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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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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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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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Thursday Evening Links -

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

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

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

OnLive Broadband Game Service To Launch June 17 - Now the big question: will it actually work?

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

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

Researchers Aim To Reduce Copyright Infringement False Positives -

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

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

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

Thursday Morning Links -

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

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