prioritization are stronger than what the FCC could obtain through Title 2 reclassification.

Fact: The non-discrimination provision for Internet connections is in-line with the President s priority on net neutrality, and it establishes specific FCC authority called for by the Free Press.These two can be tackled together, and neither is true. Partial Title II reclassification would give the FCC a degree of authority over broadband ISPs, while the Goorizon proposal is designed to ensure the FCC has "no rule making authority" and is required to "give appropriate deference" to telecom industry-backed self-regulatory organizations. And while the assumption is the FTC would step in to fill the void, the FTC is a slumbering agency that, like the FCC, can't even be bothered to address blatant, predatory false advertising in this sector.Fact: The FCC is given specific authority for the first time to oversee these provisions.Again, by "specific authority," Fish actually means "little to no authority whatsoever," with offenses judged and punished by the industry itself. Apparently, Fish hopes that by falsely repeating the "fact" that the FCC is gaining authority here, nobody will notice that said authority is simply for show.Fact: Our proposal protects Internet users by ensuring that potential services beyond robust Internet access (e.g. medical monitoring, smart grid and other ideas in the National Broadband Plan) are differentiated from the Internet and subject to GAO and FCC monitoring and reports to Congress.Verizoogle's exemption for managed services is a neutrality loophole big enough to drive a truck through, given that in an app-mad, tablet and smartphone driven world, everything can become a managed service. About the only thing the proposal restricts are things Verizon had no intention of doing anyway, like the outright blockade of a competing voice service, or packet forgery. Even those might be allowed as long as a carrier lawyer vaguely shows the ISP was acting to protect the network from bogeymen (congestion, child pornographers, P2P, phantoms, goblins, etc.).Fact: Openness is fast becoming the standard in the wireless industry, as the FCC envisioned. Verizon purchased spectrum in the FCC s 700 megahertz auction for national deployment of our 4G network, knowing it came with open access, non-discrimination and no-blocking requirements. Others are following suit.As we've repeatedly noted, the "open access" conditions attached to the 700MHz auction were also packed with loopholes, allowing carriers to do essentially whatever they'd like as long as it's done to protect the integrity of the network. Like this new proposal, those restrictions were crafted to be intentionally flimsy so Verizon lawyers can tango over and around them at their leisure. They are for show.

And yes, "openness" is so "standard," that AT&T's still busily crippling Android phones and packing them with unremovable AT&T bloatware. It's so open, carriers are crippling phone functionality as to charge consumers more for tethering. It's so "open," companies like Skype are striking exclusive deals with carriers designed specifically to artificially save the concept of the voice minute from its inevitable evolutionary extinction. Crippled handsets, exclusive deals, high ETFs, gated app-store approval criteria and punitive mobile pricing do not equate to "open."

Some people need to cool the rhetoric and stick to the facts.

-Verizon

It's fairly clear that Verizon lobbyists thought that by giving a few very minor and pathetic concessions on landline neutrality, they'd be rewarded with not only no neutrality rules applied to wireless, but they'd be able to pre-empt the FCC's interest in partial Title II reclassification of broadband ISPs. While Verizon protecting their revenues from government regulation is expected, the pretense that these actions are pro-consumer altruism is insulting.

And while consumer groups certainly aren't above layering annoying hyperbole (it's the end of the Internet!) on top of their arguments to grab the attention of a lazy public, their "facts" on the Goorizon proposal are much closer to the mark than Mr. Fish's. Here's a real fact for Mr. Fish: Verizon wants what any massive, government-pampered duopolist wants: more strings-free taxpayer money, a lazy regulatory body with no consumer protection authority whatsoever, government protection from competition, and the ability to engage in any business practices they like, no matter how unethical or anti-competitive.

Mr. Fish and Verizon apparently believe consumers and the press aren't smart enough to realize this, and judging from this morning's editorial in the Washington Post calling for "legislative enactment of something like the Google-Verizon plan," they very well may be right.
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Virgin Mobile $40 Prepaid Unlimited Launches - And it appears to truly be unlimited

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 8:03am MDT

Virgin Mobile's new prepaid broadband pricing has arrived, after a launch planned for earlier this week suffered from a few technical hiccups. The new pricing is now available on the Sprint-owned company's website: users can choose either a ten day, $10 plan with a 100 MB cap, or a $40, one month plan with unlimited usage. Unlike previous industry difficulties with the term unlimited, this one seems to truly be, the website informing users that "Virgin Mobile does not restrict your speeds based on data usage caps."
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Google's Desktop VoIP Service Lifts Off - Company promoting service with university, airport phone booths

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 7:38am MDT

Google yesterday officially announced Gmail VoIP integration for Gmail, which allows users to call cell phones or landlines from within their Gmail contact list. Google says calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free "for at least the rest of the year," while calls to other countries are subject to these rates. "We re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you ll be ready to get started once "Call Phones" shows up in your chat list," says Google, who notes you'll have to install their voice and video plugin. To promote Google Voice, the company's going to begin installing British style (watch out for Daleks) phone booths in universities and airports.
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Netflix Streaming Hits iPhone, iPod Touch - Free app with Netflix plans $8.99 or higher...

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 6:41am MDT

Netflix this morning announced that they've developed an app that will allow both iPod Touch and iPhone users to stream video selections from their instant queue. You'll need to be a Netflix customer on a $8.99 or higher to use the free application, which will work over both Wi-Fi and AT&T's 3G network (just in time to run smack into AT&T's new 200 MB and 2 GB caps). Progress made on movies or shows while at home is saved for use within the app, allowing you to finish watching your program while on the go. Users can also manage their instant queue from within the app, but only for streamed programs (not DVDs).
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: August 26th, 2010, 5:54am MDT

Broadband Trumps Farmer Payments as Obama Remakes Assistance to Rural U.S. bloomberg.com
Verizon: Nondiscrimination, Prioritization Proposals Are Stronger Than Title II multichannel.com
The lowdown on Net neutrality and cloud computing infoworld.com
BT gets 2.5bn broadband network going with Huawei deal electronicsweekly.com
Iranian Government Runs Public Warez Server torrentfreak.com
Car Audio 2.0: Pandora, MP3s and Bluetooth Car Stereos digitaltrends.com
The Ipad will dominate the market, and coffee tables (at least for the next year) theinquirer.net
Just 5% of workers ever truly leave the office theregister.co.uk
LG: big, bendy e-paper screens out by year's end reghardware.com
Geolocation gaming planned for Windows Phone 7 Xbox Live theinquirer.net

Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 5:32pm MDT

Next generation Kindle is fastest selling kindle, begins shipping two days early businesswire.com
Why Android won't worry RIM and Apple theregister.co.uk
4G will kill the voice phone market theinquirer.net
Google goes to bed with CIA rt.com
Nokia and Intel want to take Meego into 3rd dimension theregister.co.uk
Comcast Posts DNSSEC Update cable360.net
Broadcasters: FM radio on cell phones just "sound public policy" arstechnica.com
RIM Buys Cellmania to Improve App World enterprisemobiletoday.com
1.25 million Garmin Nuvi's recalled as fire hazards pcworld.com
Apple patches 13 bugs in OS X theregister.co.uk
Target launching mobile retailing business in stores; to be operated by RadioShack fiercewireless.com
Lexmark, HP Using Patent Law To Try To Block Replacement Ink Cartridges From The Market techdirt.com
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Clearwire Considering New Prepaid Options? - Announces cryptic plans to serve new consumer segment

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 4:23pm MDT

Clearwire today issued a rather cryptic press release stating that on August 30 (next Monday), the company would be unveiling their plans to "serve a new customer segment." They didn't get any more specifics than that, aside from the fact that Clearwire CMO Mike Sievert will be making the announcement on a conference call presentation with the media and analysts. So what is Clearwire planning? One likely guess is that they'll be announcing some kind of prepaid pricing option, given that 2010 is clearly the year of prepaid wireless broadband. Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile just got done announcing plans to offer 30 days of unlimited EVDO service for $40, and it wouldn't be surprising to see Clearwire announce something similar -- with a new nifty marketing name and branding for the offering.
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Glitch Postpones Virgin Mobile Unlimited Launch - $40, thirty day unlimited tier to drop in a day or two...

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 2:33pm MDT

They other day we noted that Sprint-owned Virigin Mobile was launching a $40, unlimited prepaid wireless data plan -- a price point that looks almost virtuous compared to Verizon's newly proposed $80 for 5GB of usage tirt. However, Virgin Mobile appears to have botched the launch of the new unlimited tier, the company telling us a "computer glitch" has delayed the full launch for a day or two (something they're also confirming on Twitter). Until then, their old pricing, which featured caps up to 5 GB for $60 a month, remains all you can see on their website.
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Verizon Hypes 3DTV, Eventual FiOS Holograms - Too bad millions of Verizon customers remain on last-generation DSL...

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 12:35pm MDT

It seems like only last April that Verizon was calling 3DTV sports broadcasts "hype" (because it was, and they were). That's a fairly far cry from their sudden devotion to 3DTV this week, as the company works with Cisco to highlight the work they're doing to broadcast the first NFL Game in 3D from New Jersey. Verizon's 3DTV effort isn't fully out of the oven, but the company is already talking about a future that involves holograms delivered over FiOS. From an enthusiastic CNET piece:Verizon Communications Chief Information Officer Shaygan Kheradpir said his company is already working with researchers to bring holographic technologies into homes and small businesses. And the medical industry is one place where he sees a particularly good fit for holograms. Kheradpir wouldn't offer specifics of what Verizon is working on with its research partners, but he said that it has been playing around with sending holographic images of someone's head across its Fios fiber-optic network.Oddly, CNET gushes over Verizon's Jetson-esque future vision without mentioning that Verizon has halted all next-gen network upgrades, with no plan to resume them anytime soon. You do wonder: if 3DTV winds up being just hype, wouldn't this time, money and effort be better used upgrading Verizon's remaining customers, millions of which remain on 3-7Mbps DSL? If not network upgrades, how about finally fixing a backoffice billing system that for years has had a bad habit of hallucinating phantom charges? No? Sorry to bring it up.
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Not Shocking: Wireless Execs Like Metered Pricing - Study also finds puppies really enjoy peanut butter

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 10:16am MDT

The Boston Globe points to a survey of 391 mobile industry executives in 55 countries, which showed that 55 percent of executives say that consumers can expect so-called tiered pricing in the future. 47 percent of the executives insist that flat-rate data plans damage their ability to grow revenues&#46 While these numbers actually seem surprisingly low, the research firm tells the Globe this "the beginning of the end" for flat-rate pricing&#46 Of course that's not necessarily true, given several execs think unlimited pricing could be a competitive differentiator thanks to its simplicity:Virgin Mobile LP said yesterday that it would offer unlimited data for $40 a month. Last week, Sprint s chief executive, Dan Hesse, said his company will not limit data usage in the near future. "We are committed to an unlimited plan, because we think that s a differentiator in the market," he said. "Customers want simplicity . . . They just don t want to hear that meter running."Of course just because 50% of execs daydream about the industry shifting this direction doesn't mean it has to. The survey may have well just asked puppies if they like peanut butter, given the low cap and overage model not only results in people frequently having to take out second mortgages to pay their wireless bill, but it also helps offset the loss of revenue in an open platform, smartphone future, where mobile VoIP and push IM make voice minutes and SMS archaic.

We already know metered billing is good for investors, bean counters and executives, as it allows them to retain control by constricting the pipe, while ramping up data revenues substantially. The question (unasked by the Globe) is whether a shift from "unlimited" (usually not unlimited anyway) to more caps and overages will be a good move for consumers, many of which don't even know what a gigabyte is. Network upgrades provide enough leg room that we should be seeing high caps, but instead AT&T's busily forcing consumers to do the limbo.
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ESPN 360 Model Continues To Take Flak - Your content access is determined by which ISP you have...

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 8:09am MDT

We've explored how smaller ISPs are annoyed with ESPN's new business model for their "ESPN 360" online video service, which involves striking deals with large ISPs, then urging consumers switch carriers if they want access to ESPN 360 content. This of course completely shakes up the consumer content choice equation, while smaller ISPs complain they have to pay more than big carriers to carry the content. Investor's Business Daily notes that consumer groups, the FCC, and smaller cable operators don't like where this model is headed:The Pittsburgh-based American Cable Association, which represents small cable companies, has objected to paying online fees for broadband subscribers that do not access ESPN3.com. . .Some rural-based industry groups, such as the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, worry that if ESPN3.com business models become more common, they'll be forced to divert funds for broadband investment to paying online fees to other content providers.Despite opposition to this model, ESPN 360 (now just named ESPN3) has had no problem signing up ISP partners if you take a look at their ISP list. Many (us included) assumed this model would collapse under the weight of its own absurdity by now, but we're seeing the model spread to other companies like HBO, whose HBO Go broadband streaming service is only currently available to Verizon or Comcast customers.

If this model spreads, the likely outcome isn't a good one for consumers or small ISPs. In a market where most users only have the choice of one or two ISPs, they likely won't have the ability to switch if they can't get access to the content they want. The end result is also likely higher costs for consumers, as the cost of paying these companies winds up being passed down to the end user for content the may or may not even want.
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Shareholders Approve CenturyLink, Qwest Deal - Deal expected to close in first half of 2011...

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 7:35am MDT

Shareholders of both Qwest and CenturyLink have approved the latter's acquisition of the former, a $22 billion deal that was announced back in April. CenturyLink was formed not that long ago by a merger of Embarq (a Sprint spinoff) and CenturyTel. This new, even larger CenturyLink -- once Qwest is integrated -- will offer service in 37 states, and the new combined business will serve approximately 5 million broadband customers, 17 million access lines, 1,415,000 video subscribers and 850,000 wireless consumers. The deal has already seen approval by the USDOJ, but is still awaiting inevitable approval by 14 States, DC, and the FCC. Ma Humpty Bell continues to slowly but surely pull herself back together again.
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Desktop VoIP Coming To GMail - As several rumors suggested already

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 7:01am MDT

Rumors have been popping up since April about Google taking on Skype by directly integrating desktop VoIP functionality into GMail, so it's not too surprising to see CNET confirming that such a project is in fact being worked on. According to a source, users will be able to make VoIP calls from within their contacts using "a user interface that strongly resembles the one used in Google Voice." Obviously this project would be tightly integrated with Google's existing Google Voice system, and is the end result of their Gizmo5 acquisition from a few years back.

Update: Well that didn't take long. Google has announced VoIP integration for Gmail.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 25th, 2010, 5:25am MDT

Europe and USA Broadband ISP Prices Continue to Fall as Speeds Increase ispreview.co.uk
Organizations Counter Defense Of Verizon's Net Neutrality Policy Accord With Google multichannel.com
Evolving from multi-cloud to multi-screen video delivery fiercecable.com
Tiered data pricing looming for mobile broadband says ABI Research EE-Times Europe
Analyst: IPTV is the best defense against cord cutters fierceiptv.com
Court Throws Out FCC Auction Rules multichannel.com
FCC's chairman warns of national crisis in broadband twincities.com
Android web browsing surges 400% in Q2 fiercemobilecontent.com
Google testing web-based VoIP phone calls from Gmail theregister.co.uk
Windows DLL bug exploits go wild, hits dozens of apps cnet.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 5:26pm MDT

Verizon Wireless, RIM data issues/outage in Midwest? boygeniusreport.com
The FCC's wireless work is just beginning fiercewireless.com
Cloud computing expansion threatened by power shortage? broadband-finder.co.uk
Qwest shareholders OK CenturyLink deal Columbus Business First
Only 1 in 20 to benefit from LTE by 2015 fiercewireless.com
Where have all the subs gone? Online broadcast picks up steam fiercecable.com
NBN dominoes starting to fall: Aussies freeze rollout fiercecable.com
Weapons expert warns Wi-Fi could cause generational birth defects vancouversun.com
Verizon-AT&T deal finalized on Centennial assets wirelessweek.com
RIAA: U.S. copyright law 'isn't working' cnet.com
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Hype Surrounding The New Apple TV Ramps Up - Though Apple scrapped subscription service due to frightened broadcasters

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 4:31pm MDT

There's been a pretty steady flood of details surrounding Apple's plan to launch a new broadband video TV service. Most recently, details emerged indicating that they hoped to name the unit "iTV," price it at about $99, and offer TV shows for about 99 cents. Not all of the details are promising, including rumors that the device will top out at 720p. Bloomberg today offers up another confirmation that the service is coming, with a little added detail -- such as the fact that program rentals will last for just 48 hours. Bloomberg confirms the TV rental effort replaces a scrapped plan by Apple leaked last fall to offer a full subscription video service broadcasters wouldn't support for fear of cannibalizing pay TV.
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Dell Offers First Smartphone Via AT&T - Aero arrives at $100, with outdated Android 1.5

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 2:31pm MDT

Dell today unveiled their first smartphone, the Android-based Aero, which goes on sale today for $100 if you agree to a two-year AT&T contract. The specs are solid if not immensely average, the device sporting a 3.5-inch screen, 2GB of onboard storage, triband 3.6Mbps HSDPA and quadband EDGE, a 5 MP camera, and all at 3.67 ounces. One thing that's annoying gadget nerds is that the device is still sporting the 1.5 version of Google's Android OS, though Dell (weakly) justifies this by insisting the Aero comes with a "tremendous amount of customization." Hopefully the device sees better results than Dell's other attempt to jump into an established market.
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Verizon Trimmed Investment By $2 Billion In 2010 - Making threats to trim investment rather hollow..

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 12:36pm MDT

Though it doesn't get talked about much, we've explored in the past how AT&T and Verizon have slowed (in Verizon's case all-but stopped) next-generation broadband deployment. Dave Burstein digs through the numbers to note that Verizon cut wireline capital spending by about two billion so far this year, and has cut back investment by about $7 billion over four years. AT&T's slowed U-Verse projections several times, and cut U-Verse investment by about 1/3 last year. Burstein suggests they're gunning for government funds:These multi-billion dollar cuts came after the U.S. enacted a stimulus program and now is talking about huge subsidies supposedly for broadband. Ivan is a smart guy who told investors that he thinks the government will pay up if he doesn't invest. The stimulus, as Tom Hazlett predicted, resulted in fewer new broadband connections as company after company reduced spending hoping the government will pay instead. Verizon is claiming 20-30% of their lines require a subsidy and asking for billions or they might discontinue voice service. Ironically, V & T just reassured wall street their wireline margins are staying up.AT&T and Verizon didn't apply for stimulus funding, fearing it would come with some regulatory conditions. Instead they've been focusing on getting billions through "reform" of the USF -- which could net them billions in additional, poorly-tracked funds. While investment cuts have pleased short-sighted investors, they've also resulted in cable operators eating the telcos lunch in these un-upgraded legacy markets. These are the same companies that continually threaten to cut investment if they don't get what they want in DC, while hoping nobody notices that they already did.
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Verizon Offers $80, 5GB Prepaid Data Plan - 'viable option' for high end users, says company...

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 10:23am MDT

Sprint-owned Virgin Mobile this week launched a new unlimited, $40 a month prepaid wireless data plan that could shake things up for larger carriers. Companies like Verizon have laughed off offering any prepaid unlimited plans, despite the fact they're simpler for byte-challenged users to understand. Late last year, Verizon Wireless started offering prepaid daily ($15 for 75 MB, 20 cents per additional MB), weekly (30 for 250 MB. 12 cents per additional MB) and monthly ($50 for 500 MB. 10 cents / additional MB) plans. Verizon is now adding a $80, 5GB monthly plan to the prepaid mix, a move the company insists provides "contract-phobic, high-end users with a viable option."
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RIAA: Failed 'Sue 'Em All' Campaign A Success - Because it got people talking about how ridiculous the RIAA is...

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 7:58am MDT

The RIAA recently decided to scrap a plan that involved suing P2P users (and potential customers), in the hopes that the surrounding fear would stop piracy. Of course that didn't work, so the current plan appears to be to make deals with ISPs, who'll then threaten copyright infringers with account disconnection (which as we've noted is sometimes a bluff). Talking with Vice Magazine, RIAA boss Cary Sherman claims that their lawsuit campaign was successful, because it got people talking about things over dinner:The time had come to shift over to a strategy that would be more effective. The lawsuits were obviously controversial in the media, but the reality was that most people had no idea that what they were doing was illegal at the time of those lawsuits. We did all sorts of surveys. We tried PR firms. We did everything to look at how to begin to change the culture of using illegal P2P. We realized that 1) none of the messages resonated, and 2) most people had no idea that what they were doing was illegal, let alone thought it was wrong. That completely flipped overnight when we started the lawsuits. It made an enormous impression and we were constantly generating dinner conversations about what you may or may not do with your computer.Of course the "enormous impression" made was that the recording industry was greedy, myopic and out of touch -- and instead of evolving their business models and offering inexpensive, DRM-free piracy alternatives, decided to make life miserable for potential customers. Of course the RIAA's next "successful" campaign will be to buy U.S. laws forcing ISPs to boot users for copyright infringement, which will "successfully" push all P2P toward other, more private distribution methods -- while doing nothing to stop piracy.
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Verizon Defends Goorizon Accord - Our wimpy proposal is better than past wimpy proposals

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 7:28am MDT

Given he helped write it, it's not too surprising to see Verizon's top lobbying and policy guru Tom Tauke reacting poorly to criticism that his company's net neutrality deal with Verizon is an empty shell, designed to pre-empt real network neutrality rules. According to Tauke, the proposal is "much tougher than any nondiscrimination proposal that had ever been put on the table publicly before." That's not saying much, given previous proposals were just as weak as Verizon's (and weren't actual law either). Tauke also insists that not having rules protecting wireless is ok, given there are already rules on the books:Tauke said that the controversy stirred by the proposal's treatment of wireless networks has been "a little ironic, because there is only one company in the U.S. that has a requirement for open access as a wireless entity, and that of course is Verizon." Verizon bid for and won a chunk of valuable wireless spectrum in 2008 that came with so-called open access rules, requiring that the airwaves remain open to a wide array of devices and applications provided by companies other than the airwaves' owner.Verizon enjoys bringing up the 700MHz open access conditions as an example of why wireless consumer protections aren't needed, but they don't bother to note that the rules are jam packed with loopholes making them meaningless. So in short, Tauke is correctly noting that his toothless Goorizon proposal is just as toothless as previous network neutrality proposals.

All of these proposals have simply been show pieces, designed specifically not to restrict Verizon in any way (while keeping real consumer protections at bay). Obviously that's precisely the way Verizoogle wants it as they push harder into the Android tablet/smartphone space.
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ISPs Make Comparison Shopping Difficult - Asked for a price quote up front recently?

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 7:09am MDT

David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times concisely explores one of the broadband and TV industry's more annoying traits -- their unwillingness to tell you what the full cost of service will be up front. All you'll usually get is your promotional rate, after which the TV operator or ISP piles on a long list of taxes and fees. Ask your ISP to pre-calculate your total up front and you'll usually get some kind of flimsy excuse, notes Lazarus. Verizon tells Lazarus that's just how it is:Jon Davies, a Verizon spokesman, said the company's sales reps aren't being deliberately evasive when it comes to taxes and fees. They're just making sure potential customers have been offered every possible option and add-on before a final price can be given. "We have to build the order to see what the customer is going to get before we can give a final price," Davies said. "We need to make sure they're aware of everything that's available."Of course an example customer in the piece who just wants a base package can't get his price upfront either. Not only does the tactic give the company ample time to upsell a user, it makes comparison shopping more difficult by not letting users just call up and get a quick quote. Meanwhile, as we've long explored, many of those tacked on fees are completely bogus -- and exist simply to impose rate hikes without having to change the advertised price. That last tactic has been ignored by sleeping regulators for years.

