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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 4:40pm MST

Sprint gives LightSquared until March to get FCC approval cnet.com
LTE will 'dominate' wireless infrastructure budgets by 2013: report zdnet.com
Smaller carriers press FCC for 'shot-clock' on data roaming negotiations fiercewireless.com
Verizon's tangled Web wsj.com
Comcast issues six-month progress report for cheaper broadband program zdnet.com
FCC votes to fund broadband service for low-income homes washingtonpost.com
Another Congestion Culprit: OS Updates? lightreading.com
Spectrum auctions locked in Congress fiercewireless.com
Changing our privacy policies, not our privacy controls Google
CableCARD's remain a retail fail fiercecable.com
Facebook readies to file US$5bn IPO, could grow ifre.com
Barnes & Noble Stores Will Not Stock Books Published By Amazon mediabistro.com
Online petition asks Apple for 'ethical' iPhone MSNBC.com
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Sprint Gives LightSquared Until March - As Faint Funeral Music Begins to Play

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 3:45pm MST

Last October Sprint finally uneveiled their LTE plans, noting that in addition to partnering with Clearwire Sprint would partner with LightSquared, hopefully using LightSquared's 1600MHz spectrum for LTE FDD. That of course depends on LightSquared's ability to manage the increasingly-ugly problems they're having getting regulatory approval, which hinge in turn on whether or not they can fix their network's potential to interfere with GPS signals. In early January Sprint gave LightSquared a thirty-day extension to work out regulatory headaches. That didn't help, so Sprint has now given LightSquared until mid-March to sort out their problems. It's not clear that the six-week extension is going to help, given that the last time we left LightSquared, they were busy claiming the GPS testing process was completely rigged, so one gets the sense things won't be resolved anytime soon -- if at all.
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Comcast Shores Up $10 Broadband Offer - Bumps Speed to 3 Mbps, Increases Availability by 300,000

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 12:45pm MST

To get the NBC acquisition approved, Comcast last year proposed a condition requiring they offer $10, 1.5 Mbps broadband tier (dubbed "Internet Essentials") to low income homes. As we pointed out last summer, however, actually getting the offer wasn't so simple. Program applicants have to qualify for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), can't owe Comcast money or equipment, can't currently have any Comcast broadband service, and can't have had service in the last ninety days.

As you might expect, most low-income homes live in debt, and much of that debt is for a very common service (TV). A Comcast insider informed us last year that many applicants were getting rejected as a result. Last December, groups representing low-income individuals started noticing that the program seemed designed to minimize the number of people who would actually benefit from it. Many low-income families weren't qualifying, or had no idea the program existed.

Things bubbled over a little further this week with protesters in Philadelphia again accusing Comcast of making Internet Essentials too difficult to actually get. Originally, officials had insisted that the program could bring cheap broadband to 150,000 students in Philadelphia alone. Of the 3.5 million National School Lunch Program (NSLP) families in the districts Comcast worked with, the company says they've connected 41,000 families nationwide so far. That's certainly not nothing, but it's a far cry from the totals predicted at a series of city launches that delivered oodles of positive PR for Comcast.

Responding to criticism, Comcast today announced they are going to shore up some parts of the program. Among the changes, Comcast says they're going to ramp up eligibility to include families that qualify for reduced price school lunches (not just the NSLP), a move Comcast estimates will increase potential homes by 300,000. The company's also going to up the speed of the offering from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps downstream and up to 768 Kbps upstream, more in line with the minimum definition of broadband.

"As gratifying as these early results are to Comcast, we recognize there is still a long road ahead," said Comcast Public Policy VP David Cohen. "We remain firmly committed to the important cause of providing low-income families with an opportunity to connect to affordable broadband service," said Cohen. That commitment, at least as it currently stands, is expected to last for another two years or so, after which qualifying families will revert to less opportunity-creating standard Comcast rates.

