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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 5:25pm MDT

Why Internet connections are fastest in South Korea cnn.com
Cox Wireless launch details coming soon fiercewireless.com
Has AT&T's network improvement plan helped enough? networkworld.com
LTE will bridge the digital divide fiercewireless.com
TiVo Faces Patent-Infringement Countersuits By AT&T, Verizon multichannel.com
FCC War Over Mobile TV: Airwaves or Cell Networks? How About Both wired.com
FCC begins rollout of national broadband policies washingtonpost.com
Court Says President Bush Violated Wiretapping Laws With Warrantless Wiretap techdirt.com
BT outage causes chaos in London v3.co.uk
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AT&T Scrambles For Possibility Of Verizon iPhone - We'll see how that churn holds up if/when iPhone users have option to flee...

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 4:42pm MDT

2009 was of course jam packed with people complaining about the performance of the iPhone on AT&T's network -- at least in congested markets like New York and The Bay Area. After taking a serious beating in the press, AT&T quickly got to work adding more backhaul and cell sites, converting their markets to 850Mhz, and according to a new report from Wall Street Journal this week, working more closely with Apple on ways to make the iPhone a little more efficient in terms of network use. According to the website, Apple engineers got a "crash course" from AT&T in networking:At times, the carrier has gotten help from Apple. Last year, as its network came under heavy strain, AT&T flew Mr. Stankey and Mr. Donovan to California. Their job: assure Steve Jobs they were working on the problems and to provide Apple designers with a crash course in wireless networking. Apple rejiggered how its phones communicate with AT&T's towers. As a result, the phones now put less of a load on the network for such simple tasks as finding the closest tower or checking for available text messages.The Journal got a lot of attention for this article yesterday, namely because it rekindled the rather obvious rumor -- for what really is about the fifty-seventh time -- that the iPhone should eventually make the leap to Verizon. AT&T has one of the lowest customer defection (churn) rates in the industry, and while AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spent 2009 pretending this was because of the AT&T network -- it was because of the cult of Apple. Should AT&T lose iPhone exclusivity, the AT&T network will of course be put to direct comparison with Verizon in terms of iPhone performance, so AT&T is apparently scrambling.

AT&T tells Broadband Reports that so far their efforts have involved adding 1,900 new cell sites, installing more than 100,000 new backhaul connections (that's four times the number installed in 2008), doubling the number of towers served by fiber (as opposed to T1), pushing overall coverage out further to serve 360 markets, or roughly 75 percent of the population, and deployed HSPA 7.2 software at all of the company's 3G (though not EDGE) towers.

"While this upgrade is not expected to provide a noticeable immediate boost in average speeds until backhaul is in place, it does result in a better overall customer experience by generally improving consistency in accessing data sessions," AT&T's Seth Bloom says about the 7.2 HSPA software upgrade. "It also prepares the network for faster speeds and increases network efficiency." You of course need a 7.2 HSPA-capable phone to take full advantage of those speeds.

So far it appears that the efforts are paying dividends. Tests earlier this year by PC World show a marked improvement in iPhone performance, though other studies from JD Power and Associates indicate the company still lags in terms of call quality. While anecdotal of course, the number of dropped iPhone calls we've experienced in the NYC area has dropped considerably. It's pretty clear AT&T is listening.
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Sprint Offers 30 Day Money Back Guarantee - Improving upon their previous 30 day free trial (where you still paid)

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 2:28pm MDT

Sprint today announced that the wireless carrier is now offering a thirty day money back guarantee for users who sign up for service with Sprint. Sprint actually started offering 30 day trials back in 2008 after being sued by Minnesota's Attorney General for sneaky contract extensions. However, while the offer allowed you to escape paying an ETF if unsatisfied within 30 days, you still had to pay for any services used during that period, in addition to having to pay taxes and a restocking fee. Now, Sprint says they're refunding the full thirty day amount (with the exception of ringtones or other third-party services purchased):Beginning tomorrow, the Sprint Free Guarantee gives any customer opening a new line of service the chance to try Sprint for 30 days. If a customer isn't completely satisfied, they can get reimbursed for the device purchase and activation fee, get the early termination fee waived, get a full refund for service plan monthly recurring charges incurred and get all associated taxes and Sprint surcharges associated with these charges waived. In addition, Sprint will waive the restocking fee for new customer exchanges as part of this policy.Sprint offers up a handy chart (above, right) highlighting how they're the only carrier currently doing this. Several operators recently began offering 30 day trials allowing users to escape paying ETFs within thirty days, but it had nothing to do with altruism. It was in response to settlements over ETF practices, or to fight off proposed laws aimed at ramping up wireless industry consumer protections. Verizon briefly offered a money-back guarantee, but then subsequently backtracked.

Sprint of course needs all the additional subscribers they can get after weathering their botched acquisition of Nextel, and the resulting customer fallout. Sprint's earnings last quarter indicate that their subscriber losses are slowing, and the company clearly hopes giving a little love to consumers may help improve things even more.
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Megapath And Covad Announce Merger - No terms announced -- to close sometime during Q3

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 12:29pm MDT

Megapath and Covad have announced that the two companies will be merging their operations, depending on regulatory approval. According to a company representative, the transaction will create one of the largest managed service local exchange carriers (MSLEC) in the United States. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but the companies say that barring regulatory approval, the deal should close sometime in the third quarter of this year. The combined businesses will be owned by Platinum and MegaPath investors.

"It seems that Megapath will become the ISP side of Covad and Covad.net will be going away," one source who just attended an internal video presentation tells Broadband Reports&#46

Both Covad and Megapath were huge players in the early residential broadband market, and should be more than familiar to most of our readers. Like many independent carriers, both companies found it difficult to compete in the residential sector against the nation's deep-pocketed incumbents.

As such, both companies focused more intently on the (at the time) less incumbent-laden small/medium business and managed services market. In some instances, the brush-off of residential customers was brusque, to be polite.

In 2007, Covad was purchased by Platinum Equity for $304 million, a price tag many considered particularly fair given Covad's national reach. Covad currently offers IP broadband services in more than 4,400 central offices nationwide.

"From my understanding, Megapath's network will be integrated into Covad's network for central offices that Covad is not currently in," says our source. "They (in internal meetings) never outright said what would happen in CO's that both companies are in, but I got the impression that the Megapath equipment would be shut down," the source says.

"This transaction brings together two industry leaders who will focus on expanding service offerings and distribution channels to further our leadership positions in the SMB, enterprise and wholesale markets," MegaPath CEO D. Craig Young said in a prepared statement. "By leveraging the strengths of each company, we will provide customers and partners with expanded expertise, broader innovative services and a powerful network that simplifies the way they communicate and conduct business online."

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Comcast Expands Buildout Into Unserved Vermont - Pushes fiber and service an additional 300 miles into unserved territory...

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 8:07am MDT

Vermont is one of the country's less broadband-wired states, with Verizon leaving much of the state un-upgraded due to the cost of rural deployment. Verizon of course recently sold their DSL and landlines to Fairpoint Communications, who isn't in much of a position to expand service in New England after filing for bankruptcy (though they're busily lobbying to kill others from doing so). Vermont is home to some very interesting non-profit efforts like ValleyFiber, though those efforts have been slowed by the recent economic troubles. In a bit of good news for Vermont residents without broadband, Comcast this week announced they've completed a 300 mile expansion into Vermont that should bring service to 6,000 more people:Comcast today announced that it has completed a 300-mile network expansion in Vermont, bringing more than 6,000 additional homes and businesses in 25 communities access to the cost savings, innovative features and reliability of Comcast's digital TV, high-speed Internet and voice services. Four of the communities - South Hero, Grand Isle, North Hero and Brookline - had not previously had access to Comcast's advanced broadband services prior to the extension of the company's fiber-optic network. With the recent additions, Comcast has extended its fiber-optic network by more than 1,200 miles since arriving in Vermont in 2006.Comcast of course is leading the pack at expanding faster DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades into all of its territories, which is an additional bit of good news for Vermont residents.
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Saturday Postal Cuts Could Hurt Netflix - And pricey, stubborn Hollywood licensing could hurt streaming...

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

The U.S. Postal Service is considering eliminating Saturday postal delivery in order to help shore up their budget problems. Netflix will spend $600 million on postage in 2010, and of course Saturday delivery and higher postal prices could seriously dampen Netflix's bottom line. If only there were some conceivable way to deliver films directly to people's homes without relying on the mercy of the U.S. Postal Service? Slate (via Consumerist) argues that broadband streaming won't help, given the high prices Netflix pays for licensing:...while instantly streamed movies obviously eliminate postage costs, they are not a cost-free proposition for Netflix. Analysts suggest that the streaming technology itself is very cheap-it costs roughly five cents to stream 90 minutes of content-but the licensing fees can be exorbitant. Netflix won't release the data on how much it pays for online licensing, but can apparently be quite expensive. Dan Rayburn, an analyst with Streaming Media, has said that he's seen some streaming movies that cost as much as $4 per play.Of course Hollywood continues to be stingy with film licenses for streaming rentals, out of a misguided fear that streaming video will further cannibalize DVD sales. It's amazing that Netflix has developed a fairly cheap, high-quality alternative to piracy, and they may wind up struggling because Hollywood can't get out of its own way. Apparently, we're sliding backwards toward suing potential customers as a revenue stream, instead of offering those users high-quality alternatives to piracy.
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Rhythms Employee Finally Gets His Money - Just enough to buy a gumball or two...

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:49am MDT

Those of you who've been here for a while of course will remember broadband startup Rhythms NetConnections. Rhythms went public on April 7, 1999, and the company's stock ended its first day of trading at around $70 a share. Of course then came the dot com bubble, Enron's special brand of involvement in Rhythms stock (Enron owned 50% of the company at one point), and Rhythms ultimately stumbled into bankruptcy in August of 2001. The company's collapse highlighted everything that was broken about the sector (insanely overvalued startups, fuzzy math, executives who somehow got away wealthy and clean), and shareholders and employees of the company have spent most of the last decade engaged in legal battle over the company's implosion. Jim Shank, who worked for Rhythms and invested $10,000 of his own money into the company, blogs that he finally got his check last week: all eighty-three cents of it.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:32am MDT

Broadband rules target black families cincinnati.com
Coalition Calls For U.S. To Modernize Electronic Privacy Law multichannel.com
House Passes Ban On File Sharing Use By Government Employees techdirt.com
BT plans further fibre optic broadband deployment cable.co.uk
ZigBee searches for a new home theregister.co.uk
Rumor Mill: Google to thwart Android fragmentation fiercewireless.com
Ipad might face an import ban theinquirer.net
Hacker pledges to re-enable Linux on PS3 reghardware.co.uk
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Novus Opens Up Fiber Network - Expands fiber network, invites other players to battle Shaw...

Posted: March 31st, 2010, 6:24am MDT

Back in February we noted that a company named Novus Entertainment had started offering 200 Mbps fiber to the home connections to residents of Vancouver. The company's been engaged in a public pricing feud with Shaw Communications, who dropped their prices to unheard of levels ($10 for 15 Mbps, $10 for VoIP and $10 for TV) in order to try to drive Novus out of business. Novus first responded by running an ad letting all Shaw customers know that Shaw was only offering that deal in Vancouver. Now they're announcing that they're opening up their network to other competitors:Novus will use a portion of the fibres to deliver its own Cable Television, Internet and Digital Phone services. The balance of the fibres will be available to other communications service providers and to businesses for lease or for sale. Doug Holman, Co-President and Chief Financial Officer of Novus Entertainment Inc. noted, "This is an important step forward for providing broadband access in Canada. By leasing fibre to other service providers and to businesses, Novus is allowing companies to deploy broadband services economically. To date, other companies holding fibre optic assets have generally insisted on providing "managed services", greatly adding to the cost of accessing fibre optic cables."According to Novus, they've also extended their fiber network to Richmond. If you're interested in the 200 Mbps service, it's $279.95 per month ($261 US).
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 5:18pm MDT

LTE to bridge wired Internet gaps in Europe fiercewireless.com
Google Gets in Bed with Verizon huffingtonpost.com
Cable ISPs: new broadband test makes our service look slow arstechnica.com
Ericsson Seeks North American Dominance xchangemag.com
PC Modems Drive Mobile Data Traffic cable360.net
AT&T can survive loss of golden egg (aka the iPhone) marketwatch.com
Verizon Intros Push To Talk For BlackBerry informationweek.com
Extortion-Like Mass Automated Copyright Lawsuits Come To The US: 20,000 Filed, 30,000 More On The Way techdirt.com
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Verizon Still Struggling To Deliver FiOS Promotional Discounts - Verizon's billing problems will outlive most of us...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 4:30pm MDT

You might recall that back in 2007 Verizon promised new FiOS users a free, 19" HDTV if they signed up for service -- but our users had a hell of a time actually getting the television set after signing up. Last December Verizon settled with the state of New Jersey to the tune of $795,000 after the company repeatedly promised promotional items which never arrived. According to the Newark Star Ledger, Verizon's still having a hard time delivering promotional items to consumers, be they gift cards, rebates, or discounts for referrals. The paper profiles a user who has been battling with Verizon since October of 2009:Parascandola said reps had a different story each time he called. First they said there was no record of a promotion on his account. Then he was told that Verizon had run out of the promotional cards. "They tell me a different thing every time I speak to them," Parascandola said. "The only resolution I would agree to at this point is for them to immediately provide the gift cards as per terms of the contract I have with them."Verizon's promotional databases must be tied to their notoriously troubled billing systems, which have a long history of phantom charges and errant mistakes (which are vary rarely in the customer's favor). At least in this instance Verizon willing to admit error, though like most Verizon billing mistakes -- it required Verizon being contacted by the press before it was fully resolved. One tip: you may be able to get your carrier to put their sign up promises in writing.
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Copyright Lawsuit-O-Matic Hits U.S. Shores - ISPs fighting new movie industry user lawsuit push...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 1:52pm MDT

Techdirt directs our attention to the fact that a new company named the US Copyright Group has started representing a collection of independent filmmakers by launching an automated copyright infringement threat letter campaign. The campaign has kicked off by filing copyright infringement lawsuits in federal court against some 20,000 BitTorrent users, with another 30,000 forthcoming. As with a similar controversial campaign in the UK, the money-making effort involves sending users rapid-fire threat letters in the hopes they'll settle outright, but it raises a litany of questions (and Techdirt asks all of them) over whether this is a smart PR move, legal, the reliability of the IP-address evidence being used, etc.

ISPs have traditionally fought handing over usernames tied to an IP address unless they see a subpoena, and getting a subpoena can be a costly affair for the copyright holder. Hollywood Reporter notes that the effort is seeing blowback from ISPs, with the exception of one unnamed ISP that voluntarily turned over 71 customer names to the lawsuit machine:When the U.S. Copyright Group filed its recent lawsuits and approached AT&T and other ISPs for account information, the lawyers say they were stunned at the reaction. "Their subpoena compliance group said, 'We thought we had shut this (approach) down with the MPAA before,'" says Dunlap. . . So far, the US Copyright Group says that one ISP has cooperated, handing over 71 names and addresses. These individuals will be sent settlement offers. Eight of those cases have already settled. The other less cooperative ISPs are in the midst of fighting in court or reaching out to their respective customers.

The difference between the MPAA's past approach and the new one being offered by the US Copyright Group could come down to numbers. Weaver says the MPAA took a less targeted approach going after a smaller sampling of infringers in a single suit for multiple films, to send a message that would hopefully resonate to a much larger crowd. In contrast, Dunlap and his partners are using the new monitoring technology to go after tens of thousands of infringers at a time on a contingency basis in hopes of coming up with the right cost-benefit incentive to pursue individual pirates.Apparently, the US Copyright Group has reached out for MPAA support, but the MPAA wants to see if the company can get past the ISPs in court before getting too excited about this new "revenue stream."
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Verizon, Google Play Nice For WSJ Editorial - Push publicly for limited government, privately for regulation of one another...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 12:26pm MDT

Sure, Verizon lobbyists are busily lobbying Uncle Sam to push the government to investigate Google for privacy and antitrust violations, and Verizon pays "consultants" like Scott Cleland to smear Google at every opportunity. And sure, Google has been a thorn in Verizon's side on everything from White Space broadband to network neutrality. But the two companies apparently put their seething hatred of each other aside long enough to write a vague, dual-CEO editorial in the Wall Street Journal asking for "minimal government involvement" when it comes to the new broadband plan. Says CEOs Schmidt and Seidenberg:The Internet has thrived in an environment of minimal regulation. While our two companies don't agree on every issue, we do agree generally as a matter of policy that the framework of minimal government involvement should continue. The FCC underscores the importance of creating the right climate for private investment and market-driven innovation to advance broadband. That's the right approach and why we are encouraged to see the FCC's plan.Of course given the FCC's plan in its current form does nothing to tackle high prices and limited competition and is packed with pages of empty showmanship -- it's not as if either Google or Verizon really has anything to worry about. It's actually what isn't in the plan that has Verizon worried. Should the FCC lose their case against Comcast, it's widely believed they're going to try to reclassify ISPs under Title II common carrier services. That would mean greater authority for the FCC over all manner of telecom issues, something Verizon spent much of last week ranting about.

But there is some hypocrisy at play here -- given both companies claim to be for minimal government regulation -- unless it's regulation that can somehow be used to beat the hell out of one another. Verizon's idea of "minimal government regulation" apparently involves lobbying Uncle Sam for additional regulation of Google, while Google's version of "minimal government regulation" apparently means lobbying for additional regulation of Verizon.
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Permalink for 'Verizon, Google Pretend They Don't Want Government Help - Push publicly for limited government, privately for regulation of one another...'

Verizon, Google Pretend They Don't Want Government Help - Push publicly for limited government, privately for regulation of one another...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 12:26pm MDT

The Press Realizes The FiOS Party Is Over - But doesn't quite see the bigger picture yet...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 9:36am MDT

We've been covering Verizon's decision to suspend FiOS deployment in many neighborhoods for much of the last month, discussing how cities like Alexandria, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland are more than a little annoyed that they won't be getting upgraded from last-generation DSL. The company is continuing builds in cities that have signed franchise agreements, but for all intent and purposes -- the great FiOS experiment has ended -- prematurely. This week we finally saw the press wake up to the news of FiOS's grinding halt after the Associated Press noticed what was going on. Most of the coverage repeats some variation of Verizon's position that they never promised you, the users, full coverage:Verizon never committed to bringing FiOS to its entire local-phone service area. It has introduced FiOS in 16 states, but the deployment is concentrated on the East Coast, and Verizon is selling off most of its service areas in the Midwest and on the West Coast. Its stated goal was to make FiOS available to 18 million households by the end of 2010, and it's on track to reach or exceed that.While it's true that Verizon never promised to deploy FiOS to their entire footprint, the AP doesn't tell you the telco was previously planning to deploy FiOS to cities like Baltimore and Alexandria, and this freeze is a change of plans. Verizon originally hoped to pass about 85% of their available customers through several deployment waves. Right now, Verizon's own data suggests that 48% of all Verizon-served homes are passed (this doesn't always mean service is available) by FiOS.

That number will grow as Verizon works on building out service in cities like DC, NYC, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But while Verizon has promised to deploy service to everyone in these cities, the fine print in those contracts (usually hashed out in private between cities and Verizon) usually allows Verizon to stop deployment after hitting the most profitable neighborhoods -- should they not see satisfactory TV uptake. Once Verizon picks the best parts of these cities, total FiOS penetration might be as high as 65%.

That still leaves a huge chunk of Verizon customers on last-generation infrastructure, many of them in rural markets or in second or third-tier cities. Meanwhile, there's no indication that there's going to be a "second wave" of FiOS deployment.

What changed? For one, Verizon wants to stop and market the service in already deployed markets to boost penetration. They also want to pause and contemplate whether they can grab some taxpayer money. Early Verizon lobbyist attempts to grab funds for doing nothing didn't work out, and Verizon avoided the first round of funding because they didn't like conditions tied to the money. Obviously network builds aren't cheap, and Verizon's move to spend $23 billion on FiOS was a gutsy choice. Unfortunately for more than 40% of Verizon customers, it was a gutsy choice championed largely by one man.

The primary reason for the Verizon FiOS halt is that FiOS's biggest fan, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, is on his way out at the company. Seidenberg was big on solidifying Verizon's future with FiOS, and was more than willing to pour money back into the network. Investors of course eager for immediate returns complained, going so far as to claim Verizon was "doomed." But Seidenberg's bet paid off, and Verizon created the largest fiber to the home network in the western world.

But Seidenberg's replacements are more interested in satisfying short-term, often myopic investors, and are busily pushing their vision of the new, more investor-friendly Verizon. This includes slowing FiOS deployment, and using sophisticated financial tricks to offload unwanted networks (and debt) onto smaller companies (tax free). Verizon then hopes to fill in any FiOS gaps with LTE wireless broadband. Knowing these companies can't really afford to upgrade, Verizon can win back many of these sold-off DSL customers with faster LTE service in a few years.

The plan isn't particularly good news for the millions of Verizon DSL customers who were waiting for FiOS. It's not good news for the tens of thousands of employees Verizon's laying off. It's not good news for Verizon's hardware vendor partners like BigBand Networks. It's not good news for the smaller telcos that are gobbling up Verizon copper-based networks (and going bankrupt under Verizon debt) without realizing the LTE counter punch Verizon has planned down the road.

But it is good news for investors who think real network upgrades aren't necessary for the health of a company. It's also good news for cable operators who do business in these unwanted markets and won't have to worry about an expedited timeline to upgrade to next-generation infrastructure. Verizon was the only major U.S. carrier with the insight and courage to embrace fiber to the home, and it appears, with a few urban exceptions, that the party is over.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 7:50am MDT

TD-LTE: The most powerful weapon in the LTE arsenal against WiMAX fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Cox Drives 50-Mbps Internet Down Hampton Roads multichannel.com
Mergers of Wireless Companies Are Expected to Rebound post-gazette.com
Sprint's Bold Play on a 4G Network businessweek.com
Verizon iPhone coming out in just a few months? tgdaily.com
Because NBC Could Never Have Figured Out How To Put TV Shows On The Internet By Itself... techdirt.com
Obama Administration Warns Australia About Its Internet Censorship Plan techdirt.com
MS to release emergency IE fix on Tuesday theregister.co.uk
PS3 update to rid all consoles of Linux support reghardware.co.uk
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Windstream Wants $238 Million In Taxpayer Funds - Says in exchange they'll bring DSL to 93% of their footprint

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 7:41am MDT

Many of the bigger carriers ignored the first round of broadband stimulus funding because they generally prefer their taxpayer dollars without any pesky restrictions. After lobbying to have the rules weakened, we're not surprisingly seeing major carriers change their tune on applying for funds. Last week we noted that Qwest was going to apply for $350 million in federal stimulus funds to help them deploy VDSL. That's an ironic move given Qwest would be using taxpayer funds to deploy DSL -- after a long history of suing cities for trying to use taxpayer funds to deploy fiber.

Windstream Communications also now appears interested in the latest round of stimulus funds. According to a Windstream press release, the company has applied for $238 million to expand what sounds like ADS2+ into a larger number of markets. According to Windstream, they'd combine the $238 million with $80 million of their own funds to improve service to about 500,000 homes and 80,000 businesses. The company says the push would allow them to deliver DSL to 93% of their 3 million voice line customers, up from 89% currently:Windstream would expand its fiber network by more than 7,000 miles and install additional equipment in its facilities to expand and enhance broadband service to about 500,000 homes and 80,000 businesses within 320 exchanges under the project. If approved, the project would enable Windstream to make high-speed Internet available to 93 percent of Windstream s three million voice lines, up from 89 percent currently. Maximum speeds for the stimulus project areas would range from 6 Mbps to 12 Mbps.Like Qwest of course, Windstream lacks a wireless division to buoy revenues, making next-generation upgrades and pleasing investors not something that's easy to do simultaneously.
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Suddenlink Launches 107 Mbps Service - And the high-end broadband marketing wars continue...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 7:08am MDT

Most carriers realize that speeds faster than 50 Mbps aren't really necessary for most people (yet). But that hasn't stopped carriers from pushing their higher-end tiers beyond 100 Mbps in order to gain some press attention and bleeding-edge nerd cred.

Last April, Optimum Online launched a $99 (plus $300 "activation fee") 101 Mbps service, and last December Mediacom announced a 105 Mbps tier. Suddenlink has now jumped into the bragging rights arena with a press release stating the carrier is offering a new topheavy 107 Mbps/ 5 Mbps broadband tier dubbed "High Speed Internet MAX 107.0."

"Based on our research, we believe this residential download speed to be the fastest available in the U.S. today," Suddenlink CEO Jerry Kent announced in a statement. Technically that's not true, as one of our readers reminds us that a company named Paxio in the Bay Area offers 1000Mbps service. Meanwhile Suddenlink doesn't provide any price for the new tier in their release -- so we've had to inquire about the price and will update this post when we have it.

According to Suddenlink, the new tier is part of "Project Imagine," a $350 million investment plan through 2012 aimed at upgrading networks to DOCSIS 3.0 technology, pushing HD channel counts in all markets past 200, and upgrading On Demand services for all users. For now, it appears than only suburban Austin (Georgetown, Pflugerville, and Leander) will be graced with this new, 107 Mbps speed tier.
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Maine Rejects Radiation Warning Labels on Cell Phones - San Francisco push continues...

Posted: March 30th, 2010, 6:49am MDT

Last December we noted how some Maine lawmakers were pushing for more visible radiation warnings for cell phones. Under a bill proposed by Democratic Maine Representative Andrea Boland, manufacturers would have had to put labels on phones and packaging warning that users (particularly pregnant women and children) keep the devices away from their head and bodies because of the cancer risk from electromagnetic radiation. However, according to PC Magazine the bill, L.D. 1706, (aka the "Children's Wireless Protection Act") -- is all but dead. San Francisco officials have also been pushing for radiation warnings for cellphones via both local ordinances and new state laws.

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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 5:18pm MDT

Google sheds new light on broadband plans v3.co.uk
Verizon's Audacious Proposal for an FCC-Free Internet ecommercetimes.com
The Digital Divide Will Ensure a Broadband Ghetto gigaom.com
UK Farmers Furious Over Paying Taxes For No Broadband ispreview.co.uk
Universal Music Funds Yet Another 'Educational' Propaganda Campaign Against File Sharing techdirt.com
802.11n, WiFi Direct to broaden handset capabilities fiercewireless.com
Oman Air claims airborne internet and mobile first justtheflight.co.uk
US Airways powers up GoGo WiFi service Phoenix Business Journal
Buy Wi-Fi Access Through iTunes mashable.com
Rumor Mill: Best Buy to buy RadioShack? fiercewireless.com
Apple exhausts supply of iPads for pre-order; Existing orders will still arrive Saturday; new orders won't ship until April 12 computerworld.com
Pwn2Own winner hacks all theinquirer.net
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Parts Of Cleveland Getting 1 Gbps, For Free - Case Western Reserve University project gets underway in May

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 4:19pm MDT

Fiber optic test beds delivering 1 Gbps residential connectivity aren't just for massive advertising corporations with colorful logos anymore. Apparently, Cleveland locals will soon be able to upload their local promotional videos to YouTube much, much faster. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Case Western Reserve University is planning to deliver speeds up to 1 Gbps to thousands of homes "in or near" University Circle in Cleveland. The project, which has been planned for several years, begins in May with free fiber connections being run to about 104 households -- and is being funded by both corporations and foundations -- in addition to some additional help from Corning and Cisco. The university initially applied for $26 million in broadband stimulus funds to connect 25,000 people, but their application was rejected. As such, they plan to move slowly with deployment -- grabbing funding when and where possible.
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Cox Launches 50 Mbps In Hampton Roads, Virginia - DOCSIS 3.0 deployment continues...

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 2:12pm MDT

According to a statement by Cox Communications, the company has launched their faster DOCSIS 3.0-based broadband services in Hampton Roads, Virginia. That includes the company's "Ultimate Internet" tier, which delivers 50 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream. "We've listened to our customers, and they continue to tell us that speed and reliability are among the main reasons they choose their Internet service provider, so Cox has invested heavily in our network to ensure we continue to deliver on our commitment," said Gary McCollum, Cox Senior Vice President and General Manager. Well, as long as you live in a market where there's competition. Pricing for the 50 Mbps tier varies by region, but Virginia users in our forums indicate the tier costs between $90 and $110 a month depending on bundle options.
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Shaw Begins Testing Fiber To The Home - Some cable operators see a fiber optic future...

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 12:39pm MDT

Like many cable operators, Canadian cable company Shaw Communications is apparently exploring delivering fiber to the home in instances where it makes the most financial sense: namely new deployments -- most of which will be upscale housing developments. According to Light Reading, the company is hoping to use a physical passive optical network (PON) coupled with RF over Glass (RFoG) for all new builds. The technology allows cable operators to use fiber to the home, but continue using traditional cable backend systems. Says Shaw of their future plans: Presently, Shaw is using an "N+1" architecture in greenfields, whereby just one power-hungry, "active" amplifier resides between the node and the homes it's serving. If Shaw goes with PON and FTTP, it would leap right over an "N+0" approach being touted by suppliers like Aurora Networks. "You'll see us move from N+1... into a fiber-to-the home architecture, hopefully using the PON architecture and RFoG overlay with an appropriate Ethernet underlay, as required, from now on," Atkinson says of Shaw's future greenfield strategy.Shaw currently imposes monthly caps on users ranging from 10 GB to 150 GB a month.
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AT&T Says 24 Mbps U-Verse Now Available Everywhere - Well, everywhere there's U-Verse, anyway...

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 10:11am MDT

In July of last year, Broadband Reports was the first to report that AT&T was cooking up a new 24 Mbps down 3 Mbps up tier for U-Verse users, and in December of last year the product launched under the "Max Turbo" brand. The tier, which costs $65 a month but requires you bundle other AT&T U-Verse products, was originally launched in Austin, San Antonio and St. Louis. According to an AT&T press statement today, AT&T has now expanded the availability of the tier to all of their U-Verse markets. AT&T currently offers U-Verse in 120 markets across 22 states.

AT&T chose to save cash by using copper instead of upgrading to fiber the the home. As such, while some people close to the CO see their U-Verse gateways sync at 100 Mbps, most people see about 25 Mbps of total bandwidth at about 2,500-3,000 feet from the VRAD or CO. AT&T's therefore continually engaged in a balancing act that involves using compression and real time traffic management to ensure broadband data and HD IPTV signals get along.

The faster speeds come courtesy of a new 32Mbps/5Mbps gateway profile that supports the higher speed. The upgrade will also eventually support three simultaneous HD streams -- something U-Verse users should see in fairly short order.

While 24 Mbps is certainly more than enough for the average user, it's quickly being overshadowed on the marketing front by deployment of cable industry 50 and 100 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0-based service. Repeatedly-delayed pair bonded VDSL will be AT&T's retort, with AT&T enlisting a second copper pair to each house (assuming an extra pair is available) to increase speeds and extend U-Verse's range. AT&T says they should be able to double the bandwidth they're currently delivering, though other estimates peg the speed bump at closer to 25-30%.

Of course like Verizon, more than half of AT&T's users still reside on last-generation DSL. Also like Verizon, there's been indications that AT&T is slowing down deployment of their "next generation" product into additional territories. In other words, many AT&T customers won't see anything resembling next-generation speeds for a very long time. However, if you're in a U-Verse market, things just got a little bit faster for you.
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Clearwire/Sprint 4G Launches In Houston - Expect a flood of additional market launches soon...

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 7:36am MDT

Both Sprint and Clearwire have issued press releases announcing that the companies have officially launched Mobile WiMax service today in Houston, Texas. That brings Clearwire's total deployment to 27 markets, the majority of those smaller market launches in Texas. Last week Clearwire announced they'd be launching service in Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City this year -- in addition to previously-planned 2010 launches including New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Denver, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay Area. Clearwire hopes to reach 120 million potential customers by the time 2011 rolls around.
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Google Will Choose Fiber Test Location By Year's End - Received responses from roughly 1,100 speed-crazed communities

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 7:01am MDT

Google has given an update on their plan to deploy 1 Gbps fiber to the home service to a seemingly random community in order to test next-gen ad delivery (and illustrate the benefits of the open access model). Google says the received more than 1,100 responses from different communities, whose sometimes bizarre efforts to get Google's attention have gifted Google with national press attention for months now. Given Google plans to only deploy the service to somewhere between 50,000 and 500,000 people, obviously most of these towns will of be disappointed. Google says they're now going to begin site visits and meeting with different communities and should have their target location chosen by year's end.
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The Birth Of A New Wireless Broadband Competitor? - Private equity firm planning entirely new LTE network

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 6:44am MDT

GigaOM directs our attention to the fact that a New York private equity firm plans to spend billions to build a new LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband network to do battle with industry heavyweights AT&T and Verizon. Harbinger Capital Partners owns a company by the name of SkyTerra, and in turn the significant chunk of spectrum SkyTerra owns. Harbingers hopes to launch the wholesale network before the third quarter of 2011 and initially reach 9 million people, but reach 260 million people by 2015. trials set initially for Denver and Phoenix. With conditions attached to the spectrum in question aimed at keeping AT&T and Verizon away from it, GigaOM speculates that Harbinger will ultimately wind up partnering with T-Mobile.
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Verizon's Favorite Tax-Dodging Tactic May Soon Be Illegal - Federal jobs bill could put Verizon Frontier sale at risk...

Posted: March 29th, 2010, 6:32am MDT

As we discussed last week, Verizon's taking increasing heat of its use of sophisticated financial tricks that allow the carrier to unload unwanted assets and debt without having to pay taxes. The problem has traditionally been that this financial maneuver (known as a Reverse Morris Trust) has resulted in bankruptcies for the companies either being spun off or used as acquisition partners, and a lot of headaches for broadband consumers. As Verizon now attempts to sell 6 million DSL users across 14 states to Frontier using the same method, they've found their favorite tax trick has been made illegal under a House version of a new federal jobs bill:A provision in a federal jobs bill that outlaws a tax loophole used in Verizon's bid to sell its telephone landlines to Frontier Communications Corp. in West Virginia and 13 other states could derail the sale. On Wednesday, the U.S. House passed legislation that includes a ban on a tax shelter -- known as a Reverse Morris Trust -- that Verizon and other companies have used to spin off operations tax-free. Verizon plans to use the Reverse Morris Trust as part of its $8.6 billion deal with Frontier.You shouldn't be surprised if the ban on Reverse Morris Trusts "magically" disappears as the law winds its way through the legislative process. It has been a very popular financial tactic to avoid taxation, used by Kraft, Viacom, Disney and other companies. The Reverse Morris Trust, made legal since 1997, would prevent Verizon from paying any taxes on the $8.5 billion Frontier deal. Given Verizon's "makeover" (selling off all rural DSL and landline markets) has involved tens of thousands of terminated employees -- unions have been lobbying hard to have the Reverse Morris Trust eliminated from the Verizon accounting arsenal.

As the link above illustrates, Verizon hasn't specifically made many friends in West Virginia -- given that they've neglected the state's aging copper infrastructure for years to focus their attentions elsewhere. Unions in the state have also been complaining for most of the decade that they haven't been given the necessary resources to do their jobs. As a result, regulators have stated that consumer complaints in the state have skyrocketed over the last few years.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 5:05pm MDT

U.S. Drops to Fifth in Most Networked Countries List switched.com
Verizon to Slow FiOS Roll-out, Sell off Midwest and West Coast Services digitaltrends.com
More than 600 communities vying for Google network a deadline hits azcentral.com
Genachowski: FCC Spent $20.6 Million on National Broadband Plan; Greatest Portion Of Costs Went To Salaries multichannel.com
Satellite Use In Broadband Plan A Big Unknown aviationweek.com
Gleaned From The ACTA Draft: Whole Thing Can Be Rammed Through With 5 Votes techdirt.com
Verizon Wireless to open app store March 29 telecomengine.com
iPhone Hacker Thinks He s Cracked the iPad, Too wired.com
Xbox 360 firmware update coming on 6 April; Adds support for USB keys, hard drives reghardware.co.uk
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Weekend Open Thread - What do you think?

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 4:36pm MDT

The weekend has dropped. Chat amongst yourselves in the comment section below. Just clean up when you're done.
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AT&T Locks Down Android Tight - Did you expect something different?