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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 24th, 2010, 5:26am MDT

Internet and broadband: the difference between cake and icing fiercecable.com
Murder by malware: Can computer viruses kill? computerworld.com
UK regulator Ofcom proposes to reserve 'best bits' of mobile broadband for UK Olympic Games broadbandgenie.co.uk
Copps: Broadband regulation will preserve openness fiercecable.com
Airband, Sparkplug merge to create largest US fixed-wireless company fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Verizon's Exec VP Defends Google Policy Accord multichannel.com
Tech industry attacks proposal for mandatory FM radio in cellphones mobile-ent.biz
Police Arrest Researcher Who Showed E-Voting Machines Are Not Secure techdirt.com
AT&T, Dell, Best Buy bank on tablets fiercewireless.com
YouTube surpasses Yahoo! as the Internet s 3rd most visited site thenextweb.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 5:39pm MDT

Is DSL dipping or diving? fiercetelecom.com
Clearwire best served by moving to TDD-LTE fiercewireless.com
New Round of Talks In Broadband Regulation Debate multichannel.com
Verizon DSL Promos Aimed At Dial-Up Internet Users multichannel.com
Will Seattle be an early Verizon LTE market? fiercewireless.com
Will Reduced Wireless Backhaul Costs Promote Broadband? wirelessweek.com
Motorola's Android 2.2 Rollout: What a Mess networkworld.com
Net neutrality concern as app downloads become bigger earners for mobile operators computerweekly.com
Dual-core chips migrating to smartphone market fiercewireless.com
Fraudsters Drain PayPal Accounts Through iTunes techcrunch.com
Will Google's Net Neutrality Shift Complicate The Book Settlement? booktrade.info
Samsung Blu-ray players won't play Warner, Universal movies after firmware update, require a rollback engadget.com
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DirecTV To Offer NFL Sunday Ticket Via Broadband - $350 for those without the satellite TV service

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 4:46pm MDT

When DirecTV extended their exclusive (and expensive, at more than $700 million a year) distribution deal with the NFL they included the right to deliver NFL games via broadband. Last fall DirecTV started testing their broadband video Sunday Ticket service last fall, and according to the New York Daily News, will be offering it to everyone this fall. Subscribers don't need to be a DirecTV subscriber to get the service, which will cost $350 for a season and will be offered in 720p -- assuming your broadband connection can handle it.
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Virgin Mobile Embraces Prepaid Unlimited - $40, thirty days, unlimited usage...

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 1:55pm MDT

Sprint owned prepaid operator Virgin Mobile has shaken up their wireless broadband pricing, announcing via Facebook that the company is unveiling new pricing. The new pricing includes either $10 for 100 MB of usage over ten days, or $40 for unlimited broadband service that's good for thirty days. Virgin Mobile has tinkered with their prepaid data plan tiers several times, though this is the first time they're offering an unlimited option. Sprint recently stated they felt unlimited plans helped simplify things for consumers, and Virgin's unlimited tier is a nice choice for people (especially travelers) who don't want to worry about per-byte overages.
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Sprint Starts Offering EVDO Femtocells - And they're free for many users...

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 11:42am MDT

Sprint was the first wireless carrier to embrace femtocell technology, their Airave service debuting back in 2007 and allowing unlimited mobile calls over a user's home broadband connection for an added fee. While the old version didn't support EVDO wireless broadband, they've started shipping a new unit that does. The new unit can run up to six simultaneous calls (up from three with the last unit), and Sprint is giving the device away free to customers who call in and complain about indoor coverage. In fact, we know someone who was given two Airaves for free; one for his home and one for his small business down the road.
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Verizon Targets Dial-Up Laggards - Assuming there are any left....

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 7:52am MDT

Coming off of their worst quarter ever for DSL losses, AT&T and Verizon are once again tinkering with their DSL pricing in the hopes of luring cost-conscious customers who aren't looking for the fastest connection. AT&T's brought back their $15-$20 DSL prices (depending on the market), and now Verizon tells us they've cooked up a new "Regional Value bundle" that offers existing landline users the ability to tack 768-1Mbps kbps DSL service onto their landline for $35 total. "This is a very value-conscious deal at a time when our customers need value the most," Verizon's Robert Elek tells us. Oddly, new landline customers have to pay $45 per month for the same package, a price point that doesn't exactly scream value for POTS and slow DSL.
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France Sees The $60 Quadruple Play - VoIP, DSL/Fiber, TV and wireless for 45 Euros

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 7:25am MDT

We've often pointed to France as an interesting case study, where the country took our discarded idea of open access, ran with it, and now users in several markets wound up seeing some ridiculously competitive deals. How ridiculous? Users can often get unlimited VoIP, TV service, and broadband speeds up to 100 Mbps for around $40 a month. According to industry analyst Dave Burstein, the land of the $40 triple play is now turning into the land of the $60 quadruple play, as companies add wireless to the mix for very little money. Right now, several of these deals involve 20 Mbps + DSL, though similar fiber deals are coming.
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Cord Cutters Still Rare - And cable industry hopes to keep it that way

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 7:08am MDT

The New York Times is running an article with a popular theme: namely that broadband video is over-hyped as a threat to traditional cable TV. Many people cut the cord only to find out that can't gain access to the content they want anywhere if they don't have a cable TV connection -- something the Cable industry's "TV Anywhere" model encourages, given it requires a cable TV connection to get access to the industry's walled-garden playground. As such, cord cutters are still a minority:A New York Times/CBS News poll this month found that 88 percent of respondents paid for traditional TV service. Just 15 percent of those subscribers had considered replacing it with Internet video services like Hulu and YouTube. . . Even through the downturn, the number of people subscribing to pay TV continued to grow. Cable, satellite and fiber-optic providers added 677,000 customers in the first quarter of this year, according to the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein.We've consistently shown how internet video ad revenue is minuscule when compared to traditional TV, and that it will be that way for another decade. Still, once someone develops the perfect broadband video living room solution, all of this can change rather quickly. There's a massive potential market out there of users tired of overpaying for television service and eager to pay for a la carte TV.
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HBO Wont Share Content With Netflix - 'There is value in exclusivity,' says HBO's Kessler

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 6:55am MDT

HBO hasn't exactly warmed to the broadband-driven Internet video revolution. Over the years they've been accused of poisoning copies of their TV shows available for download via BitTorrent, petitioned the FCC to make DVR recording of subscription video-on demand illegal, and even hinted at possibly suing Slingbox for allowing the re-transmission of their content. Now as Netflix streaming gains in popularity, HBO Co-President Eric Kessler tell Bloomberg the company has no intention of letting Netflix gain access to HBO content:"There is value in exclusivity," Kessler said in an interview. Consumers "are willing to pay a premium for high quality, exclusive content," he said...HBO's stand prevents Los Gatos, California-based Netflix from gaining online access to titles from all of the major studios. Netflix members can see films from Walt Disney Co. and Sony Pictures Entertainment online through a deal between the subscription movie service and Liberty Media Corp.'s Starz channel, which has separate accords with both studios.While that's certainly HBO's right, it's possible they could stand to make more money collaborating with Netflix than competing with them. HBO's of course protecting their new broadband-video service HBO Go. HBO Go is only available to customers whose ISP or cable provider have struck an arrangement with the company -- and right now, only Comcast and Verizon have.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: August 23rd, 2010, 6:05am MDT

Can staid BlackBerry survive the smartphone wars? thestar.com
The Aussie NBN rollout schedule becomes a serious political football itwire.com
RIM close to solving Indian government problem with monitoring system v3.co.uk
UK Universal 2Mbps broadband 'will leave users behind' computeach.co.uk
Comcast: We Sped Up Your Internet... Oh, No, Actually, We Didn't techdirt.com
Court Rejects Patent On 'Watch An Ad To Get Content' techdirt.com
Virgin Mobile USA launches unlimited mobile broadband plan for $40 techwhack.com
Motorola in Froyo crackdown theinquirer.net
What to do? Samsung Galaxy S firmware update invalidates Vodafone warranties theregister.co.uk
Buyer beware: Misleading HDMI cable labels suggest needless upgrades msnbc.com
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 5:32pm MDT

Senators question potential Sprint-Huawei deal fiercewireless.com
Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanish airliner crash, 154 deaths theregister.co.uk
Sprint begins offering EV-DO femtocells fiercewireless.com
UK ISP Demon to prioritise gaming broadband traffic pcpro.co.uk
The Tragic Death of Practically Everything Tech pcworld.com
Warflying? Hackers create 'W.A.S.P.' (Wi-Fi Aerial Surveillance Platform) to fly around and find people s insecure Internet connections pcworld.com
Apple may be looking to lock out unauthorized iOS users arstechnica.com
The Fading Glory of the Television and Telephone pewsocialtrends.org
Steve Jobs: Software Fix Coming For Slow iOS 4 Performance On iPhone 3G thenextweb.com
Guy Sues Online Game Company For Making Game Too Addictive techdirt.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Perhaps you'd feel better if you talked about it...

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 4:00pm MDT

The weekend has finally dropped. Empty your thoughts into the comment section below. Just remember to clean up after yourselves.
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Fairpoint Asks CEO To Leave - As company tries to emerge from bankruptcy

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 3:14pm MDT

Fairpoint has been trying to exit from bankruptcy after their acquisition of Verizon's landline and DSL networks proved to be a little more than they could handle. The company's plan has run into a little snag, as Vermont regulators recently decided to not approve Fairpoint's reorganization plan, arguing that Fairpoint's financial projections weren't realistic. Fairpoint's trying to get Vermont regulators to change their mind, and if that doesn't work -- they plan to try to get a federal bankruptcy court to overturn Vermont's June 28 decision. Meanwhile, Fairpoint's creditors have asked CEO David Hauser to resign, after just fourteen months on the job.
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Magic Jack Femtocell Device 'On Hold' - Though company offers new MagicTalk software platform

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 11:04am MDT

As we noted back in January, Magic Jack is gearing up to offer a new femtocell product that will allow users to make cheap calls using a GSM-based mobile phone. There's still very limited technical details about the product, outside of the fact it detects a compatible phone within eight feet of the USB femto device, and allows users to make VoIP calls with it. Back in January Magic Jack said the device was supposed to go on sale right around now for somewhere between $20-$40.

More recently the company started telling blogs that the product is still expected to come out this year -- but with a new wrinkle: the company's partnering with an as-yet-unnamed mobile carrier. Except given the technology is GSM based, here in the States obviously the company would have to partner either with AT&T or T-Mobile. But according to a new article by Peter Svensson of the AP, the project is now "on hold" as finding that partner has apparently proven difficult:Borislow said plans for the device are now on hold. The device had to use low signal power levels to get around legal restrictions on the use of licensed spectrum, but that also shortened the range and reduced sound quality. He's now looking for a carrier partner that would allow him to turn the power up.In other words, neither AT&T or T-Mobile were interested in promoting a technology that could cannibalize their own business models. Of course Magic Jack creator Dan Borislow has something else cooked up: he's launching a software version of Magic Jack this week called MagicTalk that offers free calls to landlines or cellphones in the U.S. or Canada.
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WiMax 2 To Be Finalized In November - With deployment possible sometime in 2012

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 7:15am MDT

Nearly every major global telco plans to embrace LTE, a number of high profile major global WiMax supporters have either shifted from WiMax to LTE or shut down, and WiMax's poster children here in the States, Sprint and Clearwire, have both clearly stated they'll jump to LTE if the wind blows that way (and it is). That's of course not stopping the WiMax 2 (802.16m) standard from being finalized by the IEEE this November, with initial deployments potentially in 2012. Earlier this year Clearwire stated they were in no rush to test the new standard. WiMax 2 can deliver 120 Mbps downstream and 60 Mbps upstream by using a 4X2 MIMO antenna configuration with a single 20 MHz TDD channel.
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Pirate Party Offers To Host Wikileaks - 'Real responsibility for changing the world...'

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 6:28am MDT

Sweden's Pirate Party recently made headlines for not only agreeing to be The Pirate Bay's bandwidth provider, but for deciding to use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Parliament. Then, they began plans to launch "Pirate ISP," an ISP that will openly support the exchange of copyrighted files while thumbing its nose at the draconian nature of both Swedish and United States copyright laws. Now, the Pirate Party has struck a deal with Wikileaks to host several of their servers. Says Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge:"I love opportunities to demonstrate that one of the biggest differences between us and the other parties is that we positively leap at any and all changes to take real responsibility for changing the world, rather than just commission reports and avoiding blame like the archetypal politician," Falkvinge added.Not only would the entertainment and software industries love to see both the Pirate Party and Wikileaks shut down, but so would a significant number of corporations and the majority of the U.S. military and intelligence community. In other words, this could get rather interesting.
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Google CEO Perfecting The Art Of Creepy Statements - Somebody should tell him many people are already terrified of Google

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 6:27am MDT

It hasn't been a particularly good few weeks for Google from a brand perspective, largely thanks to their network neutrality flip-flop, which we've documented in fairly extensive detail. But CEO Eric Schmidt hasn't exactly been helping things, recently ramping up his marginally creepy commentary by stating that everyone will eventually need government online identifiers to help curb "criminal or anti-social behavior." This week, Schmidt proclaimed that kids today should be able to change their names once they reach adulthood, in order to cover up all the ridiculous things they did as kids that Google's busy tracking and storing. While a good chunk of the public's worry about Google is over-inflated (Google can only store what you put online), Schmidt isn't helping things by giving the Google phobic more to worry about.
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San Francisco Launches Free Wi-Fi - Joins Denver and Seattle airports...

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 6:26am MDT

Our friend Glenn Fleishman directs our attention to the fact that the San Francisco airport has launched their free Wi-Fi service ahead of schedule. San Francisco is the largest airport yet to ditch their menu of paid services and instead offer free access to visitors, joining similar moves by the Denver and Seattle airports.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: August 20th, 2010, 6:22am MDT

3G Femto a 'Key Project' for Verizon? lightreading.com
Hughes wins $58.7M stimulus deal for rural broadband gazette.net
Apple kills Quattro to focus on iAds telecoms.com
Recording Industry Using Net Neutrality Debate To Try To Link Child Porn With Copyright Infringement Again techdirt.com
Belgian ISP reveals one data hog gobbles 2.7TB of data in a month arstechnica.com
Energy firm proposes private LTE network for oil and gas firms fiercewireless.com
Researcher: Code-execution bug affects 200 Windows apps theregister.co.uk
Marvell buys into broadband-over-power electronics-eetimes.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 5:31pm MDT

Sprint tests more aggressive WiMAX pricing in select markets fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Report says free hotspot locations now outnumber paid locations in US fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Intel to Acquire McAfee, Moving Into Online Security nytimes.com
T-Mobile s HSPA+ G2 4G Speed Is Just Another Market Ploy wirelessweek.com
Music industry questions Google and Verizon on piracy and their proposed regulatory framework thehill.com
Facing up to the 'mobile data tsunami' philly.com
Comcast 'Clears' Denver for 4G in 2011 cedmagazine.com
Apple testing iOS 4.1 alongside next-gen iPod touch, iPad and 'unknown' product appleinsider.com
New Software Out Now To Unlock Iphone 3g, 3gs And Iphone 4 Ios 4.0, 4.0.1 And 4.0.2 yahoo.com
Unhackable PS3 finally jailbroken? theregister.co.uk
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Verizon Testing $99 Unlimited Postpaid Offer - Takes Aim At Sprint's Simply Everything plan

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 3:54pm MDT

Fierce Wireless notes that Verizon is currently testing a new, post paid $99 unlimited voice, data and SMS/MMS plan designed to take aim at Sprint's "Simply Everything" plan. The new offer, so far only being tested in retail outlets in Los Angeles and San Diego, would be about $20 less than what Verizon's currently offering for unlimited data, text and voice. Verizon's current $90 unlimited text and voice plan is currently $70 in those test markets as well. The tests of course may or may not result in a nationwide launch, depending on whether Verizon likes the trial results.
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Satellite Providers Once Again Promising To Suck Less - Carriers still hyping boosted capacity of new satellites...

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 12:56pm MDT

We've mentioned how satellite broadband is the Rodney Dangerfield of broadband connectivity, given the ridiculously low caps, high prices, and slow speeds. With the satellite industry pushing for broadband stimulus funds, they're heavily hyping next year's launch of ViaSat 1, which Viasat insists will have more capacity than all current commercial satellites combined. The NY Times is running yet another in a number of articles where satellite providers insist they're finally getting ready to not suck:WildBlue s alone will have 10 times the capacity of its three current satellites combined. Such behemoths, the companies say, will enable them, at prices similar to what they now charge, to provide Internet service at speeds many times faster than they now offer as fast, in some cases, as fiber connections. Further, the companies argue, satellites can provide service more easily and cheaply per subscriber than their earthbound cable and phone company competitors, particularly to the 14 million to 24 million Americans who live in areas without broadband service.Most satellite customers will have to see this kind of satellite broadband Utopia to believe it. Satellite providers have been making these kind of over-the-horizon promises for the better part of a decade, but limited capacity and their pesky inability to defeat basic physics have left them as little more than marginal providers. Viasat purchased WildBlue in 2009, and says that they're planning to "reposition WildBlue as a higher-end service," as in, one that can actually deliver the speeds they promise. That might be a good place to start.
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Not Shocking: People Keep Cutting Landlines - 30% of households have cut the phone cord

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 10:17am MDT

The slow erosion of ye olde copper landline continues, as telcos continue to slowly bleed customers who switch to either a wireless phone only -- or take the plunge on a cable VoIP/broadband/TV triple play. Business Insider notes that almost 30% of U.S. households have cut the cord, up from about 25% a year ago, according to a Citi Investment Research report by analyst Jason Bazinet. The past nine quarters have seen the acceleration of "wireless substitution" has accelerated, with more 1% of households cutting the cord every quarter, according to Bazinet. Other recent data from the CDC (which tracks the information for medical polling accuracy reasons) notes that another 15% have landlines -- but rarely if ever use them.

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Intel's WiMax Hype Machine Grinds To A Halt - From revolution to also ran...

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 8:18am MDT

Mobile WiMax certainly isn't dead, but given recent events it wouldn't be distasteful to send the technology a get well soon card. International support is wavering, most global telcos are supporting LTE, and even U.S. WiMax poster child Clearwire is planning on LTE trials. That doesn't mean Mobile WiMax can't survive as a promising niche solution, but primary (as in more than $1.2 billion) backer Intel's predictions that WiMax would be a dominant player are fading fast. The Financial Times explores how Intel's dealing with the news:"I think many service providers are still going to look at WiMax as the best technology and I think WiMax absolutely has a lifespan that s going to continue," said Julie Coppernoll, Intel s director of WiMax. "I do see LTE and WiMax coexisting; 10 years from now there will ideally be two technologies." . . We ve never said it will be the only solution, we ve said it will be a timely solution."Actually, if we remember correctly, back when we were trying to temper some of Intel's hype back in 2004, Intel actually said WiMax was going to be "the most important thing since the Internet itself."
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More Wi-Fi Health Hysteria. This Time In Canada - Parents group tries to have Wi-Fi banned

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 6:44am MDT

Despite no scientific evidence of harm, there continues to be people both here and abroad that believe Wi-Fi signals are a serious health threat. We've seen several instances of schools going so far as to ban Wi-Fi on the basis that it's no different from second hand smoke (did we mention there's no evidence that Wi-Fi is a health risk whatsoever?). PC Magazine directs our attention to a group of parents in Canada who are convinced Wi-Fi is making their kids sick. Says their website: So far there has been no scientific study concluding that long term exposure to microwaveas is safe for children. Since December 2009 members of the Committee have been informing Superintendents and Trustees of the Simcoe County District School Board of the symptoms that can occur in students when they enter a school with WiFi microwave transmitters. . .So far the Committee has documented reports from children with such strange problems as they can't hold a pencil, they feel faint, they have chronic headaches, and they have developed an erratic heart rate requiring medical attention.Perhaps they were eating paste? Interestingly, the parents group has offered to pay for wired connections as an alternative to Wi-Fi, though the school board has yet to take them up on the offer. In fact, this CBC report says the school has denied the parents' request to shut off all Wi-Fi.
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Cablevision's Wi-Fi Footprint Continues To Grow - Use in New Jersey has quadrupled since last year

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 6:40am MDT

A few years ago, Cablevision decided they'd spend roughly $300 million to not only upgrade their entire footprint to faster DOCSIS 3.0 speed (allowing 100 Mbps service), but also on a Wi-Fi network that provides free Wi-Fi to all Cablevision customers. Plugged largely along commuter rail lines and at train stations into New York City, the service coverage area continues to grow, with Cablevision announcing (pdf) their New Jersey footprint has grown by half since 2009, and usage has quadrupled during that time. Price promotions, faster cable broadband service, and 3 Mbps down 1.5 Mbps Wi-Fi to be doing a good job so far keeping the Verizon FiOS monster away, if Cablevision earnings are any indication.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: August 19th, 2010, 6:31am MDT

Administration announces $1.8 billion program to bring broadband to rural areas agrimarketing.com
NextWave, Cavalier highlight shadowy world of spectrum speculators fiercewireless.com
Industry Groups Back To 'Negotiating' Net Neutrality techdirt.com
Is Google TV Right for Service Providers? lightreading.com
MessageLabs Blacklists Email from UK BT Business Broadband ISP Customers ispreview.co.uk
Why Nothing Will "Save" Print Media techi.com
The Audacity of Warner Brothers and Re-Spawning Zombie Cookies networkworld.com
Verizon Sets Live TV iPad App For FiOS multichannel.com
Cricket going after major wireless providers' customers denverpost.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 5:17pm MDT

California launches the largest broadband network dedicated to telehealth in the nation informationweek.com
UAE Plans to Go All Fiber by 2011 redorbit.com
Verizon targets Sprint's Simply Everything with $99 unlimited tests fiercewireless.com
LightSquared Moves Forward With Re-banding of L-Band Radio Spectrum cable360.net
Will Apple redesign iPhone antenna for Verizon? Don t count on it yahoo.com
Akamai CEO sees mobile overtaking wired Internet fiercecable.com
IPTV, DVRs will spur growth of 'no-new-wires'-based home networks fiercetelecom.com
Skype mobile application to run on Verizon Wireless BREW feature phones boygeniusreport.com
Feds Won't Bring Charges Against School District Officials In Webcam Spying techdirt.com
Apple to Deliver iPad Mini by Christmas? theatlanticwire.com
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Free Hotspots Outnumber Paid Hotspots For First Time - Thanks to Cablevision, Starbucks, Barnes and Noble

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 4:15pm MDT

According to new data from Jwire, the number of free Wi-Fi hotspots are outnumbering the number of paid hotspots for the first time, with 55 percent of locations now offering free Wi-Fi. What's driving the surge in free wireless? In part it's Cablevision's (and to a lesser degree Comcast and Time Warner Cable) decision to offer free Wi-Fi to paying customers. Starbucks, McDonalds and Barnes and Noble all deciding to offer free Wi-Fi (all of which use the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot network). We're going to go out on a limb and assume Jwire's data does not include the world's largest and most popular free ISP, linksys.
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Windstream Keeps Gobbling Up Smaller Operators - Acquires Q-Comm Corporation for $782 million

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 2:57pm MDT

As the rural telco consolidation trend continues, Windstream continues to quietly grow in the shadow of larger deals, like CenturyLink and Qwest or Frontier and Verizon. Fresh off of putting the finishing touches on their deal to acquire Iowa Telecom, Windstream has announced that they've acquired Q-Comm Corporation in a deal worth around $782 million. Q-Comm is a Kansas-based regional fiber transport company and CLEC, with operations in 22 states. Q-Comm also has two subsidiaries: Kentucky Data Link, a fiber services provider in 22 states, and Norlight, a Midwest competitive local exchange services company. From the release, it looks like a primary motivator for the deal is Windstream's desire to expand their wireless backhaul presence.
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Wireless Carriers Won't Budge On Wireless Neutrality - While CTIA 'very curious' of how Goorizon deal impacts public perception

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 1:06pm MDT

Wireless carriers have made it very clear they don't want any network neutrality rules applied to wireless networks. They've been fighting it tooth and nail in negotiations with the FCC (both open and closed door), and the recent Voogle proposal also suggests wireless shouldn't be included in neutrality rulemaking. The Hill has posted interview excerpts from a conversation with former NFL player turned wireless industry spokesman Steve Largent, who strongly suggests the wireless industry won't budge:"Our job is to say 'nothing is necessary,'" in reference to the push by some for a net neutrality framework that applies a non-discrimination rule to wireless traffic. CTIA does not see a compromise short of a wireless exemption to a non-discrimination rule that would be acceptable, he said. . . Largent said he does not think wireless carriers in FCC-led talks (Verizon, AT&T) are prepared to swallow tougher rules than those in the Verizon-Google proposal. He said if there are reports to the contrary, he thinks they are wrong. By "wireless carriers," the CTIA means AT&T and Verizon, who dominate both the industry and most of the industry trade and policy groups. And by saying he sees "no workable compromise," Largent's saying they aren't willing to compromise at all. Interestingly, The former Seattle Seahawk goes on to suggest that the Goorizon deal may have hurt the wireless sector, with the CTIA wondering if there was "opposition generated by this story that would not have been there otherwise."
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Skype Offers Apps For More Verizon Phones - Now available for LG enV TOUCH, LG Chocolate Touch and Samsung Reality

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 10:59am MDT

After years of complaining about close wireless networks, Skype recently got a tad hypocritical (there's a lot of that going around), striking an "exclusive" deal with Verizon to offer a semi-crippled version of Skype on a limited number of Verizon smartphones. Skype and Verizon have now apparently expanded that partnership, the Skype blog announcing they'll soon offer a Skype app based on the BREW platform for a broader selection of Verizon phones, including the LG enV TOUCH, LG Chocolate Touch and Samsung Reality. Like the previous Verizon app, Skype-to-Skype calls to or from your mobile, computer or TV are free -- but calls to another mobile number or landline number in the US will eat your Verizon Wireless minutes.
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HTC Google Chrome Tablet On Verizon In November - To be offered subsidized with long-term Verizon contract

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 7:54am MDT

We've already noted that Motorola is building an Android-based tablet to be sold by Verizon later this year, with functionality tied to FiOSTV. Now come reports that HTC is building a Chrome-driven tablet computer for Verizon that will launch on November 26. Tablet mania has clearly infected many ISPs, who will either be offer TV Everywhere Internet video apps for tablets (Comcast, Cablevision, AT&T, Time Warner Cable) -- or offering tablets themselves later this year. Much like the recent netbook craze, expect ISPs to give these things away at a subsidized price point if you sign a long-term wireless broadband contract.