On one hand, you don't want to be too critical of Comcast's effort because the fact they're doing anything at all for struggling families is obviously better than nothing. On the other hand, you'd be naive to believe Comcast didn't originally design the program to exclude as many potential families as possible as a hollow NBC merger condition. Still, that the company is willing to move a little on speed and qualification requirements is certainly welcome news to low-income residents.
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MegaUpload Users Try to Get Their Files Back - Legitimate Data Loss Overshadowed by Hullabaloo

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 11:39am MST

One of the many problems with the government's global assault on MegaUpload is the fact that, as with any digital locker service, many users used the website legitimately to store non-copyrighted files. Some of the website's users have tinkered with the idea of suing the government to get access to those files, but it remains unclear if there's any solid course of legal action for them. After originally stating the files would be deleted immediately, a Tweet by MegaUpload's lawyer suggests that files will be made available for users for a limited time:

Carpathia and Cogent agreed to preserve consumer data for additional time of at least two weeks so #Megaupload can work with US on proposal.

Both Carpathia and Cogent Communications leased servers and bandwidth to MegaUpload, with employees of the latter saying they were raided during the recent MegaUpload crackdown.

Carpathia contests any such claim that they have access to user data, telling PC Magazine that the company "does not have, and has never had, access to the content on MegaUpload servers and has no mechanism for returning any content residing on such servers to MegaUpload's customers." The company did however work with the EFF to create MegaRetrieval.com, a website dedicated to giving legal help to those who lost legitimate files (no, that doesn't include your pirated Led Zeppelin discography).
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Mexicans Overbilled Billions For Internet, Voice - Courtesy of Carlos Slim and Telmex Monopoly

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 9:37am MST

According to a new report, Mexicans have been overcharged $13.4 billion a year for phone and Internet services, primarily thanks to the fact that the Mexican telecom market is dominated by one player: billionaire Carlos Slim and his incumbent telco Telmex. Telmex dominates 80% of the landline voice and broadband market, with Slim also controlling about 70% of the wireless market with America Movil.

According to the new report, Mexico's uncompetitive market resulted in consumers paying $129 billion over five years, nearly 2 percent of the country's economic output. The report found Mexico had the lowest per capita public investment in telecommunications in the 34-member OECD, while Telmex maintained a profit margin of 47 percent, among the highest of all member countries.

What's to be done? The OECD report suggests that actually having a strong-willed and independent regulator that does its job would be a great start. That's in stark contrast to the dominant carrier discourse that all regulation and regulators are utterly irredeemable because government can simply never, ever work properly (ignoring of course that carrier lobbyists and guys like Carlos Slim work tirelessly to ensure this becomes true).

"Mexico should make the regulatory authority Cofetel more powerful and independent," notes the OECD. "This would include increasing its financial and administrative independence and being able to impose higher sanctions than it can today to deter anti-competitive behaviour."
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AT&T Doesn't Want Dish, They Just Don't Want Competition - AT&T Maneuvers to Derail Dish LTE Build

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 7:56am MST

The last few weeks we've noted that for some reason, Wall Street stock jocks really seem to want AT&T to buy Dish. That's a rumor that has circulated for as long as we've been in existence, but it has seen new legs recently under the premise that because the T-Mobile deal was rejected, AT&T simply must buy somebody else. Missing from that narrative is the fact that AT&T really doesn't need to buy anybody else, and that their own data shows they have all the spectrum they need to deploy LTE nationally, particularly after repurposing existing spectrum and their Qualcomm acquisitions.

Bloomberg is running their third AT&T Dish rumor story in as many weeks, noting that because AT&T doesn't want restrictions on the transfer and/or leasing" of Dish spectrum, AT&T clearly is showing an interest in buying Dish. You'll note however that at the same time AT&T wants rules making it easier to nab Dish's spectrum, they're pushing for rules that make it harder for Dish to potentially complete their planned build of an LTE network that would compete with AT&T:

There should be no restrictions on the transfer and/or leasing of the spectrum, AT&T wrote in comments to the Federal Communications Commission on Jan. 26. The letter is a change of heart for AT&T, Stefan Anninger, a Credit Suisse analyst, said in a note yesterday. AT&T also urged the agency to require a fast-track network buildout, a stipulation that could make it difficult for Dish to keep the spectrum, Anninger said.