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 2:27pm MDT

Earlier this month, AT&T launched their first Android-based smartphone the Motorola Backflip, and many were annoyed (but unsurprised) to learn of a few Ma Bell "modifications." In addition to replacing Google with Yahoo search, the device came complete with AT&T bloatware that couldn't be removed, and couldn't run unsigned applications (running contrary to the whole point of the Android OS). Now as AT&T prepares to launch the first Android-powered Dell smartphone (the Dell Aero), Phone News confirms with Dell that the Aero also won't allow unsigned applications:To Google's credit, the chief developer of Android wants no part of these restrictions, and is refusing to put the "with Google" branding on Backflip or Aero. Still, legal questions loom large for device manufacturers willing to consent to these hinderances (sic). As Android touts a gatekeeper-less universe of open application development, these changes make it questionable if users should be notified pre-purchase about said hinderances (sic).AT&T showed off the Aero at CTIA this week but apparently wouldn't let the press play with it for longer than a few moments, lest they notice AT&T's special "enhancements" to the device. Of course AT&T-imposed restrictions on a platform designed to be (largely) open does nothing to stop the eventual migration to truly open mobile platforms, though it does act to undermine the AT&T brand. Of course you can now buy a Nexus One from Google for $529 (but not unsubsidized through AT&T), though that effectively creates a system where real application freedom becomes a luxury option.
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David Pogue Gushes Over Line2 App For iPhone - This is the beginning of something very, very interesting...

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 11:30am MDT

Despite the fact that many people don't yet "get" Google Voice, last October we discussed how these kinds of applications could change everything -- by taking core phone functionality like dialing and voicemail away from traditional wireless carriers. We've also mentioned how mobile VoIP also will slowly destroy the idea of the traditional voice minute bundle, given enough time. So what happens when you combine mobile VoIP and hijacked core dialing and voicemail functionality?

David Pogue at the New York Times this week wrote a love letter to a (relatively) new $1 Google-Voice-esque iPhone application named Line2. The application duplicates the existing iPhone voicemail and call functionality, but can also turn the iPod Touch into a faux phone or creates a second VoIP line (duh) for the iPhone. First, watch this video where Line2 is explained by its creator, then we'll let Pogue gush for a bit:Line2 also turns the iPhone into a dual-mode phone. That is, it can make and receive calls either using either the AT&T airwaves as usual, or now this is the best part over the Internet. Any time you re in a wireless hot spot, Line2 places its calls over Wi-Fi instead of AT&T s network....Your calling partners sound as if they re speaking right into the mike at an FM radio station. It s almost too clear; you hear the other person s breathing, lip smacks, clothing rustling and so on.Pogue's heavy breathing aside, the service, which costs $15 a month, could let you downgrade to lower minute plans (are we understanding yet why AT&T's eager to charge more for wireless data?). Oddly, despite Apple's decision to block Google Voice because it duplicated core phone functionality, Apple approved Line2. Even Pogue admits that Line2 is a bit clunky, though again these are just the first generation of applications that liberate core phone functionality from the phone companies. This is a sector that's going to be very interesting to watch, and make no mistake: it terrifies the crap out of incumbent wireless carriers.

Pogue must be getting somebody's attention at Apple (or AT&T), given the application keeps disappearing from the application store today.
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Verizon's Leaving A Trail Of Bankrupt Wreckage Behind Them - After being slammed for Fairpoint deal, Idearc shareholders sue telco...

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 10:26am MDT

Three of Verizon's biggest divestitures in the last few years haven't turned out too well -- at least for companies not named Verizon. Both Fairpoint Communications and Hawaiian Telcom went bankrupt, after the debt incurred by their deals with Verizon resulted in the companies simply imploding. Those companies then of course couldn't even properly run their networks, much less upgrade them to next-generation technology. Customers under-served and unwanted by Verizon then wound up with carriers that were crushed under the weight of Verizon debt.

Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom of course deserve a huge part of the blame. Either the companies' eyes were bigger than their metaphorical stomachs and they were incredibly over-confident, or the plan all along was to blow off the debt in bankruptcy. If the latter, Verizon's lawyers are certainly smart enough to know about it -- and the end result was a long line of defrauded creditors. Fairpoint meanwhile fought giving consumers rebates for outages, and only recently was forced to pay Maine consumers about $1.72 per line a month for 12 months.

Though given less attention, Idearc, formerly Verizon's telephone subsidiary, also went bankrupt after Verizon employed the same techniques to avoid paying taxes on the spinoff. All three deals involved a tax-loophole known as a Reverse Morris Trust to avoid tax penalties, while dumping debt onto their deal partners. Idearc shareholders this week sued Verizon, claiming Verizon's been consistently engaged in "Enron-style" skulduggery. The problem is that (for now) Verizon's tax-dodging procedure of choice may be unethical and have anti-consumer ramifications, but it's perfectly legal. But shareholders are rightly annoyed:The class calls the spinoff "a massive, Enron-style debt off-loading spin transaction". The class claims that the Idearc flop was "just one of three such transactions accomplished by Verizon Communications that were followed by quick bankruptcy - Hawaiian Telecommunications Inc., Idearc Inc., and Fairpoint Communications Inc." The shareholders claim Verizon did the spinoff so it "could escape federal taxation," and resorted to it only "after a series of failed attempts to sell the subsidiary to potential bidders."Of course the suit comes as Verizon prepares to do their biggest-such deal yet: offloading six million DSL and landline customers in more than a dozen states to Frontier Communications. That deal has recently come under scrutiny by an Illinois Judge's report that found the deal serves Verizon and Verizon only. Of course heavily-lobbied regulators continue to approve these deals with wimpy conditions they then fail to properly enforce. Meanwhile Verizon this week is busily arguing the FCC should have no authority over them, while waiting for what will be the likely and inevitable FCC approval of the deal.

Are we noticing any systemic failure at work here yet?
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AT&T Celebrates Open Access Failure, Threatens FCC - Our friend Jim hints that the next few years could get very ugly...

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 7:35am MDT

Earlier this week AT&T's top lobbyist Jim Cicconi could barely contain his laughter at the fact that regulators had ignored recommendations that the U.S. employ open access policies if they wanted to see competition and lower prices in the U&#46S&#46 broadband market&#46 Cicconi has also now issued a blog post in which he (surprise!) agrees wholeheartedly with Verizon lobbyists, who this week insisted the government should have no substantive ability to impose consumer protections upon phone companies. Cicconi essentially threatens both the FCC and Congress, warning them that they shouldn't even bother to try:Any other answer will appear as a means-justifies-the-ends rationalization by the Commission an action it can t reasonably expect anyone in disagreement to accept. At best, it would lead to litigation and investment uncertainty. At worst, it will diminish respect for the Commission and paralyze their agenda so little else can be accomplished including their ambitious NBP. In short, this is a serious question and decision and it will require some serious adult judgment.As opposed to telecom policy dictated by under-aged mimes? The old "investment uncertainty" is a line carriers like to use as a carrot on a stick. Verizon, for instance, threatens Massachussets with "investment uncertainty" (no FiOS) if they force the carrier to pay property taxes. The threat, only made possible by a lack of competition in the first place, is a little less compelling when AT&T attempts it. Despite unprecedented deregulation over the last decade, AT&T chose to nurse last-mile copper instead of investing in fiber to the home. The investment uncertainty is AT&T's fault alone.

Cicconi is, in very pleasant lobbyist speak, threatening both the FCC and Congress should they try to either extend existing authority, or even attempt to defend their existing authority. This is a new chapter in a very old fight, and it's a fight that's going to heat up substantially over the next few years as the FCC begins the rule-making procedures necessary to define network neutrality and put aspects of their national broadband plan into motion.

The FCC is currently in court fighting over whether they had the right to "sanction" Comcast for lying to customers about throttling P2P services (a debate that actually began right here at Broadband Reports). They're in court because the rather flimsy network neutrality principles created by previous FCC administrations were painfully vague. Should the FCC lose their fight over Title 1 authority, the FCC may try to reclassify broadband services as Title 2 common carriage, giving them broader authority.

That terrifies our friend Jim because consumer protections could mean slightly smaller huge bags of money, and Jim's job is, of course, to protect AT&T's pocket book. Jim -- and all the loyal politicians, think tankers, and PR folk Jim throws money at -- do this by pretending the path to low prices and telecom nirvana in the broadband sector is created when you allow AT&T and Verizon to do absolutely whatever they'd like. According to folks like Jim, Uncle Sam should simply be there to dole out subsidies and repeat press releases when asked. Both Jim, and the FCC, have a big fight ahead of them.
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Your Verizon FiOS Concierge Will See You Now - Company develops new tools to woo stubborn landlords...

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 7:19am MDT

Verizon has of course halted FiOS deployments in any new areas, but they are still busily building out in cities where they've recently signed franchise agreements (NYC, Philly, DC, Pittsburgh). While the company developed smaller ONTs and bendable fiber for city building installs, Verizon's CEO recently stated the company is still struggling in cities with two things: "landlords and cable companies." To help grease the wheels when dealing with the former, Verizon this week announced that they've developed a new "concierge" service for FiOS. From the Verizon statement:The offering, to be provided free of charge, organizes all of a building's available concierge amenities under one master platform and interface that automates many repetitive tasks, such as delivery and visitor management, allowing the building staff to focus on providing a more personalized service to occupants. Additionally, Verizon Concierge - accessible via any Web browser, mobile application for popular smartphones and soon on FiOS TV - allows a building's occupants to communicate with each other to set up carpools or clubs; have quick and easy access to schedule property amenities, and set up services from local businesses such as dry cleaners and taxis; and make reservations at a local restaurant or place a takeout order.Apparently, by offering the free service to property owners (see this video), Verizon can sell landlords more quickly on the idea of getting FiOS installed. The technology Verizon's using appears to be based on services created by Simplikate.
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Sprint Stops Advertising 3G Network As 'Most Dependable' - Verizon complains, tests show Verizon network more reliable

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 6:48am MDT

Last November Verizon complained to The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureau, saying that Sprint ads claiming they ran "America's most dependable 3G network" weren't true. Shortly thereafter, NAD issued a statement agreeing with Verizon, saying that Nielsen "drive test" data confirms that Verizon's network has been more reliable of late, even though some tests indicated Sprint had better signal strength in many regions.

Sprint appealed the decision with NAD but ultimately lost their appeal, and while Sprint says they'll stop running the ads, they don't have to like it. "Sprint respectfully disagrees with the NARB's decision and maintains that its dependability claim was fully substantiated based on tests that were designed by industry experts to measure how consumers use 3G data networks," says the carrier.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: March 26th, 2010, 6:28am MDT

ACTA Raising Serious Constitutional Questions techdirt.com
Phorm turns up in Brazil theregister.co.uk
Sprint's next challenge is touting the 4G difference fiercewireless.com
UK Digital Economy Bill To Be Rushed Through With No Debate techdirt.com
Netflix Streaming Via Wii Coming Soon? networkworld.com
Hacker gets 20 years theinquirer.net
RadioShack takes iPhone nationwide fiercewireless.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 5:24pm MDT

Lawmakers Debate the FCC's Broadband Plan yahoo.com
Is public investment in broadband premature? thinkbroadband.com
Cisco: 1 Trillion Connected Devices by 2013 wirelessweek.com
Genachowski Vague On How FCC Would Get Spectrum If Broadcast Incentive Plan Fails multichannel.com
American Cable Association Says Funds Going To Areas 'Already Sufficiently Served' By MSOs multichannel.com
Internet caf owners asked to spy on customers theregister.co.uk
Clearwire Readying Reseller Channels For 4G Expansion? crn.com
The U.S. WiMAX Smart Grid: Cisco Backs Grid Net, Michigan Pilot earth2tech.com
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MetroPCS Preps For LTE Launch - Can we get some disruptive pricing up in here?

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 4:26pm 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 (almost) 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 service sometime this year. They're still not announcing pricing details, but MetroPCS this week did announce an LTE-partnership with Samsung for core network gear and the first MetroPCS LTE phone -- the SCH-r900. Like pricing, there's still no definitive data on their first LTE market launch, the company simply saying LTE arrives sometime "later this year."
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Verizon, Cablevision Duke It Out Over 3DTV - Cablevision offers hockey in 3D, Verizon complains about it...

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 2:10pm MDT

If you were getting bored with carrier fights over HD channel counts, it looks like TV providers will soon have something new to bicker about in television ads. Verizon this week announced via their At Home Blog that the company is planning to offer a 3DTV option later this year. Verizon was actually responding to Cablevision's decision to air a hockey game in 3D for the first time this week on their MSG Channel (see Cablevision discuss the offering here). Verizon of course took the opportunity to complain that Cablevision doesn't share the MSG channel with competitors:Until (our launch), you ll see various grandstanding plays by cable companies who also produce content and can play it on their networks in 3D, hoping to make headlines with their "firsts" while excluding Verizon and other competitors from carrying this material. Is it unrealistic to think integrated operators should share their 3D content with all their viewers, even those served by others?The FCC doesn't think so, recently taking steps that should eventually lead to companies like Cablevision being forced to share their own sports channels with competitors. As for 3DTV, Sony and Imax recently stated that carriers will need to dedicate 6MHz of bandwidth to offer the service. It's very possible that consumers (many of whom just bought a new HD set when prices fell) will see 3DTV as little more than a pricey gimmick, though the technology might see early traction among console gamers.

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Qwest Wants $350 Million From Uncle Sam To Deploy 40 Mbps VDSL - After spending millions to fight municipal fiber deployments...

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 11:10am MDT

Qwest for years has sent their lawyers after communities who, unhappy with Qwest service, wanted to deploy their own broadband. They've fought against Seattle's attempt to deploy fiber. They've been particularly aggressive in the state of Utah, where the telco sued the Utopia FTTH project in an effort to prevent them from using regional utility poles. Qwest's Utah President, Jerry Fenn, informed the press that Qwest was fighting the project because they were worried about "the long-term harm to consumers." Back in 2003, Fenn asked the question: "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

"Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

Qwest executive Jerry Fenn

The problem has been that Qwest never offered many of these communities a serious alternative. With no wireless division to buoy income, Qwest has been very lax in upgrading their network, instead focusing on dressing up the company for possible sale. While that pleases investors who want an immediate return on their investment, it leaves customers with sub-par service and doesn't do much for the company's future fortunes.

Qwest does offer VDSL service to a limited part of their footprint, but those speeds top out at 40 Mbps. Only 14% (420,000) of Qwest broadband customers have Qwest's fiber to the node service.

100 meg is just a dream.

-Qwest CEO Edward Mueller

This week finds Qwest eager to finally deliver faster speeds to rural customers -- provided the taxpayer is willing to foot the bill. Qwest today issued a press statement saying they were applying for $350 million in federal stimulus funds to help them deploy 12 to 40 Mbps VDSL service to about half a million homes, schools, businesses and hospitals. Qwest recently claimed 100 Mbps service was "just a dream," but they can apparently do 40 Mbps with a lot of help:The total cost of the proposed deployment would be $467 million. Qwest is requesting a grant for $350 million from the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), which is administered by the Rural Utilities Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). When Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last year, it directed the USDA to establish a program that would stimulate broadband deployment to hard-to-serve rural areas. The BIP provides 75 percent of the build-out costs. The remaining 25 percent, or $117 million, would be funded by Qwest.Qwest previously had stated that they could offer 95% of their customers 7 Mbps DSL service for a cool billion, but then Qwest failed to apply for the first round of funding. As we mentioned then, it seems a little counterproductive to give Qwest taxpayer money for network builds they were unwilling to do. Consider this again: we'd be giving taxpayer money to a company that spent millions of dollars fighting towns and cities from using taxpayer money to wire themselves when Qwest wouldn't.

Qwest Wants $350 Million From Uncle Sam To Deploy VDSL - After spending millions to fight municipal fiber deployments...

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 11:10am MDT

Qwest for years has sent their lawyers after communities who, unhappy with Qwest service, wanted to deploy their own broadband. They've fought against Seattle's attempt to deploy fiber, and in Utah Qwest sued the Utopia FTTH project in an effort to prevent them from using regional utility poles. Qwest's Utah President, Jerry Fenn, informed the press that Qwest was fighting the project because they were worried about "the long-term harm to consumers." Back in 2003, Fenn asked the question: "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

"Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

Qwest executive Jerry Fenn

100 meg is just a dream.

-Qwest CEO Edward Mueller

Comcast Usage Meter Now In 25 States - With plans to expand meter nationally 'as soon as we can'

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 9:49am MDT

Back in October of 2008, Comcast implemented a 250 GB usage limit for all broadband subscribers. In December of 2009 Comcast finally released their usage meter, which allows users to track their consumption via the Comcast portal. The meter first appeared in Portland, but has recently been expanding into new markets very quickly. Comcast tells Broadband Reports the meter is now in "all or parts of" 25 states, including OR, WA, MA, MN, WI, NE, NH, NY, CT, VM, AR, KS, MO, CO, UT, AL, FL, GA, TN, SC, DE, MD, PA, WV, VA and DC. Comcast couldn't specify how many users they've reached, but stated it's "many multiples of millions of customers." "Our goal is to get it out nationally as soon as we can," Comcast's Charlie Douglas tells us.
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Permalink for 'T-Mobile CTO: Overages 'Not A Good Experience For Consumers' - T-Mobile, like Clearwire, not sure what next-gen wireless pricing looks like...'

T-Mobile CTO: Overages 'Not A Good Experience For Consumers' - T-Mobile, like Clearwire, not sure what next-gen wireless pricing looks like...

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 8:04am MDT

AT&T and Verizon have been spending the last year proclaiming that the industry needs to shift from the (sort of) flat-rate wireless model we use now -- to one where users pay for consumption. As we noted yesterday, it's a push driven largely by investors, and while AT&T and Verizon say they want a "usage-based billing" based on "fairness," what they really want is a model that funnels all users toward higher data bills. Why? They want to offfset future losses in voice and SMS revenues caused by smartphones and mobile VoIP.

T-Mobile's CTO Cole Brodman talks to GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham about AT&T and Verizon's lust for a new wireless pricing model. According to T-Mobile, the average Android customer consumes between 400 and 600 MB a month, and only about 2% of their customers reach the company's 5GB monthly cap. Brodman has this to say when asked if we don't already have usage-based pricing:It s hard to expect consumers to know what a megabyte is because what that can offer changes every day. And the problem is overage is not a good experience for consumers. I don t have an answer for you today on what usage-based pricing will look like, whether it s upgrade buckets, app-based pricing, quality of service-based pricing or time-sensitive throttling.Brodman kind of ignores the question asked (T-Mobile's WebConnect services already feature $0.20/MB overages), though it's interesting to see him admit overages are "not a good experience for consumers." It's great to see T-Mobile open to ideas that will bring more value to consumers (rollover megabytes?) But like Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, it's clear that Brodman isn't sure what the next-generation of pricing is going to be yet.

That's in part because carriers don't want to confuse customers. Last year amidst the cable industry's attempt to impose metered billing, Cablevision stated metered billing simply confused customers. Some surveys have indicated something like 83% of the public don't even know what a gigabyte is. Of course carriers also aren't yet sure what consumers are willing to pay for next-gen wireless; but given their experience with SMS pricing, they know that consumers will let them get away with a lot.
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Verizon To Launch App Store Next Monday - Wonder if they'll help offer Google Voice?

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 7:10am MDT

Last summer, Verizon Wireless announced that they'd be developing their very own wireless phone application store, as part of the company's claims that they are embracing a truly open wireless ecosystem (despite continued evidence to the contrary). Speaking at the CTIA trade show, Verizon announced that their "VCast Apps" store would finally launch next Monday, March 29 with about 300 applications. According to Verizon, the store will first be made available on select Blackberry phones, and users will be able to buy applications via their cellphone bill. The company told attendees their app store will somehow "take priority" over RIM s App World or the Android Marketplace -- so we'll have to see exactly what that means -- and whether Verizon is "open" to selling applications like Google Voice.

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Time Warner Cable Joins Free Wi-Fi Push - Will offer free Wi-Fi to users in NYC

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

An insider tells GigaOM that Time Warner Cable will soon join both Cablevision and Comcast in offering free Wi-Fi in the New York City metro area. According to the source, the initiative will target New York City train and bus stations and city parks, for those of you who can't access the nation's biggest free ISP already (linksys). From the sound of the looming announcement, it seems likely that Time Warner Cable, like Comcast started doing last year, has probably struck an agreement with Cablevision to share some of their existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. Cablevision spent $300 million to upgrade their cable network to DOCSIS 3.0, and to deploy free Wi-Fi for commuters.

Update 1: A user below found the map of hotspot locations, and accessibility is currently, well, sparse.

Update 2: The official Time Warner Cable press release has arrived here with more detail.
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Qwest Helps Verizon With LTE Backhaul - And no, this doesn't indicate any broader deals

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

The race to offering faster 4G speeds is largely dependent on backhaul, the bandwidth that feeds individual tower sites. With AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all rushing to fuel this demand ahead of 4G launches, a number of companies are pushing harder to get into providing this backhaul bandwidth (like Time Warner Cable, who says backhaul was their fastest growing market last year). Today Verizon announced that the company has chosen Qwest to help deploy fiber to towers as part of Verizon's LTE broadband build, which will reach 25-30 markets this year.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: March 25th, 2010, 6:39am MDT

The World's Most Tech-Friendly Countries forbes.com
Time Warner Cable Launches WiFi HotSpots gigaom.com
Verizon Confirms Fiber Backhaul to LTE Sites in 25 States convergedigest.com
UK Gov't confirms 50p landline tax for broadband funding zdnet.co.uk
AT&T 3G May Not Be Enough to Save Nexus One technewsworld.com
Are wireless gadget chargers as revolutionary as they sound? pcauthority.com.au
Apple and Microsoft get trashed by hackers again theinquirer.net

Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 5:28pm MDT

Mobile data overtakes voice traffic theinquirer.net
Full ACTA Draft Leaked... EU Wants Injunctions Against The Possibility You Might Infringe techdirt.com
Cox Business Sees $4 Billion Opportunity in Wireless For Small Business multichannel.com
Panel: Keep TV Everywhere Simple multichannel.com
Olympics Threaten ICANN, Saying Its Trademark Concerns Outweigh Any Benefits From New TLDs techdirt.com
Clearwire CEO mentions that WiMAX could join LTE as one, Verizon Wireless CTO says no way engadget.com
Network Admin who shut down San Francisco says it was "part of the job" theinquirer.net
Deutsche Telekom CEO tackles EU, US 'dumb pipe' worries fiercewireless.com
T-Mobile's New York City Network is Proof of HSPA+ Speed yahoo.com
Reports of cable's demise premature variety.com
Mobile broadband users less satisfied than broadband, says survey broadbandgenie.co.uk
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AT&T Microcell Deployment Begins In April - $150. $100 if you sign up for $20 a month plan. $0 for new AT&T broadband users.

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 4:37pm MDT

We've had plenty of leaks over the last few months highlighting the looming launch of AT&T's new femtocell service, and today AT&T officially announced the product. AT&T's new "Microcell" won't be officially available until "mid-April." The device, as we've well-discussed, in effect creates a miniature cell tower in your home, allowing users to route wireless calls over their home broadband connection. The service is particularly useful for those who suffer from poor cell reception in their homes. For carriers, femtocells help ease congestion on local towers.

Pricing for AT&T's Microcell is about in line with what trial participants have been reporting since last fall, with the device costing $150. If you're an existing AT&T wireless customer, you can get $100 off that price if you sign up for $20 a month service. That $20 a month allows you to make unlimited domestic calls over your home broadband connection.

Those who don't want to pay $20 a month (plus wireless plan) can pay the full $150 for the device, but calls made via the Microcell will eat away at your AT&T wireless minutes. As we complained with Verizon's "Network Extender" femto-based product, eating away at user minutes when consumers are using their own bandwidth to make the call -- while saving carriers money on wireless tower bandwidth -- never seems to get any less absurd.

According to AT&T, new users to AT&T can get the device for free after mail in rebates if they sign up for the $20 a month plan, and sign up for new AT&T DSL or U-verse service of 1.5 Mbps or faster. The device, which supports up to ten devices authorized by the user, has a range of approximately 5,000 feet according to AT&T (barring interference or obstruction). We'll of course bring you user impressions of the device when it officially launches next month.

While femtocells offer promise for those in homes with limited reception, carriers seemed determined to price them so that they suck all the value out of the proposition for consumers. That, unsurprisingly, has resulted in the femtocell not really taking off the way analysts had predicted. AT&T's Microcell pricing certainly doesn't change this equation.
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Sprint CEO: We're Moving From Voice Minutes To Gigabytes Used - Et tu, Hesse?

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 2:19pm MDT

Both Verizon and AT&T have made it clear that they want to ditch the current (sort of flat rate) wireless pricing system to one that involves more caps and per-byte overages. That's (and sorry to repeat ourselves) because carriers want to prepare for the inevitable revenue losses they'll see as mobile VoIP and push IM clients begin to erode voice and SMS revenues. The carriers pitch these changes as being about fairness and even altruism, and it works.

Many people (and reporters) hear the sales pitch for these pricing models and think carriers are talking about pure per-byte billing -- where grandma gets a tiny little bill because she only checks the Weather Channel. That's just not the case.

Just like in the terrestrial broadband market, carriers aren't interested in pure pure-byte billing because the vast majority of their users don't use very much data, and would pay lower bills. What executives and investors really want is a funnel-like pricing model that pushes all users toward higher monthly bills, by using mandatory data plans for most phones and unreasonably-low caps on base tiers. This acts to herd consumers to pricier tiers under the illusion of value.

So far most of this rhetoric about a need to change wireless pricing has originated from AT&T and Verizon (and influential sector stock jocks like Craig Moffett). But Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, whose company has actually been using flat rate pricing to compete with AT&T and Verizon through both Sprint and Clear, has suddenly joined the wireless sector chorus. Hesse says wireless industry billing is moving from minutes to gigabytes in two years, whether you like it or not:Sprint Nextel Chief Executive Dan Hesse said that in about two years, monthly cellphone bills will focus on the amount of data used and move away from the number of available voice minutes. Sprint has already driven much of that migration with its own aggressive rate plans, which lump in unlimited data, minutes and text messages at a single, flat-rate price.Of course many people believe the idea of voice minutes will be dead before long. And replacing this model with a pure per-byte billing model that offers value would be one thing, but when executives begin dreaming about charging by the gigabyte, you need to study the proposed pricing models carefully. It's strange that Hesse would be eager for the end of a flat-rate pricing model when it's the very thing they're using (under both the Sprint and Clear brands) to compete with AT&T and Verizon. In fact Clearwire executive Dow Draper spent yesterday at CTIA using unlimited flat-rate service as a selling point for Clear:Clearwire does have customers that use far more than 7 GB a month, though Draper wouldn t give any specific numbers. So far, Clearwire has taken no measure to restrict excessive usage even if the operational costs of delivering that data exceed the revenues it makes from a particularly high-volume user. Clearwire s attitude is that if the capacity is there and it s not being consumed by others, its customers are free to browse, download and stream to their hearts content, Draper said.Neither AT&T and Verizon have officially announced LTE pricing, in part because they're curious to see what kind of pricing consumers will tolerate. If you tell them that low caps and high overages are a good value by buying their service, guess what kind of pricing model you're going to get? Consumers are going to have to pay close attention and ask lots of questions (will my unused gigabytes roll over?) as the wireless data pricing of tomorrow gets hashed out.
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Permalink for 'AT&T, Verizon Pour It On Thick In Praise Of New Broadband Plan - Lobbyists celebrate open access failure, insist they're 'empowering consumers''

AT&T, Verizon Pour It On Thick In Praise Of New Broadband Plan - Lobbyists celebrate open access failure, insist they're 'empowering consumers'

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 12:20pm MDT

Today the incumbent phone and cable carriers hosted a roundtable forum, sponsored by The Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy and the Technology Policy Institute. The "discussion," which featured a smattering of academics for legitimacy's sake and no consumer advocates, was a who's who of incumbent telecom lobbyists and hired think tankers. Most of the forum's participants spent their time praising the FCC's new broadband plan, which as we've discussed, is a good sign the plan fails to rattle the status quo or tackle competition.

AT&T's chief lobbyist Jim Cicconi, who surely had a lion's share of input into the plan, repeatedly praised the FCC's "fact-driven" approach to policy, though only apparently if the facts in question were approved by AT&T.

At around 4:45 in this video, Cicconi can barely hold back a laugh at the failure of the open access push. That failure was, in part, thanks to the FCC's Blair Levin, who recently admitted the FCC (or at least Levin), lacked the courage to challenge carriers like AT&T in court.

Specifically, Cicconi claims Harvard researcher Yochai Benkler has "the faint whiff of sour grapes." Why? Because in an editorial last weekend, Benkler complained that the FCC essentially ignored his study. Said study contained data that argued that open access policies lead to competition and lower prices across global markets. In France, for instance, open access policies led to multiple Parisian fiber companies competing, which resulted in prices plummeting (as in, 100Mbps/50Mbps fiber service, VoIP and IPTV bundles for $40 a month). AT&T's clearly happy the FCC ignored this data, and hopes the trend continues.

Back in 2007, lobbyists like AT&T's Cicconi and Verizon's Tom Tauke didn't want a broadband plan. Now that there is one, the baby bells' focus will obviously be on shaping it to their liking as the FCC begins the gladiatorial effort of actual rule making. For the baby bells, this means less regulation of incumbents, more regulation for threats like Google, weakened FCC authority, and changing the USF so more money goes to AT&T and Verizon. Of course Cicconi and Tauke can't just say this is their goal, so they work hard to dress up simple revenue-driven lobbying as altruism and consumer advocacy.

Ever since the FCC began crafting a broadband plan and thinking about network neutrality protections, Verizon's top lobbyist Tom Tauke has toned down his rhetoric from recent years, in the hopes of stalling new consumer protections. Tauke's now taken a strong fancy to saying things that sound quite consumer friendly (empowered consumers!), provided you completely ignore Verizon's long history of anti-competitive behavior, or their recent decision to literally hang up on millions of rural customers. Luckily for Verizon and Tauke, the press usually does.

Today saw Tauke pour it on particularly thick in his speech at a forum. In his turn at the microphone, a lobbyist for a company not known to be gentle when crushing competitors underfoot, magically became a huge fan of the broadband plan, consumer advocacy, and even arch-enemy Google:Consumers must be fully empowered. Any new policy should put the users in charge. Consumers should have the ability to choose the devices and software they want, access whatever lawful content and applications they need, and obtain the products and services they desire on the move or at home. Empowered consumers are also well-informed consumers, who are able to make choices and decisions based on easily understood language and transparent business practices.So, by empowered consumers, Tauke must be referring to consumers being allowed to use applications that Verizon hasn't intentionally crippled to prop up dying business models? And by "transparent business practices," Tauke must be referring to milking consumers for millions of dollars by using a computer glitch Verizon is fully aware of? And when Tauke talks about "finding common ground with Google," he must mean paying "consultants" to smear them? And by "informed consumers," Verizon must be referring to the consumers they fight in court to prevent getting access to broadband mapping data?

Tauke's call for overhaul of telecom policy is not new -- the laws do need to be changed to incorporate the litany of changes facing the sector, most of which involve the eventual waning power of Tauke's employer. However, given Verizon's history -- it's unlikely any reasonable, "informed" consumer wants Verizon dictating those changes. Meanwhile, there's a huge chasm between what a lobbyist says, and what the company they lobby for actually does. And again, luckily for AT&T and Verizon, nobody in the press is going to really bother to point that out as the baby bells "participate" in crafting the finer details of the broadband plan.
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Two ISPs In A Market Does Not Mean There's Competition - 78% of Americans live in duopoly markets. Guess why prices are high?

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 8:45am MDT

Updated with comment from FCC below. When the appointment was announced, consumer advocates had some questions over whether new Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn was going to be another in a long-line of baby bell pushover Commissioners. But since starting her tenure at the FCC, she's actually shown herself to be both tough and savvy to the ways of the telecom sector. She's recently done things like pointing out the hypocrisy of minority ant-net-neutrality astroturf (try asking Joe Public what that is), hammering Verizon for high ETFs and their phantom $1.99 fee, and most recently criticizing the sector's lack of competition and high prices (pdf).

Clyburn is planning to continue her criticism of high prices and limited competition when she appears this week before the House Energy & Commerce Committee. While her full testimony is not yet publicly available, a leaked copy obtained by cable operator trade mags indicates that Clyburn plans to highlight recent Time Warner Cable comments that the company raises broadband prices simply because they can. While honest discourse on the real state of competition is refreshing, Clyburn seems to be confused about what actually constitutes "competition":FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn plans to tell the House Energy & Commerce Committee that the national broadband plan should make sure there are least two broadband offerings in every market to insure (sic) price and speed competition. That is according to a copy of her prepared written testimony. "Competition is the lifeblood of investment, innovation, and affordable prices," she tells the committee, adding that absent that competition, cable operators and others have no incentive to improve their service or facilities.But assuming FCC data is right (and that's never a given given the agency has spent a decade using junk science), the agency's recent broadband plan noted that 78% of the public already has the choice of two providers. Of course a duopoly doesn't mean there's competition. In duopoly markets, massive phone and cable incumbents essentially stare at each other waiting for the next opportunity to raise broadband or TV prices, jack up ETFs, or impose the latest absurd fee. Sure, you'll see some competition on things like channel counts, but this "competition" is usually based largely on superficial perceptions of value, not price.

Carriers also lag on network upgrades if their sole competitor agrees an area isn't worth upgrading. For example, ask Time Warner Cable when they plan to upgrade markets like Binghamton or Rochester, New York -- where the only competition for the next five years (or more) will be last-generation DSL (Verizon and Frontier, respectively). Given Verizon is putting FiOS deployment on hold, and most other telcos plan on nursing copper for the next decade -- there's tens of millions of people living markets who won't be seeing next-generation broadband any time soon.

Of course for all of Clyburn's concerns, the FCC's broadband plan really doesn't address the problems created by these broadband duopolies. Much like they did with broadband over powerlines, some at the FCC are apparently hoping that fourth-generation wireless broadband steps in and magically creates extra layers of competition. Of course that extra layer of competition will be very expensive service, dominated by these same regional mono(duo)polies, which means it won't really be competition at all.

Update: Clyburn's advisor Rick Kaplan reaches out to us to note that the original trade magazine interpretation took some liberties with Clyburn's statement, which thankfully doesn't naturally equate two carriers with robust competition. "Commissioner Clyburn is not suggesting that the presence of two providers automatically makes competition robust," he says. "Rather, she is merely pointing out that when there is only one, even cable execs have said they won t roll out new technologies." Here's her complete statement:"Competition is the lifeblood of investment, innovation, and affordable prices. Without it, industry has little reason to upgrade its facilities and improve its services. A cable industry executive recently noted as much, informing investors that there is simply no need for the company to roll out the faster Internet speeds available today in areas where it does not have competition from another high-speed provider. Thus, only in those areas where Americans are lucky enough to have more than one provider with truly high-speed capability will providers like this one have any economic incentive to offer better service.

And the same goes for prices. There is little question that where there is limited or no competition, consumers pay higher prices for broadband. Indeed, just recently we saw a new spike in prices levied by providers on the lowest tiers of service. When these across-the-board increases occur, our role as stewards of the public interest requires us to examine the market carefully and take appropriate action where necessary."It's refreshing to see a Commissioner understand that the majority of the problems in this sector stem from a lack of substantive competition. Cure competition, and you organically resolve a lot of other issues (network neutrality, predator pricing) without the need for additional regulation.
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Will Cable's 'TV Everywhere' Be A Big Pile Of Fail? - Yes, if cable insists on forcing square pegs into round holes...

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 7:39am MDT

We've frequently discussed how the TV industry (both phone and cable) is collectively working on an online video service that takes some existing content and puts it behind a paywall -- accessible only to users who have cable service. The idea has long been that this will stop users from cutting the cord and moving to competing Internet-based services, though there's been some bickering with broadcasters over compensation, and the idea seems to be a jumble of non-standards from one operator to the next. Comcast is so far the first to launch their TV Everywhere effort, and opinions are mixed.

Techdirt directs our attention to a piece over at MediaShift, where author Mark Glaser argues that TV Everywhere is going to fail, and it's going to have nothing to do with broadcaster disputes, clunky GUIs, or inconsistent standards. It's going to have everything to do with the fact that the cable industry believes they can take their old business model, and violently force it upon the new broadband-driven Internet:The cable companies have no plan to give people the option to access Xfinity or other TV Everywhere services for a fee instead of forcing them to pay for cable TV. That means this is not a strategy for working out an online business model (either through advertising or paid content, or a mix of those or something new). Instead, the cable companies have one aim: Protect the old business model. Again, this is not a strategy born from innovation or smart thinking about new platforms. This is survival mode and all about protecting the old, broken way of doing business.If you talk to cable industry executives right now, most of them are almost glibly confident that cord cutters are a very small niche segment, and not something to worry about. And for now, they're right. Cable's incredibly-robust infrastructure is in place, works great (usually), and even during a recession and despite endless rate hikes -- consumers continue to throw money at the industry for hundreds of channels most users never watch. But if you've watched the evolution of broadband and Internet content, you know that despite what Mark Cuban wants to believe, Internet video is a very real threat.