Update: Verizon today also expanded on their iPad application ambitions today in great detail.
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T-Mobile Preps First HSPA+ Smartphone: The G2 - Made by HTC, will launch sometime in September

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 7:43am MDT

T-Mobile employees have been rather busy running running around upgrading the company's wireless network to HSPA+, which provides theoretical top downstream speeds close to 20 Mbps (though more like 10 Mbps in the real world). The company recently noted that their HSPA+ upgrades are now available in nearly 50 major metropolitan areas, with plans to cover 185 million people by the end of the year. Now T-Mobile has launched a new teaser website for the first smartphone that will be able to take advantage of those speeds here in the States: the G2. Rumors have suggested the phone is made by HTC, and should drop sometime in September.
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Wired Trolls The Undead Web For Hits - 'I'm not dead yet!'

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 7:25am MDT

It seems like inevitably, people covering the tech sector like to declare things as "dead," when they're very much, well, not. Take VoIP, for example. Plugging away for site hits during the August doldrums, Wired this week is running a rather silly story that declares that the "Web is dead." That conclusion seems based almost entirely on data from Cisco used to create this graphic, which highlights largely how video is taking up a larger slice of overall traffic. However, more reasoned voices note that if you look at the same data using absolute numbers, things look much different. In short (because the resulting debate over this has already gotten more coverage than it deserves), the web isn't dying, it's just evolving.
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Google TV Running Into Stubborn Broadcasters - Who don't want Google 'cannibalizing' their existing cash cows

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 7:02am MDT

Earlier this year, Google unveiled their Google TV ambitions, which include embedding their Android OS into broadband-enabled TVs, set tops and other devices, hoping to simplify the content gap between the PC and the living room. Like other broadband video efforts before them, they're running into problems getting the broadcast industry to loosen up their licensing restrictions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Google's been meeting with the major networks, but those networks are "are skeptical that Google can provide a business model that would compensate for potentially cannibalizing TV owners' existing broadcast businesses," notes the Journal.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 18th, 2010, 6:41am MDT

Five billionth device about to plug into Internet networkworld.com
Clearwire ISpot pcworld.com
Netflix vs. Hulu Plus: Who Deserves Your $10 a Month? maclife.com
Firm behind LTE startup LightSquared drops Clearwire, cuts Sprint/Nextel holdings fiercewireless.com
Analysis: Industry still split on vulnerability disclosure v3.co.uk
Google Sued in Spain Over Data Collecting nytimes.com
Apple's Iphone 4 advertising system fails theinquirer.net
Congressmen Speak Out Against Verizon-Google Broadband Proposal crn.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 5:14pm MDT

ACA: Higher Pole Fees = Less Broadband; New Regs Could Push Fees Up 400% for Rural Operators multichannel.com
Will The NAB Agree To A Performance Rights Tax In Exchange For Having RIAA Support Mandatory FM Radio In Mobile Phones? techdirt.com
Intel faces 4G predicament as WiMAX's star dims ft.com
Australia begins first phase of NBN network buildout fiercetelecom.com
Debunking the Internet apocalypse cnn.com
WiFi Goes Mainstream in Phones tmcnet.com
India sets BlackBerry data-monitoring deadline for August 31st networkworld.com
BlackBerry Torch Fizzles: What's Next For RIM? networkworld.com
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FCC: You're Not Getting The Broadband You Pay For - Again insists users only see 50% of advertised speed

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 3:18pm MDT

Ars Technica directs our attention to a new FCC report (pdf) that's just chock full of broadband stats. Among them, the report concludes that users are getting about half of the speed advertised, thanks to that nifty "up to" marketing lingo used by most ISPs. According to the FCC, ISPs advertised a mean "up to" download speed of 6.7Mbps in 2009, while consumers actually saw a median speed of 3 Mbps and a mean speed of 4 Mbps:In other words, consumers need a better, publicly agreed upon measure of broadband performance that reflects the network operation and end-user experience. The NBP s Recommendation 4.3, calling on the FCC to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, consumer groups, industry and other technical experts to develop broadband measurement standards is designed to address this issue.The FCC's solution is a more comprehensive nutrion-label esque advertising standard that gives consumers a more well-rounded idea of what they can expect from their connection. This label would include actual average connection performance estimates for peak and off peak speeds, "tested against a given set of standard protocols and applications."

This isn't the first time the FCC has said they would like to see more accurate speed advertising, nor is it the first time the FCC has used that 50% metric (they mentioned this before on page 26 of a recent slideshow here). While there's certainly a very real gap between real-world broadband and marketed broadband, most people in the industry don't think it's that big -- and there has been some complaints (primarily from the cable industry) that the FCC used not-entirely-comprehensive Akamai and comScore data to get that total.

As such, the FCC has started more comprehensive, in-home testing with the help of UK firm SamKnows, involving the use of custom-firmware embedded Cisco routers that will gather more comprehensive data to fuel FCC decisions.
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Intel Gobbles Up Texas Instruments' Cable Modem Business - Will focus on whole-home gateways for cable industry

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 1:48pm MDT

Intel this week announced they've struck a deal to acquire the Texas Instruments Inc.cable modem chipset product line, though the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "All employees of Texas Instruments' cable modem team received offers to join Intel at sites in their home countries, primarily Israel, and will become part of Intel's Digital Home Group," says the company's press release. Intel, who has been a key player in DOCSIS 3.0 development, says they'll fuse TI's Puma product lines with DOCSIS 3.0 technology and Intel SoCs to deliver advanced set top box, residential gateway and modem products for cable operators.
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Blackberry Torch: 150,000 Sold In Three Days - Mixed reviews mire AT&T, RIMs latest exclusive launch...

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 11:45am MDT

Analysts at RBC Capital Markets and Stifel Nicolaus both put weekend sales at around 150,000 phones for the AT&T Exclusive RIM Blackberry Torch, according to The Wall Street Journal. The paper suggests the "plodding start isn't great news for RIM," with the iPhone selling roughly 1.6 million units during its first four days on sale. Gizmodo argues those sale numbers still aren't awful, given they roughly matched Palm Pre and HTC EVO launch numbers, but they certainly don't match the hype RIM tried to create; their CEO Jim Balsillie calling the smartphone "a quantum leap over anything that's out there." The good news? If you like the Torch, it's already on sale in many locations.
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T-Mobile Won't Launch 4G For At Least 2 Years - Going to nurse HSPA+ to the very end of the line...

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 8:48am MDT

We already knew that T-Mobile planned to nurse HSPA+ for as long as possible, and that their fourth generation wireless broadband plans were murky at best. Rene Obermann, CEO of T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, says the company won't even consider making a move on LTE for at least two years. According to Obermann, the company isn't worried that they'll lag LTE efforts by Verizon and AT&T, who'll both have deployments underway by that time. Says Obermann:"We'll get a fourth-generation wireless network either by buying spectrum or re-farming existing spectrum, or potentially leasing spectrum together with others. I don't think we'll trail others in the next two years. With HSPA+ we're in a very good position. We still have plenty of capacity, so we are competitive" said Obermann.T-Mobile does have some time (but not a lot) to dilly dally as they consider their next move. The company's current upgrades allow theoretical downstream speeds of up to 20 Mbps, and there have been rumors they'll try to push HSPA+ towards 40 Mbps down the line. While Verizon plans to offer 4G services by the end of this year, their LTE deployment will be initially capped at 5-12 Mbps downstream. AT&T meanwhile is taking their time on the shift to LTE, and like T-Mobile is nursing HSPA+ -- albeit less aggressively.
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RIAA Wants Mandatory Radios In Smartphones - RIAA, NAB join forces, come up with even worse idea than usual...

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 7:57am MDT

It appears that the RIAA and broadcasters (NAB) have joined forces to push Congress to create laws that require FM Radios be embedded in all digital devices, including smartphones, MP3 players, and theoretically e-readers. Of course, the move is yet another attempt to prop up the dying recording business models of old, and to sell the idea they're comparing their push to the FCC mandated shift to digital television (which aren't related in the slightest). It gets worse, given that as Techdirt notes, the agreement between the RIAA and NAB would include NAB's support for a "performance rights tax on radio," which would force radio stations to pay performers for advertising and promoting their music.
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Wired: Android Users Can Expect To Be Capped, Throttled - But they should demand those caps be (unlike the iPhone) reasonable

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 7:41am MDT

A recent study found that Verizon (mostly Android) users consume the most data; even more than iPhone users, who've taken quite a beating from AT&T for supposedly being the worst sort of gluttons. Meanwhile, the study also found that while 56% of iPhone users stream over 3G, 72% of Android users stream over 3G. With this in mind, Wired news is running a somewhat vague story that notes that Android users should expect their wireless Utopia to be introduced to caps in fairly short order:If you re contemplating the purchase of an Android phone, you should probably get a move on. Nothing is impossible, of course, and one of the Android carriers could somehow offer unlimited bandwidth forever. Nonetheless, the likelihood that Android users will continue being able to sign up for unlimited data contracts grows slimmer with each passing day.Maybe. Maybe not. You'd have to look at each carrier that carries Android phones. Sprint (home of the Android-based EVO and now Samsung Epic) for now appears poised to stick with unlimited plans, arguing that low caps and overage models simply act to confuse customers. Verizon meanwhile has made no secret of their desire to mirror AT&T's low cap and high overage model. And while all carriers are constrained by limited spectrum, as sector analyst Dave Burstein recently notes, Verion's shift to LTE should make higher caps possible:Two of the best engineers in the U.S. tell me wireless congestion can be almost eliminated except at Katrina type emergencies with 5 and 10 gigabyte caps. Models from Adtran suggest 20-30 gig caps (or higher) are practical in the LTE generation. There's nothing wrong with caps if they are economically sensible. The problem is that AT&T placed the cap much too low.So while the end of unlimited smartphone plans is probably coming, it may not be coming for all carriers right away (including some MVNOs), some of whom realize that low caps and high overages confuse and annoy users. Meanwhile, carriers that do start imposing caps on their previously unlimited smartphone plans don't necessarily have to follow AT&T's lead and impose punitive models with puny caps.
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Verizon Readies More Droids - 4 inch screen 'Droid Pro' should be launching soon

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 7:15am MDT

The Boy Genius Report has posted a few screengrabs from internal Verizon Wireless systems that confirm Verizon's droid lust won't be slowing anytime soon. A Verizon source confirms that the wireless carrier will be launching the DROID Pro, the latest Droid smartphone with a 4" display, 1.3GHz CPU, and global roaming capability -- sometime in November. There's also references to another mystery devices, which may possibly be a new "slab touch screen Android phone." It may also be the new Motorola Android-powered tablet, which as previously discussed, Verizon plans to tie tightly to their FiOS TV service.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 17th, 2010, 6:32am MDT

BelAir Gets CableLabs Best Product Nod multichannel.com
After Google-Verizon fizzle, FCC should force Net neutrality boston.com
Clearwire: 4G Pure Play Is a Risky Bet thestreet.com
Radio, RIAA: mandatory FM radio in cell phones is the future arstechnica.com
EFF Warns of Untrustworthy SSL, Undetectable Surveillance networkworld.com
Google dominates Web video rankings totaltele.com
Intel Acquires Cable Modem Business from Texas Instruments. xbitlabs.com
Three UK Broadband ISPs Slammed for Poor Customer Satisfaction Ratings ispreview.co.uk
RIM Halves BlackBerry Torch Price to Boost Sales networkworld.com
Geeks turn Army surplus drone into a Wi-Fi network hacking plane dvice.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 5:18pm MDT

Traffic Jams Ahead Unless More Cables Laid livescience.com
WiMAX 2 planned to top 100Mbps in real world by 2012 electronista.com
Broadband superhighway only part of the whole fiercecable.com
How Wireless Net Neutrality Could Kill Kindle Business Model pcworld.com
Mobile Data Offloaded Will Grow 100-fold by 2015 fiercemobilecontent.com
Report: Sprint's merger with Nextel ranked among least successful fiercewireless.com
Android app secretly uploads GPS data, warns Symantec theregister.co.uk
Hulu IPO: Just Another Risky Dotcom Bet? theatlantic.com
Data-Gobbling Android Users Will Likely See Bandwidth Capped wired.com
Ruckus debuts public Wi-Fi device for MSOs cedmagazine.com
Ont. school board to parents: No proof WiFi makes anyone sick = WiFi stays on in schools cbc.ca
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House Dems Diss Verizoogle Proposal - 'The time for FCC action is now,' says letter

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 4:14pm MDT

Not particularly taken with the Googizon (Voogle? Goorizon?) network neutrality proposal from last week, House Democrats Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Anna Eshoo of California, Jay Inslee of Washington and Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania today sent a letter (pdf) to the FCC urging the agency to reject the deal. Instead, the representatives argued, the FCC should propose a neutrality framework that, unlike the Verizoogle proposal, ensures the FCC have strong authority over broadband ISPs, adequately addresses paid prioritization and managed services, and addresses both wired and wireless services. Says the letter:The recent proposal by Google and Verizon of an industry-centered net neutrality policy framework reinforces the need for resolution of the current open proceedings at the Commission to ensure the maintenance of an open Internet. Rather than expansion upon a proposal by two large communications companies with a vested financial interest in the outcome, formal FCC action is needed. The public interest is served by a free and open Internet that continues to be an indispensable platform for innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, and free speech.In short, the four dems want the FCC to do what they're already doing. Namely, push for neutrality rules that cover wireless (something AT&T, Verizon and now Google absolutely do not want), and proceed with their plan to partially reclassify ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act (something the three companies also don't want).

Given the FCC's apparent terror at upsetting AT&T and Verion (by doing things like tackling open access or improving broadband competition), and Genechowski's tendency to walk a murky, non-committal middle ground, one gets the sense the final FCC product will have more in common with the Googizon proposal than not.
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Apple's Testing CDMA iPhones, iPads - The Verizon iPhone rumor parade marches on...

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 3:06pm MDT

The flood of endless iPhone to Verizon speculation has certainly been annoying for iPhone users irked with AT&T's network, but the latest rumor that Verizon will launch a CDMA-based iPhone in January seem to actually be more substantive (which isn't saying much). On the heels of rumors that Apple recently ordered a flood of CDMA chips from Qualcomm and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg will give the CES keynote in January -- the Boy Genius Report notes that there's some hints in iOS 4 code that suggest either a CDMA iPhone and/or CDMA iPad are being currently tested. Of course Verizon isn't the only CDMA carrier out there, so keep those grains of salt handy...
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Permalink for 'Time Warner Cable CEO Opposed, Not Opposed To Neutrality Rules - Wants 'more people in the room' while hashing out rules he may, may not want'

Time Warner Cable CEO Opposed, Not Opposed To Neutrality Rules - Wants 'more people in the room' while hashing out rules he may, may not want

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 12:53pm MDT

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt walks a fine line when discussing the recent Verizon/Google network neutrality deal kerfuffle, essentially telling the paper he's neither for or against network neutrality rules, then going on in great detail about how he's essentially against network neutrality rules. Britt, whose company faced a wave of negative PR when they tried to impose low caps and high overages on consumers, offers his thoughts on last week's events:I didn't say I was opposed to having rules&#46 But I'm not in favor of taking a competitive market and trying to shoehorn it into regulation that's meant for a monopoly. That doesn't work- it's just basic economics.What about for a duopoly? Speaking about the Verizon/Google framework, Britt says he would have liked to see "more people in the room" and more of a consensus. The CEO Goes on to argue that the broadband sector is simply too "dynamic" for consumer protections on the network neutrality front:We're competing in a sector of the economy that's enormously dynamic, where companies start up every day in garages that have new ideas. We should be able to innovate, too. Without the U.S. cable industry, we wouldn't have broadband and all the jobs and investment that came with it . If there had been rules in place at that time causing us not to do broadband, I don't know where we'd be.It's not clear who came up with the idea of new government laws telling ISPs they "can't do broadband," but we'd agree that whoever it was, it wasn't a very smart idea.
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Verizon Tests 1 Gbps GPON FiOS - Existing business customer sees 800-925 Mbps in trial

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 10:24am MDT

Verizon's been busily conducting GPON connectivity in the field, showcasing how future upgrades could theoretically allow them to offer 10 Gbps to each home, or symmetrical 1 Gbps service to each PC in said home. But Verizon's current framework is no slouch either, the company today announcing they just completed a trial that involved almost 1 Gbps service on their existing GPON network.

The trial involved connecting Verizon's Taunton, Massachusetts call-switching office to an ONT located at a business customer's location. The speed was tested to a local speed test server over an optimized route, as well as across the public Internet to a regional speed test server located more than 400 miles away.

GPON is theoretically capable of offering 2.4 Gbps downstream and 1.2 Gbps upstream. In the real world (or at least something close to it), the connection tested out at 925 Mbps to a local server and 800 Mbps to a regional speed test server.

"The successful trial demonstrates that we have the headroom to meet current and future demands on the FiOS network from both residential and business customers," Verizon spokesman Cliff Lee tells Broadband Reports. The test "validates our decision to support both residential and business services on the same platform," said Vincent O'Byrne, director of Verizon's technology organization, who managed the trial.

Last week AT&T proclaimed Verizon's decision to halt FiOS expansion (to ramp up penetration and see if they could score some taxpayer/USF funds to continue deployment) justified AT&T's decision to spend less on AT&T U-Verse, though Verizon remains in a better competitive position. While you won't see 1 Gbps FiOS anytime soon, it seems likely Verizon will offer a new 100 Mbps (uncapped) tier sometime in the next year.
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Sandvine 'Fairshare' System Hits DOCSIS 3.0 - Fairshare 3.2: 'application, subscriber, time of day and congestion awareness'

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 8:14am MDT

You'll recall that after Comcast had their wrist slapped by the FCC, they wound up shifting to a protocol agnostic network management platform in late 2008. Instead of using a blunt hammer to throttle all users 24/7, the system targets only heavy users on the heaviest nodes, and temporarily flips the user to a lower quality of service (QoS) until they ease off consumption. This platform is supplied in large part by Sandvine, who calls it "Fairshare," and says they're now testing the system on DOCSIS 3.0 CMTS' with four tier 1 providers in North America and Europe (you can probably safely assume Comcast is one of them).
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 8:00am MDT

Kiwi device to make broadband Internet 50 times faster at no extra cost The Economic Times
Skype filing reveals company's worries, strategy fiercevoip.com
Canadian parents say school WiFi made kids sick upi.com
Wireless Is Not Different. You Can t Be Half-Open techcrunch.com
WiMax 2 standard to get final stamp of approval soon neowin.net
1 out of 3 AT&T iPhone customers will switch to Verizon intomobile.com
Antennagate hits Verizon's Android Motorola Droid 2 appleinsider.com
WildBlue and HughesNet say they'll be able to provide easier, cheaper Internet than cablecos and telcos boston.com
Sandvine Expands Cable Support In Bandwidth-Management Platform multichannel.com
Verizon Fivespot by ZTE gets FCC Approval itechnews.net
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AT&T: Wireless Is 'Different' - In which AT&T gives that speech about growing wireless demand. Again.

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 7:25am MDT

As we noted last week, AT&T stayed largely quiet when Verizon and Google announced their network neutrality agreement, not wanting the deal telecom tango to be seen as a plan hashed out by only the debate's wealthiest participants (which it was). So, even though the framework gave AT&T everything they wanted (no wireless neutrality, a weak FCC, paper thin rules) AT&T figured they would stay quiet.

That didn't last. AT&T's now put a blog post up entitled "Wireless Is Different," which complains there's a lot of "misinformation out there about this issue," which AT&T will be happy to clear up for you. AT&T pulls out their well-used speech about how mobile data use is exploding (I think we get it already, guys), and argues that because wireless networks are more bandwidth-contained, it makes better sense to skip wireless when/if we impose network neutrality rules. Says AT&T's Joan Marsh:Pitted against this insatiable demand are wireless networks of finite and shared resources. Wireless networks simply cannot provide the same amount of capacity as wireline networks (i.e., DSL and cable). Fiber is to a wireline network what spectrum is to a wireless network, and as a transmission medium, the two simply do not compare. The theoretical top speed of a LTE carrier is 100 Mbps. By contrast, theoretical transmission speeds on fiber can reach as high as 25,000,000 Mbps. The 5 extra zeros tell the story.While wireless is different, that's certainly no reason to have no consumer protections of any kind (outside of some meager transparency requirements). AT&T, Verizon and Google have constructed a false choice between either no neutrality rules for wireless -- and an imaginary future where any effort to protect wireless consumers ends up in sector collapse. You'll note the companies intentionally ignore the fact that you could have neutrality rules for wireless that take into account the need for intelligent congestion management systems.

AT&T just doesn't want consumer protections for wireless. Why? They might prevent AT&T from crippling vendor handsets so users are forced to use AT&T bloatware, or forcing users to pay more for certain services. Consumer protections also might prevent AT&T from blocking applications that either compete with their own services, or say the services of a giant preferred advertising partner with a colorful and whimsical logo. Such protections might restrict AT&T's shiny new pricing model as well, which involves fairly unreasonably-low caps of 200 MB and 2GB.