As was made clear by the T-Mobile attempt, AT&T doesn't really need to buy companies, but they want to because the more spectrum sitting in AT&T's vault, the fewer competitors can disrupt the cozy duopoly AT&T and Verizon enjoy. The current spectrum debate in Congress isn't really about capacity, innovation, or other political buzz topics, it's about competition -- and whether existing spectrum sits gathering dust in the vaults of giants, or whether it gets doled out to competitors who'll really put it to use.
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ViaSat May Add Another Exede Tier - 12 Mbps, 10 GB Cap For Somewhere Around $55

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 6:38am MST

Earlier this month we noted how ViaSat's new 12 Mbps satellite service, well-hyped at CES, wasn't quite the revolution it was cracked up to be in the press. In addition to not being available to everyone and being offered belatedly to existing customers, the tier makes the one thing users hate about satellite broadband (caps) worse, with Exede's usage limits actually lower than existing services. ViaSat's service costs $50 for 7.5 GB of monthly usage (up & down combined), $80 for 15 GB of usage, and $130 for 25 GB of monthly usage.

One user familiar with negotiations tells Broadband Reports that the member companies in the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative weren't entirely thrilled with the choices being offered users, and are negotiating with ViaSat to add another tier to the mix.

"NRTC members have banded together and gotten ViaSat to offer a fourth package, between the 7.5 and 15GB tiers, for 10GB. Pricing should be around $55 per month, so slightly more money than the old tier for a combined total data transfer allotment that's comparable to the old $50 package's up and down gigabyte total per month." The source insists that the price tag is subject to change, but that 10 GB cap likely shouldn't.

WildBlue customers: Does a 10 GB, $55 tier do anything to impress?

Update: We're told by representatives of the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative that this 10 GB tier will only be available for NRTC member companies and customers. The NRTC did confirm that they negotiated a 10 GB tier to replace the 7.5 GB tier originally included in the lineup.
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AT&T Shuffles Executives After Failed T-Mobile Bid - Executive in Charge of Mergers and Acquisitions Retires

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 6:05am MST

After their bid to acquire T-Mobile for $38 billion was surprisingly crushed by regulators for being anti-competitive, AT&T announced this week they're now shuffling executive positions. John Stankey, who the company says has led nearly every major AT&T business unit during his 27-year career, will be named to a newly created position of "Group President & Chief Strategy Officer." Not mentioned in the press release is the fact that Forrest Miller, AT&T's head of corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions, will be retiring. There was plenty of blame to go around for the AT&T deal collapse. AT&T's own law firm posted data that dismantled most of their claims, and the company's longstanding practice of using non-telecom groups to spam the FCC in exchange for cash donations rubbed many the wrong way this time.
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T-Mobile Imposes Domestic Data Roaming Caps - 100 MB for 5 GB Plan, 200 MB for 10 GB Plan

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 5:43am MST

According to some leaked data posted to TMoNews, T-Mobile is preparing to impose new caps on data roaming starting April 5. According to leaked employee memos, customers roaming outside of T-Mobile s data network will be notified via text message when they have reach both 80% and 100% of their allotted domestic roaming data. T-Mobile's 5 GB plan now comes with a 100 MB off network roaming cap, and their 10 GB plan now comes with a 200 MB off network roaming cap. Unlike normal T-Mobile caps where the customer is throttled, in this case T-Mobile will cut off any and all data service until connection to Wi-Fi is made. T-Mobile insists that "very few customers use enough domestic data while roaming on other carriers' networks to be impacted."
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 31st, 2012, 4:51am MST