Right now, slow last-mile speeds, terrified Hollywood studios, and clunky first-generation home video solutions are keeping Internet video out of the mainstream. But it's only a matter of time before speeds increase, cheaper and simpler home broadband video services appeal to the cost-conscious, and consumers gladly begin fleeing a sector that has pounded consumers with an endless stream of rate hikes, forced them to buy bundles of channels they simply do not watch, and continues to have some of the worst consumer satisfaction scores across any industry (even the IRS).

Traditional cable will still dominate for much of the next decade; this is going to be a slow (r)evolution. But the industry does have one hell of a fight coming down the pike. While some cable insiders work a little too hard trying to convince you of cable's infallibility, the insightful insiders know things will be getting rocky. That's why just like wireless carriers, who fear the impact mobile VoIP and push IM have on voice and SMS revenues, the cable industry dreams of a broadband future where you're paying one hell of a premium for every gigabyte delivered -- so if you do someday switch to Internet video -- they'll still get their pound of flesh.
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Wireless Users Send 5 Billion SMS A Day - 1.5 trillion text messages across wireless networks in 2009

Posted: March 24th, 2010, 6:45am MDT

The wireless industry has released their semi-annual survey results (see both the announcement and the pdf survey), indicating that wireless data service revenues increased 25.7% from the last half of 2008 to reach more than $22 billion for the last half of 2009. A significant chunk of those data revenues were courtesy of those 160 character, 140 byte communications you know as SMS or text messages. According to the survey, there were more than 822 billion text messages sent and received on carriers networks during the last half of 2009:According to the survey, text messaging continues to be enormously popular, with more than 822 billion text messages sent and received on carriers networks during the last half of 2009 amounting to almost 5 billion messages per day at the end of the year. During the 2009 calendar year, there were more than 1.5 trillion text messages reported on carriers networks. Wireless subscribers are also sending more pictures and other multimedia messages with their mobile devices more than 24.2 billion MMS messages were reported for the last half of 2009. That s more than double the number from the previous year, when only 9.3 billion were reported for the last half of 2008.While wireless pricing is now designed to push people toward bundled SMS services; in bundle or standalone pricing, SMS is still a ridiculously-profitable cash cow. It costs virtually nothing to provide the service, and prices per SMS have jumped some 200% across carriers in the last three years (the DOJ recently declared this was not collusion, and consumers continue to pay). However, as users migrate toward smartphones with more sophisticated push IM clients, carriers can expect to see SMS revenues dwindle. All indications are that they plan to compensate for this loss by charging users more for wireless data.
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 5:33pm MDT

Huawei Shows Off 1.2 Gbps Wireless gigaom.com
EU Negotiators Insist That ACTA Will Move Forward And There's Nothing To Worry About techdirt.com
FCC Commissioner Wants Two Broadband Offerings In Every Market multichannel.com
Cell execs say more steps needed to meet demand ap.org
Virgin Media suffers outage in Leeds, UK as thieves steal fiber thinking cables were copper theregister.co.uk
Leap goes nationwide fiercewireless.com
Greenville, South Carolina holds outdoor Google worship service theregister.co.uk
Despite all the talk about racing to 4G, wireless network upgrades slowing down? internetnews.com
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Sprint Unveils The Nation's First 4G Smartphone - The EVDO and WiMax ready HTC EVO 4G drops this summer....

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 4:25pm MDT

Sprint's turn at the CTIA podium today involved first announcing new expansion markets for Mobile WiMax, but also the unveiling of the first-ever 4G smartphone in the United States: the HTC EVO 4G. According to the Sprint website for the device, the phone will arrive sometime this summer. The initial specs have even the traditionally gadget-bored drooling a bit, and include the Android OS (of course), two cameras (one of which is 8 megapixels capable of 720p video), HDMI output, 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM, and supports both Sprint's EVDO and Mobile WiMax networks. The folks over at Engadget got to play with the device, and call it "easily the best specced phone we've ever witnessed":We got to play with the phone for an all-too-brief matter of minutes, but everything we saw was frankly breathtaking. The camera does seem to be indeed of a high quality (though we'll still be holding on to our compact shooter, thank you very much), the screen is naturally gorgeous, and the Sense UI was as responsive as we've seen it, and frankly delicious at this jumbo size.No word yet on pricing or battery life, and Sprint isn't getting any more specific than a "summer" release.
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T-Mobile Expands HSPA+ Into DC, NYC - 100 markets to see upgrade by year's end...

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 4:07pm MDT

T-Mobile took their opportunity under the spotlight at CTIA today to announce that the company this week is pushing faster HSPA+ wireless broadband service outside of its initial test market of Philly. Users in both the New York City (including New Jersey and Long Island) and Washington DC markets should now be seeing the faster wireless broadband speeds (let us know in the comment section below). According to T-Mobile, the company says they'll be offering the faster speeds in 100 markets before the end of this year -- and the next market to go live should be Los Angeles. From the magenta horse's mouth: T-Mobile successfully launched its HSPA+ network service in Philadelphia last fall providing customers access to one of the fastest and most modern wireless networks in the U.S. T-Mobile now has made HSPA+ commercially available in new markets including major areas of New York City, New Jersey, Long Island and suburban Washington, D.C., with deployment in Los Angeles coming very soon. The company will continue to aggressively expand the availability of HSPA+ in additional 3G markets, putting the necessary backhaul capacity in place to support the very fast speeds. Today, its 3G high-speed data network covers more than 206 million people.T-Mobile says they should have about half of those 100 planned markets up and running by mid year. The total upgrade should cost T-Mobile between $200 million to $300 million, according to executives at CTIA.
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Crippled 'Exclusive' Verizon Skype App Drops On Thursday - Complete with a long list of annoying restrictions!

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 2:26pm MDT

Back in February, Skype and Verizon announced that the two companies had struck a exclusive agreement to offer a Skype client on Verizon smartphones. While that sounded interesting at first, it soon became clear that the client would be packed with restrictions, and that Skype (which had complained ceaselessly about the closed nature of wireless networks) was in several ways helping Verizon keep the wireless sector closed with the deal. The two companies dropped a few more details about their exclusive partnership at CTIA today. Harry McCracken at over at Technologizer breaks down the restrictions:But this version of Skype isn t without meaningful limitations. You can t make Skype Out calls to U.S. numbers if you try, the app will let you route your call over Verizon s voice network, where it ll use minutes from your plan. You also can t use Skype In to receive calls from landlines and cell phones: Incoming calls must come from other Skype users. And for reasons I don t completely understand, Skype Mobile works only over Verizon s 3G network, not Wi-Fi which is the opposite of the situation on the iPhone, where you can only call over Wi-Fi, not the AT&T network.We'll help Mr&#46 McCracken: Verizon wants you paying more money for data. As mobile VoIP and push IM applications begin to erode the idea of traditional voice minutes and SMS, Verizon knows its only choice to keep profits up is to charge an arm and leg for data. Thus, exclusive Skype deals rife with restrictions, increasingly-high ETFs, pricing models that push everybody on to pricier data plans, and mandatory data plans for all phones are now par for the course. The deal gives the impression that Verizon's embracing progress, but in reality they're fighting the inevitable decline of the traditional voice minutes model.

Meanwhile Skype, who used to complain about closed networks, not-coincidentally decided to stop supporting Skype for Windows Mobile, and has yet to release a 3G-enable iPhone client. Apparently, Verizon was able to loosen Skype's principles (however briefly) with a handshake and an exclusive partnership, which we're told will be in place for two to three years. Skype insists that the 3G iPhone client and Android support are coming, which suggests the "exclusive" part of this deal is largely stage dressing for a rather bizarre dog and pony show.
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Verizon Gets Personal With Frontier Sale FiOS Customers - A new 'Service Commitment' that involves no longer serving you?

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 12:07pm MDT

Pending likely regulatory approval, Verizon is working on an $8.5 billion deal to offload six million broadband and voice customers in more than a dozen states to Frontier Communications. While the majority of those customers are DSL and landline users, there are approximately 110,000 FiOS fiber to the home customers included in that total. Apparently, cable companies have been using the sale as a marketing opportunity to get these FiOS customers to switch to cable (see this regional Comcast letter). Verizon apparently is trying to calm regional customers, and has issued this press release.

In it, Verizon promises existing and new FiOS customers in Indiana, Oregon and Washington that Verizon will adhere to a new "Service Commitment." What does this service commitment to customers about to be sold of consist of? Apparently it involves FiOS getting the personal phone number of the Verizon technician who did their installation. It also means users get a phone call from Verizon to make sure the installation went ok. From the Verizon press release:Under the commitment, the Verizon technician who installed the service will be available to ensure the customer's service is working and to answer questions from Day One. New customers get a direct phone number to reach the technician who installed their service, should they have any questions after the work is done. Verizon service employees will also check in by phone with customers within the first 30 to 45 days of installation to answer any questions, review the customers' first bill and ensure they know how to reach Verizon round-the-clock for any future needs.Of course if Verizon really valued these customers, they wouldn't be selling off a chunk of them to Frontier Communications. Meanwhile, Verizon has an interesting habit of saving truly personal customer support until after problems arise. You might recall they began assigning FiOS customers in Florida their own "Personal Account Managers" (PAMs) -- after state regulators, local union workers and the local press had hammered Verizon for poor service.
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OpenDNS: We're Now Used By 1% Of The Internet - Will ISPs start to realize that this is lost revenue?

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 9:12am MDT

OpenDNS executives probably huddle together each morning in a meeting room, praying to the digital gods for ISP DNS problems -- given that every time an ISP has a DNS disruption, the increasingly popular company sees an influx of new customers. OpenDNS this morning highlighted their growth by announcing that they now officially serve 1% of the Internet. That's a bigger number that it seems; the company says they've now reached 18 million of the world's 1.67 billion Internet users, and that their usage total has doubled in the last 12 months.

OpenDNS was founded in 2006, and for most of that time they've been a very profitable company, largely thanks to search-based ads. In 2008 it was estimated that OpenDNS generates a whopping $20,000 per day off of their DNS redirection relationship with Yahoo.

Of course we're starting to see some ISPs realize that this is ad revenue they could be keeping in house. Comcast in particular has put a lot of effort lately into beefing up their DNS reliability and tools, including a new portal to track DNS uptime.

Added DNS functionality is by and large a neglected service aspect for many ISPs. Many ISP executives simply ran toward DNS redirection advertising (redirecting users trying to access mistyped or non-existent URLs toward an ad-laden search portal) with dollar signs in their eyes, without realizing that they might want to actually offer value. Worse, many of these DNS redirection systems don't even feature functional opt-out mechanisms.

Of course ISPs awakening from their slumber isn't the only obstacle facing OpenDNS moving forward. Last December Google announced they were launching Google Public DNS, and while OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch claimed Google's service wasn't going to compete with OpenDNS -- it's going to compete with OpenDNS.

Still, OpenDNS has successfully carved an 18-million-user strong niche by offering quality DNS tools and services, and if ISPs or Google want to claim that lost ad revenue, they're certainly going to have to work for it.
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Clearwire Announces More 2010 Launch Markets - Los Angeles, Miami added to 2010 deployment list

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 8:36am MDT

Speaking at the wireless industry's annual CTIA trade show (which kicks off today in Las Vegas), Clearwire offered an updated deployment schedule, which lists a slew of additional launch markets for the company's 2010 deployment. Clearwire currently offers service in 27 markets, and hopes to reach 120 million potential customers by the end of this year. To accomplish that goal, the company today added Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City to their list of 2010 deployments. The company had already planned to launch Clear service in New York City, Houston, Boston, Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Denver, Minneapolis and the San Francisco Bay Area before the end of the year.
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So Far, Internet Video Supplementing Traditional TV - 60% watch TV and browse the Internet simultaneously

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 7:23am MDT

According to new data from Nielsen, a growing number of Americans are now watching TV and using the Internet simultaneously. The study found that Americans watch roughly 35 hours of TV and two hours of timeshifted TV via a DVR a week, on average. But while Internet video use is up 16%, it's used largely as a supplement to traditional TV viewing -- while nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV.

"The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different," argues Nielsen's Matt O Grady. That's probably comforting to cable executives for now, though a rise in living room broadband video options could change these numbers significantly over the next decade.

The full report is available here (pdf) for those interested.
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AT&T Takes Shots At Verizon's LTE Plans - Claims technology (particularly handsets) not ready for prime time

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 6:53am MDT

Verizon has been getting a lot of press lately about their plans to launch 5-12 Mbps Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband service in 25-30 markets sometime this year. AT&T, for one, isn't impressed. The carrier, who won't be launching their own LTE implementation for another few years, this week took shots at Verizon in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that Verizon is embracing technology that "isn't fully mature." Most notably, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan complained that LTE handets aren't ready yet -- and won't be for another few years:"2012 will be the time when you'll have decent handsets, decent quantity of handsets, and decent choice of handsets," Mr. Donovan said. LTE-compatible handsets require two antennas, and chip sets are larger than what is currently built into current third-generation, or 3G, devices. "Right out of the chute, it's going to be difficult to engineer," Mr. Donovan said of the first LTE handsets. "It's going to drain the battery like crazy, and it's going to be a fat brick."AT&T of course has stated they intend to nurse their HSDPA network for another few years before fully committing to LTE. Verizon claims they'll be launching their first LTE-compatible handset sometime in the middle of 2011, though Donovan went on to claim that any wireless carrier that thinks their network is ready for the demands of the iPhone is being "naive."
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 23rd, 2010, 5:15am MDT

FCC testing finds fastest broadband speeds in D.C., N.Y. areas washingtonpost.com
Genachowski: Government Should Have 'Restrained' Role In Broadband Rollout broadcastnewsroom.com
4G Wireless Ready to Take On Broadband? cbsnews.com
UK Broadband tax will push 200,000 homes off the internet telegraph.co.uk
Egypt Says No More Mobile Skype Calls techdirt.com
Australia filter could 'legitimise' Web censorship - Google totaltele.com
Ofcom proposes BT opens infrastructure to rivals ft.com
Apple Sells Contract-Free iPhones: $500-$700 wired.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 5:18pm MDT

The 50 Riskiest Online Cities; Seattle Tops List foxnews.com
Does the FCC Want Our Internet Slow? huffingtonpost.com
Report: Mobile data traffic patterns look similar to fixed broadband patterns fiercebroadbandwireless.com
FCC plans to begin D Block re-auction process this summer fiercewireless.com
Dodgy BitDefender update bricks systems theregister.co.uk
Just As It Tries To Kick People Offline, The British Gov't Wants To Move All Public Service Online telegraph.co.uk
More adverts for iTunes would stop digital piracy, according to focus group broadbandgenie.co.uk
Hacker could get up to 25 years theinquirer.net
Verizon Wireless Preps Mobile Payment Service xchangemag.com
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FCC Study Author Thinks Agency Wimped Out On Open Access - And U.S. consumers will pay high price because of it...

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 4:32pm MDT

Last October the FCC released an FCC-commissioned study from the Harvard University's Berkman Center. That study found that in countries where "an engaged regulator" enforced open access obligations, robust competition and lower prices were usually the result. As you might expect, incumbent carriers spent the next six months trashing the study -- and when the FCC's broadband plan dropped last week, not only was open access nowhere in it, the plan didn't even really address the nation's uncompetitive duopoly.

Comments several weeks earlier made by plan architect Blair Levin seem to indicate that Levin lacked the political and legal stomach for the fight that would erupt between government and the nation's carriers. The author of the original open-access Harvard study, Yochai Benkler, over the weekend penned an editorial for the New York Times. In it, Benkler notes that the FCC's broadband plan failed to address competition, ignored open access, and failed to address fading telco copper infrastructure. The result, according to Benkler, is going to be a cable-dominated U.S. broadband future where high prices continue:But without a strong commitment to open access, things will get worse. Because of the high price of laying their own next-generation fiber optics, would-be competitors like AT&T and Qwest have largely abandoned their goal of bringing fiber to the home, leaving the highest-speed tiers to the cable companies. Those companies aren t keeping their excitement quiet: a recent Time-Warner investor briefing touted the company s ability to set higher prices in markets in which its potential competitors provide only DSL services.Benkler goes on to note that while the FCC's plan does help with transparency, that's obviously not going to be a miracle cure for competitive issues. He also notes that Levin's unwillingness to make a tough stand against carriers on open access means we're simply tacking decorations on to an entrenched monopoly system -- "lodging an insurmountable obstacle in the path" toward better, cheaper, faster U.S. broadband networks.
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Clearwire Exec: Please Use Our Network - Company says they want high-consumption users to stick around...

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 2:26pm MDT

The last year we've seen some wireless executives confused into thinking that people wanting to use their networks is a bad thing. AT&T executives in particular have taken abuse for seemingly lamenting the fact that they have a popular product. Clearly hoping to avoid AT&T's 2009 public relations fate, Clearwire VP Dow Draper is busily telling people that Clearwire is "thrilled" that the average Clearwire user consumes 7GB of data a month. Speaking to Connected Planet ahead of the CTIA conference tomorrow, Draper admits they do have some very heavy users -- but Clearwire doesn't want to deter them from using Clear services:Clearwire does have customers that use far more than 7 GB a month, though Draper wouldn t give any specific numbers. So far, Clearwire has taken no measure to restrict excessive usage even if the operational costs of delivering that data exceed the revenues it makes from a particularly high-volume user. Clearwire s attitude is that if the capacity is there and it s not being consumed by others, its customers are free to browse, download and stream to their hearts content, Draper said.We'll see how things change as Clear grows; the company currently has just half a million customers, though they also have ample spectrum for expansion. With a relatively-low subscriber count and facing an uphill fight against giants AT&T and Verizon, Clearwire will need all the subscribers they can get and can't afford to alienate bleeding-edge customers. Meanwhile, Clearwire makes it clear that they "might come to the point" where they'd have to throttle customers who are sucking down a terabyte of monthly bandwidth via P2P transfers.
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AT&T Adds Wireless To U-Verse Triple Play - Users can now swap out home phone for wireless

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 12:14pm MDT

According to a new AT&T press release, the telco is shaking up the traditional triple play for the company's U-Verse customers. For the first time, AT&T is allowing users to swap out the U-Verse Voice home phone service portion of their triple play offerings, and replace it with wireless voice service. AT&T's latest bundles start at $99 a month, which includes U-family (70 channels); U-verse High Speed Internet Pro (up to 3 Mbps downstream); and your choice of AT&T Nation 450 wireless voice or U-verse Voice 250 home phone service. While allowing users to supplement wireless for home phone is a welcome change, AT&T's broadband speed and channel count for their $99 starter bundle is found lacking when compared to other "next-gen" bundle discounts like Verizon's $89 FiOS bundle (see details). AT&T tells us the $99 bundle includes DVR service -- though that speed for a "next-gen" bundle still seems a little feeble.
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Verizon Shutting Off Free Wi-Fi For Future Frontier Users - March 26 last day of free Wi-Fi for sale markets...

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 9:37am MDT

Verizon's of course pushing forward with their $8.5 billion deal to offload nearly 6 million new voice and broadband users across more than a dozen states to Frontier Communications. That deal has yet to see full regulatory approval yet (and in fact earlier this month ran into some significant snags in Illinois), but Verizon is apparently getting a good head start anyway. One user forwards us this letter which indicates that Verizon is shuttering Wi-Fi service in his area (which is in the Frontier sale footprint) starting on March 26. Fine print on the Verizon website also confirms the shut down of Wi-Fi starting this Saturday:Verizon Wi-Fi will not be available to customers located in the following areas after March 26, 2010: AZ, ID, IL, IN, MI, NV, NC (except Knotts Island), OH, OR, SC, Crows-Hermatite (VA), WA, WI, and the following communities in California that border AZ, NV and OR--Big River, Blythe, Coleville, Crescent City, Desert Center, Eagle Mountain, Earp, Felicity, Fort Dick, Gasquet, Klamath, Kneeland, Markleeville, Merced, Needles, Orick, Parker Dam, Ripley, Smith River, Topaz, Trinidad, Vidal and Winterhaven.Verizon of course offers free Wi-Fi through their partnership with Boingo to customers that subscribe to base levels of DSL, FiOS and wireless (data, not voice) service. The fact that Verizon's shutting these offerings down early in Frontier markets should tell you a little something about Verizon's confidence that the Frontier deal is going to see regulatory approval from the remaining states and the FCC.
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Google Fiber Is The PR Gift That Keeps On Giving - While carriers warn that already-disappointed people will be...disappointed?

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 7:36am MDT

Google's recent announcement of a 1 Gbps fiber to the home trial is the public relations gift that keeps on giving. Without laying a strand of fiber or delivering a single bit, Google has the nation's towns and cities tripping over themselves to get the carrier's attention -- and perhaps some of Google's planned broadband deployment money. In the process, they've filled the newswires with the Google brand, for free, for more than a month. What began with Topeka's decision to change their name to "Google" this month has now evolved into something substantially stranger notes the New York Times:Duluth videotaped a mock press conference in which it said that every male born in the town would be named Google Fiber. The city enlisted Minnesota s junior senator, the longtime comedian Al Franken, to make a humorous video supporting the bid. Not to be outdone, a dairy in Madison, Wis., aided that city s efforts by creating a "Google Fiber" ice cream flavor vanilla ice cream with granola and M&Ms to match Google s multicolored logo. In Palo Alto, Calif., city employees danced outside the city hall to the tune of the disco-era hit "Y.M.C.A.," unfurling a banner reading, "Palo Alto for Google Fiber."You can imagine how thrilled this all must make incumbent ISP executives. They were already fighting with Google before the search giant lit up the nation's newspapers with talk about how incumbent broadband networks were lacking. Scott Cleland is a telecom PR representative paid by the nation's biggest carriers to cheerlead for the carriers, but also spends a lot of his time smearing Google with pseudo science at their behest. Cleland warns the Times that people are going to wind up disappointed when Google doesn't come through:"Google will rue the day that it can t meet the unrealistic expectations that it has set," said Scott Cleland, the chairman of NetCompetition.org, an organization that represents many telecommunications companies and their industry associations. "The interesting thing will be to see how cities react when they are jilted at the altar."Many cities are going to be disappointed, though several cities we've spoken to know this and don't see the harm in trying; Google has made it clear the trial is limited and the company has no interest in being a national provider&#46 It's ironic that Cleland is suddenly concerned with unfulfilled expectations, given these towns and cities wouldn't be acting this way if they were satisfied by the broadband service being offered by their local incumbent operators.
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Is AT&T Cooking Up A Usage Meter? - 'Usage & Recent Activity' section of U-Verse account management...

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 7:10am MDT

We recently noted how AT&T has decided to scrap their two metered billing trials in Reno, Nevada and Beaumont, Texas starting in April -- an insider telling Broadband Reports that the projects may not have been cost efficient. It does however appear that AT&T is getting ready to offers users some kind of consumption meter. A user over at Stop The Cap noted over the weekend that AT&T's U-Verse account overview website now includes a section called "Usage & Recent Activity," which in turn has a placeholder for what appears to be a monthly usage meter. Such meters (which aren't always accompanied by caps) are becoming common, with carriers claiming they hope to "educate" users on their monthly consumption habits. One users tells us this portion of the website has always been there, while another believes the placeholder is a website glitch created from fusing wireless and wireline brands. We've dropped a line to AT&T to confirm whether a usage meter is indeed coming.
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AT&T NOT Cooking Up New Usage Meter - Strange website glitch, says company...

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 7:10am MDT

We recently noted how AT&T has decided to scrap their two metered billing trials in Reno, Nevada and Beaumont, Texas starting in April -- an insider telling Broadband Reports that the projects may not have been cost efficient. But is AT&T still working on a consumption meter? A user over at Stop The Cap noted over the weekend that AT&T's U-Verse account overview website now includes a section called "Usage & Recent Activity," which in turn has a placeholder for what appears to be a monthly usage meter. Such meters (which aren't always accompanied by caps) are becoming common, with carriers claiming they hope to "educate" users on their monthly consumption habits. One users tells us this portion of the website has always been there, while another believes the placeholder is a website glitch created from fusing wireless and wireline brands. We've dropped a line to AT&T to confirm whether a usage meter is indeed coming.

Update: AT&T tells Broadband Reports that whatever users are seeing, it's some kind of website glitch, and that the company has no plans to implement a usage meter. "We did do some upgrades to our account management portal this weekend, but we haven t been able to recreate this screen," AT&T spokesman Seth Bloom tells us.
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Sonic.net To Deploy Fiber To The Home - Carrier decides it's financially worth it 'to go the distance...'

Posted: March 22nd, 2010, 6:47am MDT

Independent California ISP Sonic.net (see our user reviews) started offering ADSL2+ service over their own network a few years ago, offering tiers in 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 18Mbps flavors. In recent tests in their labs, the ISP tells us the carrier was able to obtain ADSL2+ speeds of 46 Mbps downstream and 4.8Mbps upstream. Sonic CEO Dane Jasper recently stopped by our forums to note that the carrier is now considering making the migration to fiber to the home. Over the weekend, Sonic's plans caught the eye of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

According to Jasper, pushing deeper from the central offices requires one of two things. "We can either deploy equipment in the same location the RT is, at what's called the "serving area interconnect", or SAI," says Jasper, who notes that this gets Sonic about 6,000 feet from the home. "At that distance, with ADSL2+ we can offer single pair speeds of roughly 12Mbps downstream and up to 2Mbps upstream, so it is, give or take - about twice as good as ADSL1 equipment," he says.

But this approach is expensive, with each cabinet deployment costing $50,000, plus the cost of running fiber from the cabinet to the CO and the last-mile truck roll. "Our financial analysis leads us to the conclusion that if you're going to go that distance -- in more ways than one-- it's probably better to simply carry the fiber all the way to the customer premise and offer much more compelling services," says Jasper. "ADSL2+ is too little gain for the investment, in other words."

Jasper says that fifteen-year-old Sonic has been planning this project for about a year, and the first deployment will be a string of about 600 homes in the Sebastpol, California market (as long as local Wi-Fi opponents there don't complain that fiber is a conduit for the devil). No prices or speeds have been announced yet, though the company plans on bundling both voice and TV service.

"Our lack of access to these new facilities is the reason that we are building our own," Jasper says -- referring to his company's inability to access next-generation FiOS or U-Verse deployments. "It will take time, but we are committed to it," says Jasper.

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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 4:59pm MDT

Political, Economic 'Bloodbath' Awaits FCC's Broadband Plan foxbusiness.com
Google's Pacific Ocean cable close to completion v3.co.uk
If ACTA Gets Approved, Expect China To Use It As Justification For Censorship techdirt.com
Sprint offers prepaid mobile broadband service for wholesalers fiercewireless.com
Apple swears iPad partners to secrecy msnbc.com
Canon Becomes First Single Word Domain Holder techdirt.com
Vodafone Spain Admits to Having 3,000 Malware Infected HTC Magics slashgear.com
Mac OS X has 20 zero day flaws theinquirer.net
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Weekend Open Thread - Empty Your Head

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 4:19pm MDT

Another week in the books. Empty your thoughts below.
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Satellite The 'Rodney Dangerfield' Of Broadband Connectivity - Have industry executives tried their own product lately?

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 2:07pm MDT

Inmarsat CEO Andrew Sukawaty talks to the Washington Post and seems upset that satellite broadband didn't get more attention in the FCC's recently released national broadband plan. Sukawaty downplays the success other nations have had in deploying 100 Mbps as a product of geography, argues the country is just gosh-darn big, and then unrealistically pushes satellite's role as a broadband niche filler even above and beyond technologies like Mobile WiMax and LTE. Meanwhile, Viasat CEO Mark Dankberg talks to SpaceNews, and at least realizes that some of the satellite broadband industry's problems are self-inflicted:Viasat Chief Executive Mark Dankberg said early satellite consumer broadband efforts in the United States, to make their profit goals, loaded too many subscribers onto a single transponder, resulting in poor service that tainted the young technology s image among US policymakers. "From the U.S. government s perspective, satellite is a failure," Dankberg said March 18 here during the Satellite 2010 conference. "That is totally due to perceptions established because of the race to stuff as many people as possible on a transponder. The service was not good, and that gave satellite broadband a poor reputation."Dankberg goes to note that even new Ka-band satellite launches haven't been enough to help the sector, something made evident by the high prices, inconsistent connectivity, slow speeds and ultra-low usage caps common in the satellite broadband sector. The SpaceNews story goes on to quote White and Case lawyer Maury Mechanick, who does a lot of work for the satellite sector; Mechanick calls satellite the "Rodney Dangerfield" of the telecom sector, and goes on to lament the FCC's obsession with 100 Mbps:"It s not an issue of lobbyists," Mechanick said in explaining the US government s view of satellite broadband. "The problem is that the politicians are fascinated by downlink speeds that satellites cannot deliver. Also satellites are not labor-intensive. So what we get is a policy 100 megabits per second that will satisfy a few uber-gamers who will take precedence over ordinary people."Mechanick's apparently a little confused. The government's perception or fascination with speed isn't the problem, the satellite industry is the problem. Satellite broadband customers, long-held captives in under-served markets, have grown used to service that's slow, expensive, and inconsistent. These "ordinary people" have never asked for 100 Mbps -- they've just asked for reliable, relatively inexpensive connectivity -- and rarely even get that. What they get are connections that barely qualify as modern broadband, cost an arm and a leg, and come with daily caps as low as 200 megabytes.

These users have spent a decade hoping that the next satellite launch will cure what ails their connection (the launch of the high-capacity Viasat 1 next year being the latest hope on the horizon). But satellite technology can't defeat physics to improve latency, and until the capacity is in place to satisfy demand, the industry's reputation won't be getting any better. The problem isn't perception, the problem is the satellite industry has spent a decade delivering a low-quality residential product.

Mechanick and satellite industry executives should spend some time in our HughesNet or WildBlue forums listening to satellite users if they really want to know why they're considered the Rodney Dangerfield of connectivity.
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MTA Releases Plan For NYC Train Wi-Fi - Focused primary on 'improvimg passenger satisfaction.'

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 12:25pm MDT

In July of last year we noted how the MTA was exploring the possibility of deploying Wi-Fi on New York City area train lines. Last fall Cablevision, which has been busy building Wi-Fi services they offer free to their subscribers, offered to partner with the MTA to extend their existing service. Glenn Fleishman directs our attention to the fact that the MTA has released their request for proposal (RFP) for the project, which indicates the MTA wants a carrier partner who'll operate the network, bear all the expense of installation and operation, and manage support. Fleishman, for one, doesn't think it will work:I don't see how this could fly. No sensible firm would propose taking on all this expense without any assurance of revenue beyond the public Wi-Fi side of the system. Despite the large number of passengers, many of those most likely to pay already have 3G service on smartphones or through laptop cards. There's no operational services component, and that should be the baseline for any new rail RFP of the last five years.Of course with both AT&T, Verizon, Clearwire and T-Mobile all prepping to launch faster wireless broadband service in the NY market sometime in the next two to three years -- you start to wonder if it will really be necessary. Of course the MTA doesn't just want to just offer public wireless, they want the systems tied into their internal ticket and rail monitoring capabilities. But according to the RFP, the plan's "key business objective" for their wireless broadband ambitions is "to improve passenger satisfaction." Maybe lower ticket prices instead?
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Exploring Amsterdam's Fiber To The Home Build - CityNet, Herman Wagter, and open access fiber

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 9:54am MDT

Amsterdam not only has one of the busiest global Internet exchanges, but consumers also see some fantastic speeds in a city that increasingly treats broadband like an open access utility. At the heart of that effort is CityNet, a joint partnership between the city and two private investors. CityNet is run by a guy named Herman Wagter (this older interview is a must read). We've talked a lot about Wagter and CityNet over the last few years, including exploring how they've been working on 1 Gbps connectivity to Amsterdam homes (and houseboats). Wagter has now written a really great piece for Ars Technica on the finer details of delivering FTTH service in a densely-populated European city where all fiber must be buried.
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The FCC Wants Your Thoughts On Comcast/NBC Merger - Deadline is May third for initial comments...

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 7:52am MDT

An FCC statement (pdf) indicates that the agency is fielding public comments on Comcast's planned merger with NBC Universal. The nation's largest TV and broadband provider (and third largest phone company) is hoping to create a $28.2 billion joint venture with GE, which would give Comcast a a 51 percent share in NBC Universal. Not too surprisingly, Comcast lawyers and lobbyists continue to argue that the merger with NBC would be a good thing for consumers, and that somehow the consolidation would mean more competition and diversity in the marketplace:The Applicants assert that the proposed transaction would serve the public interest and promote the Commission s policy goals of diversity, localism, and competition. They argue that the proposed transaction would be in compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements, including the Commission s media ownership rules and channel occupancy limits. They deny the potential for public interest harms and contend that the antitrust laws and the Commission s current regulations, including the program access, program carriage, and retransmission consent rules, would serve as adequate safeguards against any anti-competitive behavior by the partiesIf you really love massive media consolidation -- or think the deal could spell problems for consumers -- you have until May third to make your voice heard at the FCC. You can file your thoughts electronically here, referencing MB Docket No. 10-56.
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Time Warner's 'Surgical' Upgrades Identify Competition Gaps - Citizens of Rochester, New York wonder where their upgrades are...

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 7:02am MDT

While Time Warner Cable dropped faster "Wideband" 50 Mbps speeds this week in parts of New York State like Buffalo and Syracuse, cities like Rochester, New York and Binghamton, New York were won't be seeing upgrades anytime soon. Why? Competition, or more accurately -- a lack thereof. While Verizon has deployed FiOS in portions of Buffalo and Syracuse, in cities like Binghamton Verizon only offers last-generation DSL. Rochester, NY too is served by Frontier Communications, who also is still using last-generation DSL. Rochester residents are annoyed:That's the nice way of saying Rochester isn't getting the speed increases because there is no competitive reason to provide it. With Rochester left off the upgrade list, and no real incentive to run to Frontier (which can't beat Road Runner's existing speeds), this community falls behind the rest of the state in broadband speed.Time Warner Cable has always stated that these upgrades would be "surgical," which is code for Time Warner Cable markets that see real competition. By the cable company's sluggish deployment, you can get a pretty clear idea of what kind of competition they're dealing with in most of their markets. There's a lot of cities like Binghamton (this author's hometown) that are going to be passed over initially in the first wave of next-generation upgrades. The question is: how long will they have to wait before they get faster speeds? With no competition to speak of, the answer could be a very long time.
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AT&T, Verizon Undecided On LTE Pricing - Here's your chance to make your voice heard...

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

Verizon's John Czwartacki this week asked via Twitter what the public's biggest question was surrounding Verizon's upcoming Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband launch this year. Given we know the service will launch in 25-30 markets this year, offering speeds of 5-12 Mbps (probably more around 3-8 Mbps) -- our biggest question remains: what's the price tag, and what kind of caps are we looking at? Judging from the lack of response to that question, Verizon hasn't decided yet. That's what Light Reading concludes as well:AT&T and Verizon Wireless both say they are undecided on how they will charge for Long Term Evolution (LTE) data plans when they are launched over the course of this year and next. . . It s worth thinking about something that is usage-based, but nothing has been decided yet," said Sawanobori. "That's still being looked at," Rinne told the listening audience of press and analysts. Verizon CTO Melone has been more vocal on this issue recently, however, telling The Wall Street Journal: "As much data as you can consume is the big issue that has to change."Of course the pricing models the carriers want to implement involve high ETFs, mandatory data plans, low caps, high overages, and a structure that pretends to offer value, but quietly pushes consumers toward the higher price points whether they use a lot or a little data. While these models are proposed under the auspices of fairness, they're really about charging everybody more money for data -- to counter a future where SMS and voice minutes are supplanted by open networks, mobile VoIP, and smartphone IM clients.