Sure, wireless may be different, but AT&T's love of using capacity as a bogeyman to justify any and all behavior remains the same, whether we're talking about wireless or wireline networks (you'll of course recall the AT&T-funded Exaflood myth). Of course this discussion really isn't about capacity, given regulators could easily craft rules that allow for intelligent network congestion management. The discussion is about protecting consumers from AT&T's bad behavior. It's also simply about money. It has always been about money.
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Sprint Epic 4G Reviews Start Rolling In - Tops HTC EVO with better screen, battery

Posted: August 16th, 2010, 6:58am MDT

Last week Sprint announced that their second 4G phone, the Samsung Epic 4G, will be launching August 31 for $250 after a $100 rebate and with a Sprint two-year contract. Now the reviews have started to roll in, Gizmodo calling it the best 4G phone available, which isn't saying all that much -- given there's only two. But according to the gadget blog, the device does wind up topping the popular HTC EVO, in part due to a more visible screen and slightly improved battery performance. Reviews over at CNET and Engadget also seem largely positive.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 5:10pm MDT

MagicJack maker plans to banish calling costs msnbc.com
Android has overtaken iPhone worldwide electronista.com
Free Press Calls for Swift FCC Action to Protect Internet Users commondreams.org
ISPA UK Regrets Governments Failure to Solve the Fibre Optic Broadband Tax ispreview.co.uk
Google admits compromise made on network neutrality in wireless sector techwhack.com
Dual-core smartphones on the horizon networkworld.com
How AT&T s iPhone exclusivity ends Orange County Register
Skype and Google next against the wall in India theregister.co.uk
Marvell, Harmon team for factory-installed in-vehicle WiFi fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Is Charter missing the boat on Opelika's muni broadband network? fiercetelecom.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Discuss!

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 4:52pm MDT

The week is over. Share your thoughts in our comment section below.
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Verizon To Show First NFL Game In 3D - Preseason game between Giants and Patriots

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 2:02pm MDT

If you think 3D TV is little more than a new old gimmick that requires annoying glasses and a new television, you might want to skip this post. If you think 3DTV is a compelling product, you might be interested to note that Verizon has been working with the New York Football Giants on broadcasting the first ever NFL game in 3D (well, preseason, anyway). Verizon will be showing the September 2 preseason match-up between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots in 3D to FiOS TV customers. If you recall, Verizon earlier this year called similar cable "first ever" 3D sports efforts "hype," and insisted they'd be ramping up their own 3D efforts ahead of the 2010 holiday season.
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San Francisco Gets Tough(er) On Tower Builds - New Ordinance allows build rejections based on aesthetic reasons

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 12:03pm MDT

San Francisco certainly isn't making many friends in the wireless sector. The city recently passed a new law requiring the industry clearly display all phone radiation levels at retail -- and they're being sued by the industry, which insists cell phone radiation is already managed by the FCC, there's no solid evidence of health issues, and the warnings unnecessarily frighten consumers. Now San Francisco is working on a new ordinance that would let the city reject tower builds based on aesthetic reasons, and give local communities more authority on build locations:Avalos' ordinance, however, would ban new utility poles built solely for new antennas. It would also require special permits for large antennas on public property, force carriers to plant trees to disguise antennas in some locations, and oblige the city to notify neighbors of new installations. Neighbors would then have the opportunity to protest new antennas and force a hearing with the Department of Public Works.San Francisco may find themselves running into a new rule passed last fall by the FCC, which puts a 90-150 day shot clock on municipal tower build decisions. Of course AT&T's also impacted here; the company working hard on trying to shore up flaky wireless network performance in the Bay Area, but recently noting these efforts are well-behind NYC improvements due to additional layers of bureaucratic wrangling. Of course at the same time, nobody wants towers in their backyard, so something here has to give...
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Cox Launches 50 Mbps In Connecticut - $99 for 50/5 (55 Mbps with Powerboost)

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 10:08am MDT

Cox Communications has announced that the company is now offering faster, DOCSIS 3.0 based service to businesses and residential customers in Connecticut. That of course includes the company's fastest Ultimate Internet tier, which offers 50 Mbps downstream (55 Mbps when Powerboost kicks in) and 5 Mbps upstream for $99 a month. According to the Cox press release, the tier comes with three unique IP addresses, 10 e-mail addresses, and 50 hours per month of remote dial access (that last one being something you'll enjoy for less than a month, since Cox is killing off backup dial-up starting in September).
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Charter Cures Cable Theft With $50,000 In HUD Money - Service will be kept on at heavily vandalized apartment complex

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 7:58am MDT

Last year we noted how Charter was threatening to stop offering TV, broadband and cable service to an apartment complex in Michigan, because local vandals kept destroying hardware and coax runs and/or stealing service. Charter of course didn't want to pony up the cash to upgrade the apartment, if thieves and vandals were going to be a mainstay. Many locals, meanwhile, didn't think it was fair to lose service because of the actions of a select group of residents.

The majority of the residents are elderly and on fixed incomes, and the apartments are subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development -- legally restricting Charter from including service charges in monthly rent (one proposal of several).

For those who found the original story interesting, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports Charter and the apartment owners have come to an understanding; namely to use $50,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on the upgrades Charter didn't want to pay for:Lisa Willcutt, property supervisor, said her company received special permission from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to use more than $50,000 from the project s replacement reserves to pay for changes management hopes will stop the pirating and malicious damage. . . According to Willcutt, cable wires now visible on the outside of Interfaith s buildings will be enclosed and access boxes on the buildings will be boosted to 12 feet above ground to make it more difficult to illegally access the cable signal and easier to spot pirating.Charter's still threatening to stop serving the complex if the company detects "more than 20 instances of illegal cable connections or must repair three or more vandalism incidents totaling $500 in a one-year period."
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Cable, TelcoTV Operators Eye Tablet Video - Verizon, Cablevision, Comcast all have projects underway

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 7:30am MDT

We've already noted that Verizon is working with Motorola on an Android-based tablet that will be integrated with FiOSTV content and services. Time Warner Cable this week also indicated the company was working on a video streaming application for the iPad, something Comcast and Cablevision are also investigating. This is of course part of a broader satellite, telcoTV and cable industry effort to extend their TV Anywhere paywalled functionality to tablet computers, and of course the effort's success will be dictated by ease of use -- and navigating broadcaster licensing restrictions. You'll of course note that while most of these companies are focusing on iOS, Verizon's hitched their wagon to Android.
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FCC Quiet On Verizon/Google As Review Continues - Though insiders suggest they do want rules to cover wireless

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 7:12am MDT

Aside from a somewhat vague statement from Commissioner Copps (pdf), the FCC has been quiet this week about the network neutrality kerfuffle caused by Verizon and Google. One anonymous White House aide tells a Time Magazine blogger that they're staying quiet because their review is ongoing. Another anonymous White House insider tells the blog that the government does want whatever final rules are made to cover both managed services and wireless -- something Verizon, Google and AT&T have been opposed to during those closed-door negotiations; recently scuttled thanks in part to Verizon and Google's late-night cuddle sessions.

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Project Vigilant: 'One Nearly Homeless Guy Talking Big?' - Sound and fury, signifying nothing...

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 6:54am MDT

Earlier this month your might remember a ruckus about "Project Vigilant," a group that claimed to be buying data from ISPs in order to act as outsourced data analysts for Uncle Sam. Except nobody in the security industry had heard of them and on first look, the group came across as a bunch of crackpots. Techdirt directs our attention to a piece over at CNET by Declan McCullaugh that notes the group is really little more than one guy, with virtually no budget, who likes to make a lot of very large claims, virtually none of which can be supported. As an aside, it's interesting to see the shift in news coverage of the group in just over a week, as reporters realized the group was about 90% hyperbole (see Salon article one and Salon article two).
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Frday Morning Links -

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 5:49am MDT

Cox Fires Up DOCSIS 3.0 In Connecticut multichannel.com
Global mobile data traffic tripled in last year - Ericsson totaltele.com
T-Mobile Tops US Wireless Retailer Customer Care Survey cellular-news.com
If Verizon and Google Win, We Lose pcworld.com
Most Dangerous Trojan Virus Ever Steals Over $1 Million digitaltrends.com
French court effectively rules that gov can order ISP's to censor Internet techdirt.com
Wireless To FCC: Don't Tread On Us multichannel.com
NCTA to FCC: Adopt a sort of Hippocratic oath for broadband broadcastingcable.com
Persistent Wireless Broadband Communications Network for the Battlefield defencetalk.com
Oracle sues Google over Java in Android theregister.co.uk
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: August 13th, 2010, 5:49am MDT

Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 5:36pm MDT

Is there a "caring about broadband" divide in the US? arstechnica.com
Net neutrality protest planned at Google on Friday cnet.com
High-Fiber Subs Are Happiest With Broadband, TV: Survey multichannel.com
Smartphone sales up 50% theregister.co.uk
Leap's MVNO deal with Sprint makes MetroPCS merger unlikely fiercewireless.com
Sprint's 4G chief stands behind WiMAX despite LTE rumblings fiercewireless.com
4G: It s All Semantics goinglte.com
Verizon certification program OKs home routers resistant to hacking cedmagazine.com
Long-Rumored 'Verizon iPhone' Gets a Name: N92 pcworld.com
Proposed SF ordinance would place new restrictions on cell phone antennas cnet.com
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Here Comes Sprint's Second WiMax Phone: The Samsung Epic - August 31 for $250 with 2-year contract and $100 rebate

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 4:41pm MDT

After launching the HTC EVO to largely positive reviews back in June, Sprint is now gearing up to launch their second Mobile WiMax smartphone. The Samsung Epic 4G will be available starting August 31 for $250 -- after a $100 rebate and only if you sign a two-year contract with Sprint. The device mirrors the Samsung Galaxy S family of devices, but is the only one to support Mobile WiMax and have a slide-out keyboard. The Epic comes with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, 1GHz Samsung Cortex A8 processor, Android 2.1 (no Froyo, yet), free 3G/4G hotspot functionality, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash capable of 720p video.
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Google Lawyer Again Insists They Didn't Sell Out On Neutrality - Though this same lawyer in 2007 would probably disagree

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 1:40pm MDT

Google continues to work on damage control over their deal arrangement telecom policy lambada with Verizon. The company took to their policy blog today to insist the company didn't "sell out" on network neutrality, but instead is just working "tirelessly for an open Internet" (in ways an ocean of critics just can't see). The post, by Google lawyer Richard Whitt, essentially argues that due to "political realities," their solution is better than the neutrality protections currently on the books (namely, none):

the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from.

-Google Attorney Richard Whitt, in 2010

But given political realities, this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. . .With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together. We re not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all.Of course there's a third option: a neutrality foundation built by tough regulators based on the input of all parties (including small businesses and consumers), and not just two of the wealthiest corporations in the debate. Whitt glosses over the fact their proposal creates a toothless FCC that will be subjugated by industry-created self-regulatory showmanship, insists the wireless sector (dominated by AT&T and Verizon) is actually very competitive, and then proclaims their joint proposal has nothing to do with Android:

...such competition, while beneficial to consumers, appropriately should be seen as relatively shallow in nature.

-Google Attorney Richard Whitt, in 2007

This is a policy proposal not a business deal. Of course, Google has a close business relationship with Verizon, but ultimately this proposal has nothing to do with Android. Folks certainly should not be surprised by the announcement of this proposal, given our prior public policy work with Verizon on network neutrality, going back to our October 2009 blog post, our January 2010 joint FCC filing, and our April 2010 op-ed.You'll note Whitt conveniently doesn't want to go back to 2007, where you'd actually start to notice the stark contrast between a company focused on innovation, and one focused on turf protection. Take a look at documents written by Whitt in 2007, back when Google was trying to break into the wireless ad business. You'll see a remarkably different tone, with Whitt not even approving of wireless or wireline QoS prioritization, while repeatedly noting a lack of competition in the wireless sector and the myriad of possible threats entrenched, uncompetitive carriers pose consumers:...Wireless providers block many common Internet applications and services outright, frequently do not allow network attachment of any device but their own, and reserve the right to terminate service arbitrarily for using other services that do not conform to a short and vaguely-defined list...Where the broadband incumbents do compete against each other in the market, they do so primarily based on qualities such as price and speed. Within the larger context of market dynamics, such competition, while beneficial to consumers, appropriately should be seen as relatively shallow in nature.Aside from some pressure from upstart prepaid carriers (whose subscriber totals are still relatively laughable), the wireless sector hasn't magically become so competitive and open that Whitt's fears in 2007 no longer apply. Clearwire's partial network build adds a little competition, but recall Verizon removed the semi-disruptive Alltel from the market. The wireless sector remains a market absolutely dominated by AT&T and Verizon, who are still consistently crippling handsets and blocking applications they don't like in the hopes of retaining control.

So what changed? Google did. In 2007, Android wasn't a major mobile OS, and Google didn't have multi-billion-dollar wireless advertising relationships with Verizon and AT&T. You'll also recall that Google had hopes of bypassing the carrier retail experience completely -- hopes that flamed out rather spectacularly with the death of the Nexus One and their online phone store. The policy shift is clear and indisputable, as is the motivation: Google doesn't want consumer protections (be they privacy, or network neutrality) to impact wireless ad revenues.

Even industry "consultant" Scott Cleland, paid by AT&T and Verizon in the past to attack Google (he apparently didn't get the memo that Verizon and Google are now BFFs), acknowledges Google's new perspective is about mobile ads. The continued pretense that Google's shift has nothing to do with protecting their new multi-billion-dollar wireless ad empire from tough consumer protections is aggressively insulting. While we wait for Google to admit the obvious, the Richard Whitt from 2010 might benefit from a conversation with the Richard Whitt from 2007.
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59% Don't Know What Fiber To The Home Is - Fiber users most satisfied, says group that sells fiber

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 10:58am MDT

According to a new survey from the Fiber To The Home Council (which is comprised of largely fiber hardware vendors and carriers), 71% of FTTH subscribers say they are "very satisfied" with their Internet service, compared with 53 percent for cable broadband and 52% for DSL. The survey, conducted by RVA LLC, polled 1,000 FTTH subscribers and 600 other broadband subscribers from a pool of 50,000 randomly selected consumers.

Most interesting perhaps is the fact that the FTTH council found that just 41% of broadband subscribers actually know what the term "fiber to the home" even means, compared to 28% one year ago. You might recall the FCC recently found (pdf) that 80% of broadband customers don't even know what connection speed they have, despite it being clearly advertised at sale. The survey also found that FTTH is usually faster (shocking) than DSL or cable:The survey, which also asked respondents to measure and report the speed of their Internet connectivity via www.speakeasy.net, found that average FTTH download and upload speeds continue to stay well ahead of cable and DSL. Based on these reports, FTTH currently has a median download speed of 16.6 Mbps and an upload speed of 4.5 Mbps, an increase of 219 percent for download and 350 percent for upload speeds over the three years RVA has conducted this survey.The group says FTTH is now available to more than 16% of North American homes, with six million homes actually connected. 3.8 million of that total are Verizon FiOS customers.
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Apple TV Will Be iTV - $99 broadband TV unit to top out at 720p?

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 7:55am MDT

Last May leaks emerged that Apple was starting to get serious about their next incarnation of Apple TV -- which is expected to be a much smaller, simpler broadband-connected device that will cost somewhere around a hundred bucks. Subsequent leaks indicated that the service will be co-launched with a rental service providing TV shows for 99 cents -- down from the $1.99 Apple charges now for standard-definition programs -- and the $2.99 it charges for high-definition programs. Now Engadget has a little more detail, and says the unit won't be capable of anything higher than 720p. Oh, and Apple's also going to change the name of the unit (which will of course be tied tightly to iTunes and have an app store) from Apple TV to iTV.
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AT&T: Verizon, Google Deal 'Positive Sign' - AT&T playing assigned role as casual observer

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 7:43am MDT

Part of the reason Verizon has been so reluctant to call their collaboration with Google a "deal" or "arrangement" (scolding news outlets who do so like bad puppies) is because they don't want the deal romance seen as just two major corporations trying to use their size and influence to craft regulatory policy with little to no real substantive consumer protections (even if that's precisely what it is).

AT&T, who frequently works in perfect symmetry with Verizon on lobbying tactics and manages an almost endless list of telco lobbying operations with Verizon, has remained uncharacteristically quiet so far for exactly the same reason. Still, AT&T figured it probably wasn't believable to remain dead silent, so yesterday AT&T exec Ralph de la Vega casually complimented the deal, calling it a "positive sign":"It's a positive sign that shows that those two companies can agree on something as different as net neutrality," Ralph de la Vega, head of AT&T's consumer and mobile divisions, told analysts during an investor conference on Wednesday. He called it the right step forward in coming up with a reasonable agreement. . . De la Vega, meanwhile, said he hopes the industry can use the proposed framework to come up with a reasonable agreement.Given AT&T's history of working with Verizon in lock-step with nearly all lobbying issues (and their mutual interest in gutting the FCC, preventing Title II reclassification and keeping neutrality away from wireless and AT&T's crippled Android phones), it's impossible to believe AT&T didn't have at least some role in the agreement legislative lambada. AT&T's playing restrained observer to ensure the deal love affair appears to be about a bridging of discordant minds -- and not about a bunch of the wealthiest corporations trying to dictate telecom policy (aka, business as usual).

Below the surface, you can expect Verizon and AT&T to begin using their army of think tanks, hired PR consultants, policy flacks and lobbyists to start pounding a unified message over the next several weeks. Namely, the message that this largely-empty framework aimed at preventing ISP Title 2 reclassification and protecting wireless revenues is a great boon to consumers and lovers of balanced compromise everywhere, and anyone who thinks otherwise is the very worst sort of unreasonable and radical contrarian.
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Cox TiVO Users To Get Access To Cox VOD - Though those TiVO-embedded Cox DVRs still a no show

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 7:00am MDT

Back in 2008, Cox announced they'd be offering cable TV subscribers TiVo-based Cox DVRs, though like a similar announcement by Comcast -- the offering never quite fully materialized. Meanwhile, the cable industry has found itself at odds with TiVO over their use of switched digital video, which saves bandwidth across the cable network by storing unwatched channels at the edge router, but requires that users add an external adapter to their box. On the plus side, Cox has announced that TiVo Premiere DVR users will now be able to access Cox VOD with their units, something previously not possible:the two companies will offer TiVo Premiere with integrated Cox On DEMAND service to Cox subscribers. This represents the first time that a cable operator will make its entire video on demand (VOD) library available via a retail DVR and TiVo Premiere will become the first retail product to fully integrate a cable VOD service, along with linear television and broadband content accessible through TiVo's user interface and intuitive search capabilities.Access won't be enabled until "early 2011" according to Cox, which made no mention of that 2008 announcement to offer TiVO-driven Cox DVRs directly to consumers.
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Broadband Adoption Slows - While 26% say gov't shouldn't worry about expanding cheap broadband

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 6:49am MDT

A new Pew Internet And Life Study indicates that broadband adoption continues to slow. According to the study, roughly 66% of U.S. citizens currently use a high-speed internet connection at home -- up from 63% just one year earlier. Pew also asked survey participants if they though that expanding affordable high-speed internet access to everyone in the country should be a top priority for the federal government. 26% of respondents said government shouldn't get involved, 27% said it was "not too important" a priority, 30% said it was an important priority, and 11% said it should be a top priority.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: August 12th, 2010, 5:14am MDT

3G data networks being saved by WiFi fiercewireless.com
The Mobile TV survey says ... wireline wins big fiercetelecom.com
Broadband more important than clean clothes for Brits thinkbroadband.com
Australian planned broadband network boosted to 1Gb/s pcr-online.biz
Cox, TiVo Strike a DVR Deal lightreading.com
How Starbucks Plans to Capitalize on Free Wi-Fi mashable.com
Another Embarassment For French 'Three Strikes' Agency... As Someone Beats Them To Filing For Trademark techdirt.com
Facebook fixes bug that spilled names and pics for all 500 million users theregister.co.uk
Sony Ericsson to introduce Android 3.0 gaming platform and PSP Go-like smartphone engadget.com
Aussie Communications Minister Stephen Conroy now stands alone on Internet filtering theregister.co.uk

Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 5:12pm MDT

Broadband Should Not Be a Government Priority: Pew Internet Study wired.com
AT&T, Level 3 agree Verizon-Google proposal a positive step totaltele.com
Don't Tax the Internet pcmag.com
UK ISP Backlash Feared After Government Scraps Fibre Broadband Tax Review ispreview.co.uk
VeriSign goes back to roots with DNS management service v3.co.uk
Music Festival Producer Pre-Sues Bootleggers techdirt.com
Viacom Formally Appeals YouTube Decision multichannel.com
EU regulators team with FTC for Apple antitrust probe fiercemobilecontent.com
Free Android antivirus clocks up 2.5m downloads theregister.co.uk
iOS 4.0.2 released, fixes jailbreak vulnerability neowin.net
Amazon, looking beyond Kindle, considers making phones fiercewireless.com
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Opelika, Alabama Decides To Give Charter Fiber Competition - 62% of locals vote to get into the broadband business...

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 3:35pm MDT

Despite best efforts by Charter Communications (including telling locals earlier this week that a coax network is more reliable than fiber to the home), 62 percent of Opelika, Alabama residents have voted to build a fiber to the home network.The $33 million fiber network will be funded with revenue bonds, using a core fiber ring from the local power utility as its heart -- with some services and support layered on top by local competitor Knology. Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller called out Charter when announcing results:"It s a great day for Opelika. It s a great day for our future. It s a terrible day for Charter," Fuller said. "We all worked very hard on this," Fuller said. We heard the cry of our citizens about competition for Charter and know the importance of this to economic development that this fiber and high speed Internet will provide as well as the value of improving our existing smart grid system." "We still don t have any plans to control anybody s coffee pot," joked FullerOf course if history is anything to go by, this is usually the part where the local incumbent, after being semi-responsible for the community effort due to neglected upgrades and poor service, engages in an expensive campaign to bog down the community fiber build via a series of endless lawsuits. Then when the project struggles, the incumbent usually uses said failure as "proof" that all community broadband efforts end in failure.
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Frontier Quietly Decides 5 GB Is No Longer 'Excessive' - Changes back TOS to vague, industry standard

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 2:55pm MDT

Back in 2008 Frontier Communications was seriously considering applying a 5GB a month cap to all of their DSL tiers, their TOS declaring that any monthly usage beyond 5 GB was "excessive." The company backed off the plans when Time Warner Cable began their now-defunct capping plans, Frontier using the opportunity to try and win over Time Warner Cable customers using ads like this one that picked on cable industry greed.

Once the Time Warner Cable kerfuffle quieted down, Frontier quietly returned to their cap and meter ambitions, imposing some particularly ridiculous caps on users in Minnesota in a trial that involves users paying up to $250 a month for last-generation 3-6 Mbps DSL. Still, at least it appears that Frontier has removed all references to 5 GB being excessive from their acceptable use policy, for whatever that's worth:The 5GB usage allowance was deemed generous by Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter. Frontier claimed most of its 559,300 broadband subscribers (2008 numbers) consumed less than 1.5 gigabytes per month. But news of the cap angered customers anyway, particularly in their biggest service area Rochester, N.Y. In fact, Frontier s usage cap was what sparked the launch of Stop the Cap! in the summer of 2008. While never universally enforced against the company s DSL customers, Frontier has used that portion of its acceptable use policy to demand up to $250 a month from some "heavy users" in Mound, Minn.The company's website still refers to the never-quite-implemented 5 GB cap, still telling users that Frontier graciously offers user 5GB of usage on their basic residential tiers, providing users with the luxury of being able to send 500,000 "basic text e-mails." Providers who cap usually measure their caps in e-mails as a way to make the caps seem more generous (hint: it doesn't work). It's still very clear Frontier wants to head down this path, and it's still very clear consumers (especially those just acquired from Verizon) don't.
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Broadband Stimulus Funds Trimmed By $302 Million - As part of bill aimed at saving teachers' jobs

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 12:47pm MDT

Back in July, we noted how just as the Obama camp was busy announcing $795 million in broadband expansion grants, efforts were underway to re-distribute $600+ million of that funding to pay for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The law in question, HR 4899, passed without those broadband cuts -- but a new bill has passed that will wind up trimming broadband stimulus funding by about $302 million. HR 1586 is a $26-billion state aid package aimed (in part) at helping prevent layoffs among state educators and other employees. The White House insists the law saved 160,000 jobs, though it made cuts to a number of programs to do so -- including "the Departments of Defense and Agriculture, the Park Service, and ironically, the Department of Education."
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Verizon: Consumers Will 'Pay A Premium' For LTE - With new network, will come Verizon's new pricing

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 10:46am MDT

The latest rumors indicate that Verizon will begin launching their LTE network on November 15, and will deploy the service in up to thirty markets by the end of this year -- including New York, LA, Chicago, and Philadelphia. While speeds will be around 5-12 Mbps downstream and 2-5 Mbps upstream, there's still no word on pricing, though Verizon CFO John Killian this week proclaimed consumers will "pay for quality and premium service and premium speed." For those playing along at home, this is literally about the five-hundredth hint that Verizon's pricier cap and overage (aka "tiered") ambitions -- which some rumors falsely suggested were supposed to land last month for 3G -- will arrive hand-in-hand with Verizon's faster network.
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Clearwire's Back Office Billing Kerfuffle - $100 million and all they got was this lousy Amdocs T-Shirt

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 7:47am MDT

Clearwire's busily getting their national Mobile WiMax network built -- though now in addition to the looming, costly possibility of having to embrace LTE, they're apparently struggling to get a new billing system in place. Fierce Wireless directs our attention to the fact that Clearwire has dumped $100 million during the past year and a half into an Amdocs billing platform that has "encountered unanticipated delays resulting primarily from the discovery of defects in the new Amdocs software code." As such, implementation of the upgrade could be pushed into next year, creating "additional, unplanned costs" for a company that can't really afford it.
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AT&T Again Downplays Loss Of The iPhone - Expects 'No Material Negative Impact' On Company. Thanks, $325 ETF!