AT&T gives heavy data users a not-so-subtle hint to ditch the unlimited plan cnet.com
As Anonymous protests, Internet drowns in inaccurate anti-ACTA arguments arstechnica.com
Megaupload lawyer: User data is safe for at least two weeks thenextweb.com
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, AOL and Facebook combine to stop phishing and spam physorg.com
Angry Birds boss: 'Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business' guardian.co.uk
Now satellite broadband is 'pay as you need' itweb.co.za
Feature Phones Now More Profitable Than Mid-tier Smartphones forbes.com
iPad propels Apple to top of PC market as growth stalls without tablets gigaom.com
US lawmakers seek Google answers on privacy totaltele.com
EU probes Samsung, Germany blocks its tablets ap.org

Monday Evening Links -

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 4:03pm MST

Opinion: Constraining the Internet's freedom is necessary to stop online piracy fiercetelecom.com
Can Reddit Write Legislation, Too? Proposes The 'Free Internet Act' techdirt.com
Symantec says pcAnywhere safe, offers free upgrade reuters.com
Global broadband zooms, US penetration is over 80% gigaom.com
London named as worst UK city for 3G broadband speeds itproportal.com
LightSquared GPS Argument Up for Public Comment wirelessweek.com
Is AT&T jockeying for Dish's wireless spectrum? cnet.com
More Hints that Apple is Working on an NFC Payment System on the Next iPhone macrumors.com
Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Censorship torrentfreak.com
Canada's capacity-based wholesale billing regulations go into effect Wednesday telegeography.com
DataJack Signs Comprehensive Distribution Agreement marketwatch.com
Row 44 to Deliver NFL Network and NFL RedZone on Commercial Flights marketwatch.com
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New Wireless Privacy Bill Addresses CarrierIQ Fallout - 'Consumers Have the Right to Know and Say No...'

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 3:14pm MST

Responding to the CarrierIQ scandal, Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has released a draft (pdf) of a new cellphone privacy bill. The Mobile Device Privacy Act would give the FTC the authority to regulate monitoring software, give consumers the clear information about the use of such software, and require that third party vendors have clear standards when it comes to the storage of the information collected. According to a statement posted to Markey's website, Markey's primary focus of the bill is on disclosure and consent.

"Consumers have the right to know and to say 'no' to the presence of software on their mobile devices that can collect and transmit their personal and sensitive information," Markey said.

The problem, as we've noted more than a few times, is that with the collective lobbying power and wealth of the telecom, content, and advertising industries against privacy regulations, the chance of getting any bill with teeth actually passed (particularly if it requires opt in) is virtually non-existent.

Carriers traditionally argue they can self-regulate on this front, arguing that public shame will keep them honest. However, the effectiveness of this approach is made somewhat clear by the fact nobody knew CarrierIQ even existed on devices early last year, much less that any user data was being collected.
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Verizon: Expect FiOS Rate Hikes This Year - As Company Keeps Pace With Cable Rate Hike Season Festivities

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 1:31pm MST

With Verizon's FiOS build out largely suspended, the company is looking to ramp up subscriber totals in markets where FiOS already exists. On the TV front they're primarily trying to do that by trying to be a little more innovative in the DVR and set top space with widgets and GUI enhancements. Like any good cable company, Verizon is terrified of having to compete on price, though they have been aggressive in competitive markets (oh hi, Cablevision) with bundle pricing. Speaking to hike-loving investors and stock jocks, Verizon's CFO assured them FiOS users should expect price hikes this year:

Verizon Communications will probably hike prices for some FiOS services this year, even as the telco looks to continue to drive up penetration of its fiber-optic video, data and voice services, chief financial officer Fran Shammo said on an earnings call with analysts. "I know folks are saying that we are overly competitive in pricing on FiOS . But what I would say is that the pricing has not actually changed," Shammo said on the call Tuesday. "And if anything, if you look at it, there was a price increase in 2011, and there will probably be some more price increases in 2012 as we go here."