In contrast, consumers dealing with an economic recession and layoffs (maybe even from AT&T and Verizon) want data plans that offer them real value (not the illusion of value), and they don't want use of next-generation networks constrained by last-generation caps and pricing. AT&T and Verizon will have to meet consumers somewhere halfway.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: March 19th, 2010, 6:24am MDT

Virgin Media UK Demo 200Mbps Cable Broadband ispreview.co.uk
Google, Intel, Sony to join forces on 'Google TV' timesonline.co.uk
Skype's global WiFi service a big price gouge for travellers? pcauthority.com.au
Google To Shut Down China Unit in April? businessweek.com
Charter Picks FourthWall EBIF Platform to Deliver Interactive Programming, Advertising; Eyes 50% Of Digital Footprint By End Of 2010 multichannel.com
10 Reason Why the Apple Lawsuit with HTC Could Set Back the Mobile Industry eweek.com
Analysis Of Google And Viacom's Mud-Slinging Arguments Over YouTube techdirt.com
Global sales of built-in 3G modules to exceed plug-type data cards in three years, say sources digitimes.com
Energizer site still plagued by data-stealing trojan theregister.co.uk
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 5:05pm MDT

EU Proposes Criminalizing Inducing Infringement In ACTA Draft; Could Outlaw Google techdirt.com
AT&T, Verizon Undecided on LTE Pricing; Wary of Consumer Protest Over Usage-Based Pricing lightreading.com
Cable TV Is Doomed! theatlantic.com
Smartphones Drive More Handset Sales Overall, But Lower Prices Stall Total Handset Revenue Growth prweb.com
LTE may heat up mobile net neutrality debate networkworld.com
London gets kiddie Internet addiction center theinquirer.net
Free Wi-Fi Via Skype Access This Weekend ubergizmo.com
Apple Patents: Your Next iPhone Doubles as a Walkie Talkie fastcompany.com
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Clearwire, T-Mobile May Hook Up - T-Mobile CEO says they've been chatting with Clear, cable companies

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 1:51pm MDT

The last year or so has seen an endless stream of rumors surrounding T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, and their desire to improve T-Mobile's fourth-place fortunes in the U.S. wireless market. Rumors recently suggested that Deutsche Telekom wanted to buy Sprint and merge the company with T-Mobile, despite some headache-inducing technical and network integration differences. While that rumor was largely debunked, one lingering rumor is that Deutsche Telekom would like to partner with Clearwire -- perhaps funding Clear deployment in exchange for access to spectrum.

That rumor became only a little more solid this week. Speaking at an investor conference in Frankfurt, CEO of T-Mobile USA Robert Dotson stated that the company had been talking with both Clearwire and cable companies about future business opportunities. "We continue to look at joint venture opportunities for additional spectrum... there are a number of different options we look at, (and) have been talking with cable companies, with Clearwire," says Dotson.

While a lot has been made about how Verizon and AT&T could easily overpower Clear with their as-yet-built LTE wireless broadband service (in large part because of their lobbying influence), Clearwire is certainly busy making a lot of friends to help in the fight. As for T-Mobile wanting to get together with Sprint? "What you never want to do is take one company that is going through challenges and take another company going through challenges," says Dotson.
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Cox Rearranges Speed, Pricing In Arizona - 'Premier' tier sees $5 bump, and bump to 20/4 Mbps

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 11:54am MDT

Like many carriers, Cox Communications' broadband speeds and prices depend on the amount of local competition -- and if there isn't any, speeds are usually lower and prices higher. In Arizona, users in some markets were lucky enough to begin seeing faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds last summer, now according to users in our Cox forum, the carrier is again tinkering with prices and speeds in the region. Users statewide are receiving letters informing them that the cost of Cox's "Premier" plan increased from $59.95 to $64.95 starting this week. On the plus side, the tier is also apparently jumping from 15 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up to 20 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up (speeds that should get closer to 25/5 with Powerboost, a technology that will give you a surge in bandwidth for the first 18 to 22 MB of a download).
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Comcast Confirms 100 Mbps Is Coming - Will expand over next '12-18 months' says carrier...

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 9:56am MDT

Comcast insiders earlier this year told Broadband Reports that as part of Comcast's Xfinity rebranding effort, the carrier was hoping to deliver a new 100 Mbps tier to roughly 20% of their footprint before the end of the year. 100/15 Mbps service is currently offered in only one Comcast market (Minneapolis), but at a price tag of $370 per month. Comcast now confirms to Multichannel News that broader deployment of the 100 Mbps tier is coming, but the company isn't getting specific on price (it will likely be considerably less than the $370 price tag in Minnieapolis). From the report:In the next 12 to 18 months, Comcast anticipates being able to offer 100-Mbps Internet service to many, if not all, of those customers, said Cathy Avgiris, senior vice president and general manager of communications and data services. The company is the biggest broadband provider in the U.S., with 15.9 million high-speed subscribers as of the end of 2009. "We're looking to introduce a residential service at 100-Meg speeds," said Avgiris, who recently was promoted to oversee Comcast's broadband as well as voice and wireless services. "For a customer who wants to take advantage of that, we'll offer that to them."Comcast of course has been on the leading edge of DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, and should offer 50 Mbps service to almost their entire footprint by the end of this year. They're also working on perfecting DOCSIS 3.0 upstream channel bonding, and are seeing upstream speeds of up to 75 Mbps in both the lab and the field. Though still several years off, Comcast insiders also tell Broadband Reports the company is already laying the groundwork for pushing downstream speeds toward 250 Mbps and beyond. Newer DOCSIS chips support eight channels and 320 megabits down of shared bandwidth.

While nobody very few people really need those kinds of speeds (unless you work at say a observatory transmitting massive swaths of galaxy observation data), and many others won't be able to afford them -- at least they'll be there. One thing buried in the Multichannel report is that Comcast appears to be sliding a little on their plan to have DOC 3 everywhere by year's end:Meanwhile, whereas Comcast had previously expected to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 to 100% of its footprint by the end of 2010, Avgiris said it may be 2011 until the remaining 25% of the operator's systems are upgraded. "We will do it as aggressively as we can... but certainly by the end of this year I don't think there will be a major market that will not have DOCSIS 3.0," she said.Still, Comcast's upgrade pace has been fairly remarkable.
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Couple Busted For Stealing Comcast Pedestal Batteries - Pulled over with 33 of them in the back of a Durango. Whoops.

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 7:47am MDT

Though we've yet to find any reference of it in regional news, an internal Comcast newsletter forwarded to Broadband Reports tells the amusing tale of a man and a woman who recently got into hot water with both Comcast and the Houston police. Apparently, the couple had been driving around Houston in a Dodge Durango stealing backup batteries from Comcast power supply enclosure pedestals. When caught, according to the Comcast newsletter, the couple was found with 33 batteries in their vehicle.

said by Comcast :Houston Safety Specialist, Gene Sockwell, made special note of the type of vehicle used by a pair of people breaking into a Comcast power supply ped, and recorded the license plate. He quickly relayed his suspicions to the Houston Police Department and gave them a description of what he witnessed. Not long afterwards, a half dozen police officers stopped a vehicle matching Gene s description and found 33 Comcast batteries in the back of it. The driver and passenger were immediately arrested and escorted downtown.

Of course everybody knows that if you really want to impress your date, you should take her out to steal live copper wiring from utility poles, duh.
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Charter Rep: Don't Cancel TV Because Internet Video Is Ending - Carrier still apparently struggling with support quality control...

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 7:29am MDT

You probably knew this already from first-hand experience, but some broadband support reps are very good at their jobs -- and some, well, aren't. The The Consumerist has a nasty habit of highlighting the worst of the worst, and this week was no exception. A Charter user writes into the site to note that when he tried to cancel TV service to save money, a Charter support representative informed him that he shouldn't -- because Internet video streaming was about to be shut down completely by the FCC:At this point, he said he would see what the cost of internet alone was, and said there would be a $10 "no cable TV" fee (sounds like b.s. to me), which would make it $49.95 a month for internet alone. Then he went on to say that he strongly suggested that I keep the tv service because come May 1, all of the online streaming services would be shut down because the cable TV providers are taking over, and that the FCC regulations are changing so that the cable companies will have total control over streaming video.The Consumerist (also see Reddit) this week has also been fielding complaints from Charter users who are being told that one of the most common routers ever (The Linksys WRT54G) doesn't work with Charter and that users will need to rent a router. Yeah, these are one-off examples of Charter support issues -- and we're sure there's plenty of very competent support agents who work at Charter. Then again, Charter has ranked last or next to last in every major consumer satisfaction study (Consumer Reports, J.D. Power, The ACSI) for much of the last decade -- so draw whatever conclusion you feel is most plausible.
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FCC Indicates Broader Plans To Test Home Broadband - Gives update on new speedtest, unveils broader project

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

User uid://421043 drops us a line to note that the FCC has given an update on their new broadband speed test, which the agency launched just last Friday. According to a blog post by the FCC's Jordan Usdan, the speedtest has already seen 150,000 unique users who've taken 300,000 tests and submitted 4,000 addresses. Usdan offers up a closer explanation of the differences between the Ookla and M-Lab speed tests, and offers a look at the data the agency has collected so far from the tests. With the understanding that these tests won't be enough data for fully-informed policy, the FCC also had this to say:On Friday, the FCC asked for bids on a contract to measure broadband performance in roughly 10,000 homes to scientifically understand broadband performance across America. (Read the Request for Quotation). The contract would likely involve installation of a measurement device in the homes of volunteers, using a representative set of connections to help identify how different networks and technologies perform at different times of day, across different parts of the network, under different conditions and using different testing methods.We mentioned yesterday how the cable industry is being supportive of these more accurate testing opportunities, because they know it will highlight the chasm between DOCSIS 3.0 upgraded cable networks and networks still relying on last-mile copper (AT&T, Windstream, Qwest and many more). The collection of hard, first-hand data to inform policy hasn't traditionally been a strong point at the FCC historically -- so this shift is a welcome one.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: March 18th, 2010, 6:34am MDT

Comcast: 100-Meg Residential Service Coming This Year multichannel.com
Berners-Lee says rate countries by data sharing theregister.co.uk
ZigBee and Wi-Fi Alliances to Collaborate on Smart Grid Wireless Networking cellular-news.com
Illegal file sharing in Europe could cost 215 billion by 2015 thinkbroadband.com
Android 2.1 arrives in force theinquirer.net
What Would You Want From a Google Set-Top Box? newteevee.com
Verizon 4G handsets out by mid-2011 cnet.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 5:32pm MDT

America's Broadband Revolution: Where We Go From Here huffingtonpost.com
Public safety fee for broadband will be less than $1 a month computerworld.com
First WiMAX phone to debut next week? theregister.co.uk
Mobile apps market is set to explode theinquirer.net
(Still) Defining Net Neutrality lightreading.com
California s Smart Meter Battle: Google vs. Utilities earth2tech.com
Microsoft prepping Xbox 360 Slim? gamespot.com
Mozilla will put Firefox 3.0 to bed theinquirer.net
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Verizon Sues Cablevision Over DVR Patents - Good thing Cablevision wants to kill off the DVR by 2011...

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 4:28pm MDT

There was already no love lost between Verizon and Cablevision, who are engaged in a heated competitive battle in the NY Metro market. Verizon's now upped the ante, and according to Light Reading has filed suit against Cablevision for violating five DVR patents. As is usually the case in these patent fights, several of the patents are incredibly vague and broad, like technology that "allows users to navigate available programs by channel, and through the selection of an anchor channel, by category."

According to Verizon, these patent violations are causing "immediate and irreparable harm to Verizon's business." Not too surprisingly, Cablevision disagreed, and fired some high-test snark in Verizon's direction.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that Verizon is having difficulty competing on the merits in the marketplace, so they are resorting to filing lawsuits and pursuing regulatory bailouts," stated Cablevision, in apparent reference to our story earlier this week that suggested Verizon wants taxpayer money to continue their FiOS deployment.

Luckily for Cablevision, the company is planning to migrate away from the kind of set top DVRs this patent fight covers (the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4250HD, Explorer 8300HD, and the 4200HD set-top box models), and toward a network-based DVR that stores content at the network head end. "By year-end we intend to cease buying physical DVRs as we begin deploying our network-based DVR solution throughout our footprint," Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge recently stated on a Cablevision earnings call.
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Comcast Continues To Expand Usage Meter Availability - Deployment speeds up, hits Georgia, New Mexico, many more markets

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 2:19pm MDT

Back in October of 2008, Comcast implemented a 250 GB usage limit for all broadband subscribers. In December of 2009 Comcast finally released their usage meter, which allows users to track their consumption via the Comcast portal. The meter originally showed up in Portland, then showed up in Seattle and Spokane last January, and the Boston area in February. According to users in our Comcast forum, the meter has recently expanded more quickly into several additional markets, including portions of New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, and Georgia. Comcast still isn't offering an official release schedule, though users should receive an e-mail before the meter officially goes live in their market.
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Were Google An ISP, They'd Be The Third Biggest - But again: they're not, and don't want to be.

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 12:29pm MDT

Arbor Networks has released a new study that notes that if Google was an ISP (a big if), they would be the fastest growing carrier in the world -- and third largest global carrier. As we've long discussed, Google has made huge investments into data centers and worldwide fiber. Why? So they can save money on and speed up delivery of their primary product: advertisements. Based on anonymous data from 110 global ISPs, Arbor estimates that Google now contributes somewhere between 6-10% of all Internet traffic globally. And Arbor claims Google's network muscle power is growing in a multitude of new ways:But even building out millions of square feet of global data center space, turning up hundreds of peering sessions and co-locating at more than 60 public exchanges is not the end of the story. Over the last year, Google deployed large numbers of Google Global Cache (GGC) servers within consumer networks around the world. Anecdotal discussions with providers, suggests more than half of all large consumer networks in North America and Europe now have a rack or more of GGC servers.Of course with all this network power, data centers and fiber -- there have long been proclamations that it's a hop, skip and a jump for Google to simply become an ISP themselves. That assumption has only grown louder after Google's recent decision to trial 1 Gbps service in between 50,000 and 500,000 U&#46S&#46 homes. Again though, Google's trial is about 1 testing next-generation ad delivery and 2 collecting political ammunition and PR brownie points in their battle against ISPs over network neutrality and broadband competition.

Google isn't an ISP, and Google doesn't want to be an ISP.
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Cable Industry Pushing For Better Government Speed Tests - In order to highlight DOCSIS 3.0's advantage over copper...

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 10:17am MDT

For several years now, UK regulators have been issuing comprehensive reports highlighting the chasm between advertised broadband speeds and delivered broadband speeds. During that time the FCC here in the States didn't give much thought to it. Only last February did the FCC even really begin to mention this disparity, and it was only just last Friday that the FCC unveiled a real consumer speed test. Late last month executives from Cox, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and the cable industry's NCTA trade group visited the FCC to push for broader, UK-style speed test standards. From an NCTA filing about their visit to the FCC:The Cable Representatives explained that online speed tests potentially have some value if they are well designed, but that a poorly designed speed test provides no useful information to consumers. The Cable Representatives expressed general support for the approach taken by Ofcom in the United Kingdom. A number of cable operators have held discussions with SamKnows, the contractor used by Ofcom, and the Ofcom/SamKnows approach is a useful reference point for the development of a common set of metrics for U.S. broadband providers.So why is the cable industry suddenly concerned about educated consumers?

One, the FCC recently used seemingly inaccurate comScore data for a study that declared most users' actual speeds lagged advertised speeds by between 50 and 80% (you can see the FCC's data 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 the cable industry wants more accurate tools that will reflect this.

But the cable industry also wants more accurate tools because they currently have a competitive speed advantage in the mark (excluding, of course, fiber to the home). More comprehensive speed tests are going to act as advertisements for DOCSIS 3.0, while highlighting the limitations of phone company networks still relying on last-mile copper (Qwest, AT&T, Embarq, Windstream). The cable industry also uses a technology called Powerboost that helps bump the first few moments of a big download -- which of course produces some very nice looking speedtest results.
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FCC Boss Answers Questions About Broadband Plan - Including questions from several Broadband Reports readers

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 7:58am MDT

Yesterday of course the FCC finally released our first ever national broadband plan. For those who were napping yesterday, you can find a copy of the plan here (pdf), and you can read our thoughts on what the plan does (and doesn't do) here. Meanwhile, FCC boss Julius Genachowski this week conducted a video interview where he fields questions about the plan. Just as with the plan itself, Genachowski pays a lot of lip service to competition, without really addressing the sector's duopoly logjam. The video features cameos from several Broadband Reports regulars, including net neutrality opponent and Wyoming WISP owner Brett Glass (uid://1453543), and net neutrality supporter and Stop The Cap creator Phillip Dampier (uid://789624).
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Time Warner Cable Makes 50 Mbps In Dallas Official - Though users in Buffalo, Syracuse New York also seeing service

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 6:58am MDT

One week ago we were the first to report that Time Warner Cable had unofficially begun offering faster DOCSIS 3.0 service to customers in Dallas, Texas and Buffalo, New York. Users in these upgraded markets are now seeing tiers of 30/5 Mbps for $25 more than standard service, and 50/5 Mbps for $100 a month. Time Warner Cable has now made it official with a press release confirming the news for the Dallas-area market (Carrolton, Flower Mound, Plano, Grapevine, Bedford and Lewisville, with expansion soon). Local news outlets in Syracuse, New York indicate the faster speeds have launched in about 30% of the central New York division as well.
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Neither AT&T Or Riverside, CA Want Their Wi-Fi Network - And city's contract with AT&T prohibits reselling or leasing network...

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

Back in 2006 we reported how AT&T had partnered with Wi-Fi operator Metro-Fi on a bid to offer Wi-Fi service to the city of Riverside, California. At the time it was a unique move for AT&T, given they'd spent most of their time up until then fighting such projects from taking root. Of course in 2008 MetroFi gave up on citywide Wi-Fi, and AT&T has apparently been running the Riverside network ever since. MuniWireless notes how neither AT&T nor cash-strapped city leaders seem to want the network, but locals do:The city council will vote on 16 March 2010 to maintain the network, find a sponsor, or shut it down. Some people in Riverside do not want the city to spend money on the network given the city s precarious financial state, but others who have been enjoying the free Wi-Fi service, don t want it taken away from them...People who have been financially crushed and are trying to save money by using the free Wi-Fi service (and canceling their DSL/cable subscriptions) are urging Riverside to keep it up and running.Of course the city's in a bit of a spot, given their contract with AT&T forbids the city from reselling or leasing the network to another operator for a period of five years (since AT&T didn't want any added competition). The ghost of MetroFi isn't only haunting Riverside. Portland, Oregon is looking at a $200,000 bill just to remove old MetroFi antennas from around the city.
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Fairpoint Still Fighting Rural Maine Broadband Expansion - But again, why should Maine residents value Fairpoint's advice?

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 6:46am MDT

After acquiring Verizon's Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont DSL and landline networks for $2.3 billion, Fairpoint Communications subsequently imploded under the debt load, created a multi-state crisis by bungling 911 service for months, missed all agreed to broadband expansion promises, could barely provide dial tone or broadband service to thousands of customers, couldn't answer the phone when they called, and then stumbled into bankruptcy.

Despite bankruptcy and their laundry list of problems, Fairpoint still found the time and funds to lobby Maine lawmakers to try and derail a public-private partnership between the University of Maine and Biddleford Internet Corporation (also known as GWI) aimed at trying to shore up the significant rural broadband coverage gaps across Maine.

Light Reading has the latest, and notes that Fairpoint's still fighting tooth and nail against this proposal, known locally as the "Three Ring Binder." Despite winning federal stimulus funds, the project failed to get CLEC status in Maine, and is now fighting Fairpoint to gain access to state utility poles:In addition, the non-profit Maine Fiber has been unable to gain CLEC status -- since it is an open access network and not a service provider -- and so it now needs special action by the state legislature to gain access to 36,000 utility poles before it can begin construction. With a 2012 deadline looming to get the network up and running, delays are a major concern.

At the heart of the dispute is Fairpoint s insistence that Three-Ring Binder is a government-funded duplication of its own fiber optic network. Those who want the new network built complain that Fairpoint refuses to lease dark fiber on its network, that its fiber optic network lacks the necessary capacity, and that its leased services are too expensive.At this point it's not really clear why any Maine consumer would want Fairpoint's "help," but Fairpoint's apparently very dedicated to delivering their unique version of it.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 17th, 2010, 6:27am MDT

Googlenet dwarfs all but two of world's ISPs theregister.co.uk
Verizon Files Patent Complaint Against Cablevision; Renews Set-Top Wars multichannel.com
Facebook beats Google's web traffic volume theinquirer.net
TV broadcasters prepare for spectrum battle cnet.com
Ofcom UK Clamps Down on Landline and Broadband ISP Mis-selling ispreview.co.uk
Netflix Goes With Akamai for Video Streaming softpedia.com
Spotify: The Savior, or the Destroyer of Music? pcmag.com

Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 5:27pm MDT

Time Warner Cable Fires Up Wideband In Dallas, Buffalo multichannel.com
MetroPCS Selects LTE Solutions from Gemalto softpedia.com
President Clinton talks about the iPhone, newspapers, broadband computerworld.com
Why Google's Nexus One hasn't flopped (yet) cnet.com
Losing the war against The Pirate Bay theinquirer.net
AT&T on taking risks and changing business models fiercebroadbandwireless.com
39% of BlackBerry users would prefer an iPhone as their next purchase investors.com
Anti-virus suites still can't block Google China attack theregister.co.uk
Microsoft launches IE9 platform preview v3.co.uk
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Verizon (Sort Of) Addresses FiOS Deployment Freeze - FiOS may still come 'to towns and villages NEAR you.'

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 4:11pm MDT

The past few weeks we've been exploring how Verizon's FiOS deployment is grinding to a halt for some, specifically right outside the city lines of places like Alexandria, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. Places that were once promised deployment are now on hold indefinitely, as Verizon tries to market to existing deployment markets and waits to see if they can get some taxpayer funding for FiOS. Verizon hasn't responded to requests for comment on how much of of their DSL base won't get FiOS, but Verizon's Bill Kula addresses the deployment halt somewhat over at their Verizon at Home Blog.

"You may have seen some recent discussion about Verizon s deployment of our all fiber-optic network, and I wanted to set the record straight for our At Home readers," says Kula, who apparently reads Broadband Reports. "As we move forward this year, we re focusing on building our fiber-based network and increasing FiOS availability in those areas where we already have video franchises in place," says Kula.

That of course means cities like New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC where Verizon has recently signed citywide franchise agreements. Except as many of those cities will find out in a few years, their agreements with Verizon (usually hashed out in private with city leaders) include find print that allows Verizon to back out of 100% citywide deployment promises if Verizon doesn't see certain television service adoption rates.

You'll note that Kula doesn't really deny that Verizon has put the brakes on deployments elsewhere, though he tries to comfort Verizon readers by insisting that FiOS may still come to "towns and villages near you." Well, as long as your market signed a franchise agreement (which Verizon is no longer negotiating anywhere), and you don't live in places like Baltimore or Alexandria.

On the positive side, Kula reminds readers that FiOS should pass (again, that doesn't always mean serve) about 18 million premises by the end of this year, and Verizon is now the nation's eighth biggest TV provider. This year's urban push to 18 million homes passed should bring them to about 60% of their total customer base. That other 40% is starting to get curious about what's going to happen to them, and may have to wait a while to get their answer.
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What You Need To Know About The National Broadband Plan - A good first step, possibly made worthless without lobbying reform

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 12:18pm MDT

Some 36 public workshops, 9 field hearings, and 31 public notices later, the FCC today finally unveiled their national broadband plan (pdf). There's 376 pages of dense policy to dig through, so it's going to take some time to completely digest the plan. Legal experts and policy wonks will be poring over this one for weeks, given the FCC recommends some fairly dense changes to telecom mainstays like the Universal Service Fund (USF). Also keep in mind that this plan is preliminary, and will heavily mutate as it runs the lobbyist and political gauntlet. That said, here's our high and low points:

What's Promising About The Plan
• At least it's a plan -- kind of: One good thing about our national broadband plan is that it is one. Almost. It's more like a pile of recommendations to Congress, or a plan for a plan. That may not sound like much, but for a country that has spent the last decade using bad data to proudly proclaim we didn't have any broadband issues to fix? It's a forward step. The plan punts to Congress on some of the tough issues, but it at least gives recommendations and establishes a framework.

• The FCC wants 4 Mbps to be broadband's baseline: For years we've reported how the FCC used fairly paltry definitions of broadband (256 kbps downstream, recently updated to 768 kbps) so that our national success on this front looked good. The FCC's plan now calls for broadband to be defined as "4 Mbps of actual download speed and 1 Mbps of actual upload speed" (page 135). Page 19 tries to argue that 95% of us already have access to those speeds, which brings us to...

• The agency makes collecting more hard data a priority: On page 38 of the plan, the FCC proclaims that "the dearth of consistent, comprehensive and detailed price data makes it difficult to evaluate price competition." While the FCC tries to do so anyway -- it's clear the agency's decade-long disdain for hard science has come home to roost, and impacted the agency's plan draft. The plan calls for a complete overhaul of FCC data collection and public presentation. This is the first of many FCC proposals where the devil will be in the details and the agency needs to stand up to major carriers to achieve the goal.

• The plan pushes for broadband advertising improvements: While the plan's habit of citing transparency as a fix for competitive issues is disingenuous, the plan makes it clear the FCC would like to impose requirements that improve the accuracy of broadband advertising. The FCC is eager to eliminate the use of the dreaded "up to" speed descriptor, replacing it potentially with a "broadband nutritional label" (see FCC example, left and page 46 of the plan) that could potentially advertise both the maximum and average provisioned rate.

• The plan finally begins revamping the Universal Service Fund: For years even the government's own General Accounting Office has complained that the Universal Service Fund was collecting billions in taxpayer dollars but the FCC wasn't doing a very good job managing the fund. While the plan's USF reform is a complicated tangle of policy revision, the primary goal is to refocus $16 billion in USF funds over the next ten years away from legacy voice service and toward broadband. By 2020, voice-only networks (assuming there are any) won't be eligible for USF funds.

•The FCC wants wireless broadband to be a priority: The plan clearly pins a lot of hope on 4G wireless broadband services as a cornerstone of future competition, and Chapter 5 (starting on page 73) is entirely dedicated to spectrum. The plan's goal is to get 500 megahertz of spectrum into the hands of 4G providers, of which 300 megahertz (between 225 MHz and 3.7 GHz) is to be made newly available for mobile use within five years. There's an ocean of details involved in the FCC's agenda, and the devil will be in the end-game details and whether broadcasters want to give up some unused spectrum (hint: they don't).

•The FCC wants more competition in the set top box market: The FCC is pretty clearly annoyed with the industry's (and their own) failure with CableCARDs and starting on page 49 explains how the agency is going to push hard to end proprietary conditional access systems "on or before" December 31, 2012. In other words: they want more consumer choice in broadband-powered set tops and home gateways that can access the Internet without carrier restrictions. Again, the devil will be in the details and whether TV operators want consumers to have access to their choice of completely open set tops (hint: they don't).

What's Troubling About The Plan
• USF reform could actually increase the cost of broadband and phone service: While the FCC repeatedly states their goal for the plan is to deliver "affordable" broadband to Americans by 2020, the proposals could actually raise your broadband costs. The plan imposes a new "Connections" fee as part of an overhaul of the USF that will be used for deploying broadband to under-served markets. While good for under-served markets, that means a higher bill for you. The plan annoyingly omits how much this fee could be, but once the details are hashed out, it could raise your monthly broadband bill from anywhere from $1 to $5 a month.

In addition, the FCC recommends to Congress that they allow increases in the FCC subscriber line charge, which is money that goes right back to carriers. The plan is vague when it comes to hard numbers per subscriber here as well, but industry analyst Dave Burstein tells us his his initial analysis suggests the plan could actually wind up with American families paying $5-$10 more a month when it's all said and done. Yes, maybe this money goes back to the public, but given the FCC history on this front, maybe this money goes into AT&T's pocket. Of course also tied directly to high consumer prices is the fact that...

• Again, the plan fails to tackle a lack of competition: On page 30 of the plan, the FCC proudly proclaims that the plan "contains more than 40 recommendations that directly spur competition," which makes the fact that the plan doesn't really address competition all the more obnoxious. These recommendations include such things as child safety, digital education efforts, and identity theft countermeasures. While all noble, they don't address the problem that large swath of U.S. markets suffer from high prices and slower speeds created by monopoly or duopoly markets.

The agency's own study suggested that open access policies could be one possible solution to the nation's duopoly logjam. However, the agency has made it very clear they have no intention of upsetting incumbent carriers -- many of which not only wield incredibly influence over Congress, but have also been fused into our national security infrastructure. With absolutely no hyperbole intended, many of these carriers now wield far more legislative and legal power than the FCC itself.

"The dearth of consistent, comprehensive and detailed price data makes it difficult to evaluate price competition."

-FCC's National Broadband Plan

• The plan is heavy on the showmanship: Many of the recommendations look good and are politically easy to accomplish -- but lack substance. As we've already noted, the agency's goal of bringing "affordable" 100 Mbps to 100 million U.S. homes sounds good and is getting played up by the press. But when you consider that cable broadband alone already passes 125 million homes -- the majority of which will be upgraded to faster DOCSIS 3.0 service within 5 years without FCC intervention -- this supposed "cornerstone" of the plan rings hollow. Did we mention "affordable" is left undefined?

The agency also proclaims that they want to see broadband adoption improve from 65% to 90% by 2020, something that could happen organically whether the FCC is involved or not. A few million thrown at digital literacy campaigns is the supposed answer -- though several of these efforts involve using taxpayer dollars to fund cable industry advertising campaigns. There simply is a vast mountain of policy in this plan that is, for lack of a more scientific term, empty, feel-good crap, while issues like unethical billing practices go completely unaddressed.

• The plan fails to disrupt the status quo: We've been covering this sector for a decade, and there is absolutely no limit to the number of think tanks, fake consumer groups, policy wonks and PR flacks employed by major carriers to help shape (and distort) public opinion, press coverage, and DC policy. Both before and after the plan's announcement these chorus of voices for hire were collectively, notably, uncritical. Why is that a problem? Any plan worth the 376 pages it's printed on should address competition, which could hurt revenues, which would anger the carriers, who would then fire up this "sound wall" of opinion for hire.

Granted, some carriers may not like the various rulemaking processes that emerge from this initial plan, but by and large the plan itself (after two full read throughs) does absolutely nothing to rattle the duopoly status quo in the broadband sector, and carrier silence proves it. That indicates a lack of conviction, courage and vision by plan architect Blair Levin. It also indicates that politics and carrier loyalty drove the national broadband plan's structure as much as science. That doesn't mean that things can't be accomplished as we head into the real rulemaking battles to come, but...

•The plan completely fails to address money in politics as a primary reason for our failures: The primary problems the plan faces actually aren't technical, given we're a nation packed with oodles of fiber, bright network engineers and significant wealth. The plan's primary obstacle is the influence the nation's wealthiest carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) have on the nation's political and legal infrastructure. We've seen an endless parade of well-intentioned sector reforms scuttled by carrier lobbyists. It remains unlikely that true change in the broadband (or any other sector, for that matter) can be implemented until the problem of undue corporate influence on policy has been addressed first.

What Happens Now
As we noted at the start, the FCC's new national broadband plan is more of a "plan of a plan," and implementation in the face of lobbyist pressure will be key. As plan architect Blair Levin stated this morning at the plan's introduction, the "plan is in beta, and always will be." The FCC has simply set the table for a significant number of policy discussions and rule making procedures, that may (or may not) end in substantive improvements in the sector.
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Putting T-Mobile HSPA+ Through Its Paces - 'It's so fast, you might forget it's 3G,' insists Gizmodo

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 10:39am MDT

Gizmodo spends some quality private time with T-Mobile's HSPA+ wireless broadband deployment in Philadelphia, and comes away rather smitten. HSPA+ is theoretically capable of speeds up to 21 Mbps, though users will of course see speeds that are substantially less. Giz tests the service in seven Philly locations, using T-Mobile's new HSPA+ webConnect Rocket USB modem. Average downstream speeds ranged from 1.7 to 6 Mbps downstream, and average upstream speeds ranged from .8 to 1.2 Mbps. Latency clocked in from 60-100ms. Of course Gizmodo worries about the headroom:

said by Giz :That 5GB data cap, however, could be a problem. With the 3G speeds we're used to just surfing the web can be a chore. Downloading big files or watching HD video were usually out of the question. But since the HSPA+ feels like your broadband at home, it's easy to treat it that way, and I can imagine users racking up 5GB dangerously quickly. By my back of the napkin calculations, at the speeds I saw, it'd only take about 4 hours of continuously downloading files to eat up your month's allowance.

T-Mobile recently stated the carrier plans to have the speedier standard deployed to 90% of their entire footprint by the end of this year -- though getting backhaul to power these cell cites will be an ongoing effort.
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A Closer Look At FiOS Installs In NYC - Verizon still promising complete city coverage by 2014...

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 8:49am MDT

While it's true that Verizon appears to have suspended new FiOS deployments for millions of their current DSL users, the company still has promised to deploy FiOS to every single resident in New York City by the end of 2014 as part of their franchise agreement with the city. That's no easy task of course, and the logistics of navigating New York City's labyrinthine under crust, securing landlord agreements, and wiring each apartment building is mind-boggling. Verizon gives CNN's Johnathan Blum a video tour of Verizon's NYC operations center for those interested. Blum and Verizon used the tour as an opportunity to explain to investors in no uncertain terms that Google's 1 Gbps residential fiber ambitions are extremely limited, and won't be challenging Verizon anytime soon.
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UK Lords Pass 'Digital Economy' Bill - Welcome to your new antipiracy content nanny state

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 7:15am MDT

According to the BBC, the UK Lords have passed largely entertainment-industry-written "Digital Economy Bill," which has seen heated global debate over its plan to push ISPs to suspend the broadband accounts of copyright violators. Like many other such bills, the plan is being pushed through the UK legislative process without a lot of public input into the potential damage the bill could cause. In addition to opponents complaining of the bills "draconian" copyright policies, Wi-Fi hotspot owners are concerned that the bill's language holds them liable for copyright violations. One positive? The Telegraph notes that an entertainment-industry push to include language that would make it possible to modify copyright law without consulting Parliament was pulled from the bill.
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The 'Electromagnetically Hypersensitive' Attack Smart Meters - Sebastpol, CA group moves on to the next bogeyman...

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 6:48am MDT

Back in 2008 we explored how some Wi-Fi phobic activists managed to shut down plans to build a wireless network in Sebastopol, California. Despite absolutely no scientific evidence that Wi-Fi signals pose a health risk to human beings, the group of opponents claimed to be suffering from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, a potentially psychosomatic disorder that's captured the attention of many inexplicably light-headed individuals the world over.

After managing to shut down Sebastpol's wireless broadband network, the activists are now taking aim at the city's plan to install electricity smart meters for the same reason, notes the Press Democrat:When the Sebastopol City Council voted in February to ask PG&E to delay installing wireless natural gas and electric meters at homes and businesses, the decision was cheered by residents who packed council meetings to share concerns that such technology causes serious health problems, including cancer. But to others who live in the west county enclave of nearly 8,000, the council action was further evidence that city leaders have fallen under the spell of a fringe element spreading paranoia and junk science.The group opposing all wireless in the area, the Electromagnetic Field Safety Network, has just twelve members. Those twelve people are apparently are doing a nice job impacting technology and connectivity decisions for the regions thousands of other inhabitants -- all without a shred of scientific evidence.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 6:17am MDT

Broadband key to growth, prosperity politico.com
Eastern Europe Set for Broadband Surge lightreading.com
Canadian gov quietly cuts free Internet funding thestar.com
UK Lords Pass Digital Economy Bill, Now Look To Rush It Through Commons techdirt.com
Charter Will Offer Free Broadband to Low-Income St. Louisians multichannel.com
Human Skin Hacked for Broadband switched.com
Microsoft will release emergency IE patch theinquirer.net
After Sony PSP phone, a 3G Nintendo DS? reghardware.co.uk
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FCC Releases Copy Of The National Broadband Plan - 376 pages of ideas, though plan seems light on data...

Posted: March 16th, 2010, 6:02am MDT

The FCC has finally released a copy of our first ever national broadband plan, which we're offering here (pdf) for those interested. Given the plan is 376 pages and will take some time to pore over, we'll post more specific impressions later today. After a first read we're noting that a lot of the hard data we were hoping for isn't present; for instance while we know the FCC wants to impose a new broadband fee on every broadband connection (discussed on page 147), there's no actual mention in the document of how much that will be per subscriber. We'll have more discussion of the plan later on today.
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Monday Evening Lnks -

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 5:13pm MDT

FCC Suggests Federal Approach To Taxing Online Digital Goods, Services multichannel.com
Apple details iPad 3G pricing gauge fiercewireless.com
Judge Rules P2P Legal In Spain Yet Again techdirt.com
AT&T wants to give muni-WiFi network back to Riverside, Calif. fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Member of Canadian Parliament Set To Propose Canadian MP3 Player Tax billboard.biz
No Quick Fix for Telcos, Says Ovum cable360.net
Canada seeing 'failure' on digital strategy cbc.ca
AirWalk Preps LTE Picocell Proto for CTIA lightreading.com
EMC stuns analysts and colleagues with storage pool plan theregister.co.uk
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 5:13pm MDT

'Lawn Fridges' Attack UK Lawns - Residents overseas don't much like them either...