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 7:25am MDT

With Verizon iPhone rumors never ending, AT&T is again saying they expect to see little to no impact when their iPhone exclusive ends. You'll recall that last year (right in the middle of a massive wave of complaints about the quality of their network), AT&T's CEO insisted that network quality (not ETFs or long-term contracts) would wind up keeping iPhone users around.

Now AT&T's again addressing the possible end of their rocky love affair with Apple, telling the SEC they don't expect the iPhone's departure to have a "material negative impact" thanks to people on family or business plans (who either can't leave and/or are too lazy too) and AT&T's beefed up selection of phones:Explaining the lack of impact on its business, AT&T said more than 80% of its contract customers are on family or business plans that are less likely to see turnover. The company also said it now carries a range of smartphones, reducing its dependence on any particular one, and said new devices continue to roll out in the fast-changing industry.Of course there's also the fact that AT&T just locked down millions of iPhone 4 users in new long-term contracts, right after jacking their ETF up to $325. Things get substantially more interesting for AT&T when/if an LTE iPhone comes to market, given Verizon's faster deployment of the technology (Verizon expects 30 markets launched by year's end, and their entire footprint to be upgraded by the end of 2014).
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ISP Fighting National Security Letters Ungagged - 6 year gag order finally lifted...

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 7:01am MDT

We've covered for several years the growing use (or in a significant number of proven cases, the abuse) of National Security Letters. NSLs allow the government to obtain records from broadband ISPs, then involve a gag order against the ISP with no judicial review. That's of course fairly open to abuse, given the FBI could obtain any records they want, nobody could talk about it, and nobody could review it. As such, a government investigation found 60% of FBI s NSLs failed to conform to Justice Department rules, and another 22% involved improper requests or unauthorized information collection.

One ISP has been fighting these letters for six years, but was under gag order that entire time. Techdirt directs our attention to the fact that Nicholas Merrill of Calyx Internet Access is now acknowledging his battle openly for the first time. For six years Merrill couldn't even so-much as talk about the fight with his fiancee or anyone else, until U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in New York released him from the gag order July 30. Says Merrill:"After six long years of not being able to tell anyone at all what happened to me not even my family I m grateful to finally be able to talk about my experience of being served with a national security letter," Merrill said in a statement. "Internet users do not give up their privacy rights when they log on, and the FBI should not have the power to secretly demand that ISPs turn over constitutionally protected information about their users without a court order. I hope my successful challenge to the FBI's NSL gag power will empower others who may have received NSLs to speak out."As the Wired report notes, Merrill was particularly annoyed when the FBI stated he couldn't even talk to his own Attorney about the request, which was later dropped while the gag order remained.
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If We Had Competition, We Might Not Need Neutrality Rules - Though at this rate it looks like we may not be getting either...

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 6:41am MDT

Opinions of the Google/Verizon proposal for network neutrality continue to flood in, with the vast majority of thoughts on the proposal being negative. While there are small bits that some like (the EFF for instance likes the idea of limiting FCC authority), most criticisms of the plan (see Wired's, for instance) correctly note the plan is riddled with loopholes and is designed to protect Google's Android ad empire. Of course there's also been a fair share of those who just think network neutrality itself is a bunch of silly hysteria, like Yale Professor David Gelernter, who writes in the NY Times that this is all a case of "net irrationality":Maybe a company should be allowed to do what it likes on its own, but an Internet service provider (say Verizon) that deals with many Internet companies should treat them all equally. Why? If Verizon users don t like Verizon s service, they ll switch to a different I.S.P. This is called competition. It isn t a panacea and almost never works perfectly. In fact it is (like democracy) the worst possible system, except for all the others.Except as the very first commenter to Gelernter's piece points out, the vast majority of customers have the choice of one or two carriers, something you'd think a Yale Professor would notice. If Verizon engages in bad behavior, millions of their customers have absolutely no way to vote with their wallets. That's of course something the FCC could have chosen to address with our national broadband plan -- but didn't.

Neutrality protections very well might not be necessary in a picture-book U.S. broadband market where consumers had the choice of multiple, varied providers -- but that simply isn't the case. The market is dominated by duopoly and monopoly carriers who by their nature in uncompetitive markets -- will try to get away with as much as napping regulators allow. They'll get away with substantially more if they're the ones dictating the "consumer protections" governing their sectors.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 11th, 2010, 6:40am MDT

EFF slams Google and Verizon's wireless net neutrality proposals mobile-ent.biz
UK, France, Indonesia among cheapest for mobile broadband, says ABI Research cbronline.com
Sky wants Skype to change its name theinquirer.net
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan engadget.com
Don't discount WiMAX--at least not yet fiercewireless.com
Charter claims it can one-up Opelika, Ala.'s fiber network fiercetelecom.com
ISP Owner Finally Able To Admit That He Stood Up To The FBI Over Questionable Data Request techdirt.com
Coffee shops are taking Wi-Fi off the menu mcall.com
Sprint to buy Wirefree's spectrum for $105M fiercewireless.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 5:50pm MDT

U.S. mobile data service revenues top $13.2 billion in Q2 fiercemobilecontent.com
AT&T 3G MicroCell Gadget: iPhone Call Booster Falls Flat cio.com
Food stamps for broadband would bring slow 'Net to the poor arstechnica.com
DOCSIS faces cable challenge rapidtvnews.com
Sen. Ted "Tubes" Stevens, grandfather of net neutrality, dies in plane crash as Internet debate reemerges latimes.com
T-Mobile's HSPA+ Rivals Clearwire, US LTE Speeds lightreading.com
Sam s Club Is Filling Warehouse Stores With Free Wi-Fi gigaom.com
Malware is at record levels theinquirer.net
Microsoft issues patches for a record 35 fresh security holes usatoday.com
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AT&T: Verizon's FiOS Slowdown Justifies Our U-Verse Plan - 'Investment strategy and the network strategy was the right one.'

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 4:22pm MDT

As we noted last month, AT&T has finally gotten around to deploying bonded VDSL, which enlists a second copper pair to each house to increase U-Verse's maximum delivery range another 1-2,000 feet from the VRAD. AT&T's VP of U-verse and video products, Jeff Weber, talks to Fierce IPTV about U-Verse, which he insists is "a state of the art product" at one-fourth the cost of running last mile fiber. Weber also claims that Verizon's decision to stop deploying FiOS into new markets validates AT&T's decision to stick with last-mile copper:We have a different footprint, so I wouldn't say opportunity in the sense of real significant head-to-head video competition, but I do think it's a crystal clear validation that the strategy we took, the architecture and investment at a fundamentally, order of magnitude different level of cost to go do this, was the right one, as opposed to the really expensive, slower way of going at this. So, we don't compete in wireline footprint head-to-head, but it is a validation that the investment strategy and the network strategy was the right one.Of course a major difference is that with last-mile fiber already deployed to half their markets, Verizon's in a position to offer 50 Mbps (and soon 100 Mbps) service to customers in markets where cable operators are offering 50 Mbps or faster service. Verizon's also not having to juggle compression and bandwidth to manage their TV ambitions, and they're in a position with GPON upgrades and a shift to IPTV to compete for the next decade.

In contrast, AT&T's top data tier sits at 24 Mbps and remains distance-constrained, the company is consistently battling bandwidth limitations and consumer expectations, and AT&T's eventually going to have to upgrade that last-mile anyway. It's also worth noting that AT&T slowed U-Verse expansion as well -- the company hoping to pass 30 million homes by end of 2011, a goal they originally claimed they'd pass a year or two ago.

It's really not clear how Verizon's decision to stop FiOS expansion justifies U-Verse in any way. Verizon slowed FiOS because they wanted to up penetration in deployed markets, but also because they saw the potential to net taxpayer money through stimulus funding and USF "reform." In the end, Verizon's already done the heavy lifting AT&T simply managed to defer for another day.
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Average Wireless User Eats 230MB Per Month - U.S. wireless users double data consumption in six months

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 3:04pm MDT

According to a new report from analyst Chetan Sharma, the average phone user is now consuming 230 MB of data per month, a surge that is already profitable. Even with most carriers sticking to unlimited plans (for now), Sharma notes that mobile data revenue increased 6% from the first quarter, and 22% since this time last year. Says Sharma:By 1H 2010, the average US consumer was consuming approximately 230 MB/mo up 50% in 6 months. US has become ground zero for mobile broadband consumption and data traffic management evolution.

While it lags Japan and Korea in 3G penetration by a distance, due to higher penetration of smartphones and datacards, the consumption is much higher than its Asian counterparts. Given that it is also becoming the largest deployment base for HSPA+ and LTE, most of the cutting edge research in areas of data management and experimentation with policy, regulations, strategy, and business models is taking place in the networks of the US operators and keenly watched by players across the global ecosystem.AT&T and Verizon alone accounted for 75% of the second quarter's revenue growth, 70% of all U.S. mobile data revenues, and 62% of all total subscribers nationwide. 31% of wireless subscribers now use smartphones.
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Comcast Portal Hacker Gets Four Months In Prison - For 2008 hack that knocked portal, webmail offline

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 1:05pm MDT

Back in May of 2008 you might recall that several hackers took control of Comcast's registrar account at Network Solutions. The hackers changed the authoritative DNS servers for Comcast.net -- rerouting portal visitors to IP addresses in Germany or elsewhere -- effectively taking the nation's largest ISP (or at least their portal and webmail) offline for a time. The very next day, the hackers went so far as to brag about the hack, saying they were motivated, in part, by Comcast's "shitty service." The Seattle Post Intelligencer explores the hack in more detail in an article that notes one of the hackers involved was sentenced to four months in prison this week.
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Motorola/Verizon Droid 2 On Sale Tomorrow - Droid 2: The revenge of the intentionally crippled Froyo functionality

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 10:54am MDT

Verizon recently pushed the new Froyo Android OS update to the Motorola Droid, but they intentionally gutted 3G hotspot functionality -- falsely claiming to the press at the time that the handset hardware wasn't capable of either tethering or 3G hotspot functionality. Whatever the motivation for making Froyo less useful, Verizon has officially announced that the Droid 2 goes on sale tomorrow online at the Verizon Wireless website.

The phone features a 3.7" display, 5 megapixel camera, and 8GB of internal storage. Droid 2 of course ships with Android 2.2, and according to the press release comes with that missing Droid hotspot functionality, though you'll have to pay an additional $20 on top of your existing phone, SMS/MMS and data plan to get it:Customers can enjoy the freedom of wireless with the 3G Mobile HotSpot and the ability to connect up to five compatible Wi-Fi devices, and watch content on the full multi-touch 3.7-inch brilliant display, or share content captured on the 5-megapixel camera with enhanced functionality and DVD-quality video capture with DLNA connectivity to share on compatible devices.The companies are also confirming that there's going to be a limited-edition R2-D2 version of the phone that ships in September. Verizon's also allowing any customer with a contract ending by December 31, 2010 to upgrade now at the subsidized price point without paying an ETF. The device clocks in at the now-standard $200 price tag-- assuming you sign a new two-year contract with Verizon.
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Verizoogle Pretending Pact Isn't About Protecting Android - Justifications for no wireless neutrality still don't add up...

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 8:08am MDT

As we discussed in great detail yesterday, Google and Verizon have unveiled what they are claiming is a consumer-friendly framework for network neutrality rules. Except Google and Verizon's "solution" is a hollow, self-regulatory gesture that would result in a gutted FCC, giant loopholes, and largely-meaningless rules that wouldn't extend to wireless. The two companies today followed up yesterday's PR presentation with a joint sales pitch via the Washington Post, in which they claim only two principles guided their secret negotiations:In developing this framework, we were guided by two principles: our commitment to an open Internet, and the need for continued investment in broadband infrastructure, which is critical to U.S. global competitiveness.Again, you'll note that "protecting our multi-billion-dollar Android partnership" is nowhere in there, and as we noted yesterday -- there's an immense arrogance in assuming the public can't do the simple math on why neither company wants neutrality applied to wireless networks. Yesterday the companies vaguely argued wireless service has "unique technical and operational characteristics." Today their vague justification has slightly more heft:With respect to wireless broadband networks, we agree that the rapidly evolving wireless Internet is a different kind of network, with unique technical and operational challenges, demanding different consideration than wireline networks. Notably, the 4G network that Verizon also is building on the recently auctioned 700 megahertz spectrum is already subject to open Internet rules.Except as we mentioned back in 2007, those conditions the companies refer to are so filled with loopholes, they too are all but meaningless. And therein lies the rub. If you're willing to allow Verizon to dictate policy, your final policy is going to be riddled with massive loopholes -- it's what Verizon lawyers do. Any expectation that policy proposals authored by Verizon will have any meaningful tough consumer protections is immensely naive, and ignores decades of Verizon (and NYNEX, and Bell Atlantic) political and lobbying tactics.
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Verizoogle Pretends Pact Isn't About Protecting Android - Justifications for no wireless neutrality still don't add up...

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 8:08am MDT

AT&T & Verizon's Worst DSL Quarter Ever - As Wall Street Declares Cable The Winner (For Now)

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 6:59am MDT

As we noted last week, AT&T lost a whopping 347,000 DSL customers last quarter, and only partially made up that lost ground with 209,000 U-Verse additions. Verizon fared slightly better given they've upgraded their network (and shed legacy markets) more aggressively, losing 168,000 DSL users, but adding 196,000 FiOS customers&#46 It was the worst DSL quarter ever for AT&T and Verizon, and long-time sector analyst Dave Burstein thinks Verizon and DSL price hikes are a major reason:With DSL winning in most of the world, it's not clear cable has a definitive advantage.I can explain the current dismal telco results as primarily the price increases they have been pushing through. AT&T charges $160 for the typical U-Verse triple play and Verizon recently hiked prices. 10-50 megabit cable has a huge advantage over 2 or 5 megabit DSL, but the majority of AT&T is now 10-15 meg U-Verse and the majority of Verizon 50-200 meg FiOS (sic). Cablevision most quarters beats Verizon FiOS, a better system, so the telco problems are not just the technology.Except the technology is playing a massive role. Many of these last-gen markets simply can't keep up with faster cable speeds and the lure of the triple play. As such, you have to think back at how Wall Street stock analysts like Craig Moffett were fighting tooth and nail against the phone companies upgrading their networks. The result now is cable companies kicking the telcos around in these legacy areas, while these massive financial firms cash in on their cable stock predictions (Time Warner Cable is up 40% this year alone).

That said, the telcos are already making moves to try and counter their losses in the race against cable. As we recently noted, AT&T has again dropped the prices of their introductory DSL tiers. Verizon has a more blunt approach: sell off all of those DSL networks where cable is king, and ditch long-term contracts in FiOS markets. You're not seeing more significant price cuts on next-gen broadband because again, duopoly markets allow both cable and phone operators to engage in non-price competition.
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Skype Files For IPO - 560 million registered users, 124 million of which are active

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 6:56am MDT

After somewhat untangling itself from eBay's grasp last fall, Skype is now poised to go public, with an estimated $100 million IPO now in the works (their registration statement with the SEC is here, if you're interested). As of the end of June, Skype has about 560 million registered users, 124 million of which actively use the service each month, and 8.1 million of which are paying users. The company registered 88.4 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes during the first half of this year, and 6.4 billion billing minutes during that same period.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 6:47am MDT

Germany bans BlackBerrys and iPhones on snooping fears theregister.co.uk
Google, Verizon say no net neutrality for wireless rawstory.com
South Korea Police Raid Google Office Over Data Collection nytimes.com
Airspan scores LightSquared smart grid coup fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Bridging the legacy to next-gen revenue disconnect fiercetelecom.com
Up in the sky! Rural Alaskans prepare for 'zombie satellite' fiercecable.com
FCC chief wants net neutrality promise from Comcast totaltele.com
Net Neutrality: All "Socialism" Is Not Created Equal pcworld.com
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Netflix Spends Another Billion On Broadband Video - New 5 Year Licensing Pact With Epix Looms

Posted: August 10th, 2010, 6:37am MDT

While Netflix earlier this year agreed to a bigger new release delay window for physical DVDs, their primary reason was that they could expand their broadband video library. The company continues to work aggressively to expand their licenses for new broadband streaming content, spending $66 million in the second quarter of 2010 on licenses for streaming titles, compared with just $9 million one year earlier. The company this week is nearing yet another new deal, this time with start-up pay-TV channel Epix to gain access to yet more content from the major studios, including Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. According to sources, the five-year-deal would cost Netflix about a billion dollars,
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AT&T Connects U-Verse To Your iPhone - Manage your DVR, and download (some) content to your phone

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 3:47pm MDT

We've known that AT&T was cooking up closer iPhone U-Verse integration for some time, and today the company unveiled their free U-Verse Mobile application. The app allows U-Verse users to manage their U-Verse DVR remotely using the iPhone (something that's increasingly common among TV carriers), and lets users download content from "a specific library" of approved options to their iPhone. There's a few restrictions, including the fact that not all content is supported, and the download functionality only works if you sign up for AT&T's more expensive TV tiers (though everyone can manage their DVR):All U-verse TV customers can download the app to manage their DVR, and the ability to download and watch content is available for customers that subscribe to the U300 package or higher. U-verse customers can upgrade their TV packages at any time at www.att.com/u-verse. New U-verse TV customers and iPhone owners that order AT&T U-verse U300 or U450 will receive a $75 iTunes gift card.There appears to be no real reason for restricting the show download functionality to users on more expensive tiers -- outside of the fact that it nudges users toward more expensive tiers. Note that downloading video from your DVR to your iPhone only works over Wi-Fi -- which is only fair given that AT&T has prohibited other place-shifting solutions from working over their 3G network.

As for the restrictions on what content you can download, it appears to be restricted (as usual) by what licensing deals AT&T has struck, which so far covers about 52 TV shows from Disney (ABC/ESPN), Discover Communications, and PBS. The content is secured by DRM, but AT&T wouldn't get any more specific with us than to note the content is protected by "a secure proprietary DRM solution."

AT&T's offering this video featuring their outsourced PR rep Seth Bloom walking through some of the functionality for those interested.
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Permalink for 'Verizon, Google Announce Their Net Neutrality Solution - A toothless FCC overseeing weak rules, that wouldn't even apply to wireless'

Verizon, Google Announce Their Net Neutrality Solution - A toothless FCC overseeing weak rules, that wouldn't even apply to wireless

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 12:51pm MDT

Last week was a messy (though entertaining) one on the network neutrality front, with the FCC canceling their largely closed-door meetings with carriers after criticism and reports that Google and Verizon were conducting private neutrality negotiations. While there was a lot of random interpretation of what the Verizon/Google talks mean, we noted on Friday that the goal of the talks were to to pre-empt tougher consumer protections with voluntary measures that likely wouldn't do much of anything (Verizon's usual tactic in DC).

Google and Verizon spent last week engaged in damage control, Verizon insisting that their closed-door meetings with Google were about "openness," then insisting no real arrangement had been made. Google in turn denied they'd struck any paid prioritization deal and reiterated a vague commitment to an open Internet, but didn't really deny that a private deal was struck.

Today the two companies held a joint press conference to announce that yes, they had come to an arrangement. Both Google and Verizon CEOs and top lobbyists attended the call, and after calling all of last week's press coverage "erroneous," the companies directed call attendee attention to this framework, which the companies hope can be used as either the cornerstone of voluntary principles, or the basis of new law. The framework pledges to protect consumers' rights to:(1) send and receive lawful content of their choice;
(2) run lawful applications and use lawful services of their choice; and
(3) connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network or service, facilitate theft of service, or harm other users of the service.The restrictions so far seem just as nebulous as the vague FCC principles that brought us to this point. Obviously, the term "lawful" is a nod to leaving the door open for ISPs to engage in anti-piracy protections. Google meanwhile continues to insist they will not pay for prioritization of services (like YouTube) over the Verizon network. Sort of. As Google notes at their policy blog, a massive, vague door is being left open to profitable specialized relationships that extend beyond general Internet traffic (smart grid and health care services are used as examples).

Nothing said today changes the fact that this policy framework is very much focused on creating a weak, self-regulatory policy system filled with loopholes instead of real neutrality consumer protections. While the framework notes that Verizon and Google's plan would give the FCC the power to fine companies up to $2 million for offenses, it then goes to great length to argue that the FCC should have no substantive power of any kind over broadband ISPs, with offenses instead overseen by what will ultimately be the industry itself:The FCC would enforce the consumer protection and nondiscrimination requirements through case-by-case adjudication, but would have no rule making authority with respect to those provisions. Parties would be encouraged to use non- governmental dispute resolution processes established by independent, widely recognized Internet community governance initiatives, and the FCC would be directed to give appropriate deference to decisions or advisory opinions of such groups.

Parties would be encouraged to use non- governmental dispute resolution processes established by independent, widely recognized Internet community governance initiatives, and the FCC would be directed to give appropriate deference to decisions or advisory opinions of such groups.

-Verizon and Google's neutrality framework

In other words, the FCC would act as a show pony, whose authority in issues of enforcement would be superseded by groups created and run by the telecom industry. If you're new to telecom, "independent, widely recognized Internet community governance initiatives" is code for faux-regulatory agencies created by AT&T, Verizon and their massive lobbyist coalitions of hijacked political groups, paid policy mouthpieces and fake consumer advocates.

Meanwhile, both CEOs seemed combative with the press, several times all-but-stating that last week's reports were largely fabricated -- despite the fact that the majority of the information leaked appears to be true. Both companies also for some reason felt it necessary to repeatedly insist that this was not a "business arrangement," despite the fact this is very clearly a business arrangement aimed at protecting the -- wait for it -- Google Android Verizon business arrangement.

How? Because as the "erroneous" press correctly noted last week, none of these proposed rules would apply to wireless services due to "unique technical and operational characteristics." This comes as Verizon prepares to launch faster LTE wireless broadband services that will finally begin to put wireless in the role of competing with terrestrial broadband (Verizon's goal in rural markets). Stop here and think carefully about who might have leaked the details of this upcoming arrangement, why, and why exactly Verizon is so very upset about how the media interpreted that information.

The devil will be in the details (something Verizon lawyers excel at), so this framework could get even worse -- assuming it's even used. Still, there's a certain arrogance here that's notable as news. The idea that Google and Verizon think nobody will notice they've proposed a network neutrality solution that excludes wireless while nuzzling their multi-billion-dollar Android partnership seems almost obnoxiously cocky. Arrogance is par for the course for Verizon, but assuming your audience is comprised of complete morons seems like new territory for Google.