Of course when Verizon and AT&T got into the market they promised lawmakers that if they greased their entry and re-wrote laws to their benefit (some of them incredibly awful), the end result would be lower cable TV prices, and we can all see how that turned out. Meanwhile, consumer advocates and competitors are worried Verizon Wireless's new deal with the cable industry includes a quiet non-compete agreement that would freeze added FiOS deployment and jack up prices for consumers.

That's something Verizon's CFO denies, insisting Verizon will continue to "compete vigorously" in the TV market. Granted in the TV business "compete vigorously" means non-price competition, with providers winking at one another whenever it's time to raise rates in unison.
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MetroPCS Shakes Up 'LTE' Pricing - Still Hard Upselling Their Own Content Services

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 11:10am MST

In late 2010 MetroPCS was the first mobile operator in the United States to launch LTE wireless broadband service. However, being first didn't mean it was necessarily good -- the company initially offering no data card service, no tethering, limited coverage, 3G-esque speeds and only one supported device: the underwhelming $300 Samsung Craft. While cheap, the plans raised the hackles of network neutrality advocates by charging for "unlimited" LTE that blocked off much of the Internet while offering "unlimited" Youtube access.

As 2012 arrived MetroPCS has shaken things up slightly, with the company offering a significantly better selection of smart phones, though still nowhere near the selection you'll find at major carriers. They've also shaken up pricing slightly, eliminating their $40 plans. Users interested in MetroPCS now have three options if they want LTE, all designed to upsell, nudge or otherwise shove you in the direction of MetroPCS's own Metro themed content offerings:

•$50: Unlimited talk, text, Metroweb, email, "with 1GB of multimedia streaming."

•$60: Unlimited talk, text, Metroweb, email "with unlimited multimedia streaming and Rhapsody Unlimited Music."

•$60: Unlimited talk, text, Metroweb and email "with unlimited multimedia streaming and MetroSTUDIO Video On Demand."

Note their MetroWeb service limits the number and type of websites users can visit, something shaped undoubtedly by their sparse spectrum holdings. As the market shifts toward more open networks, platforms, and application stores MetroPCS seems intent on late 90's era funneling of users to their particular, closed vision of their own Internet. It would be interesting to see just how many users are willing to pay a premium for content in MetroPCS's little walled garden Utopia.
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Wi-Fi Alliance Thinks 'Super Wi-Fi' Term Confusing - Wants White Space Folks to Stay Away From Their Brand

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 9:35am MST

Last week the Wireless Innovation Alliance (whose members include Microsoft, Google and Dell) announced that Wilmington, North Carolina was home to the first non-trial deployment of White Space broadband, a technology that makes use of the unlicensed spectrum vacated from the shift to digital television. In their release, the group called the technology "Super Wi-Fi," a term that was inaccurately affixed to the technology by FCC boss Julius Genachowski in 2010.

Apparently this designation annoyed the folks over at the Wi-Fi Alliance, who issued a press statement trying to crush the Super Wi-Fi moniker before the technology gets rolling. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, use of the term will sow confusion among users who might think the two technologies are compatible.

"The technology touted as 'Super Wi-Fi' does not interoperate with the billions of Wi-Fi devices in use today," warns the Wi-Fi Alliance, adding that "today s deployments in Television White Spaces do not deliver the same user experience as is available in Wi-Fi hotspots and home networks."