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 3:23pm MDT

AT&T's decision to stick with copper VDSL instead of running fiber has more drawbacks than just limiting the bandwidth the telco can offer consumers. Unlike FTTH, VDSL requires the placement of occasional VRAD cabinets, which have caused a number of communities to complain about how the ugly "lawn fridges" reduce property value. Comcast has even run advertising attacking the boxes, and AT&T's been working on deploying smaller cabinets. With British Telecom in the UK now pursuing the VDSL angle as well, we're now seeing the same kind of debate spring up across the pond:A FURIOUS resident on Wednesday refused to allow a new superfast broadband box to be put up outside his St Albans home. He is one of a number of local residents who feel so strongly about the boxes which are being put up all over the district that they are taking the law into their own hands. Guiseppe Giubba of The Ridgeway, St Albans, was so incensed when workmen turned up to install one of the six ft by four ft boxes that he refused to allow them to fit it.Here in the States, AT&T has been offering three options to communities annoyed by the boxes. the first has AT&T doing the landscaping; the second involves AT&T paying $2000 per site if it's mutually agreed that landscaping is necessary (the City does the work); the third has AT&T paying $1500 per site regardless if landscaping is necessary.
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FCC Gives Final Sales Pitch For Broadband Plan - While saving all the actual details for Tuesday morning...

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 11:53am MDT

Our first ever national broadband plan gets unveiled tomorrow, and while we've covered a lot of the leaked details about the plan -- the real specifics have yet to be unearthed. The FCC has been very busy the last few weeks selling this plan without getting too specific -- and the agency continued that trend today with a broadband plan preview (pdf). We've stored a copy of the FCC's full plan executive summary here (pdf) for those interested. The preview again repeats the FCC's goals -- most of which have been already unveiled during various FCC interviews or editorials over the last few weeks:

Above all else, the
plan is a call to action to meet that challenge for our era.

-FCC broadband plan architect Blair Levin

• "Connect 100 million households to affordable 100-megabits-per-second service."

This is repeatedly cited as the "cornerstone" of the FCC's proposal, though the goal is something we've noted could happen organically over the next ten years without the FCC's involvement, largely thanks to Verizon FiOS and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades (cable passes 125 million homes, most of which can be easily upgraded). This goal is, frankly, show business.

• "Affordable access in every American community to ultra-high-speed broadband of at least 1 gigabit per second at anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and military installations."

While projects like Internet 2 already fuel a lot of institutions -- the FCC isn't clear on how they hope to bring these speeds to smaller community buildings and universities. While taxpayers have poured $25 billion into the Universal Service Fund (USF) since it was created in 1998, recent data from the American Library Association indicates that more than 60% of U.S. libraries lack adequate bandwidth to serve visitors. The FCC plan will be revamping the USF, but the USF is very broken, and specifically how the FCC hopes to fix it has yet to be made clear. More on that below.

• "Ensure that the United States is leading the world in mobile innovation by making 500 megahertz of spectrum newly available for licensed and unlicensed use."

The (debate over the national broadband plan) went online with 131 blogposts that triggered 1,489 comments; 181 ideas on IdeaScale garnering 6,100 votes; 69,500 views on YouTube; and 335,000 Twitter followers.

-The FCC

Again, details are murky, however. After a few early debunked rumors that the agency would be forcefully grabbing spectrum from broadcasters to give it to 4G operators (read Sprint, AT&T and Verizon), The agency has only so far proposed a plan that involves broadcasters voluntarily giving up spectrum so it can be auctioned off -- and most broadcasters aren't interested. There's no word on reform that would prevent incumbent operators from dominating said auctions, either.

• "Move our adoption rates from roughly 65 percent to more than 90 percent and make sure that every child in America is digitally literate by the time he or she leaves high school."

The most "feel good" of the FCC's agenda items. The majority of this goal will involve "digital literacy" efforts aimed at informing the public about the benefits of broadband. Though as we've noted -- some of these are little more than taxpayer-funded industry equivalents of the dairy industry's "got milk?" campaign. Recent FCC data indicates that 22% of the nation's 100 million non-broadband adopters say they either don't have the skills to use broadband, or are afraid of the dangers of going online. The FCC figures one way to shore up our adoption numbers quickly without really doing much is simply through industry-driven "digital education" campaigns.

• "Bring affordable broadband to rural communities, schools, libraries, and vulnerable populations by transitioning existing Universal Service Fund support from yesterday s analog technologies to tomorrow s digital infrastructure."

We've heard from numerous sources that the plan will employ a new USF fee levied on all broadband users and used to fund rural expansion, but it's not clear yet how much that's going to be. Estimates have pegged the new charge at $1 per user, though it could be higher once the check comes due. Given the USF's history of poor FCC oversight, the specifics behind the USF reform being planned will be very important (and will probably require a legal degree and 20 years in the sector to fully understand). We will again repeat that AT&T and Verizon have spent much of the last two years lobbying for the kind of USF "reform" that gives less money to small companies, and more money to them -- so draw your own conclusions tomorrow with the final product.

• "Promote competition across the broadband ecosystem by ensuring greater transparency, removing barriers to entry, and conducting market-based analysis with quality data on price, speed, and availability."

As we know some at the FCC are tired of hearing us repeat, while the plan continually makes reference to helping push "affordable" service into communities, early leaks indicate there's no part of the plan that really addresses limited competition in many communities (the primary reason prices are high). The agency has made it very clear that the plan shouldn't really rattle the status quo, and that the agency isn't willing to stand up to incumbent carriers on major competitive issues. A Harvard researcher responsible for a recent FCC-commissioned study that found open access was one solution puts it this way:"Either you are willing to take the step to get to more competition, or you are engaged in cosmetics."Barring some last-minute shocker, all indications are that the FCC's solution for competition is very heavy mascara. The "transparency" efforts the agency mentions may include requiring ISPs to no longer advertise "up to" speeds -- but to advertise the connection's median provisioned speed. But transparency itself isn't a magic bullet to help competition. Meanwhile, the $350 million effort to map U.S. broadband spearheaded by the NTIA has been lobbied into paste by major carriers, who won't have to share public data on regional price. That means no publicly-verifiable information on competition -- so...

• "Enhance the safety of the American people by providing every first responder with access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable public safety network."

Given the fairly easy political support for an emergency network that functions outside and beyond the often regionally-congested existing networks, this has been one of the less controversial aspects of the agency's plan. At least until bidding and project building time comes around and the check comes due. The FCC pegs the emergency network's price tag at $6.5 billion just to build, though how this will be fully funded and how the bidding and building process operates have not yet been made clear.

-------

If you're thinking this all sounds well and good but lacks substance -- you'd be right. The primary goal in this preview is to sell the plan to the bailout-weary public, carriers, the press, and to Congress. The FCC tries to appease the public and Congress by proclaiming the plan accomplishes a lot by spending very little. The FCC tries to appease carriers by proclaiming the plan is only aimed at improving government efficiency and "encouraging private activity." From the FCC's executive summary:Given the plan's goal of freeing 500MHz of spectrum, future wireless auctions mean the overall plan will be revenue neutral, if not revenue positive. The vast majority of recommendations do not require new government funding; rather, they seek to drive improvements in government efficiency, streamline processes and encourage private activity to promote consumer welfare and national priorities.What the plan really does won't be made clear until the full plan is not only released, but we've all had time to read it. The devil, as usual in DC telecom policy, will be in the finest of details -- and we should finally be getting some tomorrow.
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One Wireless Broadband Plan For All Your Devices - One plan to rule them all and in the darkness bind them?

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 9:52am MDT

Earlier this month we noted how even AT&T admitted that there's not going to be a lot of users willing to shell out an additional $15 to $30 for the bandwidth to fuel the iPad. Especially when you consider many of those users are already shelling out $100 a month for a smartphone voice, SMS and data plan -- on top of whatever they're paying for their home broadband connection. We also noted that with a flurry of tablets, e-readers and other gizmos hitting the market, it seems time for wireless carriers to offer one plan to connect all your devices. Gizmodo apparently agrees:Imagine a model in which people buy total access to a wireless network, whether it be on a contract or month-by-month basis. Once you've paid for your "unlimited" data connection a word which wireless providers are already comfortable throwing around in relation to single devices you can connect all of your devices to it, be they smartphones, computers, tablets or really, whatever. It's data sold on a per-person basis, instead of a per-device basis.Good idea! The problem, as we've been saying, is that wireless carriers are worried about a decline in SMS and voice minute revenues in the face of smartphones, push IM clients, and mobile VoIP. As such, they're looking to make more money off of wireless data -- not less- and are busily jacking up ETFs, making data plans mandatory for all phones, while busily dreaming of more expensive pricing models. With carriers looking to make more money, it seems unlikely they'd be willing to offer an all-device inclusive plan.

Perhaps some of the prepaid operators can beat them to the punch?
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Permalink for 'Verizon Pretends They've Not Been Blocking Broadband Mapping - Elvis killed JFK, and Verizon loves transparent, verifiable broadband data'

Verizon Pretends They've Not Been Blocking Broadband Mapping - Elvis killed JFK, and Verizon loves transparent, verifiable broadband data

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 9:11am MDT

Last week, John Dunbar, a project director of American University s The Investigative Reporting Workshop, issued an interesting report highlighting how companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying to ensure that the public doesn't get an accurate portrayal of U.S. broadband. Despite the fact that taxpayers are poised to spend $350 million to finally map U.S. broadband, the report notes that companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have successfully lobbied to make sure that data won't include pesky things like price:

The entire premise of this conspiracy theory is inaccurate, fabricated and just plain silly."

-Verizon, talking about their history of blocking accurate broadband mapping efforts.

The government is spending up to $350 million of taxpayer money to create a map that will show where there is high-speed Internet service in the United States and where there is not. Despite the large expenditure of taxpayer funds, it will display no information on price or subscriber numbers. Internet connection speeds will be averaged over an entire metropolitan area and an as-yet unknown portion of the data collected to make the map will be off-limits to the public.Why don't companies like Verizon want accurate broadband data? Traditionally, carriers have argued that they fight the release of this data because of "competitive reasons." However, carriers spend millions annually on intelligence gathering, and know precisely where competitors offer service -- especially before investing (or not investing) in next-gen upgrades.

The real reason they fight accurate mapping is because the data would show limited competition and high prices across wide stretches of America. That could result in somebody actually doing something about it -- which would mean more competition, and reduced revenue. Accurate broadband data would also highlight how Verizon has essentially hung up on huge swaths of rural America, and have been letting last-generation infrastructure fall apart in a significant number of less-desirable states.

We've been covering for the better part of the decade how Verizon has been fighting people in court who've tried to obtain accurate, independently verifiable broadband data. Verizon has funded an endless litany of think tanks, lobbyists and hired PR guns, all paid to discredit any organization or individual who'd argue that U.S. broadband isn't a shining beacon of competition and prosperity. We've also talked a lot about Connected Nation, a group consumer advocates believe is a carrier-created lobbying vessel aimed primarily at keeping carrier under carrier control. The truth is fairly-well documented.

Despite ample evidence (like courtroom records) that Verizon in no way wants accurate broadband data that could highlight market and deployment failures, Verizon informs Dunbar (and the Washington Post) that this is all simply a "conspiracy theory":"The entire premise of this conspiracy theory is inaccurate, fabricated and just plain silly," David Fish, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc., said.Verizon's lobbyists and PR folk have a nasty habit of ignoring the fact the carrier has chosen to hang up on roughly half of their customers. Verizon's FiOS deployment has been all but halted, and the company is focusing on selling off millions of DSL users to companies in complicated financial deals that haven't worked out well for consumers. This transformation involves laying off tens of thousands of employees -- who we imagine will tell you this is all very real.

Meanwhile, their lobbying efforts have resulted in a broadband mapping plan that omits important data (like price), and a national broadband plan (to be unveiled tomorrow) that doesn't address competition (or the resulting high prices). There's really no "theory" about it.
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Remeber Zer01? They've Mysteriously Disappeared - Is "Global Mobile 1" Buzzkirk's effort at a rebranding?

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 7:27am MDT

Last summer we skeptically directed your attention to a carrier by the name of Zero1, which was promising users unlimited voice and data on smart phones for $69.95/month, without a contract. The service claimed to use a VoIP application to route all calls. According to the founders, the service tunneled over GSM networks, though Zero1 claimed to have their own IP network -- and claimed to be using interconnect (roaming) agreements to make calls. In short, Zer01 was supposed to be a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE).

The problem? People started to dig into the operator and notice that it had the light fishy smell of an MLM or pyramid scheme. The company's apparently "floating" headquarters, the lack of product beyond a shiny GUI, and the shady business practices of a few executive partners left most in the telecom press with a bad taste in their mouth. The more people dug into the specifics behind the company, the more people began to notice they quite often made no technical sense.

It was entertaining to see some in the press develop their critical thinking skills and skepticism in hindsight. Laptop Magazine, which was originally so smitten with the unlaunched vaporware they gave them a CTIA award, was ultimately forced to acknowledge the problems and took the award back. According to the magazine, the award was pulled "because of serious ethical questions that have arisen about the company." The award remained prominently featured on Zer01's website.

That was, until last week. Glenn Fleishman directs our attention to the fact that Zer01's website has gone mysteriously offline, and now just redirects to Google.com. The company, which was quick to blame business partners for its problems and threatened to sue news outlets that spoke poorly of them -- aren't responding to requests for comment. Perhaps the company's seemingly-endless throngs of MLM spammers (who flooded every news story Internet wide defending the company) would like to comment?

Update: One user directs our attention to the fact that Buzzkirk Mobile and other partners may have decided to rebrand Zer01 in order to escape some of the recent criticism. We're starting to see some familiar MLM spammers pop up in our forums trying to generate interest in a new carrier by the name of Global Mobile 1 by Buzzkirk Mobile.
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Remember Zer01? They've Mysteriously Disappeared - Is 'Global Mobile 1' Buzzkirk's effort at a rebranding?

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 7:27am MDT

Video Relay Scammer Bilked FCC Out Of Millions - Service for the deaf continues to be a home for scammers...

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 7:08am MDT

Back in 2004 we explored how IP Relay services used by the hearing impaired have long been abused by both scammers and pranksters. Major carriers haven't done a lot about the abuse -- given they get paid per minute by the FCC for carrying the service traffic. As IP relay has evolved into broadband-powered video relay services for the hearing impaired -- the scams have of course lingered, and The Hill notes how the the FCC's Video Relay Service program of more than $2.5 million, according to the Justice Department:The former employees of two video relay service companies pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to defraud the FCC's Video Relay Service program of more than $2.5 million, according to the Justice Department. . . Three defendants admitted they "conspired with others to pay individuals to make fraudulent phone calls and to process fraudulent phone calls that were billed to the FCC" through video relay service company Viable Communications, based in Rockville, Md.The money, which you pay into via your USF fee, gets doled out to carriers to the tune of $6.50 per minute, or $390 per hour. As the FCC looks to reform the USF, hopefully they give IP relay and video relay services a much-needed look. Specifically -- what exactly allows these scammers to abuse these services without either the FCC or the multitude of inter-connected telecom participants -- apparently ever noticing.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: March 15th, 2010, 6:19am MDT

Clearwire's Big Bet on Our Broadband Addiction businessweek.com
Mobile-Phone Companies May Be Winners in U.S. Broadband Plan bloomberg.com
Prepaid wireless market hot in U.S. during recession computerworld.com
Hollywood Howard Berman To Introduce 'Internet Freedom' Bill techdirt.com
Venezuela Next Up To Try To Censor The Internet techdirt.com
Nominet to release super-short domain names theregister.co.uk
Lenovo sees mobile as a money maker fiercewireless.com
.com celebrates 25th birthday theregister.co.uk

Friday Evening Links -

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 4:45pm MST

RCN Metro to build Mass. broadband backbone cedmagazine.com
Ranking Republican on the House Communications Subcommittee Wants Answers on Cost of FCC Broadband Plan multichannel.com
NCTA Outlines Seven Consumer Principles For FCC multichannel.com
MPAA Brags About How Awesome The Movie Business Is; Right After It Claims File Sharing Is Destroying The Industry techdirt.com
iPad Kindle fighting tech and data limit warning revealed electricpig.co.uk
Broadband for All - America's Best Weapon of Mass Connection huffingtonpost.com
BT bundles voice, broadband and TV for first time zdnet.co.uk
Sprint Picks Up ESPN Mobile TV multichannel.com
Trojan armed with hardware-based anti-piracy control theregister.co.uk
Safari update cages numerous security bugs theregister.co.uk
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Weekend Open Thread - Have something to say?

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 4:38pm MST

The weekend has arrived, and we're heading back to our recharging station. Do us a favor and talk amongst yourselves in the comment section below until we come back to get you.
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Qwest Listens, Partially Drops 'Convenience Fee' - You'll no longer have to pay Qwest -- to pay Qwest.

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 1:52pm MST

Last month we reported that Qwest had joined a relatively new trend among broadband carriers: making users pay Qwest -- so they can pay Qwest. The company recently implemented a new $4 fee for users who want to pay their Qwest bill by phone, and a new $1 bill for those who'd like to pay their Qwest bill via credit card at the official Qwest website. As this thread in our forums attests, the majority of users weren't particularly impressed with the new surcharge. According to a new post in our forums, users are being told that Qwest is going to drop the fee, presumably after consumer and media backlash:Thank you again for you taking the time to write to us about the payment convenience fee. We listened to your feedback, and effective immediately have stopped charging a convenience fee on self service payment options for payments made through our online and automated telephone response system. We appreciate the opportunity to continue to serve you.Broadband Reports confirmed the change with Qwest. "Yes, there are no longer fees associated with one-time payments made via the phone using only our automated voice system -- those that do not involve a live agent at any point -- and one-time payments made on qwest.com," Qwest spokesperson Monica Martinez tells Broadband Reports. "There is still a $4 convenience fee for payments made via phone with a live agent," notes Martinez.

It's nice to see Qwest respond to criticism and consumer concerns, even if the convenience charge for speaking to a live human being remains intact. Such fees are something that's increasingly common among several carriers, including AT&T and Sprint. It's one of several ways carriers take the regular cost of doing business and add it via below the line fees, allowing companies to quietly impose rate hikes while keeping advertised prices the same.
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So, Is This Where Verizon's FiOS Deployment Ends? - 50% served. Hopefully you got FiOS during the first deployment wave...

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 12:05pm MST

Verizon's $23 billion investment into fiber to the home was frankly a bold and brilliant decision, spearheaded by CEO Ivan Seidenberg. Seidenberg understood that he needed to look past the myopic, short-term fears of investors and pour some serious money back into the network if Verizon truly wanted to be considered a next-generation broadband company over the next several decades. Because of that, a significant chunk of Verizon's network is now capable of providing 100 Mbps last mile residential connections -- and beyond. That said, we've always wondered where Verizon's investment would end.

Lately we've been getting some answers to that question. Verizon's investment in fiber ends right outside of cities like Baltimore, Maryland or Alexandria, Virginia. According to Verizon, the company is taking a contemplative pause to focus on marketing the service to areas that are already deployed.

But according to long-time industry analyst Dave Burstein, Verizon's essentially cutting and running on additional deployment plans, leaving a very large chunk of their footprint on last-generation DSL and copper-based voice networks.

Burstein tells Broadband Reports that he doesn't see Verizon expanding any further (with the exception of major cities where they've signed franchise agreements) unless they get money from Uncle Sam (aka, taxpayers). "They want to get on the gravy train, although I think the new, less competitive leadership is the primary explanation," says Burstein when asked why Verizon's shifting tactics. Seidenberg, the driving force behind the first wave of FiOS, is on his way out -- and his replacements aren't quite as bullish on angering investors for the sake of this whole "future" thing.

Verizon's FiOS fact sheet states their FiOS build "passes" (and that means fiber gets close to, but doesn't always necessarily serve) 15.4 million customers, or roughly 48 percent of total Verizon households. Considering the nebulous use of the word "pass," the actual number of Verizon homes capable of getting FiOS could be considerably less. "They've been talking for years about going to 75-80%, and they just threw that out," Burstein says. In his latest industry newsletter, he notes how the city of Alexandria was actually previously on Verizon's install agenda, having been told construction would begin several months ago. Verizon has buildout commitments to New York and other cities that will keep some crews working, but had already suggested they might cut FiOS builds by 2/3rds in 2011. This is now a further cutback, canceling areas that for years they had been promising to serve. Verizon's Harry Mitchell sends their perspective. "The bottom line is that Verizon said in 2004 we d build to pass about 18 million homes by year-end 2010, and we re on track to do that with the franchises we currently have. Of course, we will also meet any buildout commitments we made in individual jurisdictions beyond 2010."People in Philadelphia, Washington DC, or New York City (where Verizon has signed new franchise agreements) should still be seeing new FiOS deployments. In New York, Verizon's agreed to wire 100% of the city by 2014, but as with most of these agreements, there's ample fine print that gives Verizon the ability to wiggle out of obligations if they're not seeing the kind of video subscriber uptake they'd like. These city builds should push Verizon households covered past 50% or even to 60%, though that still leaves a lot of Verizon customers left un-upgraded. Verizon did not respond to a request for comment on what happens next.

Perhaps Burnstein is right and this is where the FiOS build ends. Though it's possible that Verizon wants to use LTE wireless service as their primary play for markets they don't believe are profitable enough for FiOS. If you're in more rural markets, or second and third tier cities, you may be waiting for a while if you're stuck on last-generation Verizon DSL. Given that many cable operators are only upgrading to faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds if there's FiOS competition in their local market, that could be bad news on the next-generation broadband competition front for a significant number of markets.
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Clear: Users Using 7GB A Month On Average - And a Clearwire smartphone is coming middle of this year...

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 10:03am MST

Stacey Higginbotham over at GigaOM this week sat down with Clearwire's chief commercial officer Mike Sievert, who tells the website that the average Clear customer consumes more than 7GB of data a month. Of course that data is being consumed via laptop card -- but the company says they hope to offer their first Mobile WiMax smartphone "sometime this year." Sievert says that it costs Clearwire "somewhere in the mid-$20 range" per person to build out its WiMAX network, and the company continues to reiterate that they're willing to shift from Mobile WiMax to LTE if that's necessary.
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Skype's Helping Verizon Stall Wireless Evolution - Crippled apps, exclusive deals, and less choice. Good work all around, gents.

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 8:29am MST

We've consistently explored how incumbent wireless carriers are terrified of the evolution of mobile networks and being relegated to "dumb pipe" status. The rise of smartphones, mobile VoIP, and push IM clients all collectively not only threaten some huge cash cows (voice minutes, SMS), but also content revenues. Applications like Google Voice even threaten to take core dialing and call functionality (voicemail) out of the hands of carriers. That would mean carriers would exist simply to run the best network possible, which might sound good to some of us -- but not to investors who expect quarter over quarter growth.

You'd think that mobile VoIP carriers like Skype would be helping to push us toward this open future, which means more choice for consumers and more opportunity for third party content and service vendors. But as we saw with Skype's recent exclusive, crippled application deal with Verizon, they're actually doing the opposite -- signing deals that appear to limit mobile VoIP's usefulness while helping Verizon resist change. Derek Kerton over at Techdirt breaks the issue down in great detail, offering a nice timeline of Skype's recent behavior in the mobile VoIP front:The result of this exclusive deal is, essentially, to deprive an entire country of the value of a good VoIP service (Skype) on mobile phones, and instead to offer us a crippled version that is designed not to delight any user, but to delight a carrier. How ironic, then, that Skype's Silverman has been at the forefront of the push for more "open" networks.As Kerton notes, this comes even after Skype complained ceaselessly about closed networks, and after AT&T finally relented and allowed Skype full access to AT&T's 3G network. In short, Skype was apparently willing to compromise their principles for some monetary love from Verizon, at the cost of fully functional mobile applications and consumer choice. And the slow and bumpy road toward truly open mobile networks continues...
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Comcast CFO: Broadband Pricing Will 'Evolve' - Of course his definintion of 'evolve' might not match yours....

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 6:09am MST

Speaking at an investor conference this week in Florida, Comcast Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis informed investors that broadband pricing will "evolve" as broadband use grows. According to this Dow Jones Newswire report, Angelakis wouldn't get specific about what he meant, only stating that this change would occur as broadband "eclipses pay-television as the cable industry's core product." According to Angelakis, this vague broadband pricing evolution "will end up being positive for the company."

We asked Comcast for a clearer definition of what Angelakis was hinting at, but have yet to hear back (we'll of course update this post if/when we do).

Angelakis could be referring to the desire among broadband executives to migrate the U.S. broadband market from flat-rate pricing to a system of caps and per gigabyte overages. That's a model that's become very common in other countries like Canada, but hasn't taken root yet here in the States due to backlash from consumers, most of whom (correctly) believe they already pay a premium for bandwidth.

The model is usually presented under the guise of "fairness," but its real benefit is that it allows carriers to retain control in the face of Internet evolution, charging a premium for bandwidth to help counter losses elsewhere. You'll notice that as smartphones evolve and mobile VoIP and push IM clients begin to erode SMS and mobile voice minutes, wireless carriers are looking to constrict and more heavily monetize each mobile bit. It seems more than likely that as Internet video nibbles away at TV revenues, you'll see terrestrial carriers embrace this same concept under pressure from sector investors (which is what Angelakis appears to be hinting at).

Several carriers have conducted trials (including AT&T and Time Warner Cable), but they've found the effort to be an expensive one to implement and support. It's also an extremely unpopular concept among U.S. consumers, who've grown used to the simplicity of flat-rate pricing. Some carriers, such as Cablevision, have acknowledged that the metered billing model confuses customers, and creates a paradigm where the carrier may even be discouraging use of their product.

While Comcast has yet to implement an overage system and have made no official statement indicating they would like to, they did impose a 250 GB monthly cap on all residential user tiers last October. They're also slowly pushing out a bandwidth measuring tool on a market-by-market basis. Comcast has gone through the trouble of having this tool independently tested for accuracy, so if the time comes where Comcast wants to impose metered billing -- they're certainly in a position to.
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The FCC Introduces Their Own Speed Test - Tool will magically 'make the market work more effectively...'

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 5:48am MST

Just a few days before the FCC is poised to introduce our first ever national broadband plan, the agency has launched a new java-based speed test application at the Broadband.gov website. Like most tests you may have seen at a variety of broadband-centric websites (which we hear are filled with the worst sort of ruffians), the test will measure ping, jitter and downstream and upstream speeds. The test also requires you enter address data with the FCC, which of course the agency hopes will educate consumers, but will also slightly help inform policy decisions.

The FCC's speed test is powered by Ookla (founded in part by former Speakeasy boss Mike Apgar) and the Network Diagnostic Tool, which runs on the Google-driven Measurement Lab (M-Lab) platform (which we've discussed here). As it stands, there's also mobile applications for the iPhone and Android platforms, but not for Palm or Windows Mobile.

"Transparency empowers consumers, promotes innovation and investment, and encourages competition," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. "The FCC's new digital tools will arm users with real-time information about their broadband connection and the agency with useful data about service across the country. By informing consumers about their broadband service quality, these tools help eliminate confusion and make the market work more effectively."

Who knew that one more speed test in a market filled with such tools could do that?

The FCC has been criticized for years for being too reliant on independently unverified data provided by carriers -- instead of going out into the field and collecting data first hand. They've also been criticized (and that includes the GAO) as an agency that hasn't been very good about using quality data to shape policy decisions. While these tools may help the few users not familiar with speedtests, it's not clear how much they'll help the FCC on the accurate data front.

From a quick look at the test there's nothing to prevent users from entering random garbage data, such as towns or cities that don't jibe with zip codes. Of course the test also want take into account technology such as Powerboost, which gives users a quick surge of extra bandwidth initially (and which has even confused Slashdot users a time or two). We see a few complaints with the accuracy of the tools, though again -- at least forward movement from the traditionally data-challenged agency.

Give the test a try and give us your thoughts in our comment section below.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: March 12th, 2010, 5:26am MST

Skype Deliberately Crippling Functionality of iPhone and WinMo and Verizon Apps? techdirt.com
Leaked Documents Show UK Web Censorship Proposal Written By Record Labels techdirt.com
NZ internet filter goes live - gov forgets to tell public theregister.co.uk
Small businesses "need a minimum of 8 meg broadband" pcpro.co.uk
FCC to release broadband plan Tuesday fiercewireless.com
New $900 million undersea cable aims to get Kiwis up to speed tvnz.co.nz
McAfee inadvertently speeds creation of Metaploit IE exploit pack theregister.co.uk
Windows Mobile usage plummets theinquirer.net

Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 3:55pm MST

The FCC Wants You to Test Your Broadband Speeds wired.com
DSL Still Tops Broadband Market Share, Says ABI cable360.net
Kaspersky calls for international internet government v3.co.uk
AT&T CEO Calls For 'Light Touch' Regulations advfn.com
Time Warner Cable Phasing Out Sprint VoIP multichannel.com
Buying bandwidth in the app store theregister.co.uk
Will Verizon 4G Mean the End of "All You Can Eat" Data? pcworld.com
Cox Business lands state contracts in Va. cedmagazine.com
Why the FCC National Broadband Plan Should Include Public Wi-Fi pcworld.com
FCC Scammed Out Of Millions In Telco Scam techdirt.com
ComScore: Motorola, BlackBerry rule U.S. market fiercewireless.com
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Permalink for 'Piracy Increases In France Despite 'Three Strikes' Law - Users shift to other sources, while ISPs, entertainment industry lose customers'

Piracy Increases In France Despite 'Three Strikes' Law - Users shift to other sources, while ISPs, entertainment industry lose customers

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 3:16pm MST

France of course was one of the first countries to impose laws that require ISPs terminate the service of users who repeatedly engage in copyright infringement. Surprising, well, nobody, Torrent Freak points out since France's new antipiracy law was passed last September, piracy has continued to rise. A new study published by the University of Rennes indicates that piracy has risen in France 3%, with users having to only slightly vary their online habits:This increase in piracy shows that the French are not changing their downloading habits much, despite the tougher legislation. There is, however, an interesting shift in the sources people use to download copyrighted movies and music. At an increasing rate the French are using streaming services along with file-hosting cyberlockers such as Rapidshare and Megaupload.The law of course doesn't cover direct download sites, and so the use of BitTorrent dropped 7.1% to 14.6% as users migrated to direct downloads and Usenet. Again, French critics continue to charge that instead of playing this game of perpetual whack a mole, the industry should be focusing on offering cheap, compelling, DRM-free alternatives.

In line with other studies, the French study also found that half of all P2P users who download copyrighted content also buy digital content online -- meaning that by kicking them off of the Internet -- both ISPs and the entertainment industry are losing customers.
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Frontier Suggests You Ignore Judge Critical Of Verizon Deal - Because said Judge 'ignores the numerous public interest benefits.'

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 12:57pm MST

Earlier this week we noted how a Judge in Illinois had issued a 47-page report claiming that Verizon's sale of their DSL and landline networks in the state would be both bad for consumers, and bad for Frontier. According to Judge Lisa Tapial, the $8.5 billion deal (which would immediately infuse Frontier with nearly 6 million new voice and broadband connections) "will diminish Frontier s ability to perform its duties to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service." Frontier has issued a press release that unsurprisingly argues that the Judge doesn't know what she's talking about:Today s proposed order by an ALJ in Illinois ignores the numerous public interest benefits outlined in the complete record developed in the Frontier/Verizon transaction. . . Frontier has been a leading provider of telecommunications services to Illinois customers for a decade, and during this time we have demonstrated our ability to meet our commitment to providing quality service. Without any regulatory mandates we have deployed broadband availability to more than 90 percent of our footprint in Illinois. "We hope to deliver these same broadband benefits to even more consumers in Illinois as soon as possible."It's not clear what "numerous public benefits" Frontier's referring to, given Judge Tapial's point was that the Verizon deal infuses Frontier with so much debt -- they may not be able to provide any. Meanwhile, it's not exactly as if Frontier is lighting it up in the territories they serve now. Our Frontier user reviews are thoroughly average, the carrier isn't offering next-generation speeds (most users are served with 3 Mbps or less), and just a few years ago the carrier was considering applying a 5GB cap on all DSL tiers.

Which "numerous public benefits" are we talking about, exactly?
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OnLive Broadband Game Service To Launch June 17 - Now the big question: will it actually work?

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 10:07am MST

Back in March of last year a company by the name of OnLive unveiled their new broadband gaming service, which aims to replace the traditional game console with what's essentially a broadband-connected dumb terminal. Under the system, which has been proposed in various forums for a decade, major title games are streamed over your broadband connection -- for a monthly subscription fee.

Initial demonstrations were on closed networks, and of course everyone wants to see this service in the real world -- where the company admits you'll need to live within 1,000 miles of a data center. For Standard-Definition gaming, OnLive says it needs a 1.5 Mbps connection. For HDTV resolution (720p60), at least 5 Mbps is required.

Those curious in seeing whether the service works will be interested to know that OnLive has issued a press release saying they'll be commercially launching the service on June 17:Starting on June 17, 2010, the OnLive Game Service will be available to early registrants throughout the 48 contiguous United States. The initial offering will be supported by a $14.95 monthly service fee, which will provide access to an ever-increasing library of high-end, new-release, instant-play game content without the need to purchase expensive PC gaming or console systems.According to the OnLive FAQ, that $14.95 doesn't include the purchase or rental of actual games, the base subscription fee subsidizing the hardware and giving you access to demos, videos, and community features (think Xbox Live). Users who sign up get a small microconsole that hooks up via HDMI to your set, and via Ethernet to your broadband router. The service features both Bluetooth and USB connections for up to four wireless controllers.

There's a flood of factors that will dictate whether this service will be successful, and most of them are completely outside of OnLive's control. There's still a lot of Americans on connections well below 5 Mbps, and OnLive's only offering HD gaming at launch for some reason. The system also obviously depends on low latency, which could be a fickle mistress for many. This also isn't an idea that will play nice with ISPs who've decided to impose monthly bandwidth caps.

You can expect the initial launch to feel very much like a beta as the company struggles with real-world Internet weather and last mile limitations. While funded in part by companies like AT&T, OnLive's also gunning against some heavy hitters in the gaming industry, including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Broadband streaming is likely an inevitable future, but OnLive may suffer from being ahead of its time. Stay tuned.
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Permalink for 'Comcast, Cox, Time Warner Invest In BitTorrent Snooping Tech - Researchers claim it will reduce false positive copyright infirngement claims...'

Comcast, Cox, Time Warner Invest In BitTorrent Snooping Tech - Researchers claim it will reduce false positive copyright infirngement claims...

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 8:05am MST

Slashdot directs our attention to the fact that Cox, Time Warner Cable and Comcast have created a joint venture called PolyCipher. PolyCipher in turn is funding research into a project called BitStalker, which according to the project explanation (pdf) will help copyright holders more effectively identify BitTorrent users trading copyrighted files. The goal is to reduce the number of false positives that pop up (about 11% currently) during efforts to identify pirates on P2P networks. Says the study:We develop an active probing framework called BitStalker that identifies active peers and collects concrete forensic evidence that they were involved in sharing a particular file. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach through a measurement study with real, large torrents consisting of over 186,000 peers. We find that the current investigative methods produce at least 11% false positives, while we show that false positives are rare with our active approach.According to the researchers, the system could potentially monitor up to 20,000 different peers over a period of five minutes using somewhere between 14.4 and 50.8KB/s of bandwidth. It could also work cheaply -- the researchers claim they could monitor the entire userbase of The Pirate Bay for just $12.40 a month. A little more on how they can reduce false positives:A successful TCP probe indicates that the peer is listening on the correct port. However, an effective counter-strategy could be to register arbitrary IP addresses with ports that are opened (such as web servers). The subsequent handshake probe is more conclusive, as it indicates that the BitTorrent protocol is running on the correct port and also identifies the content being shared by a SHA1 hash. The bitfield probe provides stronger evidence still, since it describes all pieces that the peer has downloaded, which implies active sharing. Finally, requesting and subsequently receiving a block of the file provides the strongest form of concrete evidence for file sharing.Some ISPs are more willing to become the entertainment industry's content nannies than others. Cox for instance was the first large U.S. ISP to begin voluntarily booting users from their network should they violate copyrights, though Cox tells Broadband Reports only a few users have been kicked. Reducing false positives (like this Qwest using grandmother) is a huge first step if ISPs want to proceed down the road of disconnecting users for copyright infringement (aka "three strikes" or "graduated response").