It seems like common sense that telecom regulators, not the sector's wealthiest players, should be dictating the beat of this particular policy drum. The fact that this isn't the case speaks to the FCC's murky leadership over the past year. The framework used to create any Internet policy rules shouldn't be a game of policy make believe focused on protecting the revenues of the wealthiest constituents -- it should be the brain trust of a broad collective, including consumers, smaller carriers, and truly independent experts.
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T-Mobile Sued For Offering Limited 'Unlimited' Service - User files suit over 10 GB limit buried in fine print

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 10:15am MDT

For years wireless carriers have had played fast and loose with the word "unlimited," advertising their services as such but then quietly imposing caps (usually 5 GB) or other restrictions. While Verizon Wireless had their wrist slapped back in 2007 for the practice by New York's Attorney General, that still didn't stop many carriers from continuing the practice. Now T-Mobile is being sued in California for inaccurately advertising their limited (10 GB) data services for smartphones as unlimited. Complains the suit:The only warning given to consumers, according to the suit, is a statement "on the very last page of a T-Mobile brochure, buried in minuscule type barely readable, that 'Your data session may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted if you use your service in a way that interferes with or impacts our network or ability to provide quality service to other users ..."Parts of the suit are melodramatic for effect, lawyers arguing that the surprise limit makes smartphones "essentially useless for anything other than making or receiving phone calls and text messages." T-Mobile's current 10 GB cap is rather generous, and last we checked, unlike some other carriers, T-Mobile only throttles users who cross it -- they don't impose unreasonable overages or boot users from the network.

All of that said, the solution for carriers who don't want suits, user complaints or AG investigations seems pretty simple: stop using the word unlimited, and make your service restrictions clear. False advertising is false advertising, and wireless carriers have been trying to have their cake and eat it too on this front for years. The definition of unlimited is clear, and burying limits for your "unlimited" data plans in fine print on page 50 of your terms of service doesn't change that fact.
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Charter Takes Aim At Opelika, Alabama Fiber Plan - Claims coax network will be more reliable than fiber

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 7:57am MDT

The 27,000-person town of Opelika, Alabama will be voting this week on whether or not to get into the broadband business. The town hopes to build a $33 million fiber network funded with revenue bonds, using a core fiber ring from the local power utility as its heart. Broadband operator Knology is providing some of the core services over the network. As we've seen time and time again, local incumbent Charter Communications is fighting the plan and a local group has sprung up called "Concerned Citizens of Opelika" who are trying to get the plan shelved before it takes off. Says the group:"This referendum represents everything going wrong with our nation today, and it is an opportunity for us to stop, here at home, something that is so fundamentally opposed to the principles this country was founded on."Of course it's not clear that the country was founded on protectionist, anti-competitive principles either, and the town wouldn't be proposing the idea if they were entirely happy with their service from local providers, who frequently aren't driven to improve service due to a lack of competition. Charter meanwhile is taking the interesting tactic of trying to tell locals that their coaxial network will be more reliable than the fiber network, because fiber cuts take time to repair:"This delivery system keeps the cost down for residential customers while supplying direct fiber optic connections to businesses requiring the maximum bandwidth available nationally," James said. "If a coaxial cable is damaged by traffic accidents or excavation procedures, it can be repaired rather quickly, whereas a damaged fiber optic cable will take hours or days to repair, depending on the scenario."Obviously fiber cuts can happen with cable networks too, and this kind of argument is an about face for cable operators, who are usually busy trying to convince people that fiber and cable are largely indistinguishable.

According to this Q&A with Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller and Opelika Light and Power Director Derek Lee, the city hopes to have the network up and running by 2012. Though like other projects of this kind, Charter will do everything in its power to ensure this doesn't happen, and years ago convinced lawmakers to pass a state-level law intended to either slow or stop cities looking to wire themselves.
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Blockbuster and Comcast Team For...Movies By Mail? - Blockbuster continues proud tradition of ignorning broadband

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 6:45am MDT

Blogger Dave Zatz directs our attention to the fact that Comcast and Blockbuster have teamed up for a venture called DVDs By Mail, which does exactly what its name suggests. From the looks of things, this appears to be little more than a marketing effort created by Blockbuster aimed at temping Comcast's 47.7 million customers with slightly reduced rates. The deal certainly falls in line with Blockbuster's MO: here you have a company that's teetering on bankruptcy in large part because they've failed to adapt to the broadband age, partnering with the nation's biggest and fastest broadband ISP -- to use the U.S. Postal Service to deliver movies. Very adaptive, evolutionary, and innovative there, gentlemen.
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Qwest Adds Just 7,000 Broadband Users In Q2 - DOCSIS 3.0 available in 60% of Qwest markets now

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 6:22am MDT

According to Qwest's second quarter earnings, the company added just 7,000 new broadband subscribers on the quarter, down from 40,000 new subscriber additions during the first quarter of this yea, and 33,000 new subscriber additions this time last year. According to Qwest, the company added roughly 52,000 new fiber to the node customers during the quarter, but they lost 45,000 DSL users who disconnected from slower DSL service, which in many markets tops out at 1.5 Mbps -- and simply can't compete with faster cable service. Qwest's earnings call transcript is worth a read, in which Qwest COO Teresa Taylor talks about how DOCSIS 3.0 is now available in about 60% of Qwest's network, and how Qwest isn't entirely certain what's behind an overall sag in broadband adds this quarter for most carriers.
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Verizon iPhone In January Rumor Persists - Apple orders massive CDMA chip shipment from Qualcomm

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 6:21am MDT

Back in June, the long-standing (to the point of being ridiculous) rumor that Verizon was finally going to be getting the iPhone popped up at Bloomberg, with the outlet claiming "two people familiar with the plans" had confirmed a January launch. Now Techcrunch claims the rumor may be true, given Apple has ordered a massive number of baseband CDMA Qualcomm chips. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is giving the keynote at CES this year in January, and it would certainly give him something to talk about. That said, if the iPhone hits in January, battery issues likely mean it won't be dual mode -- and won't be able to run on Verizon's upcoming LTE network, which by January is expected to be available in 30 markets.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: August 9th, 2010, 6:01am MDT

TV group's attempt to obtain TV white spaces report denied fiercebroadbandwireless.com
How Fast Will Your Internet Be In 2020? newsweek.com
Apple's iPhone engineering head exits after antenna flap totaltele.com
Why The Verizon iPhone Rumors are True CDMA iPhone Due in January techcrunch.com
Comcast decision casts a long shadow on UK net neutrality computerweekly.com
'Private Browsing' Not So Much pcworld.com
The History Of Haystack... And Why Online Censorship Will Remain Difficult techdirt.com
DNS Made Easy rallies after punishing DDoS attack theregister.co.uk
Rogue San Fran BOFH given 4 years theregister.co.uk
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Weekend Open Thread - Empty your head

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 5:18pm MDT

The weekend has finally arrived, so share your thoughts in the comment section below!
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Friday Evening -

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 5:11pm MDT

Smartphone capacity crunch to drive infrastructure spending fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Clearwire LTE Trials The Fastest Internet on Earth? wirelessweek.com
Should You Keep or Ditch Your Landline? mobile-tech-today.com
Defcon speaker calls IPv6 a 'security nightmare' theregister.co.uk
Study: Android will pass iPhone by 2012 Kansas City Business Journal
Sen. Jay Rockefeller Introduces Spectrum Bill multichannel.com
Hong Kong Broadband Gives Final Call For 100Mbps Broadband Service At US$13/Month thestreet.com
Jailbreaking Your iPhone: The Pros and Cons pcworld.com
Why broadband not roads will transform Africa' cnn.com
Retailers Try, Fail to Prevent In-Store Jailbreaking pcworld.com
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To Be Clear: Google IS Fighting Real Neutrality Rules - Knows which side their Android bread is buttered...

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 2:33pm MDT

As we've noted, the FCC yesterday announced they were ceasing all closed-door negotiations with carriers and Google after reports surfaced that Verizon and Google had been hashing out their own private neutrality arrangement. The Associated Press has now offered their breakdown of this week's events, speaking to an anonymous source (perhaps the same one that spoke to Bloomberg and the NY Times) who says Verizon and Google will unveil their agreement in "days":Verizon and Google expect to unveil their proposal within days and hope it will provide a framework for net neutrality legislation in Congress, said several people briefed on the negotiations between the companies. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement is still not final.Again, the goal here is to pre-empt tougher Congressional or FCC neutrality rules by crafting either a voluntary group of largely meaningless, self-regulatory principles, or by laying the framework for equally wimpy Congressional laws Verizon's massive lobbyist army can then ram through Congress. Said laws of course would not apply to wireless, as to protect Google and Verizon's Android love affair.

While this tactic of pre-empting real consumer protections with lobbyist-written fluff is Verizon's usual modus operandi, it's an interesting shift for Google (at least in terms of neutrality), the search giant shelving their previous principles in order to protect their lucrative Android relationship with Verizon. According to an AP source, the secret Google/Verizon agreement was in fact partially responsible for the FCC scuttling this round of talks:But according to one person close to the FCC talks, the deal also undermined the discussions taking place at the FCC and progress that had been made toward an industry-wide compromise. This person said FCC officials fear that the proposal from Google and Verizon would not do enough to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over broadband connections to become online gatekeepers.Obviously rules written by Google and Verizon aimed at protecting Google and Verizon revenues would do little to protect consumers from bad behavior on either company's part. Verizon and Google are busily crafting a similar alliance aimed at trying to pre-empt real privacy consumer protection laws (like mandatory opt-in) that could constrict their behavioral advertising ambitions. We should get a closer look at the fruit of these labors in the weeks to come.
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To Be Clear: Google IS Fighting Real Net Neutrality Rules - Knows which side their Android bread is buttered...

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 2:33pm MDT

As we've noted, the FCC yesterday announced they were ceasing all closed-door negotiations with carriers and Google after reports surfaced that Verizon and Google had been hashing out their own private neutrality arrangement. The Associated Press has now offered their breakdown of this week's events, speaking to an anonymous source (perhaps the same one that spoke to Bloomberg and the NY Times) who says Verizon and Google will unveil their agreement in "days":Verizon and Google expect to unveil their proposal within days and hope it will provide a framework for net neutrality legislation in Congress, said several people briefed on the negotiations between the companies. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement is still not final.Again, the goal here is to pre-empt tougher FCC neutrality rules by crafting either a voluntary group of largely meaningless, self-regulatory principles, or by laying the framework for new Verizon-written laws the telco's massive lobbyist army can then ram through Congress with the help of loyal politicians. Said laws of course would have oodles of loopholes, and would not apply to wireless in order to protect Google and Verizon's Android love affair.

While this tactic of pre-empting real consumer protections with lobbyist-written fluff is Verizon's usual modus operandi, it's an interesting shift for Google (at least in terms of neutrality). It's clear the search giant is now willing to shelve their previous principles in order to protect their lucrative Android relationship with Verizon. According to an AP source, the secret Google/Verizon agreement was in fact partially responsible for the FCC scuttling this round of talks:But according to one person close to the FCC talks, the deal also undermined the discussions taking place at the FCC and progress that had been made toward an industry-wide compromise. This person said FCC officials fear that the proposal from Google and Verizon would not do enough to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over broadband connections to become online gatekeepers.Obviously rules written by Google and Verizon aimed at protecting Google and Verizon revenues would do little to protect consumers from bad behavior on either company's part. For months AT&T and Verizon (and we'd guess now Google) have been busily crafting a similar alliance aimed at trying to pre-empt real privacy consumer protection laws (like mandatory opt-in) that could constrict their behavioral advertising ambitions.

We should get a closer look at the fruit of these labors in the weeks to come, but amidst the muddled news coverage on this issue it's important to note one thing: Google is now officially fighting real network neutrality protections.
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Telus First To Offer IPTV Via Xbox 360 - And is offering a free 360 for two-year contract broadband customers

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 12:31pm MDT

For a very long time we've been hearing that IPTV or satellite operators would offer consumers the choice of using an Xbox 360 as a set top TV box. If you'll recall there was talk in 2006 of a DirecTV 360 blade that never materialized, and AT&T and Microsoft have been hinting at U-Verse to 360 set top functionality for several years without any product to show for it. This week a major carrier did finally begin using the 360 as an IPTV set top, but it happens to be Canadian telco Telus. According to Telus, users who go this route still need to have a HD DVR from Telus, and the service requires a personal visit from a Telus tech to configure the Xbox 360.

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T-Mobile Launches IPv6 Beta - Though you need a Nokia phone and lots of patience...

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 10:04am MDT

T-Mobile is joining Comcast and Verizon (on the landline front) in pushing the long-overdue IPv6 ball forward, and has started their IPv6 user trials. According to this T-Mobile Google Group posting, users interested in participating must be a T-Mobile USA subscriber with an unlimited data plan in a T-Mobile coverage area (not roaming), and you must have a Nokia 5230 Nuron, Nokia E73 or Nokia N900 phone. T-Mobile notes that your participation might not be particularly fun, given that "services like Visual Voice Mail, MyAccount, MMS (picture messages), and several other services do not yet work," and your only avenue of support will be the via the Google Group they created. In other words, as T-Mobile puts it, this is only for users who are "feeling adventurous."
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Google CEO Predicts End Of Anonymity - Though is there any remaining anonymity left to lose?

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 8:47am MDT

Paired with revelations that Google's now BFFs with Verizon, the company's certainly not doing any favors for their brand image this week. Speaking at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was busy making marginally creepy predictions that the end of user anonymity is at hand to prevent "the misuse of information for criminal or anti-social purposes":"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a verified name service for people. Governments will demand it."Though the comments didn't exactly warm hearts among the growing number of people concerned with the volume of data that Google's collecting daily, Schmidt's statement isn't particularly shocking or revolutionary in context.

That context being that we live in an age when ISPs are already funneling your data wholesale to the NSA without a warrant, sell your every online movement to a litany of shoppers, and are just starting to realize how much money can be made from tracking your every wireless movement. Combine that with users Foursquaring, Tweeting and Facebooking their every activity, and it becomes pretty clear that anonymity (barring extensive steps to ensure it) is a pipe dream.
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Newsweek Randomly Guesses 2020 Broadband Speeds - And claims FiOS expansion stopped because nobody wanted it...

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 7:52am MDT

Newsweek is running an article that appears to just blindly guess at how fast broadband connections in the United States will be by 2020. According to the news magazine's magic crystal ball, while Washington DC will see 200 Mbps service by that date and Topeka, Kansas will see 1 Gbps service -- rural West Virginia will still be clunking along at 4 Mbps. The piece is generally fluff, and scatters a few inaccurate assumptions -- including the fact that Verizon halted its FiOS expansion because consumers didn't want it:Yet Richard Bennett, senior research fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, notes Verizon s recent decision to halt the expansion of its FIOS fiber-optic broadband service as evidence that many consumers don t yet have an appetite for super-fast broadband.In reality, Verizon halted FiOS expansion for a number of reasons. One, the company decided to stop spending their own money when faced with the potential ability to grab taxpayer funding through either expansion grants or their version of USF "reform." Verizon's also seeing a slow change of the guard at the executive level, and the new regime is significantly more interested in pleasing investors than future-proofing the network. Verizon's also pausing until take rates in deployed markets increase -- but that's not an indication that users don't want the upgrade.

Newsweek's predictions are all just guesses based on no substantive science that we can see. Their 1 Gbps Topeka prediction makes the assumption Google's going to pick them as a test bed, which hasn't happened yet. Their 200 Mbps for DC sounds about right for some users, though it ignores the fact that you won't see this speed available uniformly in any urban, suburban or rural area, thanks to the gutting of local video franchises in most states (the very franchises most users can thank for getting them first-generation cable broadband service).

Back here in the real world, given the U.S. government only just began even admitting that U.S. broadband isn't perfect (and still isn't doing anything to address limited competition) -- there's clearly a long way to go, and predicting anything in this climate is a crap shoot. Though the Newsweek's author's primary point seems to be that we can expect huge geographical speed disparities to remain, something that's fairly obvious when you compare say Frontier's rural DSL offerings to Comcast's looming plans to offer 100 Mbps service in major markets.
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AT&T Offers Multiview Baseball For U-Verse TV - Watch the Cubs lose in new and interesting ways...

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 7:30am MDT

AT&T continues to try and expand U-Verse TV functionality in order to lure cable subscribers -- and is doing a decent job of it so far, last quarter adding 209,000 U-verse TV subscribers to bring their total served to 2.5 million. This week the company reached out to Broadband Reports to note they're expanding U-Verse TV functionality with the launch of "Chicago Cubs Multiview," which according to the company's press statement, allows users to watch their favorite team lose from a myriad of new angles. The functionality is made possible thanks to IPTV, with users able to watch the game from four positions (above home plate, third base, first base and center field.)
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$1.2 Billion In Broadband Stimulus Funding - 126 projects, most of which focus on rural wireless and DSL expansion

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 6:54am MDT

The Rural Utilities Service this week announced the latest recipients of more than $1.2 billion in broadband funding (we've got the complete list of winners here in pdf format). This was the second (and final) round of funding for the broadband stimulus program, with 126 projects seeing funding -- mostly for rural DSL and wireless expansion.

Big winners this round included Windstream Communications -- which received $66 million for eight projects across seven states (though they asked for $238 million), and TDS Telecom, which received $85.9 million in grants for 39 projects. Vtel Wireless won big on the wireless front, netting $116.8 million to help build an LTE network across rural New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of New York.

Mathew Lasar over at Ars Technica directs our attention to a new GAO study (pdf) that expresses concern about the government being able to effectively track how this money was spent (something that hasn't been Uncle Sam's strong suit if you've tracked the problems with the USF). The GAO is also worried that the government will rush funding just to complete goals, and that we're awarding grants before we've effectively mapped broadband coverage. That means relying on existing data, which the GAO acknowledges is junk:In several instances, both departments have already found existing companies making false claims of providing broadband service in various areas, the report noted. The question is whether they'll be able to keep this vigilance up as the late September deadline approaches. "Because the National Broadband Map will not be completed until 2011, NTIA and RUS will have to complete awards for round two based on existing data," GAO says. We're translating the report's use of the word "existing" as "inadequate."While this is the final round of funding, the total $4.8 billion in funds has yet to be fully distributed, according to a White House road map unveiled this week.
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Frday Morning Links -

Posted: August 6th, 2010, 5:19am MDT

Hillary Clinton to hold talks with UAE on BlackBerry ban telecompaper.com
A Coup for the FCC spectator.org
Inmarsat orders three Boeing broadband satellites in a $1.2bn deal telegraph.co.uk
Advertising Standards Authority of Britain bites BT over "instant" broadband claims ctv.ca
New Zealand's Parliament calls pending 3 stries legislation too vague, onerous on ISP's, and too gentle theregister.co.uk
Microsoft to set record with next Patch Tuesday; 14 patches, eight critical theregister.co.uk
Google-backed IP satellite operator to compete with fiber networks computerweekly.com
Privacy Groups Call For Microsoft Investigation To Examine Company's Web Tracking multichannel.com
Mobile malware: You will be billed $90,000 for this call computerworld.com
Verizon Statement On FCC Discussions On Internet Regulation thestreet.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 5:11pm MDT

FCC abandons efforts at net neutrality compromise 620ktar.com
Fiber s broadband stimulus winning streak snapped lightwaveonline.com
A Clearwire LTE switch won't bring wireless harmony overnight fiercewireless.com
Most Consumers Support Government Cyber-Spying eweekeurope.co.uk
Genachowski: Net Neutrality Meetings Aren't Secret; Outcome Still Uncertain multichannel.com
Google Street View cars back on the road webuser.co.uk
Germans sound iPhone attack alarm as Apple claims fix ready networkworld.com
Google: 200,000 Android Phones Sold Every Day newegg.com
Adobe plans emergency patch for critical Reader bug theregister.co.uk
RIM strikes back on threats of BlackBerry bans fiercewireless.com
Multi-service bundles boost Cablevision results; MSO eyes IPTV fiercecable.com
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Cablevision Bucks Trend By Not Losing Basic Cable Subs - Again says network DVR before year end

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 4:21pm MDT

Cablevision today unveiled their second quarter earnings, and bucked the trend for cable operators this quarter by not losing basic cable customers (albeit with a modest 2,900 new basic cable users). The company continues to fend off FiOS competition, adding 27,000 broadband subscribers and 24,900 phone users on the quarter, while revenue was up 5.8% to $1.8 billion. The company also noted that they're eager to expand their Internet video ambitions, and continues to insist they'll launch that long-awaited network DVR before the end of the year. "We will provide our full (TV) service, everything we offer, in the home, on any device that can display TV or act as a TV," said Cablevision's Tom Rutledge on a conference call.
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FCC: No More Closed-Door Neutrality Meetings - Didn't create 'robust framework' of openness. No kidding?

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 2:36pm MDT

Over the last few weeks the FCC has been taking heat about their largely closed-door meetings with the nation's largest carriers over network neutrality. While some argued these meetings weren't a big deal, they flew in the face of previous FCC statements claiming an extraordinary dedication to transparency, public participation and documentation. With a small firestorm created by leaks from within the discussions, the FCC has responded with a statement insisting that there will be no more private meetings about neutrality:"We have called off this round of stakeholder discussions. It has been productive on several fronts, but has not generated a robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the Internet one that drives innovation, investment, free speech, and consumer choice. All options remain on the table as we continue to seek broad input on this vital issue."

Closed-door meetings have "not generated a robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the Internet.

-FCC

Largely non-transparent meetings with primarily the wealthiest stakeholders didn't generate a robust framework of openness? Really? Did the FCC today also discover that placing toads in sealed jars fails to create a "robust framework" for breathing oxygen?

The FCC previously brushed aside criticism of these meetings, but this week's leaks appear to have placed too bright of a spotlight on the rather cozy nature of the proceedings. Said leaks not only suggested a fairly wimpy deal was nearly finished after some high-level political pressure, they also suggested that Google (protecting a very profitable Android partnership) has largely joined Verizon in arguing against strong neutrality rules in favor of a toothless self-regulatory regime that wouldn't even apply to wireless.

So the question then is: is the FCC seriously responding to public pressure and broadening participation (which is certainly what the FCC's suggesting, and what most in the press will run with), or are they simply engaged in damage control, and shutting down these discussions after most of the details have been settled privately with carrier lobbyists? We should be able to tell by the quality of the FCC's final rules, whenever they're finally unveiled.
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Cox Users Get A Free Speed Boost - Florida Premier users hit 30/5 Mbps

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 1:15pm MDT

Verizon FiOS users aren't the only ones suddenly getting more bandwidth than they paid for this week. Cox users in our Cox forum note that the cable operator this week delivered speed upgrades to most of Florida, with users on the company's 25/2 Mbps "Premier" tier suddenly seeing speeds much closer to 30 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up for the same price. In this case it looks like most of these users are still on DOCSIS 2.0, and Cox is slowly staggering deployment of this particularly speed kick on a market-by-market basis. Cox is also slowly deploying faster 50 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 service, but only in markets where the company is seeing more significant competition from AT&T U-Verse or municipal broadband deployments.
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Google Denies Selling Out On Net Neutrality - Or at least that they've agreed to pay for prioritization...

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 11:01am MDT

Both Verizon and Google this morning are busily engaged in damage control over leaks indicating the two companies have struck a closed-door network neutrality agreement. Verizon is blogging that their closed-door ten month negotiations with Google are about "openness and accountability." Google meanwhile isn't denying an agreement, but they are denying that they've agreed to pay Verizon for prioritization of content -- something suggested in articles by the New York Times, who probably didn't understand what their source was telling them:"The New York Times is quite simply wrong. We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet."As we noted this morning, Google suddenly agreeing to "pay more to ride Verizon's pipes" (as AT&T's ex-CEO phrased it back in 2005) didn't make sense. What does appear to be happening here is Verizon and Google are trying to protect revenues by crafting voluntary, self-regulatory rules that will pre-empt tougher government rules. The talks between the two companies also likely involve co-support for equally toothless, self-regulatory privacy policies aimed at pre-empting tough new federal privacy laws.