Trying to stop consumer confusion in such matters is kind of like trying to stop the rain, with most consumers not knowing what a gigabyte even is, much less capable of differentiating between technologies like Mobile WiMax and LTE (no thanks to the ITU and wireless marketing departments). The group is of course primarily concerned that the name is an unofficial use of the Wi-Fi brand, and was at least kind enough to issue a press release instead of immediately filing a lawsuit.
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Verizon Wireless Family Data Plans Coming Soon - Eventually Share Pooled Data Across Users, Devices

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 7:13am MST

Both Verizon and AT&T last year hinted more than a few times that they'd finally be joining the modern age by offering family data plans. Ideally the bucket-o-bytes approach would, like voice minutes, work across different family accounts and more importantly across devices, meaning no more annoying additional individual subscriptions for your tablet, handheld game console, or other device. While AT&T did recently announce a price hike, family plans were nowhere to be found during recent earnings announcements. Verizon in contrast does appear to be very close to family plan launch, according to leaked training materials posted to Engadget. There's no date, nor are the caveats noted (and you can be sure there will be some to offset the loss of per-device flat fee revenue), but at least the shift is in the pipeline.
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Time Warner: 1 Year of Free Phone to 50 Mbps Users - Though Offer Appears Restricted to New York City Market

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 6:09am MST

Time Warner Cable initially took their time deploying faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds, priced them well beyond what most sane people were willing to pay (often in upscale "Signature Home" packages), then complained that the services weren't initially seeing quite the uptake they'd hoped for during a recession. That seems to be improving slightly in some markets (the company signed up 54,000 wideband subs in the fourth quarter), thanks in part to offers like the free Slingboxes they were giving out in NYC last year. In NYC they compete with Verizon's slowly-spreading FiOS footprint, and are also now offering an interesting deal: one free year of VoIP service for users who sign up for 50 Mbps broadband.
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Dutch ISPs Refuse to Filter Pirate Bay - Prepare to Face BREIN in Court

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 5:55am MST

Earlier this month the Court of The Hague, responding to a demand from Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, ordered that Dutch ISPs had to filter access to the Pirate Bay. The ruling came despite arguments by leading ISPs in the country that the filters could compromise the security of their networks, threaten freedom of speech, and ultimately wouldn't work anyway. Now two large ISPs in the Netherlands, T-Mobile and KPN, have refused to block access to the website, arguing that the move is against the idea of an open Internet. "KPN doesn t believe a blockade is the right solution," the company said in a statement. "What is needed are robust, attractive business models that are easy to use and offer a fair deal to both producers and consumers of content."
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Time Warner Makes it Harder to Enjoy Their Product Via Netflix - Users Can't Add Coming Content to Queue

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 5:45am MST

As we've noted, instead of making their content easier to get, studios are making access via Netflix more cumbersome and difficult in the belief it will help sell more physical media. Time Warner recently convinced Netflix to extend the delay before the company can offer new release DVDs to 56 days, and stopped selling HBO discs directly at a discount. Now Time Warner has convinced Netflix to make it so users can't even add the coming new releases to their queue until 28 days after DVD release. While the belief is that they'll be driving more customers to buy physical DVDs, the reality is that they're driving users to piracy (then signing off on potentially-destructive laws like SOPA in the process).
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: January 30th, 2012, 4:04am MST

US Voters: Censorship is a Bigger Problem Than Piracy torrentfreak.com
What the Green Bay Packers can teach us about broadband gigaom.com
Dutch ISPs Defy Hollywood, Refuse To Block The Pirate Bay torrentfreak.com
Web economy will double from $2.3 trillion to $4.2 trillion by 2016: Google bbc.co.uk
T-Mobile raises the stakes: Full Monty smartphone deal offers unlimited everything broadbandgenie.co.uk
Wi-Fi Alliance: There s nothing Super about white spaces broadband gigaom.com
Twitter's new censorship plan rouses global furor physorg.com
Kindle Fire dwarfs other Android tablets in market share after just three months arstechnica.com
Feds: Megaupload User Data Could Be Gone Thursday npr.org
Nation's First CTO Exiting multichannel.com
Federal agents, prosecuters fear Anonymous-like online retaliation in pursuing MegaUpload case wsj.com
Waiters tote tablets, wine lists via Wi-Fi tri-cityherald.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Ready, Set, Pontificate!