With companies like Comcast poised to merge with NBC Universal -- that seems like an inevitable outcome. By investing in this technology, Cox, Comcast and Time Warner Cable could be looking to limit their legal liability for falsely accusing users. But false positives are only a small part of the issues raised when ISPs begin kicking users off of the network for piracy. Keep in mind not all ISPs and users agree that terminating a user's broadband lifeline is a fair punishment for downloading a handful of LOST episodes, or that ISPs should be propping up struggling entertainment industry business models.

But that aside, there's questions surrounding who tracks users across ISPs, how to treat multi-user homes, or whether small ISPs can afford the cost of such systems. There's still limited transparency into these processes (Qwest for instance absolutely refused to talk to us about any specifics behind their user termination program), no independent oversight, and no recourse for the falsely accused. Meanwhile studies have show that many pirates are also significant buyers of online content, so by kicking them offline -- both ISPs and the entertainment industry are losing potential customers.
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Researchers Aim To Reduce Copyright Infringement False Positives -

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 8:05am MST

According to Slashdot, Cox, Time Warner Cable and Comcast have created a joint venture called PolyCipher. PolyCipher in turn is funding research into a project called BitStalker, which according to the project explanation (pdf) will help copyright holders more effectively identify BitTorrent users trading copyrighted files. The goal is to reduce the number of false positives that pop up (about 11% currently) during efforts to identify pirates on P2P networks. Says the study:We develop an active probing framework called BitStalker that identifies active peers and collects concrete forensic evidence that they were involved in sharing a particular file. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach through a measurement study with real, large torrents consisting of over 186,000 peers. We find that the current investigative methods produce at least 11% false positives, while we show that false positives are rare with our active approach.According to the researchers, the system could potentially monitor up to 20,000 different peers over a period of five minutes using somewhere between 14.4 and 50.8KB/s of bandwidth. It could also work cheaply -- the researchers claim they could monitor the entire userbase of The Pirate Bay for just $12.40 a month. A little more on how they can reduce false positives:A successful TCP probe indicates that the peer is listening on the correct port. However, an effective counter-strategy could be to register arbitrary IP addresses with ports that are opened (such as web servers). The subsequent handshake probe is more conclusive, as it indicates that the BitTorrent protocol is running on the correct port and also identifies the content being shared by a SHA1 hash. The bitfield probe provides stronger evidence still, since it describes all pieces that the peer has downloaded, which implies active sharing. Finally, requesting and subsequently receiving a block of the file provides the strongest form of concrete evidence for file sharing.Some ISPs are more willing to become the entertainment industry's content nannies than others. Cox for instance was the first large U.S. ISP to begin voluntarily booting users from their network should they violate copyrights, though Cox tells Broadband Reports only a few users have been kicked. Reducing false positives (like this Qwest using grandmother) is a huge first step if ISPs want to proceed down the road of disconnecting users for copyright infringement (aka "three strikes" or "graduated response").

With companies like Comcast poised to merge with NBC Universal -- that seems like an inevitable outcome. By investing in this technology, ISPs could be looking to limit their legal liability for falsely accusing users. But false positives are only a small part of the issues raised when ISPs begin kicking users off of the network for piracy. Keep in mind not all ISPs and users agree that terminating a user's broadband lifeline is a fair punishment for downloading a handful of LOST episodes, or that ISPs should be propping up struggling entertainment industry business models.

But that aside, there's questions surrounding who tracks users across ISPs, how to treat multi-user homes, or whether small ISPs can afford the cost of such systems. There's still limited transparency into these processes (Qwest for instance absolutely refused to talk to us about any specifics behind their user termination program), no independent oversight, and no recourse for the falsely accused. Meanwhile studies have show that many pirates are also significant buyers of online content, so by kicking them offline -- both ISPs and the entertainment industry are losing potential customers.

Update: Comcast denies to Broadband Reports that they're currently investing in this technology, and claims the Slashdot story is incorrect. According to Comcast, while the cable companies did previously fund PolyCipher, PolyCipher no longer really even exists as an entity -- and this latest research project is not tied to the organization.
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Former FCC Boss Kevin Martin Pretends He Fought For Open Access - A little faux consumer advocate revisionist history....

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 7:11am MST

Former FCC boss Kevin Martin has broken his silence this week as the newly reformed FCC gets ready to unveil their national broadband plan. He's also apparently busily engaging in some revisionist history, telling attendees of a Seattle breakfast event this week that he was a staunch supporter of consumer rights and of "open access" broadband policies during his tenure. Martin gets a little help from mocoNews, which informs its readers that Martin played a big role in getting Verizon Wireless to open up their network:Open access is a term Martin knows all about. During his stint as FCC Chairman, he helped push through rules in a spectrum auction that would require the winner in this case, Verizon Wireless to ensure open access to its network. While vague, it means that Verizon won t be able to limit users, devices or applications on the network. However, Verizon has just started to build-out its 4G network, so it s still unclear how that will be practiced. Martin said.The "open access" requirements Martin is talking about were included as conditions for 2008's 700 MHz AWS spectrum auction. The problem is, those conditions were intentionally packed with loopholes, giving Verizon or AT&T lawyers ample opportunity to completely ignore them. Which brings us to Martin's other main point this week: a lack of power at the FCC. According to Martin, the agency increasingly has less and less authority to act in the telecom sector:The FCC s direct authority is less and less the more it gets pushed out from the carriers. It has ways, but I think it s more difficult This was an issue when I was there, and there s a balance between protecting a consumer s rights and having access to the internet, and recognizing that carriers have to manage their networks I think that you do need to find the appropriate balances and it gets more difficult the further outside the carrier you get."The problem again is, Martin really wasn't looking for "balance," as the majority of his tenure focused on giving the baby bells and endless list of regulatory favors and passing rules that freed them from government oversight. Consumer advocacy, regardless of which party controls the FCC, has been little more than lip service. Meanwhile, Martin's complaints about the FCC being a policy wimp essentially mirror recent comments by FCC broadband plan director Blair Levin, who last week informed the world the FCC was essentially too weak to impose true open access conditions on carriers.

The problem is, nobody at the FCC seems eager to addresses the FCC's role in this steady erosion of authority. Both parties have made the FCC's primary purpose to please the nation's wealthiest carriers, and not coincidentally, the FCC now finds itself complaining it lacks the authority to adequately police the sector. To have both Martin and Levin now throwing up their hands in confused wonder at the agency's lack of authority ignores both reality and the FCC's own role in allowing this to happen.

UpdateHere's a little addendum brought to our attention by user uid://594412: Kevin Martin is apparently working with the labor unions in their fight against the NBC Universal Comcast merger. While traditionally very friendly to the baby bells, the cable industry long believed that Martin had it out for them.
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Verizon Wireless: 'All You Can Eat' Has Got To Change - Which is easy since Verizon nevered offered that anyway....

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 6:19am MST

Verizon CTO Tony Melone has been on a whirlwind press tour the last few weeks promoting Verizon's planned launch of LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband service later this year. Most of his statements have offered nothing that hasn't been known since last summer, the CTO repeating the fact the service will initially offer speeds between 5-12 Mbps, and will launch in between 25 to 30 markets. Still murky of course is Verizon's LTE pricing and monthly caps, though given recent statements and other pricing changes, you can be fairly sure it won't be cheap. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Melone continues to hint at pricing changes coming down the line:For consumers, LTE's faster speeds will come at a cost. Unlimited data plans available today may become a thing of the past, as carriers try to recoup the billions of dollars they are pouring into building out the new networks. Plans offering "as much data as you can consume is the big issue that has to change," Mr. Malone said. "It's one thing to say all you can eat is gone," he said. "It's another to have consumers worrying, 'Can I stream this radio?' That's what we don't want."Except Melone is being disengenuous by suggesting Verizon offered "all you can eat" in the first place. Verizon's "unlimited" service technically comes with a 5GB monthly cap -- one NY's Attorney General slammed Verizon for advertising as "unlimited" in late 2007. Both Verizon and AT&T have been talking a lot about the need to change wireless broadband pricing models and how this is only "fair." But the real goal in these changes is simply to raise wireless data rates for everybody in order to offset losses in SMS and mobile voice revenues. Those losses will get heavier during the migration to open networks, mobile VoIP, push IM clients, and smartphones.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 5:56am MST

Consumers: we want our internet TV reghardware.co.u
Verizon lauds FCC's public-safety plan--with a big caveat fiercewireless.com
OnLive streaming video game service launches in June with one huge catch dvice.com
Verizon gains efficiences through packet optical networking fiercetelecom.com
Set-Top Data Under Lock & Key multichannel.com
Verizon Wireless 4G LTE phone due in 2011 mobileburn.com
AT&T: We re Working Hard to Bring Tethering to iPhone softpedia.com
Virgin to run fibre broadband over telegraph poles itpro.co.uk
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Windstream Joins 'Price For Life' Promotion Fad - Which again, isn't as good a deal as it sounds...

Posted: March 11th, 2010, 5:50am MST

Windstream appears to be the latest carrier to embrace the fad of offering consumers "price for life" promotion, which locks down the monthly rate of service for the length of your life (or more likely, the length of the carrier). Light Reading notes that the carrier is now offering a double-play package with offer featuring 3 Mbps broadband and unlimited local and long-distance calling for $59.99 -- a price that's locked in for life. According to Windstream CFO Tony Thomas, this deal has helped broadband penetration and the reduction in landlines:Has Windstream found the answer to wireless substitution? The independent telco believes so. Windstream is offering consumers a $59.99 double-play offer with 3-Mbit/s Internet access and unlimited local and long-distance calling that has a for life price guarantee. As a result, Windstream CFO Tony Thomas told the Credit Suisse Global Media and Communications Conference today, broadband penetration is up and access line losses in 2009 were below 5 percent.The thing is, we know Windstream's been offering voice/broadband double plays at that price point since last year -- and as we've noted with other similar offers, while consumers might think these deals are good, that doesn't mean they are. Users can actually frequently lock in better deals simply by renegotiating their rate at the end of their current contract. Locking in your price for life for last-gen DSL and aging copper voice (which continually get less expensive to provide as hardware prices drop) does more to help Windstream than it does to help you.
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 4:08pm MST

Former FCC Chair Martin Says More Fiber Will Help Wireless Crunch pcworld.com
Since Three Strikes Went Into Effect, Unauthorized File Trading Has Increased In France techdirt.com
RIM silent on data outages in North America, UK computerworld.com
Overwhelming Majority Of EU Parliament Votes Against ACTA techdirt.com
Smartphones are booming, but is there room for all the players? fiercewireless.com
The Case for Mobile Broadband Offloading xchangemag.com
Y2.01K hits Garmin satnav theregister.co.uk
Researchers use light from LEDs to send data wirelessly; Speeds of 230Mbit/sec. reported computerworld.com
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DOCSIS 3.0's 'Sweet' Economics - European carrier pays $20 per home passed to upgrade

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 1:59pm MST

As we've recently noted, the cable industry's own data indicates that cable service passes roughly 125 million U.S. homes. Upgrading the majority of those users can be done relatively inexpensively with DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, which a Comcast executive once stated could be completed with "couch change." Cablevision was able to upgrade their entire service area with DOCSIS 3.0 for $300 million, with enough money left over to offer free Wi-Fi to users as well. Executives for European operator Liberty Global seem to agree with the idea that DOCSIS 3.0 provides a lot of bang for the buck:Liberty Global is spending on average about $20 per home passed for its rapid network buildout of Docsis 3.0, the platform the operator is using to deliver downstream speeds of 100 Mbit/s or more in portions of Europe. "The economics are quite sweet for Docsis 3.0," says Timothy Burke, Liberty Global's VP of strategic technology, who highlighted those costs at the recent Cable Next-Gen Broadband Strategies 2010 event in Denver.Liberty is using the EuroDOCSIS standard, which uses 8MHz-wide channels as opposed to the 6MHz-wide channels used in North America.That total doesn't include the cost of DOCSIS 3.0 modems, though DOC 3 modem costs dropped 30% last year alone, and a number of models can now be had for $50 in the UK (The Motorola SB6120 can be had for $85 here in the States). Next up for many cable operators: improving cable upstream speeds.
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Alexandria, Virginia Wants Their FiOS - Cities neglected by first installation wave a little annoyed...

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 11:35am MST

As we've been exploring, Verizon has all-but completed their first wave of FiOS deployment with the exception in major cities where they've recently signed franchise agreements. Verizon has made it clear they want to pause for a while and market the service more heavily to markets where they've installed the fiber to the home service. Cities that were left out of this initial wave (like Baltimore) are of course left wondering when and if they'll see the upgrades.

According to the Washington Business Journal, Alexandria, Virginia is another city that's been overlooked by the Verizon FiOS fairy. City leaders expected to see FiOS deployment shortly after signing a new phone franchise agreement with the company, but network upgrades never arrived. Verizon meanwhile is telling the city they don't know if that will change any time soon:After Euille inquired about when Fios could move forward in the city, Robert Woltz, Verizon's president for Virginia, sent a response that was dated Feb. 18 but received by the city March 9, explaining that Verizon had enough agreements in place to meet its goals for national deployment. "As a result, we will not be able to add the city of Alexandria to our existing portfolio, and at this point, I do not know when that will change," the letter read.Verizon of course is in the midst of a massive company refocusing that involves selling off (and neglecting according to unions and regulators) a lot of unwanted copper-based DSL and landline markets. Instead, Verizon's focusing on filling in the FiOS gaps with LTE wireless broadband service, which of course raises a lot of questions about the other 50% of Verizon's copper-based network that has yet to be upgraded. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has publicly stated he'd like to see FiOS adoption rates hit 40% before deciding on the next wave of FiOS deployment.
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Time Warner Cable 50 Mbps Arrives in Buffalo, Dallas - Expect a flurry of market announcements shortly...

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 7:57am MST

As we recently noted, Time Warner Cable is a little behind in terms of DOCSIS 3.0 cable upgrades, and has sold faster 50 Mbps broadband service to just 2,000 users in parts of New York City. However, the company is poised for a fairly quick push into a number of additional markets over the next few weeks. One Time Warner Cable employee familiar with the plans tells Broadband Reports that Time Warner Cable signed up their first DOCSIS 3.0 customer in Buffalo, New York today.

Other markets should be launching in quick succession, so expect a wave of official announcements either this week or next.

Another supposed live-but-unannounced market is Dallas, where users in our forums are the first to note that the service is up and running, and should be live for everyone in the market by the nineteenth of this month (aka late next week). Users interested in the fastest speeds these upgrades offer will of course need to upgrade to a new DOCSIS 3.0-compliant modem.

Users in upgraded markets can sign up for a new 30 Mbps downstream 5 Mbps upstream tier that costs $25 over Time Warner Cable's standard plan (which can vary in price and speed by market depending on competition). Users also have the choice of signing up for a 50 Mbps downstream 5 Mbps upstream tier for $99 a month. That's less expensive than Verizon's 50 Mbps FiOS tier, which costs $140 bundled, or $145 standalone. That $99 price tag is the same for Time Warner Cable whether you bundle additional services or not.

Regional promotional pages have been popping up in Time Warner Cable markets the company plans to upgrade. The carrier has long stated that these upgrades will be "surgical" in nature -- which when translated means markets where Time Warner Cable sees competition from Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-Verse (and that's roughly about a third of Time Warner Cable's market). Those interested should take a look at Time Warner Cable's Wideband FAQ.
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FCC Will Release Broadband Plan One Day Early - Next Tuesday, March 16, at 10:30 EST

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 6:27am MST

According to an FCC announcement (pdf), the FCC will officially unveil our first ever national broadband plan at an FCC meeting next Tuesday, March 16, at 10:30 EST. That's one day earlier than the plan was supposed to be unveiled before Congress, though technically it's about a month behind its originally-scheduled unveiling date. The plan is expected to put a heavy emphasis on delivering more spectrum to incumbent wireless carriers, the construction of a national wireless emergency network and "digital literacy" efforts. However, early glimpses indicate the plan does little to shake up a stagnant U.S. duopoly market or to seriously tackle limited competition and high prices.
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ACTA Faces Huge Setback In Europe - EU Parliament votes 663 to 13 against

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 5:58am MST

The entertainment industry's efforts to impose U.S.-style DMCA copyright law on the globe (and push ISPs toward being network content nannies) has suffered a bit of a setback. EU Parliamant has voted overwhelmingly against the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) to the tune of 663 to 13. According to the EU the agreement, hashed out largely in secret between the entertainment industry and world governments, "flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online." One EU lawmaker put his disdain of the entertainment industry's end-around this way:"This Parliament will not sit back silently while the fundamental rights of millions of citizens are being negotiated away behind closed doors. We oppose any "legislation laundering" on an international level of what would be very difficult to get through most national legislatures or the European Parliament," added Lambrinidis.The past few weeks have seen a strong push in the European Parliament to have ACTA negotiations made more transparent, and to ensure that the rules don't force ISPs to impose "three strikes" rules that would require they boot copyright infringers from their networks.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 5:25am MST

The FCC's Misguided Spectrum Quest wsj.com
Google, Yahoo, Ebay, UK's largest ISP's all agree: UK Internet law 'threatens free speech' ft.com
Verizon sees Wi-Fi-only iPad as opportunity to sell 3G data plans appleinsider.com
Fiber firm unplugs from Palo Alto, blaming power outages mercurynews.com
NFL punts Sprint, signs with Verizon as official wireless partner bizjournals.com
EU Politicians Get Serious Demanding ACTA Transparency And No Three Strikes techdirt.com
Vodafone ships malware infested mobiles theinquirer.net
White House Cyber Security Guy: There Is No Cyberwar - Just Espionage techdirt.com
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Cable Companies Petition FCC for Help in Fee Dispute - Suddenly government regulation is apparently ok...

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 5:24am MST

Most major carriers spend a lot of time complaining about regulation in the telecom sector being akin to puppy murder -- unless of course that regulation can be applied to the other guy. With that in mind, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision have petitioned the FCC to step in and do something about the kind of retransmission fee disputes that resulted in Cablevision customers almost missing the Oscars (gasp) over the weekend. Time Warner Cable issued a statement saying they wanted the FCC to impose restrictions ensuring that consumers don't lose channels during these disputes:Time Warner said it would ask the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to "address skyrocketing consumer costs by establishing a new framework for resolving retransmission consent disputes and ensuring that consumers are not caught in the middle. "Specifically, we plan to ask the FCC to consider arbitration and forcing continuation of carriage during a dispute."Of course during Time Warner Cable's recent dispute with Fox over the network's desire for a new per-subscriber fee, Time Warner Cable seemed more than willing to "get tough" against broadcasters, even if that meant consumers losing access to channels. As we've been exploring, neither side in these disputes are faultless, and the end result of these disputes winds up being higher TV rates for consumers -- no matter which company "wins."

Verizon, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable have some consumer advocate support in their effort to get the FCC to act. Consumer advocacy firm Public Knowledge issued a statement urging the FCC or Congress to "examine the current retransmission consent process and consider whether the system needs adjustments to ensure that viewers are not disenfranchised." Something tells us they're a little late.
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TV Providers Petition FCC for Help in Fee Dispute - Suddenly government regulation is apparently ok...

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 5:24am MST

The NFL Dumps Sprint, Prefers Verizon's Huge Bag Of Money - Verizon now the exclusive wireless carrier of the NFL...

Posted: March 10th, 2010, 5:20am MST

The NFL loves their exclusive arrangements and the huge bags of money these make, be it with Electronic Arts (who is the sole publisher of video games allowed to use the NFL brand), or DirecTV (who pays a billion a year to be the sole TV carrier of out of market NFL games). For a while the NFL liked Sprint, who has been paying the NFL about $100 million a year to stream NFL games wirelessly and be the NFL's official wireless carrier. Now the NFL loves Verizon, who just ponied up $720 million to take Sprint's place. Sprint spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer tells the Kansas City Business Journal that Sprint chose not to extend the sponsorship because the cost "reached a point where we questioned the return on our investment." Verizon apparently had no such worries.
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 4:09pm MST

Speakeasy CEO talks VoIP success networkworld.com
Comcast: ITV Ready For 50 Networks Later This Year; Targets 100% Deployment of EBIF in Motorola Footprint by Midyear multichannel.com
FCC Plan Asks for Govt.-Funded Broadband Training yahoo.com
Apple s Draconian Secret iPhone Developer Agreement Goes Public wired.com
Smartphone app botnet experiment blows up a storm theregister.co.uk
New Internet Explorer code-execution attacks go wild theregister.co.uk
It's official: Adobe Reader is world's most-exploited app theregister.co.uk
Windows 7 SP1 will be brought forward theinquirer.net
Iowa House OKs Cell Phone Ban for Young Drivers wirelessweek.com
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FCC Hopes To Use Some Spectrum For 'Free or Cheap' Wireless - But you might want to see if they can fix the USF first...

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 2:45pm MST

The FCC has begun their sales pitch for the nation's first national broadband plan ahead of its formal unveiling next week. As we've been discussing, we haven't been too impressed by the plan's failure to tackle competition, or its tendency to make proclamations that sound good but are rather empty upon closer inspection. The FCC is back today making headlines about how the agency hopes to help the estimated 100 million Americans without broadband by offering "free or low cost wireless plans" according to Reuters:U.S. regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. . . One way of making broadband more affordable is to "consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low cost wireless broadband service," the FCC said in a statement.Looking at the actual FCC statement (pdf) however, there's no real explanation of how exactly the agency hopes to do this. The statement also suggests that the FCC will "consider" such a plan, not neccessarily that they'll implement it. With spectrum obviously a limited resource, clearly the FCC's thinking about some kind of subsidy package to the nation's telcos if they provide cheaper service. Of course the FCC already plans to subsidize carriers as they examine "reforming" the long broken USF system.

That reform, according to several people familiar with the plan, could involve a new monthly fee on broadband connections used to expand the plan to cover residential broadband (right now it covers only rural phone service, and broadband provided to schools). We're told the fee is slated to be somewhere around $1 a month per person, but could be higher when the final plan is unveiled. However, "free or low cast wireless service" seems like a long shot.

Reforming the USF is a very complex and difficult task in and of itself, given the fund (and the e-Rate program) has a bit of a history as a poorly supervised mess, according to GAO studies. $25 billion has been dumped into e-Rate alone since 1998, though the FCC for many years didn't track where it went. That means that maybe that money helped, or maybe it didn't. Maybe it just found its way into the pocket of a phone company, or maybe it helped buy a high school PC in Pensacola, Florida.

One thing we know is that AT&T and Verizon have been lobbying Uncle Sam very hard for several years to ensure they get a bigger chunk of the USF pie. From the looks of things they're going to get it to the tune of several billion per major incumbent annually, according to one plan source. Getting more money for incumbents will be the primary goal. Maybe consumers will see that money put to use in tangible ways like "free or cheap" wireless service -- but maybe they won't.
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Illinois Next Up To Approve Verizon/Frontier Deal - Though Judge's report finds the deal isn't good for consumers or Frontier

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 1:06pm MST

According to a new 46 page Illinois study by a state Judge, Verizon's proposed sale of their networks in Illinois would harm consumers. The $8.5 billion deal immediately infuses Frontier, which has 2.3 million customers, with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines and 1 million broadband connections. Such a huge influx of new customers will restrict Frontier's ability to offer low-price, quality service -- and to raise funds for upgrades, improvements and expansion:Lisa Tapia said in the 46-page report that allowing Frontier to purchase the Verizon lines in Illinois "will diminish Frontier s ability to perform its duties to provide adequate, reliable, efficient, safe and least-cost public utility service." She also concluded the acquisition also could hurt Frontier s ability to raise capital by taking on the additional financial obligations. Opponents and supporters filed hundreds of pages of testimony prior to release of the recommendation.Unions and consumer advocates continue to protest the deal, given the debt and huge influx of support issues will likely put broadband expansion and upgrades on the back burner. Of course the alternative (having Verizon stay in markets it doesn't want to upgrade) isn't particularly compelling either. Despite repeated warnings and studies within regulatory agencies showing the negative impact of the deal, regulators in six states have proceeded to unanimously approve the deal anyway.

In other words, expect Illinois regulatory approval in short order.
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Cisco Changes The Universe And Mankind Forever! - Well ok, not really. They just unveiled a new, really fast router...

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 11:06am MST

Late last month Cisco began leaking word to media outlets that on March 9, they'd be "making a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments." Given the fact that the country was fawning over Google's new 1 Gbps fiber to the home trial announcement at the time, it seemed like Cisco was getting ready to announce some kind of significant counter punch.

Today's the day, so what was this Internet-changing, paradigm smashing announcement? According to Cisco, it's...a new router.

According to the networking company, the new CRS-3 router technology is capable of transmitting data at about 322 Terabits per second, which Cisco claims is twelve-times faster than their closest competitor. Apparently, people pushing the Exaflood myth since 2007 will need to construct a new bogeyman.

According to the Cisco press release, the new CRS-3 offers enough bandwidth to transmit the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in just over a second, or to allow every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously. Cisco's own numbers have projected that Internet video should comprise about 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2013, and according to Cisco, the CRS-3 will "set the pace for the astonishing growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services through this decade and beyond."

AT&T sent us a press statement noting that the carrier had just completed a live network environment field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology. "This trial included Cisco's new CRS-3 equipment," the company tells Broadband Reports. While good news at AT&T's core, it may not have a huge impact on your home connection, given AT&T's decision to milk last mile copper instead of upgrading users to fiber to the home technology.

But hey, you can still take the CRS-3 home with you for $90,000 (starting price) when it officially launches during the third quarter of this year. You know, take it home, set it up next to your 1.5 Mbps DSL modem, and pretend you're beating the hell out of the Exaflood.
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Google Conducting Set Top Android Tests With Dish - 'Target ads to individual households based on search and viewing data.'

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 8:44am MST

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google continues to expand into, well, everything. The company is working in conjunction with Dish Network to test a Google-powered set top box based in part on the Android operating system. According to the Journal, Google's "trying to replicate the internet experience on TV, offering users the ability to search the Internet and explore web-based content via the device. The tests are currently ongoing in Google employee homes, and obviously bringing ads to your living room is Google's primary interest:Google's test, which began last year, is limited to a very small number of the company's employees and their families and could be discontinued at any time, said the people familiar with the matter. Viewers in the Google test, these people said, can search by typing queries, using a keyboard rather than a remote control. Google hopes to connect the service with its nascent TV ad-brokering business, allowing it to target ads to individual households based on search and viewing data.Cable won't much like Google encroaching into their dream territory of localized and behavioral cable TV advertising. The cable industry has been working hard on a unified advertising platform dubbed canoe, though they've struggled with the technology needed to make the idea of more nosy living room advertising a reality. The telcos too want in on the set top ad market, and it's unlikely that either cable or phone providers want to share their take of this market with their arch-nemesis Google if they don't have to.
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New Comcast TV, Broadband, Phone Price Hikes April First - Competition? Most broadband and TV packages going up by $2 a month...

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 6:14am MST

Fresh off a suite of price hikes last fall that included an increase in the cable modem rental fee from $3 to $5 a month, Comcast is notifying customers they're raising prices again starting April 1. Many Comcast users are being sent these letters informing them that there's several new rate hikes for broadband and TV services starting April 1, including a hike in the cost of several of Comcast's lower-priced broadband tiers by $2 a month. Several TV packages are also seeing hikes including Comcast's Standard ($61.45 to $63.45) and Expanded (from $48.55 to $50.55) services.

Comcast's "Economy" 1 Mbps downstream 384 kbps upstream service is jumping from $24.95 to $26.95 for those who bundle other services, and $38.95 to $40.95 for those who don't (what's economical about $41, 1 Mbps service?). Comcast's "Performance" 12 Mbps / 2 Mbps tier is jumping from $42.95 to $44.95 bundled, and $57.95 to $59.95 unbundled. Similarly, Comcast's "Blast!" 16 Mbps / 2 Mbps service will be jumping to $54.95 bundled, and $69.95 unbundled.

Even VoIP service isn't going to be immune from this round of hikes, Comcast raising the price of additional lines for Digital Voice "Premium" service $2 to $21.95, and the price of additional lines for their Digital Voice "Basic" service $2 to $11.95. According to the letter, Comcast is raising prices "as part of our commitment to provide you with the very best entertainment and communications experience."

Of course these changes won't impact you if you're under contract, but they will once your contract expires. Like AT&T's recent slew of price hikes for DSL and VDSL service, Comcast has focused on raising the prices for lower tiers, while leaving the price of their "Ultra" (22/5 Mbps) tier alone at $62.95 bundled, or $77.95 unbundled. That gives the user the impression that it's more "economical" to upgrade to the higher speed tiers.

As usual the question remains: if the industry is half as competitive as the industry says it is, why are carriers allowed to continually jack up prices in unison without competitive repercussions?
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Cisco Quits WiMax Business - Plans to focus on 'radio-agnostic approach'

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 6:08am MST

The "WiMax is dead, it just doesn't know it yet" crowd scored another talking point (even if wrong) against Mobile WiMax this week with the news that Cisco is going to stop developing and building WiMax gear. Cisco does provide equipment to Clearwire for their Mobile WiMax build, but only core hardware -- not radios. Cisco's decision comes after Alcatel Lucent also recently dropped out the Mobile WiMax business to focus on serving AT&T and Verizon's LTE hardware needs. Cisco acquired WiMax vendor Navini Networks in 2007.

"Cisco's mobile strategy has always been to provide a radio-agnostic approach that focuses on the packet core and IP network, where the company can add differentiated value," says a Cisco spokesman. "After a recent review of our WiMax business, we announced a decision to discontinue designing and building new WiMax base stations and modems, and we also announced a support plan for transitioning existing customers."

Given Cisco's approach of focusing on other aspects of network connectivity, the move isn't surprising -- nor does it equate to the automatic demise if Mobile WiMax, which now "reaches" (not necessarily serves) 650 million people globally, and 47 million in North America. Still, many analysts still think LTE is going to dominate U.S. connectivity, though not a single LTE network has been launched yet.

That optimism comes from the fact that most of them know betting against the combined lobbying and competitive power of AT&T and Verizon usually isn't a great idea. Still, the Sprint/Clearwire joint venture has a lot of powerful friends, including the majority of the cable industry. Should LTE dominate and Mobile WiMax be upstaged, Clearwire has stated they're not ruling out a shift to LTE service as well.
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Surprise: AT&T's First Android Isn't Open - Motorola Backflip launches, but AT&T's crippled the device...

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 5:55am MST

AT&T's first foray into the business of offering Android-based phones isn't going particularly well, and it's pretty clear the company's general dislike of Google for their positions on competition, network neutrality and open access is spilling over into AT&T handset decisions. Last week AT&T launched their first Android phone (the Motorola Backflip), but pulled Google search from the device in favor of Yahoo. That alone could be brushed aside as "all's fair in love and mobile war," but this week finds AT&T taking heat for trying to cripple the Android platform.

Users complain that not only are they relegated to Yahoo search, but AT&T has loaded the Backflip with annoying AT&T applications that can't be removed. AT&T's also managed to cripple user choice in terms of adding new applications, preventing a full range of now-standard Android options including tethering. Notes a Backflip user:There is NO option to install applications from untrusted sources. This means anything on your SD card, downloaded from the web or over your wifi at home WILL NOT WORK. Naturally, you also cannot use the "su" command in terminal. With the Kaiser's bloatware, they removed/hid apps from you so you wouldn't try to use them and replaced them with their crapware. Also on my first day of using it I got a number of "Force Close" messages including on the built-in applications (ie: Motorola's flavor of the desk clock).As Engadget correctly notes, that kind of behavior on AT&T's part is exactly the sort of thing wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega said they wouldn't do when discussing Android last year:...we like the Android as an operating system on its own, but we want to make sure that we have, and customers have the option, to put applications on that device that are not just Google applications, so when the G1 came out and T-Mobile launched it, it's primarily a Google phone. And we want to give customers the choice of other applications on that device, not just the same Google applications.Apparently, by "choice," AT&T meant theirs -- not yours. Again, AT&T's behavior is rooted in fear of what happens as wireless networks evolve and carriers like AT&T lose the power to be gatekeepers and are relegated to the role of dumb pipe operators.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 9th, 2010, 5:26am MST

Treasury: Broadband Grants For Opex Taxed, Capex Not So Much multichannel.com
Charter's Next Move: Grow, Shrink or Sell, What Happens Now Will Affect All of Cable multichannel.com
WiMax Hitches a Ride on 1000 Taxis in Taipei pcworld.com
Energizer warns of malware in battery chargers v3.co.uk
Could Cisco be announcing a killer set-top box? cnet.com
Google, Dish testing new TV search service: report reuters.com
AT&T offers more detail on 3G capital investments fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Navajo Nation May Get LTE Network pcworld.com
Panasonic 3D TVs Arriving This Wednesday pcworld.com
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Monday Evening Lnks -

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 4:33pm MST

Making the most of 4G networks fiercewireless.com
Rogers Boosts Internet Speeds for Select Markets cable360.net
Verizon LTE Blazing Trails for Wireless Broadband pcworld.com
Consumers In The Dark Over Their Broadband Speeds npr.org
Verizon LTE test speed: 50 Mbps max fiercewireless.com
Don't Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites techdirt.com
Four Companies Join for Blu-ray Patent Licensing cable360.net
Touchsreen Sales to Soar 97% in 2010 internetnews.com
Stanford survey contemplates iPhone addiction networkworld.com
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Verizon Seeing 40-50 Mbps In LTE Trials - Though real downstream speeds will be 5-10 Mbps...

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 3:38pm MST

According to a new press statement from Verizon, the carrier is seeing peak download speeds of 40 to 50 megabits per second and peak upload speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps in the LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband tests they're conducting in Seattle and Boston. As we've already discussed however, real world speeds are going to be closer to between 5-10 Mbps downstream. Other than their announcement of peak speeds, there's really nothing new in Verizon's announcement: they're launching the service in 25-30 markets this year, but we still don't know what kind of pricing, caps or overages Verizon has planned for the service. Indications are that Verizon wants to employ some kind of usage-based billing model.
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Time Warner Cable Offers Bandwidth For Backhaul - Could be helping AT&T with iPhone problems in NYC. What Exaflood?

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 1:09pm MST

As we've repeatedly noted, a cornerstone of reliable 4G wireless broadband quality is going to be adequate backhaul. Most wireless carriers are rushing to improve backhaul ahead of plans to embrace HSPA+ and LTE service, and there's plenty of companies eager to make a profit from providing that needed bandwidth, including Time Warner Cable. According to Business Week, the cable company is offering network capacity to carriers like AT&T and Verizon who've struggled to keep pace with bandwidth demand -- specifically in the New York metro market. While Time Warner Cable declined to specify if AT&T, the lone U.S. carrier for the iPhone, is a customer, the New York- based cable company says it wants to sign carriers large and small. Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt alluded to AT&T s extra iPhone traffic in a December conference call. "They want to get that into a cable as fast as they can," Britt said, referring to overloads. His company began leasing backhaul in 2008 and posted $26 million in sales last year, less than 1 percent of the company s total sales.While a small part of their business now, providing backhaul bandwidth has become Time Warner Cable's fastest growing business segment, with the company's backhaul revenue tripling last year. Those playing along at home will recall that Time Warner Cable complained last year that unless they were able to impose low bandwidth caps and high per gigabyte overages on consumers -- we'd start seeing Internet "brown outs" in the next few years.

That argument has been repeatedly debunked as a manufactured crises constructed by telecom industry lobbyists. It's used to scare lawmakers into passing bad laws, under the premise that unless carriers get "X" (X being whatever carriers want, including deregulation, the elimination of price caps or consumer protections, or the ability to drastically overcharge for bandwidth), the Internet will simply collapse. Yet you'll notice here that the scary terrestrial capacity bogeyman (which was supposed to impact both core and last mile connectivity) doesn't seem to be restricting Time Warner Cable's backhaul ambitions in the slightest.
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Verizon Bills The Dead, Laughs At Relative - Let's play: 'guess the dead man's pin number'...

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 10:37am MST

For years we've explored the difficulties of cancelling telecom services for the deceased. We've seen AOL go so far as to tell relatives that the deceased individual needs to call up and cancel themselves, though more commonly it's just a pain to cancel the deceased person's account unless you have the proper paperwork (sometimes the death certificate, sometimes it's a copy of the account holder's bills or lease). Verizon is the latest to get grief for refusing to cancel a dead man's wireless account, even after getting a death certificate, according to the St. Petersberg Times:Lacy sent the phone company a death certificate, showing her father, Bill Young of Calvin, W.Va., died in June. But not until repeated phone calls and a complaint to the media did Verizon finally cut it off - last week. It seems Lacy did not have her father's PIN (personal identification number) to access the account. So the representative refused to help her. "Well, there's nothing else I can do for you," the representative said before laughing and hanging up the phone.Laughing was certainly a nice touch. The woman ultimately got the account closed and the particular representative was reprimanded, though once again -- not until the consumer contacted the local media consumer watchdog (and such beat reporters are getting more and more scarce). For those interested, The Consumerist has a rough guide for avoiding problems when it's time to cancel service for the dead.
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Cablevision And ABC Kiss, Make Up - Verizon tries to scoop up annoyed Cablevision subscribers...