That's not exactly Google suddenly "becoming evil," but in line with their joint op/ed with Verizon back in March, it is an indication that Google is starting to do what Verizon is telling them to do. Why? How much do you think Google's Android Verizon relationship is worth? Enough for Google to ignore some of their previous principles? It's clear that as Google grows, it's shifting from innovation to turf protection, and is willing to use Verizon-style tactics (and disingenuous whining about government regulation) to do so.

And again, the broadband sector might just be fine without network neutrality rules if there were competition allowing consumers to leave an ISP should it engage in bad behavior. But given most users have the choice of only one or two carriers, and the FCC seems completely unwilling to tackle competition, these kind of back room self-regulatory agreements have virtually no value to consumers.
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Verizon Dedicated To FCC Process, Except When They're Not - Please ignore closed-door deals and heavy-handed political pressure

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 9:02am MDT

As we noted yesterday, somebody either at the FCC or at the carriers has leaked the news that Google and Verizon have quietly hatched a network neutrality agreement they then presented to the FCC on a platter. This of course comes on the heels of news that the FCC has had repeated backdoor meetings with carriers, and is getting very close to unveiling a neutrality deal (we assume based on the Google/Verizon agreement) that's largely filled with loopholes. In responding to yesterday's leaks, Verizon e-mailed a statement to press outlets insisting they're still committed to the FCC process:"We've been working with Google for 10 months to reach an agreement on broadband policy. We are currently engaged in and committed to the negotiation process led by the FCC. We are optimistic this process will reach a consensus that can maintain an open Internet and the investment and innovation required to sustain it."Except Verizon's supposed "commitment" to the FCC process involves negotiating back room deals that they hope will be used as the foundation of neutrality rules with little to no public input. This commitment to the FCC process also apparently involves their CEO putting political pressure on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to hurry up and get a deal done, even if it's largely an empty one. Over at their blog, Verizon gets even more vocal about how they're really dedicated to this whole openness thing:The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken. It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an Internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.In fact Verizon was so interested in "openness and accountability," they spent much of this year busily hashing out network neutrality policies with Google nobody knew existed, with no input from the public.

Some things to keep in mind. Most of these news reports on the Google/Verizon negotiations seem simply wrong (like this one in the NY Times). For starters, it seems incredibly unlikely Google would agree to paid prioritization of any kind. The goal of whatever deal Google and Verizon have struck is to solely to pre-empt tougher FCC rules with weak voluntary guidelines. It's also important to note that Google's involvement in this process absolutely does not mean the policies cooked up by the two companies will be good for consumers.

You might recall that back in March Verizon and Google penned a joint editorial in the Wall Street Journal arguing that both companies were opposed to government regulation (at least when it doesn't protect monopolies or bathe them in taxpayer money) on the neutrality front. As such, they've cooked up this voluntary screed as their solution, and every indication is that a timid FCC is prepared to use it as the cornerstone of their new neutrality rules.

Verizon of course is eager to get similar voluntary guidelines applied to privacy, given Verizon likes to argue that public shame will keep them honest. Of course self-regulatory efforts like this rarely work out well for consumers, given they lack any real penalties or teeth. They especially don't work well in markets with limited competition, given most consumers lack the choice of options allowing them to vote with their wallet.

With an FCC that's unwilling to pass tough rules or tackle broadband competition, the end result may not be pretty. It's not quite as dire as some news outlets are insisting (specifically that Google would suddenly agree to sell consumers up the river and pay Verizon for faster access to their customers), but the deal is troublesome. Most notably, it continues the tradition of a sector's wealthiest companies crafting meaningless rules in private in order to derail tougher consumer protections.
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Frontier CEO Downplays Company's Tactical Speed Disadvantage - As company's landline losses accelerate

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 8:27am MDT

Frontier's second quarter earnings indicate that the company's loss of tranditional copper-based landline customers is actually accelerating, the company now seeing an 8% decline in landline users since the second quarter of last year. Given their massive deal to acquire unwanted Verizon DSL and landline networks didn't officially close until the end of the quarter, these latest earnings don't reflect the deal. While Frontier's reliance on last-gen DSL leaves them at a competitive disadvantage, CEO Maggie Wilderotter obviously downplayed this problem during a conference call with analysts and the media. From the transcript:We expect to positively impact our high-speed business through increasing the availability of higher speed tiers with a focus on three meg to six meg. I want to add that we offer 20 megs service in many markets today, and industry equipment providers are now testing 300 megabits per second DSL services. Our customers and networks have a fast future.Except they don't.

The 20 Mbps service is apparently a hallucination on Wilderotter's part. The fastest speed Frontier currently offers is 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, and while the CEO insists this tier exists in "many" markets, it's actually only deployed to a small fraction of Frontier's total footprint. Meanwhile, the 300 Mbps DSL Wilderotter mentions is so far just Alcatel Lucent lab work that may or may not ever see real-world deployment.

In the real world, the vast majority of Frontier customers don't see more than 3 Mbps, and in some instances Frontier struggles to provide that. Meanwhile, a lack of real competition in most Frontier markets -- combined with the added debt and expansion obligations from their Verizon deal -- means most users won't be seeing faster speeds anytime soon. So yes, Frontier customers have a "fast future," so long as you think 3 Mbps is fast.
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Time Warner Cable Earnings Again Beat Estimates - And again without having to switch to metered billing...

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 7:20am MDT

You might recall that last year, Time Warner Cable insisted they needed to move from a flat-rate broadband pricing model to a system of low caps and steep overages out of financial necessity, given flat-rate broadband pricing simply wasn't "sustainable." Shortly after consumers slapped the idea down, Time Warner Cable posted their most profitable quarter ever earlier this year. Time Warner Cable's second quarter earnings again beat most analysts expectations, with net income rising 8.2 percent to $342 million. The company lost 111,000 basic video subscribers, though 50,000 customers signed up for digital video service. The company also added 85,000 and 63,000 phone customers.
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Charter: About 1/3 Of Footprint DOCSIS 3.0 Upgraded - Half of customers will be upgraded by year's end

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 7:03am MDT

Charter's second quarter earnings indicate the company saw revenue growth of 4.9 percent, and while the company lost 76,600 basic video customers, the company added 22,000 cable broadband customers, and 35,200 phone customers. Charter's average monthly revenue per broadband customer increased by 1.9 percent, while their average monthly revenue per phone customer decreased by 4.2 percent. On a conference call with the media, Charter stated that the company has now deployed DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades to about one-third of the company's markets, and switched digital video (which frees up bandwidth by holding unwatched channels at the edge router) to about twenty five percent of their footprint.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: August 5th, 2010, 6:28am MDT

Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay Tiers for Web nytimes.com
Aussie opposition will scrap net filter theregister.co.uk
Report Claims Universal UK Broadband Will Kill the BBC TV Licence Fee ispreview.co.uk
Verizon: We're Still Committed To FCC Talks multichannel.com
Mobile TV services outstripped by Wi-Fi phones electronicsweekly.com
The Voip Feature Wars Truphone s updated iPad app makes 3G calls techcrunch.com
Microsoft releases final Internet Explorer 9 preview v3.co.uk
Google Wave bites the dust following poor take-up by internet users broadbandgenie.co.uk
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 5:25pm MDT

Spamhaus Asks Court To Dump Even The $27,000 Award To Spammer techdirt.com
Broadband - Universal access: A catalyst for global development eurocomms.com
Vonage iPhone and Android App: Free VoIP calls onlinesocialmedia.net
France's Secret Internet Spying Spec Leaked techdirt.com
US Agency Announces $1.2 Billion in Broadband Subsidies cio.com
Clearwire hooks up Apple devices with mobile iSpot cedmagazine.com
New York Car Services to Get Free Wi-Fi yahoo.com
Time Warner CEO hints at tying print, tablet magazine subscriptions together engadget.com
T-Mobile jumps on Straight Talk bandwagon fiercewireless.com
Apple Quietly Enables Online Streaming To iPhones, iPad and iTouch michaelrobertson.com
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FCC's Secret Neutrality Deal Won't Apply To Wireless - Leak: Google and Verizon crafted skeleton of looming neutrality agreement

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 4:26pm MDT

As we noted yesterday, the FCC has been quietly meeting with major broadband (and Google) lobbyists in order to hash out a neutrality deal that appears to be little more than empty rhetoric with some mile-wide loopholes. With political pressure for a good-looking technology policy "win" mounting and an FCC chairman seemingly incapable of making hard decisions, the FCC seems to be ignoring their own supposed dedication to transparency in order to strike a neutrality agreement behind closed doors.

Today an anonymous source appears to have spoken to both the Washington Post and Bloomberg, noting that this closed door deal was actually crafted privately by Verizon and Google, then presented on a platter to the FCC (though AT&T's top lobbyist oddly denies having any part in this Google/Verizon presentation). While the deal is certainly not a finished product yet, the source informs both news outlets that this deal in its current state will not apply to wireless networks, an odd choice given wireless's looming role as a mainstream connectivity option:The compromise as described would restrict Verizon from selectively slowing Internet content that travels over its wires, but wouldn t apply such limits to Internet use on mobile phones, according to the people, who asked not to be identified before an announcement.Obviously consumer groups weren't happy with the news, left sulking at home in less-expensive suits while the industry's power players continue to privately dictate U.S. telecom policy. Consumer firm Public Knowledge quickly issued a statement lamenting the Verizon/Google closed-room deal as "meaningless": The deal between Verizon and Google about how to manage Internet traffic is deeply regrettable and should be considered meaningless. As a legal agreement, it is not binding on either company. . . The point of a network neutrality rule is to prevent big companies from dividing the Internet between them. We do not need rules to protect Google and Verizon, but we need a rule to protect the customers of Google and Verizon and the competitors of Google and Verizon."Of course as we've continually noted after more than a decade of watching this industry, absolutely nothing will change on the broadband front until the country decides to tackle corporate influence over the legislative process. The majority of the telecom rules currently on the books protecting this industry's duopoly were written by telecom lobbyists, so any shock at neutrality rules following this path seems disingenuous.

Political pressure is pushing the FCC to finalize this neutrality agreement within the next few weeks, the FCC knowing they have an even tougher fight ahead over partial Title II reclassification. However, should the neutrality deal prove to be, as rumored, a largely empty closed-door deal negotiated solely by industry power players, FCC boss Julius Genachowski can expect any remaining consumer credibility on the telecom front to be null and void.
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Clearwire Will Conduct LTE Trial This Fall - Will work with Huawei Technologies on Phoenix tests

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 2:48pm MDT

Clearwire has repeatedly stated they want to leave the option open to migrate to LTE should they see that the Mobile WiMax future isn't particularly bright, something that's a very real possibility given significant, global incumbent support for the LTE platform. So it's not too surprising to see the company today announce that they'll be running an LTE trial this fall.

According to Clearwire, the trials will "test multiple coexistence scenarios between LTE and WiMAX radio technologies" in concert with hardware vendor Huawei Technologies, and a number of so far unnamed "large wireless operators" (read: Sprint, probably T-Mobile). Arizona will be the first trial location:Other participating vendors for Clearwire's technical trials are expected to be named at a later date. In addition, due to the global dominance of the 2.5 GHz - 2.6 GHz spectrum band, a number of large wireless operators are expected to participate with Clearwire on these tests. Additional details about those companies are also expected to be disclosed at a later date. The tests will be conducted in the fall and throughout early 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona.According to previous statements by Clearwire, Wimax and LTE have 80 percent overlap when it comes to the physical hardware deployed to the field. The problem of course is that Sprint and Clearwire are already burning through money, and any migration and conversion will still pose some significant additional costs. On the other hand, there's no shortage of deep-pocketed Clearwire sugar daddies ready to foot part of the bill -- including the cable industry.
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AT&T Expands Wi-Fi "Hotzone" Trial To Chicago - Launches third hotzone near Wrigley Field

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 2:12pm MDT

Back in May, AT&T launched a massive free (at least to AT&T customers) Wi-Fi zone in New York City's Times Square, in order to help take some of the heat off of their historically-strained 3G network. Last week, AT&T announced they were expanding this "hotzone" trial into Charlotte, North Carolina -- and that they were busily collecting data to see whether they should expand this project to cities nationwide (it seems like only yesterday AT&T was trying to stop cities from getting Wi-Fi). Now today AT&T announced they've launched a Wi-Fi hotzone in Wrigleyville -- the Chicago neighborhood where Wrigley Field is located.
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Vonage Offers Free Facebook Calling App - New Vonage Mobile For Facebook offers free voice over 3G, Wi-Fi

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 11:26am MDT

Vonage this week announced they were unveiling a new application for both Android and iOS-based phones that allow users to make unlimited calls over 3G or Wi-Fi to their Facebook friends. Once installed, the Vonage Mobile For Facebook application informs you which of your Facebook friends already have the app and are available for a chat or phone call. It's a fairly clever play for Vonage, which has struggled in a VoIP industry now dominated (95% market share and climbing) by major cable players and their triple play offers. "In the future we will expand on this service to include a wide range of integrated voice and messaging services that change the way people communicate," insists Vonage CEO Marc Lefar. Those interested in seeing how it works can check out this video.
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NBC's Zucker Not Sure About This Free Video Thing - As if the direction of free content is actually under his control

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 10:21am MDT

Techdirt directs our attention to a recent interview with NBC CEO Jeff Zucker, in which the CEO talks about his looming integration into the Comcast family, and the future of Internet video content (like the cable industry's "TV Anywhere" paywall system). According to Zucker, he's not so sure that offering free video over the Internet is where the industry is headed, and while NBC offers some free video via their website and Hulu, Zucker isn't so sure it's going to stay that way. From the Journal interview:WSJ: How much TV programming should be available free on the Internet?

Mr. Zucker: We have to figure out how we are going to pay for this quality content. We used to be able to run our programs on the broadcast network multiple times . And that is how we would pay for it.

Today, in large part because of all of the new digital technology, including the Internet, we often get just one run out of those very same programs. So, I do not think that it is a foregone conclusion that content should be free on the Internet.Of course as Techdirt notes, that's not really something that's under Zucker's control. Notes Techdirt's Mike Masnick:Sorry, Jeff, but you don't get to decide that. The technology and the market have already decided that the content is or will be free online. It might not be authorized. It might not be legal. But the content is free. "Should" has nothing to do with it, because the technology and the market don't care about "should." Yes, this sucks for those who only understand how to run a business when they're a gatekeeper who controls things, but it doesn't mean there aren't really good businesses built on free content. NBC should know this, since an awful lot of its history was built on exactly that... And I don't recall Zucker's predecessors whining about that darn "free" broadcast TV.Piracy exists, the industry will never stop it completely, and as such it's something that TV operators have to compete with -- just as they'll have to compete with free (or partially free) Internet video solutions. The TV and broadcast industry, spoiled for years by their ability to impose bi-annual rate hikes in barely-competitive markets, continues to be under the false impression that the current subscription TV ecosystem is going to persist indefinitely, and that they'll remain in control of where Internet video ultimately directs the market.
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Clear Pitches iSpot Mobile Hotspot At Apple Fans - While taking a shot at AT&T's new wireless data pricing

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 7:44am MDT

In an effort to appeal to iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad owners (like Sprint did with the Overdrive), Clear this morning announced their new iSpot, a bar-of-soap-looking new mobile hotspot Clear claims is "optimized" specifically for Apple products. According to Clear, the iSpot will be available on August 10 for $99, with a no-contract, $25 monthly plan for unlimited data. "With the iSpot, Apple customers don t have to sort through confusing service plans with overage fees, nor do they have to worry about how much data they re using," says the company, taking a clear shot at AT&T's new 200MB and 2GB cap and overage pricing model.
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Knology Confirms $160 Million Purchase Of Sunflower Broadband - Employees gathered for three hour meeting this morning

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 7:27am MDT

Last week we noted that Knology was getting very close to acquiring Sunflower broadband, a small Kansas ISP that came to fame by being one of the first ISPs to impose the low cap and high overage billing model. Sunflower executives wouldn't comment on the news, but this morning Knology's earnings press release confirmed the deal, noting that they're paying $160 million for Sunflower's networks, something that's good news for consumers, given Knology is faster with network upgrades and doesn't cap their customers. It of course may not be good news for employees, who are being gathered for a three hour meeting on the deal this morning.
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Motorola, Verizon Plan Android Tablet For FiOSTV - 10' screen, will operate as a mobile hotspot...

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 7:17am MDT

According to the Financial Times, Motorola is working on an Android-based tablet that will be tied closely to Verizon's FiOSTV service. According to the Times' sources, the device will have a ten-inch screen, and will be able to operate as a mobile hotspot. Motorola, who also builds set top box units for Verizon, hopes that by working closely with a TV provider they "will not be seen as upsetting the lucrative business of pay TV" (we certainly wouldn't want that) says the Times. Apple of course has quickly come to dominate the tablet market, though their TV ambitions have yet to fully materialize.
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Leap Wireless, Cricket Shake Up Prepaid Broadband Plans - Users who exceed cap will be throttled, not socked with overages...

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 7:00am MDT

Back in April, Leap Wireless indicated it was engaged in a trial of new tiered pricing plans, but instead of socking consumers with overages , the plans instead throttled users back to a slower speed when the monthly cap was exceeded. Leap and their subsidiary Cricket have since unveiled their official, more expensive pricing, offering $40, $50 and $60 no-contract plans that allow 2.5 GB, 5 GB, and 7.5 GB of data consumption, respectively. Neither Leap or Cricket are saying specifically what speed users are throttled back to should they exceed their cap. The company is also offering no-contract, no cap unlimited plans for Android and Blackberry users at $55 and $60, respectively.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 4th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

Solar storm could hit GPS and satellite broadband pcpro.co.uk
Why carriers need a convergent charging solution fiercetelecom.com
RIM, State Dept. defend BlackBerry security following U.A.E. ban fiercewireless.com
iPhone users more likely to suffer wireless bill shock? slashgear.com
Vonage Gives Facebook Users A Voice thestreet.com
TV Everywhere comes to Charter fiercecable.com
Clearwire hopes to attract Apple users with new hotspot networkworld.com
Adobe confirms remote code-execution flaw in Reader (again) theregister.co.uk
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 6:43pm MDT

Which ISPs Hand Private Surfing Info Over To Secretive Private Group Who Monitors It For The Feds? techdirt.com
Senate Chairman Urges FCC to Use Universal Fund To Foster Broadband yahoo.com
Cricket Launches Industry-First All-Inclusive Mobile Broadband Service Plans thestreet.com
Verizon Wireless Offers Unlimited Any Mobile Plans in Texas And Louisiana cellphonedigest.net
Copper thieves strike Frontier's West Va. network fiercetelecom.com
Sony apologises for PS3 firmware upgrade glitch theinquirer.net
Telus to double wireless network speeds canada.com
MonkeyBrains: Silly Name, Serious Broadband informationweek.com
Is Verizon lying about the Droid s capabilities? mobilecrunch.com
Security breach gives complete access to iPhone msnbc.com
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iPhone 4 JailBroken, Allowing Facetime Over 3G - Facetime over 3G gobbles about 3 MB per minute...

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 4:19pm MDT

The iPhone 4 this week was officially jailbroken with the launch of JailbreakMe 2.0, a mobile Safari-based jailbreak app for iPhones and iPads that effectively jailbreaks the device with a single URL (and apparently a .pdf flaw in iOS4). Users wasted no time tinkering with their newly jailbroken devices, allowing them to ignore restrictions imposed by AT&T and Apple aimed at protecting AT&T's network from heavy data use -- like tethering. Users specifically have already managed to get Facetime working over 3G, and the call quality appears to be fairly decent (though it clearly might not be were all iPhone 4 users doing this.) Those tinkering with Facetime over 3G note that a five minute call eats about 15 MB of data, or about 3 MB per minute.
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AT&T Nabs New Blackberry Torch Exclusive - August 12th launch for $200 with two year contract

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 2:07pm MDT

Trying to generate Apple-level launch hype, Research In Motion today held a New York City launch event for the company's latest Blackberry smartphone the BlackBerry Torch, and their shiny new Blackberry OS Blackberry 6. As rumors had predicted, the BlackBerry Torch 9800 (specs can be found at the RIM website or within the AT&T press release) is going to be an AT&T exclusive, launching on August 12th for $199.99 with a two-year contract. General phone nerd consensus so far seems to be that this release does a lot to upgrade the platform and please Blackberry devotees, but still may come up a little short on both the hardware and software fronts in truly putting RIM back in the race against Android and Apple.
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Verizon Joins AT&T In Crippling Android Handsets - Reduces Froyo functionality on Droid to upsell customers

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 11:54am MDT

We've noted that AT&T has been crippling many Android devices in their lineup, not only layering them with annoying, unremovable bloatware, but making Yahoo the default search engine while making it impossible to install any applications not found in the Android Marketplace. Contrary to what many expected, Verizon had been more open in their Android offerings -- until now.

Information Week notes that while the Motorola Droid is receiving the Android 2.2 Froyo update this week, Verizon is crippling two key parts of the update: tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot creation. According to a Verizon spokesperson, the Droid isn't capable of either:In an email, Verizon Wireless spokesperson Brenda Raney told me, "The Droid by Motorola doesn't have the hardware to support a Mobile Hotspot. With tethering there is no Connection on the PC side that will allow you to tether the device so the answer is that option isn't part of this update." Information Week is very polite in saying Verizon's justification "is hardly the whole story." In reality, the Droid hardware is perfectly capable of both of these functions, as those with rooted phones can attest. It appears that Verizon's simply intentionally crippling functionality in order to upsell users on more expensive phones, including the Droid X and the upcoming Droid 2 -- then completely making up justifications for the move.

Like AT&T, despite plenty of rhetoric, Verizon's still not quite aware that these kinds of efforts to retain control in an evolving open wireless ecosystem are like swimming upstream during a flood.
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FCC, Carriers Close To Largely Empty Neutrality Agreement - All that's left is a little fauxsumer showmanship...

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 9:42am MDT

Industry analyst Dave Burstein drops us a line to note that all the top lobbyists for the industry's heavyweights (AT&T, Verizon, the NCTA) met with the FCC over the weekend and are very close to getting a deal done on network neutrality. With the phone companies now essentially part of our country's intelligence system, Burstein suggests that top Verizon and AT&T execs and lobbyists were able to put pressure on Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel to get a deal done. The deal, according to Burstein is little more than "symbolic and essentially a fig leaf." Under pressure like that, Julius has already agreed to almost everything Cicconi (AT&T's top lobbyist) really wants, including loopholes wide enough to carry 350 TV channels. K & A say there is still some opposition so that nothing is final and that the public interest groups are ready to assail Julius. Meanwhile, Verizon and Google are discussing a separate peace that will make the FCC irrelevant. This one is about power and money, not principle. The likely outcome is an agreement that will allow everyone to say noble things, will allow Julius to look himself in the mirror, and will essentially have no substance.The approaching deal (confirmed by a Stifel Nicolaus analyst report) comes after months of closed door meetings with carriers, which completely ran contrary to the FCC's promise of well-documented transparency. An empty network neutrality agreement would mimic our largely toothless national broadband plan, paying lip service to consumer-friendly concepts, but delivering no real substantive policy or rules. With the neutrality deal essentially done, all that's left is for the FCC and carriers to put on a good fauxsumer show over the next few weeks.

Neutrality rules might not be necessary in the first place if the FCC was willing to stand up to carriers and tackle the sector's primary problem: a lack of substantive competition in most markets. Real competition would allow consumers to vote with their wallets, organically punishing carriers who engage in poor behavior of any time (be it unreasonable capping plans, unreasonable throttling, or preferential treatment of their own content).

Instead, FCC boss Genachowski appears completely incapable of making tough decisions or taking solid positions on any subject (right around this time last year we noted how this might be a problem). The result (aside from some genuinely good new data-collection efforts) is empty policy with endless loopholes, something that certainly helps carriers more than consumers. In the end, Genachowski's efforts to please everybody may wind up pleasing nobody, though AT&T may be happy in believing they've put to bed a debate they themselves started back in 2005.
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Charter Starts Internet Video Trials - 5-10k users involved in early TV Anywhere test

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 8:56am MDT

Charter is the latest cable operator to fire up their "TV Anywhere" Internet video ambitions -- a "cord cutter" retention tool that involves giving paying TV customers access to a walled garden of limited TV content. While Charter has yet to name the service yet, last week they launched a trial of their TV Everywhere incarnation involving 5,000 to 10,000 Charter subscribers in St. Louis, Missouri, Madison, Wisconsin, Chicopee, Massachusetts, and Kennewick, Washington. Charter will be running the trial for the rest of the year before deciding whether they want to take the project footprint wide.
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Still Waiting On NYC Subway Cell, Wi-Fi Coverage - Service will extend into some tunnels, whenever it actually gets done...