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 3:53pm MST

The weekend has finally arrived. Let us know what you're up to in the comment section below.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 3:43pm MST

Newly found Android malware infects millions: report MSNBC.com
America abandoning DSL in favor of faster cable theregister.co.uk
Poland's prime minister vows Warsaw won't fully ratify ACTA if in-depth legal studies prove it threatens Internet freedoms totaltele.com
FTC to scrutinize mobile payment technology networkworld.com
The intelligent spectrum harvest cable360.net
TW Cable's New Wideband Gambit lightreading.computer
How Siri is ruining your cellphone service washingtonpost.com
European smartphone uptake outpaces US fiercewireless.com
U.S. Justice Department May Be Investigating Verizon Wireless over Cable Spectrum Deal tmcnet.com
New RIM CEO vows to 'stop the bleeding,' slams Android OEMs fiercewireless.com
More dark fiber for Indianapolis cable360.net
802.11ac does more for 802.11n than it does to change the face of wireless networking networkworld.com
Mobile operators are losing their grip on the tablet market fiercewireless.com
Twitter uncloaks a year's worth of DMCA takedown notices, 4,410 in all arstechnica.com
Internet economy set to hit $4.2T in 2016, half of world s population will be online venturebeat.com
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It's Time to Stop Buying the Capacity Crisis Myth - Like the 'Exaflood,' Looming Wireless Apocalypse a Lie

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 1:43pm MST

Anybody who warns of an unavoidable capacity crisis on wireline or wireless networks is lying in order to sell you something. That may be a blunt assessment to some, but it's the only conclusion you can draw as we see time and time again that claims about a looming network apocalypse (remember the Exaflood?) violently overestimate future traffic loads and underestimate the ingenuity of modern network engineers. Fear sells. Drink orange juice or you'll die of cancer. Get more insurance or you're a bad family man. Vote for me or lose your job and see your grandma deported. Pay $2.50 per gigabyte or face Internet brown outs. Be afraid.

You'll recall the litany of predictions that video would crush the Internet permeating the newswires over the last five years. Most of those claims came from hardware vendors trying to sell network gear, or ISP lobbyists and executives trying to sell bad policy (caps, throttling, overages, neutrality violations). All were repeatedly debunked simply by looking at real data, which showed that the Internet video age was easily handled by even modest network investment.

With the rumors of a looming landline network apocalypse disproven, you'll notice the doomsday predictions have shifted to wireless as we debate spectrum policy. Carriers like AT&T proclaim they're facing a capacity crunch that simply can't be avoided unless we do "X" (let them acquire T-Mobile, let them charge $50 per gigabyte, let them squat on oceans of spectrum). Research firms warn of a spectrum doomsday so they can sell LTE-Advanced hardware. The FCC nods dumbly throughout this cycle of hysteria because they want the revenue delivered by spectrum sales.

As usual though, actually bothering to listen to and look at the data tells a different story. Nobody argues that spectrum is infinite, but buried below industry histrionics is data noting that there really isn't a spectrum crisis as much as a bunch of lazy and gigantic spectrum squatters, hoarding public-owned assets to limit competition, while skimping on network investment to appease short-sighted investors. Insiders at the FCC quietly lamented that the very idea of a spectrum crisis was manufactured for the convenience of government and industry. Now Dave Burstein this week bothered to actually look at wireless growth rates to (surprise surprise) find them to be completely reasonable:

"Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T told investors and his CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed on the investor call. That s far less than the 92% predicted by Cisco s VNI model or the FCC s 120% to 2012 and 90% to 2013 figure in the "spectrum crunch" analysis...With growth rates less than half of the predictions, a data-driven FCC and Congress has no reason to rush to bad policy. 40% growth is still substantial, but wireless technology is improving at a breathtaking pace. LTE has about 10x the capacity of 2.5G and 4x the capacity of 3G. LTE Advanced, deploying beginning 2013 at Verizon, is designed for 10x the capacity of LTE.