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 8:40am MST

Cablevision's 3.1 million customers got to watch the Oscars last night after all -- with ABC and Cablevision striking a last-minute deal that brought ABC back to the Cablevision lineup a few minutes after the Oscars began. As with Time Warner Cable's recent debate with Fox, ABC was looking to be paid a fee per subscriber just like pay cable channels. Disney/ABC was apparently looking to be paid $1 per subscriber, and after heated negotiations, Cablevision apparently was willing to pony up about 55-65 cents per subscriber, according to the Los Angeles Times:Cablevision said earlier that Disney had been demanding an extra $40 million a year to let it carry WABC, or about $1 per customer each month. Disney disputed that figure but declined to elaborate. People close to the talks say Cablevision had made an offer of 25 cents per subscriber. Terms of the tentative deal were not disclosed, and there were differing accounts of the value of the contract. One person familiar with the deal said it came out to about 55 to 65 cents per subscriber; another said the figure was closer to 27 to 37 centsVerizon of course found the skirmish the perfect opportunity to market FiOS TV to annoyed Cablevision customers. While these debates vaguely involve consumers -- it's only in the sense that said consumers are used as public relations weapons in the dispute over which giant company will take home more money. The end result usually is higher rates for TV service, and no matter who "wins," it's usually not the consumer. What did Cablevision/ABC users really get from the feud? Interrupted programming, lots of advertising telling them what to do, and inevitably higher rates for their efforts.
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Anti-Cap Lawmaker Resigns To Fight Cancer, Ethics Probe - Was one of very few lawmakers concerned with ISP overcharging

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 6:03am MST

Prompted by Time Warner Cable's botched attempt to force low caps and metered billing on its customers, Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) in June of last year unveiled the "Broadband Internet Fairness Act" (HR 2902), legislation aimed at protecting consumers from unreasonable broadband overage charges. Massa, prompted by consumer complaints, stepped up during the Time Warner Cable kerfuffle to call the effort an "outrageous, job killing initiative." Massa's own job now appears at stake, as the lawmaker is poised to step down due to both a continued battle with cancer and an ethics probe involving some crude jokes made at a New Year's Eve party.

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Blockbuster Still Seems Afraid of Broadband - And Will Likely Implode Because Of It

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 5:52am MST

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.

When the company does try new delivery platforms, they sometimes forget broadband even exists, and still seem fascinated with DRM-locked physical media. When the company fails, Blockbuster executives argue that it's because of piracy, not because of their lack of vision. We're of course not the only ones to notice this; blogger Dan Rayburn talked to Blockbuster about their digital/broadband strategy, and the company continues to sound timid and terrified in an age of 50 Mbps connections:When asked different questions about Blockbuster's digital strategy, CEO Jim Keyes responded by saying things like, "these times demand a conservative approach," and that the company "will proceed cautiously as to how aggressive the company should be." For a company that has almost no digital offering today, those are some pretty scary statements. The last thing Blockbuster can afford to do is stay at the same slow pace for a digital offering roll-out that they are at now.Meanwhile, Netflix is running ahead full speed signing distribution deals and embedding their software and dirt-cheap Wi-Fi chipsets into everything that isn't nailed down. Guess which company is going to be better positioned for the future?
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 5:30am MST

America's Most Wired Cities forbes.com
The poor don't care about broadband? Of course they do arstechnica.com
Net a Fundamental Right, Four Out of Five Say gigaom.com
Home streaming is 'killing music' theregister.co.uk
EU Apparently Agrees That ACTA Should Be More Transparent techdirt.com
Jobs confirms no tethering between iPad and iPhone knowyourmobile.com
Duluth willing to name children "Google" in order to get broadband internet citypages.com
Will the FCC Interfere With Sirius XM Yet Again? seekingalpha.com
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EFF Urges FCC To Fix Wimpy Neutrality Proposals - Current proposal contains easily exploitable loopgholes...

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 5:30am MST

A number of legal experts, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently wrote a letter to the FCC complaining that the FCC's proposed network neutrality guidelines may not be enforceable in their current state. According to a new petition filed at the FCC by the EFF, the agency's proposals contain language loopholes that would allow carriers to engage in all manner of discriminatory behavior under the context of copyright enforcement. "Before the ink is dry on net neutrality regulations, we already see corporate lobbyists and 'public decency' advocates pushing for loopholes," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "A loophole like this could swallow network neutrality, with ISPs claiming copyright enforcement as a pretext for all sorts of discriminatory behavior."

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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 3:56pm MST

RCN To Be Acquired For $1.2 Billion multichannel.com
FCC Proposing Moving Fund That Supports Universal Telephone Service to Broadband multichannel.com
RIAA Claims File Sharers Are 'Undermining Humanitarian Efforts In Haiti' techdirt.com
EFF files petition to close FCC net neutrality loophole theinquirer.net
AT&T and Verizon drive largest industry growth in 3 years electronista.com
Analyst: Possible MetroPCS-Leap merger not likely until 2011 fiercewireless.com
Apple's iPad to Hit Store Shelves in April internetnews.com
LiveJournal Accused Of Redirecting Links, Swiping Affiliate Fees techdirt.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Core dump.

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 3:25pm MST

The weekend's here, and we're heading back into hibernation mode. Chat amongst yourselves in the comment section below.
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T-Mobile Revamping Their 3G Coverage Map - Will soon show where you can get 'Very Fast Mobile Web'

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 2:00pm MST

T-Mobile is getting ready to revamp their wireless broadband coverage map starting on March 14, according to internal information obtained by TmoNews. As we noted in January, T-Mobile is slowly upgrading their HSPA network, so in many markets it will offer downstream speeds of 7.2 Mbps. They've also promised to upgrade the network by year's end to HSPA+, which theoretically offers maximum downstream speeds of 21 Mbps (though you'll see something closer to 7-10 Mbps). Apparently, the map will indicate the locations where you can get "Mobile Web" (EDGE), "Fast Mobile Web" (HSDPA) and "Very Fast Mobile Web" (the latest HSPA+).
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Verizon: We're Not Playing Around With This LTE Thing - Ahead of schedule, LTE voice in 2011

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 11:19am MST

Verizon really hasn't announced anything new in terms of their plans to deploy LTE wireless broadband service for a while, though for whatever reason this week there's a flood of stories focusing on Verizon LTE. We're not seeing much new info in these stories, which all repeat Verizon's plans to launch 5-12 Mbps (probably closer to 3-8 Mbps) service in 25-30 markets before the end of this year. There's still no word on caps or pricing, but Verizon Wireless CTO Tony Melone tells Network World they aren't playing around when it comes to getting LTE deployed nationally, rather quickly:We're excited about going out of the gate with LTE in 25 to 30 markets later this year, but we're also going to be aggressive in our plan to get to critical mass. Fifteen months after our initial launch we're planning to double the number of markets that have LTE. Then by the end of 2013 we're going to have our entire current 3G footprint covered by 4G. So in other words, everywhere we have 3G coverage today we'll have 4G coverage. And we'll also have places where we don't have 3G coverage today that we'll have 4G.And that last bit, as we've been saying, is Verizon's master stroke. The carrier is offloading all of their unwanted, copper-based rural networks (and regulatory headaches, and union workers, and debt) to smaller telcos. They'll then come back into these markets in several years with LTE service that should out-perform first generation DSL and win many of those same customers back again (shhh, don't tell Fairpoint, Frontier, or Hawaii Telcom). According to Melone, Verizon's actually ahead of where they thought they'd be, with LTE voice service on tap for 2011.
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AT&T Charges $2,761.07 For A Broken Leg - AT&T tells us 'proper protocols were not followed.'

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 9:34am MST

According to the Chicago Tribune, an AT&T technician installing phone service tripped and fell on the customers premises, breaking his leg. Now normally, a carrier technician should be fully insured and bonded, but in this instance AT&T -- for whatever reason -- decided to try to make the customer pay the bill -- and sent them a letter informing them they owed $2,761.07. The homeowner says the walks were clear, and it "hadn't snowed in days," so they called to complain. When the consumer asked why they received a letter, they were informed it was standard operating procedure:"Our initial investigation indicates that you may be at fault for these damages," the letter said. "The current extent of these damages to our client is currently being determined but to date, we have paid $2,761.07 in disability payment on behalf of (the technician's) employer." Czerwien's wife called the number on the letter and was told it was a standard letter the company sends out.Luckily the consumer called the local news media consumer watchdog, and got AT&T To back off. The Tribune talked to local legal experts who note that at least under Illinois law, homeowners are not liable from injuries incurred from "natural accumulation" of snow and ice. But the law says that should users decide to clear their walkway, Illinois law says they have to do it "reasonably," meaning the user in this instance might be legally (and strangely) better off not shoveling his walkway.

AT&T gave Broadband Reports (and the Tribune, apparently) duplicate statements saying that being charged for installer injury (as long as you don't attack them with say, a blender) is not normal. "AT&T has policies and procedures in place to address workers' compensation and disability matters, and we work with all parties involved to review individual claims," AT&T says "In this particular instance, proper protocols were not followed. AT&T provides benefit coverage for its employees who are injured while on the job."
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RCN Sold For $1.2 Billion - No word on what, if anything will change for RCN users...

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 6:16am MST

Cable overbuilder RCN has had a long road since being founded in 1993, which included (if you lived in NYC at the time and remember) posters and subway ads promising a "revolution" in telecommunications. What they delivered was a fairly decent service judging from our user reviews, though the company stumbled in and out of bankruptcy in 2004, and has struggled in a sector ruled by bigger outfits. Today the company issued a statement saying they'd been acquired by ABRY Partners for $1.2 billion. If you're shopping around for a cable company, and have say -- $1.5 billion to spend -- RCN has given you an opening:Under the terms of the merger agreement, RCN may solicit proposals from third parties for 40 days through April 14, 2010. There can be no assurances that this process will result in an alternative transaction. RCN does not intend to disclose developments with respect to this solicitation process unless and until its Board of Directors has made a decision.RCN currently offers service in select portions of New York, Boston, Chicago, Lehigh Valley, PA, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. There's no word yet on precisely what this means for RCN customers, but we've contacted the company for comment and we'll of course keep you posted. The deal will of course need regulatory approval and won't close until the second half of this year. RCN users interested in talking about the deal should head into our RCN forum.
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Hey Julius: 100 Mbps to 100 Million Is Not Ambitious - Fixing the broken duopoly for the other 208 million Americans would be...

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 5:47am MST

As we noted yesterday, the FCC has started their sales pitch for the national broadband plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled in twelve days. Given the plan doesn't appear to do much about competition for fear of upsetting the nation's biggest carriers, the sales pitch so far has consisted of focusing on more murky concepts like "digital literacy," or the need to spend taxpayer dollars to advertise cable service. Less talked about is the failure of our duopoly markets, and why specifically they're failing.

Instead of declaring 100 Mbps to 100 million, the FCC should be focusing on the other two-thirds of the American population, many of whom live in markets served by two or fewer carriers; carriers who keep prices high and lag on network investment because they have no competitive incentive to do otherwise.

Genachowski has had a tendency to be murky in public interviews, saying all the right things -- but usually not saying much of anything specifically. In an interview with Steven Levy at Wired, Genachowski offers one of the more cogent interviews we've seen. In it, he defends his recent declaration that the plan will boldly aim at delivering 100 Mbps service to 100 million people:Anyone who tells you it's easy is mistaken. The first thing we need is a plan that sets goals and that identifies the key levers to make progress on deployment and adoption, which will be out March 17.100 Mbps to 100 million is easy. We're not mistaken. Earlier this month we told you Genachowski's 100 Mbps declaration sounded good but was rather empty, given cable DOCSIS 3.0 service, capable of 100 Mbps, will reach that many people within five years. DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades already reach more than 52 million of the 120 million homes passed by cable networks in the United States alone. Many don't offer 100 Mbps yet but they can and will -- depending on competition. All without the FCC having to lift a finger.

The toiling techs have to do aside, 100 Mbps to 100 million is relatively easy and inexpensive for the cable industry to accomplish all by themselves. What's hard is dealing with this industry's real problems, like the ridiculous power companies like AT&T and Verizon have over our lawmakers on both the federal and state levels, or the 100 million without broadband. Instead of declaring 100 Mbps to 100 million, the FCC should be focusing on the other two-thirds of the American population, most of whom live in markets served by two or fewer carriers; carriers who keep prices high and lag on network investment because they have no competitive incentive to do otherwise.

The FCC's own study found that open access policies was one possible answer, but the agency has clearly indicated they're not willing to upset the biggest carriers by pursuing it. Genachowski's latest interview does manage to touch on competition, and one of our more favorite topics: getting carriers to be transparent with their billing. As we noted on Wednesday, the FCC appears poised to require that carriers advertise their average speed and do a better job informing consumers as to what kind of connection they're buying. We're hoping the FCC's transparency efforts go even further. Strangely however, Genochowski seems to think transparency is going to somehow help address a lack of competition:Healthy competition places discipline on the market and should focus providers on providing the best service at a lower cost. Consumers are confused about their service and the price. They're confused about what speeds they're actually getting, they're confused about what they're paying for. As part of a competition strategy, increasing the transparency to consumers empowers consumers to make the market work.Except we have an aching suspicion that if the FCC isn't willing to stand up to carriers by supporting things like open access or tough network neutrality laws, they're not really going to have the courage to touch on transparent billing issues like the use of below the line faux taxes and fees to jack up the advertised price after sale. And while an educated user buying clearly-defined product is a great thing -- clarity in pricing isn't going to help them all that much if they have the choice of just one carrier -- or two carriers quietly working together to keep regional prices high.
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Hey Julius: 100 Mbps To 100 Million Is Easy - Fixing the broken duopoly for the majority of Americans is not...

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 5:47am MST

Updated, reworded, clarified houses vs homes in two instances: As we noted yesterday, the FCC has started their sales pitch for the national broadband plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled in twelve days. Given the plan doesn't appear to do much about competition for fear of upsetting the nation's biggest carriers, the sales pitch so far has consisted of focusing on more murky concepts like "digital literacy," or the need to spend taxpayer dollars to advertise cable service. Less talked about is the failure of our duopoly markets, and why specifically they're failing.

Instead of focusing on 100 Mbps, the FCC should be focusing on competition and the huge swaths of American markets served by two or fewer carriers; carriers who keep prices high and lag on network investment because they have no competitive incentive to do otherwise.

Genachowski has had a tendency to be murky in public interviews, saying all the right things -- but usually not saying much of anything specifically. In an interview with Steven Levy at Wired, Genachowski offers one of the more cogent interviews we've seen. In it, he defends his recent declaration that the plan will boldly aim at delivering 100 Mbps service to 100 million households (with, you'll note, no hard deadline):Anyone who tells you it's easy is mistaken. The first thing we need is a plan that sets goals and that identifies the key levers to make progress on deployment and adoption, which will be out March 17.Getting 100 Mbps to a huge swath of Americans will actually be rather easy (whether you're talking 100 million homes, or 100 million users). We're not mistaken. According to the cable industry's own data, cable service now passes 125 million American homes. Installer sweat aside, DOCSIS 3.0 service, capable of 100 Mbps, would be relatively easy and inexpensive to deploy to almost all of those users within five years. DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades already reach more than 52 million of the 120 million current cable customers in the United States.

This is before adding in municipal fiber or Verizon FiOS (which will likely deliver 100 Mbps service in a year or two). This is happening now, slowly, without the FCC lifting a finger. Setting a goal the FCC knows could be attained without them actually doing very much is clever, but it doesn't really solve core industry problems.

The problem will be that while these networks may be capable of delivering 100 Mbps to users, many carriers aren't going to actually offer it unless there's competition. Those who do offer it will charge an arm and a leg for it -- again because there's limited competition to drive pricing down. Genachowski wants this 100 Mbps service to be "affordable" but again, he's not implementing any policies that are going to spur the competition necessary to make that happen.

Getting 100 Mbps to most people should be easy. What will be hard is getting telcos who milk aging copper to upgrade to fiber without competition spurring them to do so. What will be hard is finding a solution to the ridiculous influence companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast wield over our lawmakers on both the federal and state levels. What will be hard is creating competition. So instead of focusing on 100 Mbps, the FCC should be focusing on competition and the huge swaths of American markets served by two or fewer carriers; carriers who keep prices high and lag on network investment because they have no competitive incentive to do otherwise.

The FCC's own study found that open access policies are one possible solution, but the agency has clearly indicated they're not willing to upset the biggest carriers by pursuing it. Genachowski's latest interview does manage to touch on competition, and one of our more favorite topics: getting carriers to be transparent with their billing. As we noted on Wednesday, the FCC appears poised to require that carriers advertise their average speed and do a better job informing consumers as to what kind of connection they're buying. We're hoping the FCC's transparency efforts go even further. Strangely however, Genochowski seems to think transparency is going to somehow help address a lack of competition:Healthy competition places discipline on the market and should focus providers on providing the best service at a lower cost. Consumers are confused about their service and the price. They're confused about what speeds they're actually getting, they're confused about what they're paying for. As part of a competition strategy, increasing the transparency to consumers empowers consumers to make the market work.Except we have an aching suspicion that if the FCC isn't willing to stand up to carriers by supporting things like open access or tough network neutrality laws, they're not really going to have the courage to touch on transparent billing issues like the use of below the line faux taxes and fees to jack up the advertised price after sale. And while an educated user buying clearly-defined product is a great thing -- clarity in pricing isn't going to help them all that much if they have the choice of just one carrier -- or two carriers quietly working together to keep regional prices high.
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Charter: 50% DOCSIS 3.0 Upgraded By Year's End - Now how about that traditionally dismal customer support?

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 5:14am MST

Last week Charter gave their customers a bit of good news by informing Broadband Reports that the company has no plans to impose metered billing, or for that matter even enforce their recently created "soft caps." The company dropped another bit of good news on customers this week, announcing a suite of free speed upgrades for most users. Investors got good news this week as well, with Charter's post-bankruptcy earnings report showing a company on the mend. On their earnings conference call, Charter noted that the company hopes to have about 50% of their network DOCSIS 3.0 "ready" by the end of this year:Charter chief technology officer Marwan Fawaz said Charter expects to have about 50 percent of its plant Docsis 3.0-ready by the end of 2010. Charter has about 5.3 million customers, making it the sixth-largest video service provider in the US. . . Following an initial launch in St. Louis, Charter has made its 60-Mbit/s "Ultra" wideband tier available to about 1 million homes, Mike Lovett, Charter's interim CEO, said on a conference call Tuesday.It looks like contrary to what we thought, Charter's powering this week's free speed upgrades with DOCSIS 2.0 for many markets. Next up for Charter? Fixing their traditional last-place showing in most consumer satisfaction studies, something they've struggled to do for the better part of the decade. We've had good experiences dealing with Charter's new Twitter support crew, but as we've often discussed Twitter in some instances is only a band-aid for deeper customer billing and support problems.
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Fairpoint Over-Reported Revenues By $26.4 million - "Procedural deficiencies" ahoy...

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 5:04am MST

Ever since the company acquired Verizon's DSL and landline networks in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, Fairpoint's had problems connecting 911 service, delivering consistent broadband service, meeting broadband expansion requirements, doling out customer rebates, and even for a while there answering the phone. Now the carrier says they're having problems balancing the books as well. As the carrier struggles with bankruptcy, they've also discovered that a "procedural deficiency" resulted in the company over-reporting their revenues for the first three months of 2009 by around $26.4 million, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. Fairpoint says the error was "the result of a deficiency in the transfer of certain known customer billing adjustments from the company's billing platform to its general ledger."
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 4:05am MST

BT: Not getting broadband is like deprivation pcpro.co.uk
Interview: FCC Chair Julius Genachowski on Broadband, Google and His iPhone wired.com
Distributed antenna systems: From niche to necessity fiercewireless.com
House Energy & Commerce Committee shows concern about broadband stimulus money being used to overbuild existing service multichannel.com
Former director of national intelligence trying to create panic in order to recreate the Internet with no privacy techdirt.com
Internet censorship a divisive rather than decisive issue with Aussie voters securecomputing.net.au
Google Should Take Its Broadband to Failing Cities, Not Happy Ones pcworld.com
Verizon Wireless Said to Be Aiming to Release Microsoft Phones businessweek.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 4:37pm MST

Definition of 'broadband' still a secret in U.S. plan computerworld.com
Stimulus Program Is Underwriting Overbuilders Rather Than Targeting Unserved Areas multichannel.com
GOP Lawmakers Blast Broadband Stimulus Efforts internetnews.com
Cisco Claims AT&T Femto as Its Own lightreading.com
Joost Resurrected As a Video Ad Network newteevee.com
U.S. Rural Utilities Service awards $255M in new broadband funds computerworld.com
Analyst: Dish May Have To Shut Down 8M DVRs After Appeal Loss To TiVo multichannel.com
'Severe' OpenSSL vuln busts public key crypto theregister.co.uk
Bluetooth 4.0 will be on devices this year theinquirer.net
Police shut down the Mariposa botnet ft.com
Sony Plans a PlayStation Phone mobile-tech-today.com
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AT&T Complains About Ads Mocking U-Verse Capacity Crunch - Better Business Bureau gives Time Warner Cable a wrist slap....

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 2:19pm MST

Fresh off their wireless ad dispute over Verizon's 3G coverage maps, AT&T's now taking aim at advertisements by Time Warner Cable. According to a complaint with the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau, AT&T isn't happy about a new Time Warner Cable ad campaign running in several of their markets, which suggests that the AT&T network (and AT&T's VDSL-based U-Verse service) isn't up to the task of delivering both HD signals and quality broadband.

Specifically, in a Time Warner Cable commercial dubbed "Bad Strategy," a football player (representing the Internet) is tackled by a bigger player (representing HD). The announcer then proclaims that "those high def TV signals can make mincemeat out of your Internet service - no wonder your Internet can slow down." A radio announcement makes a similar claim that AT&T's network struggles with providing both HD content and broadband services, causing user connections to "slow down significantly."

Time Warner Cable's not entirely wrong, theoretically. As we've explored far more frequently than AT&T would like, AT&T's decision to milk copper instead of moving to last mile fiber means that distance limitations remain a thorn in AT&T's side. Some U-Verse customer gateways sync at 100Mbps, but at 1,400 feet from the VRAD. 25Mbps sometime works well at distances of 3,000 feet, but issues arise closer to and beyond 5,000 feet. Many users are further than 3,000 feet -- and with AT&T now offering additional HD streams, things had been getting pinched.

As such, AT&T is playing a constant balancing act involving compression and real time balancing of bandwidth versus HD demand. In late 2008, AT&T had to change their TOS to "manage customer expectations" in terms of getting fully advertised bandwidth and all HD capacity at the same time. According to an e-mail sent to Broadband Reports by NAD, the agency has recommended that Time Warner Cable stop running the ads, after AT&T evidence suggested no slowdowns:NAD further noted that AT&T's evidence demonstrated no degradation of Internet speeds for 96.5% of all U-verse customers viewing one HDTV, no degradation of Internet speeds for 92% of its U-verse customers viewing two HDTVs, and no decrease in average streaming speed during the YouTube test for any U-verse customers. TWC provided no testing to demonstrate that there is any impact on Internet Service due to simultaneous HDTV viewing.One solution for AT&T if they want people to stop picking on their network? Tell your investors to suck it up for the future of the company, and finally upgrade to fiber to the home. As for Time Warner Cable, they really don't have much room to talk when it comes to skimping on next-generation upgrades, as we noted earlier today. Fortunately for Time Warner Cable, NAD's ad complaint process is is a toothless pseudo-regulatory agency designed by industry to prevent government intrusion into their advertising -- so Time Warner Cable can technically ignore NAD's recommendations if they'd like.
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The Top 25 Fastest Broadband Counties - Verizon FiOS a catalyst for faster speeds...

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 11:43am MST

A company by the name of ID Insight has released their list of the nation's fastest broadband counties. At the top of the list sits Nassau County, NY, where users see a median download speed of 15 megabits per second and a median upload speed of 4.4 megabits per second. ID Insight says they're using a system called Broadband Scout, a broadband coverage tool they developed to sell to communities trying to get a portion of the $7.2 billion in broadband investment funds.

Not too surprisingly, there's a lot of areas in the top ten that Verizon has upgraded significantly with FiOS, which in turn prompts local cable operators to quickly upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 technology. In Nassau and Putnam counties in New York, both are in the top five because of the speed competition occurring between carriers like Verizon, Cablevision, and Comcast -- all three of whom have dumped money back into the network in those markets. All three, not coincidentally, offer next-gen speeds between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps downstream.

At the same time you'll note that you don't see many counties from more rural states like Maine or West Virginia, markets Verizon has either offloaded or in the process of offloading because they don't believe them to be profitable. You also won't see many states dominated by companies that are busily nursing last gen infrastructure (either because they can't afford to upgrade, or are putting investor fear above consumers and future proofing the network).

Of course if you compare this list to a list of the nation's wealthiest counties you'll note the lists don't sync up particularly well. In part that's because while wealthy counties may have some very wealthy residents, it's counties where there's a litany of upper-middle classers packed into suburban sprawl where the real money's made. Carriers traditionally consider higher end housing developments the tastiest targets in terms of ROI.

There's several strange omissions from the list, including the entire state of California, and several cities in Utah served by municipal fiber to the home service.
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Time Warner Cable: We Raise Broadband Rates Because We Can - And they can because competition in their markets often stinks...

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 9:24am MST

Speaking at an investor conference in San Francisco this week, Time Warner Cable chief operating officer Landel Hobbs told attendees that the carrier raises broadband prices not because they have to -- but because they can. "Consumers like it so much that we have the ability to increase pricing around high-speed data," noted Hobbs. You might recall Mr. Hobbs from the Time Warner Cable metered billing fiasco, when he tried to convince consumers that they wanted low caps and high per gigabyte overages. Not only did Hobbs think low caps and $2 per GB overages were "only fair," he tried to argue that they'd "actually encourage more use of broadband overall." Consumers didn't agree.

"Consumers like it so much that we have the ability to increase pricing around high-speed data,"

-Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs

So what allows Mr. Hobbs to ignore reality, his customers, and raise prices without worrying about consumers running to other carriers or an overall negative consumer brand reputation? Competition, or more accurately, a lack thereof.

Limited competition means Time Warner Cable also hasn't had to rush toward DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades. Comcast, the nation's largest carrier, is quickly approaching 90% DOCSIS 3.0 coverage across its larger footprint. Even smaller, less profitable carriers like Suddenlink and Mediacom have been working at a faster pace than Time Warner Cable. According to recent cable industry data, DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades now read 43% of the nation's 120 million homes served by cable. Time Warner Cable? 2,000 users in select portions of one market.

Verizon FiOS is available in roughly only 10% of Time Warner Cable's overall markets, and Time Warner Cable doesn't have to try very hard to lure subscribers that have grown tired of sluggish DSL and high landline prices. Time Warner Cable's also helped by the fact that Verizon's all but giving up on rural DSL service, either selling or simply ignoring many of these Time Warner Cable markets. In many instances the companies that are buying them take on so much Verizon debt, they can't afford to upgrade.

Penetration of AT&T U-Verse is actually higher in Time Warner Cable markets -- approaching 20%. But AT&T's top broadband speeds max out around 24 Mbps at shorter loop lengths, and AT&T's been struggling to get line-bonded VDSL service working. Both AT&T and Verizon have put their next-gen expansion plans in hibernation mode, so Time Warner Cable has the luxury of time. With expensive last-generation DSL most of their subscribers' only alternative, they also have the luxury of high prices.
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Analyst: FCC Simply Unwilling To Stand Up To Major Carriers - And the national broadband plan's going to fail because of it...

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 6:43am MST

We've been very hard lately on the FCC's broadband plan, noting repeatedly that it fails to tackle competition, and that the agency seems completely unwilling to make any significant decision that would ruffle feathers at the nation's wealthiest and largest carriers. Recent comments by plan architect Blair Levin only served to support that assessment, indicating that Levin and several high-ranking officials at the FCC fear incumbent lobbying influence and possible political fallout from actually trying to change things. That's business as usual at the FCC.

"(the plan) accomplishes very little for affordability, quality, speed, or availability of broadband in the U.S."

-Broadband analyst Dave Burstein

Dave Burstein has been writing about broadband for more than a decade, and there's probably nobody in the sector whose head is more stuffed with constantly-revised, telecom-related facts. He's been talking with the FCC and rehashing the plan in its current state, and in a newsletter to industry watchers has concluded that with a few exceptions, the plan "accomplishes very little for affordability, quality, speed, or availability of broadband in the U.S."

Why? According to Burstein, lots of talented and bright people collected data and worked on the plan internally at the agency, but the end result is a timid mess due to three factors. One, it's not clear that the money or Congressional support is there to accomplish what needs to be done. Two, Levin and a number of FCC higher ups are playing it politically safe, and the political influence of carriers like AT&T is too potent in DC. Three, FCC boss Julius Genachowski is unwilling to impose tough, substantive regulation where necessary (see point number two).

"Genachowski made it almost impossible for the plan to accomplish very much when he pulled strong government action off the table," says Burstein. "Where the market doesn't work, you need to use government power to get results -- that could be direct regulation or indirect influence," he says. "Companies that large are constantly coming to government for favors, from tax breaks to merger approvals. Refuse those occasionally and they have to make a deal. Almost every government except the U.S. sees the regulator as a negotiator for a better deal for consumers," argues Burstein.

Here in the States, regulators exist these days exist to get a better deal for the company with the most money. Half of the time, they wind up employed at those same companies, either directly or via hired think tank. With companies like AT&T now freelancing as NSA analysts and wielding one of the most potent lobbying operations in the world (with the ability to change the law should they break it), it's fair to wonder where AT&T ends and Uncle Sam begins these days.

For those in the sector who equate "regulation" to puppy murder, Burnstein's saying you don't even need regulation much of the time -- you just need government officials that are willing to take a stand and upset incumbent carriers now and again on principle. Every indication is that at no point have Levin and Genachowski been willing to really stand up to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast when it comes to the national plan.

"Julius has adopted a policy of relying on voluntary cooperation of the carriers to get things done rather than using the authority he has," says Burstein. "Except for net neutrality -- promised repeatedly in the campaign -- he hasn't been willing to make a decision they would strongly oppose," he notes. He's actually being kind to the FCC, given most analysis of the FCC's early network neutrality rule drafts indicate that like the national broadband plan, they new rules also lack backbone.

The result of this timidness? A national broadband plan that looks like it covers a lot of territory but accomplishes very little in terms of really helping consumers with broadband price, availability and quality. "High speed Internet in the U.S. is telco and cable both watching each other closely for how high they can raise prices," notes Burstein. "Verizon and AT&T have raised basic DSL rates 30% recently despite their own costs going down." We reported AT&T's latest price hikes just this morning.

The FCC will be beginning a public relations onslaught soon as they gear up for presenting the plan to Congress in thirteen days, and it's going to be important for the press to look beyond the plan's shiny exterior to the hollow cavern within. The press will be wowed by some of the numbers put forth, but much of it will be empty if they bother to dig -- like Genachowski's claim of delivering 100 Mbps to 100 million, something that will happen with or without government help thanks to DOCSIS 3.0.

That's not to say there won't be some scattered noble efforts within the plan, but they'll be focused on uncontroversial accomplishments, most of which in one way or another put money in the pockets of the biggest operators. Like the creation of a national emergency wireless communications network (guess who'll get that contract?), or the expansion of available spectrum for the nation's incumbent wireless operators. There's an endless ocean of things covered by the plan that are simply fluff, including giving taxpayer dollars to what's essentially an ad campaign for cable service.

One thing you'll notice as we get closer to the plan announcement is that the FCC and major carriers will do their best to steer the conversation away from limited competition and high prices, and toward more nebulous fare like a need for "digital education," (see recent commentary from Verizon, or this recent FCC slideshow as a good example of this). Prepare yourselves for the sales job of the century. Just keep your receipt.
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AT&T Increasing DSL Prices - All tiers for new users seeing hikes in March

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 5:55am MST

Back in January, we leaked word that AT&T would be starting 2010 off with a suite of rate hikes for both their regular DSL and U-Verse VDSL customers. Users write in to tell us they're now officially getting the announcement from AT&T that starting with their March bill, the monthly rate for their Express (1.5 Mbps), Pro (3 Mbps) or Elite (6 Mbps) plans will be increased $3 per month. Right now AT&T is offering all three tiers for twelve months at $25, after which the prices revert to $33, $38, or $43, respectively. Note these price increases only impact new customers or customers whose contracts are expiring.

"We're adjusting our pricing for AT&T High Speed Internet service in an effort to better align our pricing structure across our entire service territory, and to better reflect the value of our broadband service," says AT&T to subscribers. "But don't worry, even with this adjustment, our pricing is still competitive across the industry."

AT&T's definition of competitive is tepid at best. It's precisely a lack of competition in most of their markets that allows a carrier like AT&T to raise prices during a sour economy, at the same time that bandwidth and DSL hardware continues to get cheaper.

AT&T's busily also "competing" on the U-Verse front, where they've raised the price on the service's lowest three tiers by about $5, while lowering the price on their Max (up to 12 Mbps) and Max Plus (up to 18 Mbps) tiers by $10. AT&T tells Broadband Reports the move reflects "the greater demand and interest we're seeing for higher bandwidth packages among our U-verse customers." Of course it also nudges users on cheaper plans toward more expensive ones.
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Cities, Activists Vie For Google's Fiber Affections - Cash-strapped cities spending money on luring Google to town?

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 5:53am MST

The city of Topeka recently changed their name to Google in the hopes that the search giant would select their city for their trial deployment of 1 Gbps fiber to the home service. The city of Greensboro, North Carolina is sending gifts to Google headquarters, and has earmarked $50,000 to promote Google's project. Activists have set up more than 70 Facebook pages in the hopes that Google comes to their towns or cities. The United States has apparently gone "gaga for Google broadband," according to Business Week:Google may pay heed. "Level of community support is certainly one of the factors we're considering," says a Google spokesman who asked not to be identified. The company is accepting applications at its Web site through Mar. 26. To drive the message home at Googleplex, some broadband boosters are using such Google tools as Google Docs, Google Maps, and Google Groups.As we've noted, the excitement around Google fiber says two things. One, it's pretty clear that there's a significant number of towns and cities that aren't happy about the current level of broadband in their markets. Two, Google's amazingly managed to turn thousands of people into Google marketing representatives without delivering a single bit -- simply by tapping into that frustration and demand for better service.

Google was already public enemy number one among broadband providers for the company's positions on network neutrality, competition, and the use of white space spectrum to deliver wireless connectivity (all of which are driven by a desire to sell ads). Expect the incumbent carriers to get more vocal as this campaign continues to highlight their failures to deliver next-generation connectivity in most markets. Carriers have been working with Cisco to deliver a public relations counterpunch next week.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 5:20am MST

Is The Commerce Department Really Ready To Regulate The Internet? techdirt.com
RealNetworks Agrees To Pay $4.5 Million In Legal Fees To Hollywood Over RealDVD; Gives Up techdirt.com
UK kicks off broadband for all plan thinq.co.uk
Malaysian law may be amended to make broadband a must thestar.com.my
UK regulator Ofcom wades into UK 'Net Neutrality' row theregister.co.uk
Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes theregister.co.uk
TiVo hopes for a lift from DVR blending 'Net, TV montereyherald.com
NTIA, RUS give small extension to second-round broadband stimulus applicants fiercebroadbandwireless.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 4:38pm MST

The Country's 25 Fastest Internet Connections xchangemag.com
FCC: Cable Operators Can Continue To Bulk Bill MDUs multichannel.com
Microsoft Security Exec Suggests Internet Tax To Pay For 'Computer Health Care' Program techdirt.com
Comcast's thePlatform Posts To Social Nets multichannel.com
FCC Broadband Plan Under Fire From All Sides pcworld.com
T-Mobile Preps HSPA+ Launch lightreading.com
Indiana Prosecutor Threatens Redbox With Criminal Charges If It Doesn't Remove R-Rated Movies techdirt.com
MS confirms 'F1 to pwn' IE bug theregister.co.uk
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Rogers Tightens Noose On Capping Plans - While Canadian journalists realize low caps kind of stink...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 3:48pm MST

Canadian cable operator Rogers has constructed what's essentially the dream business model for broadband executives. They've launched a new broadband video portal that's only available if you sign up for Rogers wireless, TV or broadband service -- avoiding a stand-alone service in order to keep users from canceling regular cable. Rogers has also imposed low caps and high overages and the new service counts against your monthly cap -- meaning Rogers is keeping content revenue in house while socking customers with per-gigabyte overages -- up to $5.00 per gigabyte.