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 8:42am MDT

Delivering phone and data connectivity to the New York City subway system has been in the works for some time, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority having struck a contract with Transit Wireless to outfit stations three years ago. "This project was stalled for too long, and we will be working with the contractor to make up as much time as possible," MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin tells NY Daily News - though he doesn't really explain why. The company insists that when completed, cell and data service will exist in tunnels, with a few exceptions:coverage will extend from station to station - where stops are relatively close to each other and tunnels are wide enough - keeping straphangers plugged in. "That's how it works," said Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Q-Wireless, one of four corporations that make up the joint venture installing the wireless service. "That's the physics of it." Cell service could be strongest in wider tunnels with express and local tracks, like in Manhattan, since signals need space to propagate, Mashinsky said.The network was projected to cost $150 million to $200 million to get all 277 stations wired within six years, with Transit Wireless then paying New York City Transit $46.8 million over 10 years. Six stations were supposed to have come online for testing by last year: 23rd Street and 14th Street on the Eighth Avenue line, 14th Street on the Seventh Avenue line, 14th Street on the Sixth Avenue line and Eighth Avenue and Sixth Avenue on the L line. Of course some people wouldn't be too upset if this project never actually gets completed...
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CenturyLink Switches From Dish To DirecTV - Though will still support users who stick with Dish

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 8:20am MDT

While CenturyLink does deliver IPTV in some locations, in most areas the telco sells Dish Network satellite TV service in bundles to try and compete with the cable industry triple play. Fresh off of their acquisition of Qwest, CenturyLink has announced that the company has swapped out their partnership for Dish Network for a new agreement with DirecTV. According to CenturyLink, the company will continue to support Dish service for those customers who choose to remain with Dish. "While we've enjoyed having DISH as our video partner, we've decided to try a new TV service that will offer our customers new features," CenturyLink spokeswoman Stephanie Meisse tells Reuters. One of those of course is access to DirecTV's exclusive arrangement with the NFL to broadcast out of market games (aka Sunday Ticket), for which DirecTV just announced a number of new enhancements.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: August 3rd, 2010, 6:33am MDT

North American broadband good for business bad for households techwhack.com
Dedicated Mobile TV Networks Face Uncertain Future yahoo.com
Senate fight looms over internet sales tax siliconvalleysleuth.com
Android Bests iPhone In Popularity Contest - For Now networkworld.com
RIM agrees to monitoring by Indian agencies totaltele.com
Microsoft issues emergency security patch for million dollar Windows flaw usatoday.com
GSM phone hack is revealed theinquirer.net

Monday Evening Links -

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 5:34pm MDT

Verizon top Capitol Hill lobbyer on Internet laws arstechnica.com
Mobile Broadband Market Worldwide to Reach 1 Billion Connections in 2012 prnewswire.com
Android takes the lead in the US networkworld.com
Verizon s 4G Roadmap Leaks, Seems to be Right on Schedule slashgear.com
No Tethering on the Motorola Droid, a Verizon Conspiracy? maximumpc.com
Clearwire isn t Even Halfway to its 4G Coverage Goals gigaom.com
Rumor Mill: Verizon boosting LTE coverage target for this year fiercewireless.com
Botnet with 60GB of stolen data cracked wide open theregister.co.uk
Coping with Wi-Fi's biggest problem: interference networkworld.com
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Permalink for 'AT&T, Verizon Want Your Smartphone To Replace Your Credit Card - Carriers working with Discover on paying with the wave of a smartphone'

AT&T, Verizon Want Your Smartphone To Replace Your Credit Card - Carriers working with Discover on paying with the wave of a smartphone

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 4:32pm MDT

According to sources speaking to Bloomberg, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are working on plans that would allow customers to use their smartphones as replacements for their credit or debit cards. The phone companies are working with Discover Financial Services and Barclays to trial a system that would allow users to simply swipe their smartphone in front of a scanner to pay for purchases. This of course continues the phone carriers efforts to expand beyond running just networks, in an effort to become all things to all people:"Mobile payments are the logical next step for consumers," said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for Dallas-based AT&T. Marquett Smith of Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless, and Peter Dobrow of the Bellevue, Washington-based T- Mobile unit, both said their companies "have nothing to announce." Discover spokeswoman Leslie Sutton said the company "is always evaluating technology solutions that make things faster, safer and more convenient."One can only imagine the wave of new potential security fraud opened up by making AT&T and Verizon a direct conduit to your finances. Hopefully they do a better job with retail transactions than they do when trying to accurately bill for broadband services.
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Project Vigilant: Outsourced Domestic ISP Snoops - Just in case you were still under the illusion that you had privacy online...

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 2:02pm MDT

Permalink for 'Project Vigilant: Outsourced Spooks Or A Bunch Of Crackpots? - Just in case you were still under the illusion that you had privacy online...'

Project Vigilant: Outsourced Spooks Or A Bunch Of Crackpots? - Just in case you were still under the illusion that you had privacy online...

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 2:02pm MDT

Those busily debating whether Facebook's CEO personally values your privacy generally don't realize that unless you go to some great lengths, privacy on the Internet really doesn't exist in the first place -- and hasn't for a long time. Your every conversation and Internet action is tracked by a vast ocean of surveillance apparatus, from Echelon to AT&T's direct data dumps to the NSA. For years ISPs have also sold your clickstream data and other information to third parties.

With that in mind, Forbes has an interesting article on a government contractor named Project Vigilant. Project Vigilant surfaced at the Defcon security conference Sunday claiming they were recruiting, and explaining they are essentially outsourced domestic surveillance and intelligence. The group either buys or directly monitors data from at least twelve ISPs (it's not clear about which, nor are the ISPs named), using said data to offer intelligence reports to government. According to the group, ISP EULAs make this all a-ok:According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant's manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies.The group appears to be a very bizarre entity, wanting to be a serious security agency but coming off as a bunch of crackpots. On first read you brush them off as some kind of bad fiction, then you note the group is stocked with former Homeland Security officials (Kevin Manson), NSA officials (Ira Winkler), former security bosses at the NYSE (Suzanne Gorman) an official formerly in charge of DOJ cybercrime (Mark Rasch) and many more. Of course just because the group is staffed with some government officials doesn't mean they still aren't simply a bunch of crackpots, and there appears to be some very legitimate privacy questions here either way.

Those interested may also want to read reports in Wired, the San Francsico Examiner and Salon.

Update: Richard Bejtlich has an interesting blog post at Tao Security arguing that Project Vigilant is little more than a PR stunt by a collection of "wanna be" security consultants. Bejtlich still has this to say about the group's ISP data collection efforts:...and whether that massive data gathering violates privacy? The organization says it never looks at personally identifying information, though just how it defines that information isn't clear, nor is how it scrubs its data mining for sensitive details. The group doesn't look at PII, yet it develops "portfolios on any name, screen name or IP address"? I think it's time for some grown-ups to check out these guys. I don't think their activities will make those ISP's customers happy.
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Chattanooga's Fiber Network (EFB) Gets Faster - Now offersing 30, 50 and 100 Mbps symmetrical tiers

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 12:15pm MDT

For many years we've tracked Chattanooga, Tennessee's attempt to wire the entire city with fiber to the home using the local public utility, Electric Power Board (EPB). Back in 2007, the city council voted 8-0 to approve the $200 million project. Despite several failed attempts by cable industry lawyers to cripple the effort, the plan moved forward -- and as of last fall citizens of Chattanooga had access to some of the best speeds available anywhere (especially on the upstream front).

Several users dropped us a line to note that EFB recently bumped the speeds for their municipal fiber service. Users can now get 30 Mbps service for $58 a month, symmetrical 50 Mbps for $70 a month, or symmetrical 100 Mbps service for $175 a month. EFB's also launching symmetrical 150 Mbps soon. Of course the operator offers users a variety of bundles for TV, Internet and voice service.

EFB is now directly competing with local cable incumbents Charter and Comcast, as well as AT&T's U-Verse -- which only just recently launched in Chattanooga. About 12,300 customers have signed up for EFB's fiber-based service since it launched last September, and the company tells us they're signing up roughly 500 new subscribers a week. EFB hopes to have 35 to 50 percent of the market within three years.
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FiOS Users Getting More Than They Pay For - Users on 25 Mbps and 35 Mbps tiers seeing 5-8 Mbps speed cushion

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 9:43am MDT

In contrast to those users who claim they aren't being given the speeds they were advertised, FiOS customers in our forums indicate they're actually getting more than they paid for. Several users have dropped us a line to note that those on 25/15 Mbps and symmetrical 35 Mbps tiers are seeing significantly extra downstream speed. Users in our forums on the 25 Mbps tier are seeing downstream speeds of 30 Mbps or greater, while customers on the 35 Mbps tier are sometimes seeing speeds up to 43 Mbps. It's not clear if this is Verizon simply giving a little extra love to users, or they're engaged in some kind of testing for future tier changes. We've dropped a line to Verizon to inquire.

Update: Verizon tells us this is simply Verizon delivering faster service than advertised and "nothing out of the ordinary."

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Clearwire, Sprint Expand 4G Further - New market launches in FL, DE, MI, CA

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 7:49am MDT

Both Clearwire and Sprint this morning launched press releases stating they've expanded their joint Mobile WiMax into Modesto and Stockton, California, Jacksonville, Florida, Wilmington, Delaware, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. According to Sprint, these launches bring their total number of 4G-served markets to 48. Both companies say they're still on track to deploy the Mobile WiMax service to the New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston later this year. You can find a state-by-state market coverage breakdown for Sprint here and for Clearwire here.
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AT&T Tinkers With DSL Pricing - Again drops tiers to $15-$20 for new customers

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 7:13am MDT

Last week AT&T posted their second quarter earnings, and while wireless connectivity was hot -- the company noted they lost a whopping 347,000 traditional DSL customers on the quarter. Some of those customers upgraded to AT&T U-Verse, but many of them were users in un-upgraded AT&T markets who migrated to cable, either lured by faster broadband speeds or the cable triple play. To try and fight back in legacy areas, AT&T's again tinkering with their DSL pricing -- their website indicating that they've brought back the $14.95 per month price point for their Basic (768/384 kbps), Express (1.5 Mbps/ 384 kbps) and Pro (3 Mbps/ 512 kbps) DSL tiers, which are all starting to look very long in the tooth -- especially upstream. The company's Elite (6 Mbps / 512 kbps) tier is now $19.95. All of these deals are for new customers, and the pricing is for twelve months before you need to negotiate a better deal.
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AT&T Sued For Helping Wife Prove Possible Affair - Husband suffered from 'embarrassment, self-revulsion...'

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 6:57am MDT

Back in May we noted how a Rogers customer had sued the company for "exposing" her affair. What did Rogers do? They started giving the couple a unified bill (including her mobile call records to her lover) after the couple decided to bundle services. Now a Pennsylvania Police chief is suing AT&T for helping his wife gain access to his phone records in order to prove he was communicating with an ex-girlfriend. According to the lawsuit, an AT&T rep voluntarily spent time helping the wife go through the husband's call records to prove he had been lying. This caused "psychological pain and suffering, as well as humiliation, shame, embarrassment, self-revulsion and damage to his self-esteem," according to the suit.

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San Francisco Getting LTE Network - Though it will be reserved for emergency workers only

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 6:56am MDT

The city of San Francisco has tapped the wireless infrastructure arm of Motorola to deploy LTE wireless broadband service across the city. The only catch? You won't get to use it (well, unless you're an emergency worker in the Bay Area). The wireless radiation frightened city is building what will be the first LTE public safety network anywhere, and will be used by public safety agencies not only in San Francisco, but also in Alameda County/Oakland, Contra Costa County, as well as the cities of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. According to Motorola, the network will be operational in early 2011.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: August 2nd, 2010, 6:20am MDT

FCC approves first LTE phone, likely for MetroPCS fiercewireless.com
Iphone 4 is jailbroken theinquirer.net
Appeal Of Important iiNet vs. AFACT Case Begins techdirt.com
ISPA calls for soft launch of Ofcom code on illegal file sharing thinkbroadband.com
World's largest private jet operator makes deal to put Wi-Fi in its planes dispatch.com
Average UK broadband speeds break through the 5Mbps barrier comms-dealer.com
UAE regulator to suspend BlackBerry services over data monitoring from Oct 11 totaltele.com
Microsoft Quashed Effort to Boost Online Privacy wsj.com
Internet Explorer Gains Market Share at the Expense of Firefox mashable.com
AT&T High Speed Internet for $15/month, up to 3Mbit for new customers i4u.com

Friday Evening Links -

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 5:00pm MDT

Broadband Bill Meetings In Full Swing; Little Progress Expected Toward Consensus multichannel.com
We're watching more TV online, relying on mobile devices and ditching land lines: CRTC report vancouversun.com
NYC Subway to Get Wi-Fi and Cell Service, We Look In To Buying Bikes switched.com
Roadmap to Broadband Britain released computerweekly.com
U.S. regulators weighing responses to Huawei's entrance fiercewireless.com
MS preps emergency patch for Windows shortcut peril theregister.co.uk
Ballmer: killing the iPad is a "job one urgency" electronista.com
'Suspicious' Android wallpaper app nabs user data; up to 4 million downloads theregister.co.uk
Kindle Wi-Fi: Has Amazon won the e-reader war? csmonitor.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Speak your mind

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 4:03pm MDT

The weekend has arrived, so talk amongst yourselves in the comment section below.
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AT&T 3G Will Power The New Nissan LEAF - From in-car media to remote battery level monitoring

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 2:00pm MDT

Despite those ever-present AT&T complaints of wireless network congestion, the company (well, all wireless carriers) are continually looking for new ways to connect people their 3G networks -- be they e-readers or electric cars. AT&T has announced that they've struck a deal with Nissan to bring HSDPA 3G connectivity to the new electric Nissan Leaf. The 3G connectivity not only allows users to access in-car media, but it's closely tied to the car's recharging systems, informing you of the nearest recharging stations and allowing users to monitor their battery levels remotely. Given Nissan plans to sell the LEAF worldwide, they chose AT&T because of their support of the GSM standard.
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Best Buy To Sell Rebranded Clearwire Service - Best Buy Connect brand to expand from 3G to 4G in 2011

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 12:14pm MDT

In its first partnership extending beyond wholesale agreements with major cable companies like Time Warner Cable and Comcast, Clearwire has announced they're now allowing Best Buy to rent space on the Clearwire network so they can also sell their own 4G services. Earlier this month we noted how Best Buy had already struck a deal with Sprint to resell wireless phone and EVDO service under the "Best Buy Connect" brand. According to the Best Buy and Clearwire announcement, the actual 4G service won't be available at Best Buy until 2011. Best Buy pricing is fairly standard -- though Best Buy hopes to make their offers compelling by offering subsidized netbook and other hardware deals to subscribers.
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Dish To File Complaint Over Comcast Philly Sports Blockade - Companies kick new FCC procedures into high gear

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 8:23am MDT

Last January the FCC issued an order (pdf) designed to put an end to cable operators preventing competitors from accessing local sports channels owned by the cable company. Last month those rules went into effect, and Dish, DirecTV, Verizon and AT&T have kicked the complaint process into high gear as they try to get access to Cablevision's MSG HD in New York, and Comcast's SportsNet Philadelphia. Dish today announced they were filing their complaint over Comcast with the FCC, claiming the cable operator refused to negotiate access to the channel in "good faith." Judging from some inside information, negotiations for access don't appear to be moving anywhere very quickly.
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Cox: People Just LOVE Their TiVo Tuning Adapters - People: well, not so much...

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 7:40am MDT

Most cable operators are deploying switched digital video (SDV) technology, which frees up bandwidth on cable systems by delivering fewer channels to the cable-box, keeping the rest waiting at the edge router. In current cable systems, all channels are consistently made available to the set-top, using up valuable bandwidth even if your TV is off. Unfortunately, the new two-way SDV technology prohibits one way CableCARDs from working, so TivO and the cable industry cooked up a free adapter so users could continue to use their TiVOs.

We've seen mixed user experiences with the devices. Many users simply don't want another gadget surrounding their TV, and many have had reliability and interoperability issues. TiVO of course doesn't think an extra box is a very elegant solution, and has been pushing the FCC to free up cable's grip on the set top box ecosystem by mandating more open, Internet-connected platforms.

Of course if you ask the cable industry, these tuners are working just fine. Cox tells the FCC that consumers actually really love the devices: Cox Communications Inc. recently met with the FCC to punctuate the cable position, offering a listing of testimonials from MSO customers that illustrated their experiences with tuning adapter installations. According to the handout, the quotes were from TiVo surveys conducted around the launch of tuning adapters in the Cox Orange County and North Virginia systems. Not surprisingly, none of the evidence shared offered a negative reaction. Some of the testimonials come off as downright giddy.Comments to the cable industry's blog by actual consumers would seem to disagree. Can any of our users share their thoughts on whether they've had good experiences with these adapters (like the Cisco STA1520, above right)?
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Netflix Streaming Costs Primarily Licensing, Not Bandwidth - Hollywood cashes in on Netflix success

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 7:25am MDT

As CNET explores, Netflix has been doing rather well financially -- which resulted in Hollywood very quickly begging them for more money. Hollywood has also gotten Netflix to do things like delaying new releases for thirty days under the misguided impression that this is somehow going to help save physical DVD sales. As NewTeeVee notes, Netflix spent $66 million in the second quarter of 2010 on licenses for streaming titles, compared with just $9 million one year earlier. That's substantially more than they pay for bandwidth:But despite a huge increase in the amount of video streams it's serving up through Watch Instantly, Netflix's streaming costs haven't increased proportionally. In the second quarter, the company said costs associated with delivery over third-party CDN networks only increased by $1 million versus the previous quarter. Netflix is benefiting from bandwidth costs continuing to fall exponentially as it grows its streaming business.So far, predictions by Internet video nay sayers like Mark Cuban that Netflix's model isn't sustainable don't appear accurate. Netflix has eaten these Hollywood licensing costs without raising subscriber rates, though of course things could get more difficult for Netflix once cable TV providers (say ones that also own content empires) realize that streaming Netflix functionality embedded in every piece of hardware could pose a long-term threat.
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Panasonic Stops Selling Tru2Way TV Sets - Latest effort to kill the cable box doing about as well as the last few...

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 6:58am MDT

Back in January of 2008, the cable industry announced Tru2way, a re-imagining of OCAP technology that was intended to integrate set-top box functionality into TVs and other devices. Users would be able to use these devices with any cable operator, eliminating the need for the set top box. That same year a huge deal was made about Sony joining the consortium and all of this "killing off the cable box," though Panasonic wound up being the only company to offer the new HDTV sets. Fast forward two years later, and Panasonic is has decided to stop selling Tru2Way televisions:"We currently have no tru2way products at retail and there are no announced release dates for Panasonic tru2way retail products at this time," Panasonic said in a statement. However, Panasonic hasn't abandoned tru2way altogether. Jeff Cove, Panasonic's vice president of technology and alliances, said the company has products in the works, including a standalone "set-back" tru2way adapter for TVs, though he declined to provide pricing or availability info. "We decided that the most scalable way to approach tru2way was on the set-back box," he said.So the death of the cable box will require -- a cable box? Tru2Way is still being used by cable operators within their own TV platforms, but companies like TiVO have long complained the technology doesn't work for them due to "costly and strict license agreements."
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Frday Morning Links -

Posted: July 30th, 2010, 5:39am MDT

An Order of Seven Global Cyber-Guardians Now Hold Keys to the Internet popsci.com
How long will AT&T's competitors resist tiered pricing plans? fiercebroadbandwireless.com
HomePlug Alliance jacks up powerline home networking businesswire.com
Australia to force users to have broadband connection techeye.net
Satellite broadband touted as digital divide clincher (again) v3.co.uk
Talk Talk and Vodafone tie up on mobile broadband theinquirer.net
Cox Business makes Security Suite available to web subscribers cbronline.com
RIM will release a Blackpad theinquirer.net
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: July 29th, 2010, 5:36pm MDT

What is Sprint's trump card? fiercewireless.com
White House Seeks Easier FBI Access To Internet Records, Blocks Oversight Attempt... Just As FBI Caught Cheating On Exam To Stop Abuse techdirt.com
Clearwire adds Best Buy as 4G wholesale partner fiercewireless.com
San Francisco Bay Area Selects Motorola for the Nation's First Public Safety 700 MHz LTE Broadband Network redorbit.com
Ofcom Faces Backlash For Broadband Criticism eweekeurope.co.uk
Sprint set to release 3G-enabling "case" for iPod touch arstechnica.com
Amazon Launches $139 Wi-Fi-Only Kindle informationweek.com
1 Billion Global Broadband Subs by 2015 Reports Strategy Analytics tmcnet.com
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Vermont Is Wiring Itself With Fiber Because Nobody Else Will - East Ventral Vermont Community Fiber Network moving forward...

Posted: July 29th, 2010, 4:24pm MDT

Vermont already wasn't exactly a great state for broadband, given the largely rural state is a ROI nightmare for large ISP bean counters. Their broadband fortunes were recently made substantially worse by Fairpoint Communications, who acquired Verizon's unwanted New England DSL network, then subsequently imploded under the not so watchful eye of Vermont regulators. Vermont's been tired of waiting for uninterested ISPs to wire them so they're working hard at wiring themselves.

The result is the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network, which tells the Burlington Free Press that the 22-town telecommunications network is "well under way," complete with mysterious financiers. We've covered this network effort before, noting how it's the brain child of a gentleman named Tim Nulty, who has repeatedly declared that running fiber to rural areas, if done right, is perfectly economical. This network (which will offer just broadband and phone service but not TV, for obvious economic reasons) is his opportunity to prove it:Project Director Tim Nulty said the pilot would "prove our concept" of creating a high-speed Internet network for rural Vermonters, at no risk to taxpayers. Nulty has projected profitability for the network in its fifth year of operation, if 49 percent of the households in the 22 towns subscribe. . . He declined to identify the source of the funding for the project, but said the $75 million network is no longer in the running for a stimulus loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "We have some private investment," he said. "We will raise some additional funds."Regardless of where you fall on the ages-old municipal broadband debate, Vermont has been an interesting broadband state to watch, from Fairpoint's collapse and efforts to prevent these kinds of community efforts from succeeding, to the fact that a Google executive is running for Vermont Governor with broadband as one of his primary campaign platforms.
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UK Finds That Google Wi-Fi Snooping Yielded Little - No 'meaningful details' gathered from Street View sniffing

Posted: July 29th, 2010, 3:02pm MDT

Google recently found themselves under fire from privacy regulators in multiple countries for the company's admission that they had been collecting Wi-Fi user data from unsecured hotspots using Street View vehicles. Google initially stated they only collected publicly available SSID and MAC Address data -- then later acknowledged that they were collecting snippets of actual transmitted data -- though Google insisted they did so accidentally. However, a UK review has found no real privacy harm was done:The ICO said in a statement: "On the basis of the samples we saw, we are satisfied so far that it is unlikely that Google will have captured significant amounts of personal data." It added: "There is also no evidence - as yet - that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment." Despite this, Google was "wrong" to gather the information, said the ICO.The UK's findings are in line with Google's admission that the equipment used changed channels roughly five times a second while the vehicle was moving.

In other words, while Google did intend to collect publicly available SSID and MAC information, most of the live Wi-Fi user data collected (from unsecured hotspots only) was largely useless. Google has admitted error and apologized for their screw up, though the company still faces inquiries in multiple countries and in the United States.
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