Back in January we noted that after Rogers let users get used to the idea of caps and overages, they began nudging prices upward -- and had plans to raise the maximum possible overage penalty from $25 to $50 a month. Canada's Globe and Mail (via Stop The Cap) notes that the maximum penalty hike has now taken effect as of March 1. Interestingly Globe and Mail writer Michael Snider explores his experiences with life under Rogers capping plans, and not surprisingly complains that the low caps and high overages have him paying more and more money:While I m not opposed paying for what you use -- that s a well-established model for utilities, including hydro, gas and wireless -- it s getting too damn expensive. I am discovering that I m actually limiting my consumption of some totally legitimate services because I ve no desire to pay extra on my Rogers bill at the end of the month.

Take for example Microsoft Xbox s movie service. After waiting for what seemed eons for some kind of a legit movie download service, I finally have access to one that has a list of movies that I d actually like to see, but it s proving too expensive to really enjoy it regularly. Reason is, downloading an HD movie eats up more than 11 GB of my bandwidth -- more than 10% of my monthly allotment (before I upgraded) for one freaking movie.That's because once again, the low cap and high overage model dreamed of by many executives and investors isn't the same thing as pure per-byte billing model. Contrary to what ISPs claim, low caps and high overages have nothing to do with fairness, and everything to do with protecting TV revenues and milking consumers for every dime possible. For the moment companies appear to be backing away from this model in the States due to cost and consumer backlash. But make no mistake it's where carriers would like to go, and if you're interested in where that road leads -- just ask Canadian consumers.
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Virgin Mobile Changes Up Prepaid Broadband Options - Raises caps on several of their bucket offers...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 1:28pm MST

Last fall Virgin Mobile unveiled "Broadband2Go," a prepaid wireless broadband option that operates over Sprint's EVDO network (Sprint now owns Virgin Mobile). The service initially offered users the option of buying pay-as-you-go cards in 100MB ($10), 250MB ($20), 500MB ($40) and 1GB ($60) increments. That pricing didn't impress many people, given users looking for no-contract wireless broadband could nab truly unlimited prepaid, non-contract EvDO on Sprint via companies like Millenicom -- for $70 per month. Many users write in to note that Virgin Mobile has revamped their packages.

It looks like they've lifted the 250 MB limit on their $20 package to 300 MB, raised the 500 MB limit on their $40 package to 1 GB, and raised the 1 GB limit on their $60 package to 5 GB. Note that all of the buckets expire within thirty days of purchase whether you use them all or not -- except the cheapest $10 offer, which expires in ten days.

The service requires users to buy a $100 Novatel Ovation MC760 USB modem. Are those of you who were underwhelmed with the service at launch any more interested with the higher caps?
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Is Cable Poised To Dominate The Telcos? - DOCSIS 3.0 will push telcos to up their game...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 11:31am MST

Our friend Bernie Arnason over at Telecompetitor makes the argument that with DOCSIS 3.0 relatively inexpensive to quickly deploy (75 million Americans should have it by the end of the year) and many telcos clinging to aging copper last mile connectivity, the cable industry should have it pretty good competitively over the next few years. Comcast added more broadband customers (608K) in the last two quarters than AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest combined (401K), and cable's triple play continues to gobble up fleeing copper landline customers. Cable also dominates more than 90% of the VoIP market.

Cable's traditional weak spot -- upstream bandwidth, looks to get some help later this year as cable operators perfect upstream channel bonding. Comcast recently noted that they're seeing 75 to 100 Mbps upstream in tests. While Verizon's decision to spend $23 billion on FTTH to the home puts them in a decent position for now, there's a huge swath of America served by telcos using aging copper infrastructure that many of these companies can't afford to upgrade to fiber. DOCSIS 3.0 means telcos will up their game somehow:It all adds up to this perfect competitive storm analogy I referred to early on. This storm compels the telcos who haven t already done so to respond, primarily with FTTH. Good customer service, local presence, and a solid DSL product are very admirable and noble. But these storm clouds may demand much more.Can Qwest seriously compete with DOCSIS 3.0 with no money for serious upgrades? Marketing that pretends last mile copper is FTTH can only go so far. When does AT&T decide to stop waiting on VDSL bonding and pony up the cash for the move to FTTH? 3-7 Mbps is the fastest speed offered by Verizon in roughly half of its broadband territories. Luckily for most carriers, they'll be sheltered from the "perfect competitive storm" Arnason mentions by the simple fact that many of their markets don't see decent competition. When you're the only game in town (be it cable, telco, satellite or carrier pigeon), you get to charge whatever you'd like for last-generation service.
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AT&T: We'll Soon Be Charging You More For Wireless Broadband - Company wants 'variable pricing,' admits few will pay for iPad 3G

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 9:01am MST

AT&T is once again dropping hints that the carrier wants to change (read: increase) wireless data pricing. Many investors have been pressuring the company to ditch the unlimited $30 iPhone data plan, and instead replace it with some kind of metered billing model. That's largely because as carriers begin to open their networks to push IM clients and mobile VoIP, they'll be losing a lot of money on voice and SMS. The only way to counter those losses will be to charge more money for mobile data. Enter AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who this week tells Reuters the changes will be coming soon:Stephenson expects changes in how the wireless industry prices its mobile data services going forward, with heavy data users being charged more. Smartphone users currently pay a monthly fee of about $30 for unlimited data. "For the industry, we'll progressively move toward more of what I call variable pricing so the heavy (use) consumers will pay more than the lower consumers," Stephenson said.What Stephenson calls "variable pricing" is confused by many to mean per-byte billing. While the idea of only paying for what you use sounds great to those not paying attention, the plans AT&T and Verizon actually wind up implementing are very carefully crafted to drive most user bills ever higher. Verizon for instance now offers users the option of paying either $9.95 for a phone data plan with a 25MB cap (20 cents per additional MB, 125 MB maximum), or $30 for "unlimited" (which actually means 5 GB a month) service. This is in addition to SMS, voice, and other monthly fees.

These plans really aren't about making "heavy users" pay more, they're about getting everybody to pay more. Since most users consume much more than 25 MB per month, they'll all wind up upgrading to the more expensive plan in the belief it offers a better consumer value. But suddenly, here you are paying more than $100 a month for voice, data and SMS plan when you're really not a particularly heavy user. Most users are somewhere around 200 MB a month, though you'll note the absence of a $20, 300 MB plan.

My expectation is that there's not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription

-AT&T CEO on iPad 3G

Meanwhile, you've got AT&T and Verizon also now requiring that everybody have an SMS and data plan on their phone -- whether they actually use data or not (for AT&T, just smartphones require data plans, for Verizon, every phone now does). What's designed to look like value and choice is in most cases the exact opposite. When thinking of 3G pricing, picture a giant invisible funnel that propels users toward one inevitable outcome: paying more money.

Whatever pricing emerges, eventually users will realize they want to connect multiple devices to these 3G and 4G networks without having to pay a subscription fee for each and every device. While some people think the $15 for 250 MB a month or $30 for unlimited 3G pricing of the iPad is a "great" deal, most people simply aren't going to want to pay yet another monthly fee just for iPad bandwidth after shelling out for both home and wireless connections. Amazingly enough AT&T agrees, Stephenson saying he sees the iPad as a largely Wi-Fi device as a result."My expectation is that there's not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription," he said during a webcast of an investor conference, adding that the device would be a mainly "Wi-Fi driven product."Even the company that's providing the iPad's 3G functionality doesn't think you're willing to pony up the extra cash, which is saying something. Whatever changes AT&T has in store for their bandwidth pricing, make absolutely no mistake that the end result is going to be you paying more money for mobile bandwidth, regardless of whether you use 100 MB a month, or four gigabytes a month. It's absolutely essential to carrier execs and investors eager to compensate for lost voice and SMS revenues. Anybody claiming otherwise is either selling you something or not reading the fine print.
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Viacom Wants Fewer People To Watch Their TV shows - Decides to yank Stewart, Colbert from Hulu...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 6:32am MST

Viacom has decided that the best way to increase viewership of some of their Comedy Central properties -- is apparently to let fewer broadband users see it. Claiming they were "unable to make the digital media dollars add up to their liking," the New York Times states that Viacom will be pulling "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and "The Colbert Report" from Hulu next week. In a blog post, Hulu Senior VP of content and distribution states that viewership for both shows was very strong, though Comedy Central and Viacom weren't willing to extend the licenses:In the past 21 months, we ve had very strong results for both Hulu and Comedy Central, in terms of the views and revenue we ve generated, thanks to a couple of key trends. First, more and more of our viewers have voted with their time by making these shows a regular part of their day. And second, we ve driven steadily increasing revenue per view as advertisers voted with their budgets to take advantage of innovative ad formats and very strong advertising effectiveness. After a series of discussions with the team at Comedy Central, though, we ultimately were unable to secure the rights to extend these shows for a much longer period of time.Of course Viacom is probably assuming that the Hulu users will simply leave Hulu and head over to the Comedy Central website, where the shows are also hosted. But Hulu users (who'll be notified of the change later today) might as easily flock to BitTorrent websites to get the shows for free -- without ads or restrictions. Again, when you're trying to combat piracy, making your content less accessible isn't a particularly smart idea.
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FCC Might Tackle 'Up To' Broadband Ad Language - One FCC official wants ISPs to list average access speeds...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 5:57am MST

While the FCC's national broadband plan pretty clearly won't be tackling competition, one thing it may address are the familiar "up to" speed claims found in most carrier advertisements. A recent agency study found that actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by up to 50 to 80 percent, especially during peak usage times (between 7 and 10). The FCC's Peter Bowen tells the Los Angeles Times that the plan might have something in it that requires carriers to list average speeds:Peter Bowen, an agency official who is helping draft a National Broadband Plan, told me one possible change could be to require Internet service providers to post average access speeds just like carmakers post average miles per gallon. "This is something we take very seriously," he said. "Consumers need the actual miles per gallon for broadband, not a maximum."We'll see if this proposal makes the final version, or if plan architect Blair Levin pulls it for fear of making the nation's biggest carriers upset. The Times article goes on to explore how the advertised price is never the actual price paid by the consumer, and the article doesn't even get into how carriers like to use below the line fees to jack up the advertised price after sale.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 5:56am MST

Verizon Wireless nationwide BlackBerry outage ubergizmo.com
Point/Counterpoint: What should be in U.S. broadband plan? eetimes.com
UK Politicians Look To Make Digital Economy Bill Even Worse: Insert Web Censorship Filter Proposal techdirt.com
Don't rely on market forces to deploy broadband eetimes.com
Utah Moves Forward On Plans To Let Attorney General Have All Sorts Of Info On Internet Users With No Judicial Oversight techdirt.com
AT&T CEO says iPad will mostly be used on Wi-Fi, not 3G zdnet.com
Apple sues HTC over phones with Google software broadbandgenie.co.uk
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Comcast Still Advertising Capped Service As Unlimited? - Apparently one market didn't get the 2008 memo...

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 5:03am MST

For many years, Comcast Communications advertised their broadband service as unlimited, despite the fact that there were obvious limits in place. Those very real limits resulted in users getting letters warning them about excessive consumption and threatening account termination. Our users spent the better part of a decade complaining that the carrier kept warning them they were using too much bandwidth -- without clearly defining how exactly Comcast defined "too much."

In October of 2008 the company imposed a clear 250 GB monthly cap for all residential user tiers. We assumed that all older marketing material (like this flyer from 2003) were no longer being used. But according to The Consumerist, the carrier is still marketing their service as "unlimited" in some markets. One user in Charleston says he received a flyer advertising unlimited service back in January, then was surprised to run into Comcast's caps:I was told I used more data than they allow (250GB). I do not argue that I used over 250GB, in fact I went quite a bit over. Though I did want to ask for proof that affected their network, I figured it wasn't the nicest way to start the interaction. I informed them that I used this because it was sold as "Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly rate." He then told me it said "access." I had the brochure right next to me and quoted, "Unlimited usage for a flat, monthly rate." He told me their website says something different, and my local franchise overstepped its bounds.Given that Comcast has been doing a much better job being direct with consumers lately, we're guessing the local Charleston franchise in question either napped through an Xfininity meeting or they're using older marketing material, though we dropped a note to Comcast just to double check. We prefer the new, more transparent Comcast, where if there are going to be network limits -- they're at least clear to the consumer. Hopefully this is just a glitch and the company isn't taking a step backward.

Update: Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas confirms to Broadband Reports that this isn't standard company procedure, and that something's wrong with Charleston-area marketing:We had an error in how our Internet service was described in customer notifications in Charleston, SC and Augusta, GA. We are sending a corrected notice to our customers in these markets right away and we apologize for any confusion it may have caused. We believe that this is an isolated incident, but we are conducting a thorough audit of our marketing materials to be certain they are accurate.
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 4:38pm MST

AT&T adds another femtocell test market fiercewireless.com
U.S. Carriers Are Running Out of Growth Options gigaom.com
Think Tank: Net Neutrality Rules Harmful, Unnecessary wirelessweek.com
Surprise! "Truth in broadband advertising is a giant problem in the United States" physorg.com
German court orders telephone, Internet records deleted totaltele.com
Google awarded location-based advertising patent v3.co.uk
Spanish Indie Labels To Sue The Gov't For Not Stopping File Sharing techdirt.com
Authorities dismantle botnet with 13 million infected PCs theregister.co.uk
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Helio Finally Dies - May 2, 2006 - May 25, 2010

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 2:57pm MST

Helio is a Mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) co-founded by Earthlink and SK Telecom in 2006, which over time developed a nasty habit of burning through money (more than $700 million) without a whole lot to show for it. Earthlink started backing away from Helio back in 2007, finally admitting to themselves that the outfit was simply a money drain. In mid 2008, Earthlink sold Helio to Virgin Mobile for $39 million. In 2009, Sprint announced that they'd acquired Virgin Mobile for $483 million.

Virgin Mobile and Sprint today started informing media outlets and customers that they're shuttering the Helio postpaid service for good on May 25th (note: Virgin Mobile prepaid service is not impacted). The 86,000 current Helio users won't be migrated to Sprint automatically, according to Virgin Mobile. They will however be offered a $50 Sprint credit if they sign a two-year contract, according to the company:Current postpaid customers are being given $50 towards the purchase of a Sprint postpaid handset with a new two-year agreement. This credit is in addition to any applicable rebates that may apply. Postpaid customers moving from Virgin Mobile to Sprint will also receive $150 off of handsets as part of Sprint s standing new customer offer. Activation fees will also be waived.Helio came, it bled money all over the upholstery, and then faded out into that dark telecom night. Goodnight, Helio.
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Oregon Approves Frontier Verizon Deal - Though PUC issues list of 57 conditions...

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 1:17pm MST

Despite heavy opposition from consumer advocates and unions, Verizon's plan to offload another significant chunk of their DSL and landline networks continues to move forward. The $8.5 billion deal immediately infuses Frontier, which has 2.3 million customers, with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines and 1 million broadband connections. 11,000 Verizon employees will be transferred. Unions, consumer advocates and many consumers fear the deal, which also infuses Frontier with $3 billion in debt, will end the same way a similar deal did for Fairpoint Communications (namely, bankruptcy and a lot of crying).

State regulators simply aren't listening to consumer advocates who've argued the deal shouldn't move forward. Oregon has just become the sixth state to approve the deal, though they did include a laundry list of "more than 50" conditions, including the requirement that Frontier invest $25 million to expand broadband to Oregon customers by July 2013. The PUC also declared that the limited number of FiOS customers in these markets can cancel their contract without penalty should Frontier slow FTTH speeds or remove channels. Verizon applauded the approval as good for consumers in a press release:"By approving this transaction, the Oregon Public Utility Commission is acting in the interest of consumers and commerce in the state," said Tim McCallion, president of Verizon's West region. "Ultimately, this transaction will allow both companies to concentrate on their respective strengths," said McCallion.Unfortunately for consumers, neither companies' "respective strengths involve" delivering next-gen broadband into rural markets. Verizon is busily offloading all of the more rural markets they don't feel are profitable after years of neglecting DSL and landline customers in those regions. Frontier meanwhile barely offers more than 3 Mbps DSL to the majority of consumers in the states they service now. With a huge influx of debt from this Verizon deal, expansion and upgrades in these new territories will take a back seat to simply dealing with the huge uptick in support and integration issues.

While "50+ conditions" sounds good, traditionally such conditions haven't wound up helping consumers in other Verizon deals. In the case of Verizon's sale of their New England DSL networks to Fairpoint Communications (which ended in bankruptcy), regulators simply let Fairpoint repeatedly miss expansion commitments. Regulators also allowed Fairpoint to craft their own, private post-bankruptcy improvement plan and their own metrics for success. Frontier insists they won't be another Fairpoint, and it looks like customers will get to see that theory tested.
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Sprint Takes Aim At AT&T, Verizon - New CEO ads mock AT&T, Verizon $70 'unlimited' plans...

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 11:46am MST

Last spring Sprint canned a series of black and white ads featuring company CEO Dan Hesse out of a fear (according to Hesse) that consumers would "get tired of seeing that guy." Apparently, Sprint changed their mind. The company is back again with ads featuring Hesse making fun of AT&T and Verizon's new $70 unlimited voice and text wireless plans, which dropped back in January. Sprint's using the campaign to promote the fact that Sprint's $70 unlimited plan includes data, according to the Wall Street Journal:The struggling telecom s most public face, Mr. Hesse, returns to a Sprint television ad for the first time since last September, when the company launched its Any Mobile, Anytime offer. The competition has become a lot tougher in the meantime. AT&T and Verizon Wireless now offer unlimited voice and text plans for $70. Mr. Hesse s job is to persuade consumers that Sprint s $70 plan, which also includes unlimited data services, is a better deal.Of course keep in mind the Sprint plan's fine print says the deal excludes calls made to international numbers or while roaming. Specifically, "Sprint may terminate service if (1) more than 800 minutes, (2) a majority of minutes or (3) a majority of kilobytes in a given month are used while roaming." Depending on where you are, you may be roaming a lot. On the bright side, when Sprint says that smartphone data is unlimited -- they mean it. While Sprint caps data card users at 5GB a month, Sprint's unlimited data for smartphones actually is unlimited.
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FCC Afraid To Tackle Open Access - Blair Levin thinks effort wouldn't survive incumbent legal assault...

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 8:44am MST

FCC Broadband planner Blair Levin this week sat down with Ars Technica's Matthew Lasar in San Francisco to answer a few questions about the looming broadband plan. Levin talks about a number of things, including the need for additional spectrum, but unlike the glimpses we've seen of the plan itself -- Levin does touch on the sector's limited competition -- right before he makes it pretty clear the FCC's not going to do a damn thing about it. Despite a recent study commissioned by the FCC showing that open access policies result in more competition, lower prices and better service, Levin spends most of the interview shooting down the idea, starting with an argument that doesn't really make sense:There is a higher percentage of broadband subscribers in the consumer market receiving it off of cable than anywhere else in the world . . . It also means that some of the policy proposals that may work in countries that have a single, national, wireline telco, don't really work when you have the largest provider of broadband not being a national telco but rather regional cable providers who are competing against, say, a telco.

I would say that there isn't going to be a lot of appetite for that (open access policies).

-FCC broadband plan architect Blair Levin

Except whether it's a telco or a cable operator shouldn't really matter, and there's no logic in claiming open access wouldn't work over cable. Time Warner Cable for instance, as a condition of Time Warner's merger with AOL, offered Earthlink service over their lines in a number of markets. Levin continues by arguing that the FCC won't pursue open access policies because the agency's essentially afraid of having to fight the nation's biggest carriers in court:You also have a different relationship between the regulators and the industry. In those countries, when a regulator says to do something, what happens is that within a very reasonable, short timeframe, those things are done. What happens in the United States is that, when a regulator says something-I'm not complaining about it; I'm just pointing out reality-it's challenged in the courts and you have a time lag. So that, I think, is an important consideration.

The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost always offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, through use of open access facilities.

-FCC study

So Levin is basically admitting defeat at the hands of the biggest operators in court before even trying anything, something AT&T, Verizon and Comcast lawyers surely appreciate. Levin, who was the architect of the 1996 Communications Act before spending more than a decade in the financial and investment sector, goes on to suggest that open access policies that might have worked then simply won't work now -- though he doesn't really explain why:And the third thing is, you have to look at where you are, at a particular point in time. One can argue whether the 2003 decision to eliminate line sharing was the right one. But, whether that decision was right or wrong, it was, if I recall correctly, reversing a 1999 decision. The 1999 decision was premised on a very different market structure and a very different market opportunity than what you have in the year 2010.So you've got an FCC-commissioned Harvard study that showed that open access works and suggested the U.S. should pursue such policies if it wants more competition, better services and lower prices. Except the person in charge of the nation's broadband plan thinks open access would be impossible to implement because U.S. regulators are weak, and the FCC would get their tail kicked in the courts.

It sounds like Levin's essentially unwilling to do what's required because -- it's hard and messy. But it sounds like Levin's also thinking politically, worrying that Genachowski's term could be consumed by court battles should the agency actually take a stand. If that's the case, maybe Levin should get better lawyers. Or perhaps get out of the way for more ambitious planners who aren't afraid to upset the incumbent duopoly providers, because any plan worth its salt should do just that.

Levin tries to sell Ars on the idea there "isn't going to be a lot of appetite" for such an open access strategy. We can only assume he means among incumbent carriers or the FCC legal team, given there has been endless consumer complaints about limited broadband competition and high prices. Maybe he could ask the dozens of cities that are lining up and even changing their city names to get a shot at open-access-based Google fiber what they think. In what universe exactly isn't there an appetite for open access and improved competition? Ok, other than in Comcast Town.

So with open access buried before being seriously tried, what does Levin suggest as an alternative method of fostering competition? He doesn't. He does go on to criticize people who've noted the plan doesn't address some key problems in the sector, like competition. We're told by several analysts that he does occasionally read Broadband Reports, so maybe he's talking about us here, and maybe he isn't. But for the second time, Levin gets annoyed with critics of the agency's apparently weak-kneed plan:As we look at this the National Broadband Plan , a lot of people are focusing on one thing-like if you don't do X, the plan is a failure or if you don't do Y, the plan is a failure. As an analytic matter, I think that's absolutely wrong. I think we need to do many things, and we need activity in many areas.The problem is, the FCC seems to be focusing on everything under the sun so the plan looks like a political success, while the reality is they're failing at some core priorities. The plan, after countless feel good roundtables, tries to address everything from distracted driving to small business tech education, while doing nothing to address the monopoly or duopoly hold carriers have in countless U.S. markets. According to the FCC's own commissioned data, a primary solution could be open access. Yet Levin's done the carriers' jobs for them -- and gutted any effort to impose such changes before they've even begun.

So, what's the FCC's plan to foster competition? We'll know for sure when the plan's unveiled in fifteen days, but for now -- they don't appear to have one.
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Topeka Changes Name To 'Google' In Lust For Fiber - Cities scramble to get in line for selective 1 Gbps deployments...

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 6:17am MST

Ever since Google announced that it would be deploying 1 Gbps connections to a few lucky Americans as part of a limited (50k-500k) test network, we've watched the newswires absolutely light up (Plug "Google," "fiber" and "hope" into Google News to see what we mean). Given that Google's deployment is largely about testing video ads and gathering data for use in their ongoing debate with carriers over things like competition, open access and network neutrality -- most of these towns and cities are going to be disappointed. To set themselves apart from the herd the town of Topeka, Kansas has decided to change the city's name to "Google" for the month of March according to the Topeka Capital-Journal:Topeka Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday calling for Topeka to be known for the month of March as "Google, Kansas - the capital city of fiber optics." . . . Bunten asked the seven council members on hand if they had a problem with his issuing the proclamation, which also encourages Topekans to recognize and support continuing efforts to bring Google's fiber optics experiment here. None objected.It's fairly amazing what Google has accomplished on the PR front with this announcement without lighting a single strand of fiber or delivering a single kilobyte. Cities are tripping over themselves to win Google's affections, helping Google to highlight that towns and cities want more than what's being delivered by a frequently uncompetitive U.S. broadband market. In the process, they're pushing the Google brand into every major news outlet in America as something positive in the minds of consumers, even if the vast majority of them will never actually see a Google-fueled fiber connection.
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Verizon Wireless Sued Over That $1.99 Mystery Fee - Will the settlement be less than Verizon's made off the fee?

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 5:52am MST

Since last summer we've been highlighting how Verizon Wireless has been charging thousands (if not more) of their users a $1.99 fee for "data access," even if those users' phones are off, don't support data, or have data blocked. The FCC recently asked Verizon what was going on, and despite stories in two major papers, complaints from our users, and the fact Verizon was already busily handing out refunds to impacted customers (who complain) -- Verizon essentially denied that the glitch was even happening. Oddly that's not what a Verizon Wireless employee told the NY Times last November:"Now, you can ask to have this feature blocked. But even then, if you (hit) one of those buttons by accident, your phone transmits data; you get a message that you cannot use the service because it's blocked--BUT you just used 0.06 kilobytes of data to get that message, so you are now charged $1.99 again! "They have started training us reps that too many data blocks are being put on accounts now; they're actually making us take classes called Alternatives to Data Blocks.'As you might expect, Verizon's now facing a class action suit for the fee, which they had to suspect given how tight-lipped they were when responding to the FCC. You get the sneaking suspicion that Verizon will want to settle this one. You also get the sneaking suspicion that when they settle, they'll probably have to pay a lot less than they've made off of this "error." Hopefully at least the suit helps put the bunk fee to bed.
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MetroPCS Prepares To Offer Prepaid 4G Service - But will carriers wind up capping consumption?

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 5:50am MST

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. 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 service sometime this year. The company will offer wireless broadband service without a contract, but there's still no hints on price or whether the service will come with consumption caps. "We believe there can be a renaissance in the no-contract wireless service segment as 4G becomes readily available," says CEO Roger Linquist.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 5:40am MST

More ACTA Leaks; Reveal Different Positions Taken By Different Countries techdirt.com
EU Wants Universal Broadband Access wsj.com
Physicist lights path to faster internet theaustralian.com.au
Topeka Changes Its Name To Google, Kansas in bid for G-fiber searchengineland.com
Aussie National Broadband Network test sites named news.com.au
Microsoft unveils first Windows Phone 7 prototype fiercewireless.com
Next iPhone to have gesture controls? fiercewireless.com
PS3's up and running on network again theinquirer.net
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 4:07pm MST

Verizon Sued Over $1.99 Data Charges wirelessweek.com
LTE is the trigger for greater network sharing fiercewireless.com
Pew study: Mobile news consumers have "voracious" appetite rcrwireless.com
Motorola Cooking Up Video-Centric Edge Platform multichannel.com
The downside of LTE expectations rcrwireless.com
How a National Broadband Plan Will Be The Next Public Works huffingtonpost.com
Playstation 3 s hit by leap-year network error theinquirer.net
UK says bye bye to public Wi-Fi nzherald.co.nz
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Permalink for 'Seattler Fiber Planners Could Learn Something From Louisiana - Seattle applies for Google fiber, also considers building their own...'

Seattler Fiber Planners Could Learn Something From Louisiana - Seattle applies for Google fiber, also considers building their own...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 3:22pm MST

The city of Seattle has for many years been unimpressed with Qwest's regional broadband offerings (100 Mbps is just a dream according to the carrier, after all) so the city has been exploring the creation of a citywide fiber network. The city again recently has been feeling out private-sector interest in building and operating a $500 million fiber to the home network. They've also applied for Google's limited FTTH trials to help out the 26% of Seattle residents still on dial up, though thousands of other towns and cities have the same plan.

As Glenn Fleishman notes over at the Publicola blog, should Seattle decide to build their own, the city could learn a lesson or two from Lafayette, Louisiana, whose long road in deploying fiber we've long covered. Lafayette locals now get access to some of the faster speeds and lowest prices we've seen anywhere, but it wasn't easy. The city faced countless legal attacks and sleazy public disinformation campaigns from local incumbents BellSouth and Cox, even after city citizens clearly voted to move ahead with the project. Amusingly, Lafayette City Parish President Joey Durel advises not to get blisteringly fast fiber at his house first:At one point during the interview, Durel said he had just gotten fiber into his neighborhood a few weeks ago. I stopped him, laughing. "You didn't get it first?" I asked. Durel also laughed and said, "my neighbors got mad at me" for making sure he gets any city benefits last. They want him to move, he said.Durel tells Fleishman that Lafayette didn't build a fiber network because of a lack of broadband -- they built a fiber network because a lack of competition meant incumbents didn't have to try very hard to offer upgraded technology to locals. And while Cox and BellSouth tried endlessly to scrap the project (which is funded with revenue bonds, not taxpayer dollars), their efforts backfired. While Lafayette spent $1.2 million in legal fees, the legal delay trimmed $8 million in equipment costs from the plan budget as equipment got cheaper.
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Permalink for 'Seattle Fiber Planners Could Learn Something From Louisiana - Seattle applies for Google fiber, also considers building their own...'

Seattle Fiber Planners Could Learn Something From Louisiana - Seattle applies for Google fiber, also considers building their own...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 3:22pm MST

Cablevision Testing Wi-Fi Phones - Some kind of UMA service in the works?

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 1:31pm MST

Cablevision was busy last week, announcing not only a new trial of an Internet to TV service that should allow users to watch Hulu in their living room, but also announcing plans to begin deploying their network DVR service starting in April. But also buried in the company's earnings discussion was the fact that Cablevision is also testing phones that float between the carrier's Wi-Fi network and traditional cellular networks.

Cablevision has slowly been deploying Wi-Fi service, which they offer free to subscribers both in their footprint, and across major commuter train lines around New York City. The deployment and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades across their entire network cost them just $300 million -- or less than $100 per subscriber. Speaking on the company's fourth-quarter earnings conference call last week, Cablevision's COO Tom Rutledge indicated the company testing of Wi-Fi phones is going well.

"We are trialing phones that switch from Wi-Fi to cellular and back as you move in and out of Wi-Fi and cellular zones," said Rutledge. "So when you are in a Wi-Fi zone, the traffic goes over our Wi-Fi and ... cable network -- and when you are outside of our footprint or outside of this Wi-Fi footprint, the signal travels through a cellular network. The test is so far proving to be good and consistent with our view of what is possible and gives us some hope that we will be able to launch additional products using the Wi-Fi network that will look like what some people think of as cellular telephone."

Details as for the cellular side of this equation remain scarce, though it sounds like UMA (unlicensed mobile access) technology. All Rutledge had to say was that Cablevision had yet to really decide whether they'd like to build a wireless network themselves (like Cox is doing), or lease capacity from existing carriers in the NY Metro market. "We haven't made those decisions, but the latter outcome would be a less capital-intensive, higher-return business," stated Rutledge.
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EU Lets You Cap Your Maximum Mobile Data Bill - Protecting users from ridiculous monthly roaming charges...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 11:09am MST

Every few months we'll see a story where a user receives a roaming bandwidth bill that requires a second mortgage, because they didn't understand how much wireless data they were consuming. One contingent of our users argue consumers are stupid and deserve bankruptcy for not being able to navigate overage fees. Another group argues that carriers don't do a very good job of notifying consumers of abnormal account activity (common among credit card users).

While users should read their contracts, understand carrier overage fees and roaming surcharges, there's a disconnect somewhere in the customer education and alert process. At the very least, it seems like carriers could both call and SMS users before their bill enters the luxury automobile price range.

In the European Union, regulators have stepped in and imposed new restrictions that will help users cap their monthly wireless data bills. As of July 1, mobile broadband users in Europe must choose a maximum monthly cost they want to pay for mobile data. When they get close to 80% of that total, the carrier sends out a warning, then temporarily suspends the user's service when they reach their spending cap. If users don't choose a limit, a limit of $68 per month is set for them (that's data only, and doesn't include voice minutes or other bill totals). The move is part of a regulatory effort in the EU to tackle insane roaming costs:By setting a monthly Internet limit, the European Commission hopes that "the tendency for operators will be to bring the price of surfing the Web down," EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said. Neelie Kroes, the new EU digital issues commissioner, called the new measure a step in "building customers' confidence to surf the Internet when traveling in Europe." Network operators can now charge each other no more than 1euro per megabyte for downloading. National telecoms regulators are responsible for enforcing the rules with mobile phone operators, and the EU commission will report on the issue by June 2011.It seems highly unlikely carrier-friendly regulators here in the States would impose such restrictions, though you wonder how many more stories about consumers with $20,000 bandwidth bills we'll see before somebody tries. The move comes on the heels of new price caps for roaming charges imposed last summer by European regulators, which have translated into a 35 percent drop in the average cell phone bill for Europeans.
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Amtrak Offers Free Wi-Fi In Northeast - On DC and Boston line, and at six major stations...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 9:02am MST

Amtrak has deployed free Wi-Fi service on all twenty of the rail operator's Acela Express trains running between Washington and Boston, according to the Associated Press. The service has also gone live at Washington Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station, New York Penn Station, Providence Station and Route 128 Station in Boston. That "free" tag may not last, as Amtrak says they're reviewing whether or not to charge for service "after an introductory period."
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Charter Offers Free Speed Upgrades - Express, Plus and Max tiers see speed bump...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 6:37am MST

Last week Charter gave their customers a bit of good news by informing Broadband Reports that the company has no plans to impose metered billing, or for that matter even enforce their recently created "soft caps." The company dropped another bit of good news on customers this morning, by announcing a suite of new speed upgrades for users. According to a new Charter website and Charter employee Eric Ketzer, the company started bumping their "Express," "Plus" and "Max" speed tiers last week, and users need to power cycle their modem to see the faster speeds.

The company's Express tier used to be 5 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, and is now 8 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. Charter's Plus tier has gone from 10 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up to 16 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. The company's Max tier has gone from 20 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. Prices may vary based on regional competition, but Charter's website lists the tiers' introductory new-contract price points at $30, $40, and $55 respectively.

Ketzer confirms to Broadband Reports that the freshly-upgraded 25/3 Max tier is being powered by DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, so you will need to upgrade your modem to one that's DOCSIS 3.0 compliant. Ketzer also confirms to us that this faster speed should be available in all markets, which suggests that Charter has been a very busy company since they exited from bankruptcy late last year. As a related aside, Charter's latest earnings report shows a company on the mend.

Looking for something faster than 25 Mbps? Charter unveiled 60 Mbps service in St. Louis last year for $139.99 ($129.99 bundled), and Ketzer tells us the company does have plans to expand that service into additional markets. California should be next to see the high-end service, but the company isn't providing specific dates for the launch.

As always, you can find Charter user opinions and speed tests of the tiers in our Charter forum.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 6:24am MST

South Korea Leads in FTTH/B Penetration convergedigest.com
Evolving HSPA : HSPA+ thetelecomblog.blogspot.com
How AT&T Plans to Keep SxSW From Swamping its Network gigaom.com
UK to kill off Internet cafes theinquirer.net
French Court Says IP Address Does Not Identify A User techdirt.com
Skype withdraws support for Windows Mobile theinquirer.net
Old PS3s locked out of PlayStation Network reghardware.co.uk
Microsoft spits out 'browser choice' update to appease EC antitrust probe theregister.co.uk
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Nexus One To Verizon March 23? - AT&T, Verizon support coming soon...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 6:07am MST

The new Google phone (the Nexus One) received lots and lots of hype, most of it focusing on how the device was supposed to revolutionize the US subsidized handset pricing model. Instead, it landed with kind of a semi-interesting thud -- and users complained of high fees, no phone support, and the fact that the phone was only available via T-Mobile. Google has tackled the first two of those problems, and now it appears the phone is poised to arrive on other carrier networks. Vaguely-sourced rumors indicate that the Nexus One is set to arrive on Verizon's network on March 23 -- which sounds about right, given that's the first day of CTIA. FCC documents indicate an AT&T version is also in the pipeline.
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DOCSIS 3.0: 75 Million By The End Of This Year - Comcast paves the way in upgrade deployment...

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 5:46am MST

According to a new study by Heavy Reading, North American cable companies should reach 75 million homes by the end of this year, and 90 million by the end of 2012. Those numbers are actually behind another recent survey from Multichannel News, which stated that DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades already reach more than 52 million of the 120 million homes passed by cable networks in the United States alone. That's in large part thanks to Comcast, which should have their entire network upgraded (with a very few rural exceptions) by the end of this year. A coming "surge" in deployments this year is attributable to Time Warner Cable, who should be unveiling a number of additional launch markets within months or weeks.
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