Burstein correctly reminds us that there's nothing to fear, and with modern technology like LTE Advanced and more-than adequate resources, any wireless company struggling to keep pace with demand is either incompetent or cutting corners (or both). The idea that our modern networks face rotating oblivion scenarios lest we not rush to do "X" is the fear mongering of lobbyists, politicians, and salesmen. All of them use fear by trade, but the key failure point when it comes to capacity hysteria seems to continually be the press, which likes to unskeptically repeat whatever hysterical scenario gets shoveled their direction each month.

The reality is that the evolution of wireless and wireline networks has been an amazing act of engineering, one that quietly and consistently keeps pace with demand. While politicians wrangle, lobbyists distort the truth, and marketing departments pollute the discourse with fear for personal gain, network engineers quietly do their jobs and do it well.
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NAB Takes Pot Shot at Time Warner Cable Earnings - Argues Carriage Fees Account for Less Than 1% of Cable Bill

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 11:25am MST

The National Association of Broadcasters is highlighting Time Warner Cable's 44% jump in net profit as an example of how retrans fees aren't hurting the cable operator quite as badly as claimed. 2011 saw broadcasters and cable operators annoy consumers endlessly with blackouts, PR feuds, and higher rates, with cable operators often claiming demanded rate hikes were borderline gluttonous. A NAB press statement however argues that retransmission consent fees accounted for just six-tenths of one percent of a pay-TV operator's revenues in 2010. Says NAB:

"Given that Time Warner Cable just announced a quarterly net income increase of 44 percent and annual profits of $1.3 billion, it's time for pay TV's poster child for skyrocketing rates to come clean on retransmission consent. Time Warner and its front group the American Television Alliance claim that broadcast retransmission consent fees are responsible for escalating cable rates. That claim is false. The fact is that local TV station carriage fees account for less than 1 percent of the cost of a monthly cable bill.

...it's laughable to suggest that broadcasters are responsible for higher cable rates.

With ESPN as expensive as it is, it's pretty "laughable" that NAB would suggest programming costs don't play a role, even if the cable industry likes to play up their impact to justify bi-annual rate hikes (even on DVR rentals). On Twitter, Ted Hearn of the American Cable Association tweets that comparing retrans fees to all revenues (including broadband, VoIP) is an apple to orange comparison, though it does appear NAB at least tries to compare the retrans impact to pay-TV revenues specifically.

At this point consumers don't really care, nor do they particularly like either side in these debates. In the end, most consumers know their cable bill will keep going up regardless of who "wins" these increasingly-ugly retrans disputes. Why? Because the cable and broadcast industry absolutely refuse to seriously compete on price, must get improved quarterly results however possible, and as a result would blame rate hikes on Uruguayan Ocelots if they could get away with it.
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Cogeco User Socked With Thousands in Overages - Company Suddenly Eliminates Cap Penalty Ceiling

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 7:11am MST

Back in April of 2009, Canadian cable operator Cogeco foisted metered billing on the back of their customers, applying caps as low as 10GB per month and overages as high as $2.50 a gigabyte on top of existing tiers. When customers complained, Cogeco insulted customer intelligence by insisting the move wasn't about making money. Cogeco then decided to raise monthly rates as well -- and add a DOCSIS 3.0 "upgrade fee" for good measure. Consumers subsequently complained that the meters didn't actually work well, while lamenting that there's zero regulatory oversight to ensure they ever will.

To sell the idea Cogeco originally had overage penalty ceilings in place, meaning that even if you incurred overages, you couldn't go over a certain amount each month (initially $30). Last summer Cogeco eliminated the cap ceilings completely for their Ultimate 30 and Ultimate 50 tiers, and raised the penalty ceiling for all other tiers from $30 to $50. A letter to consumers at the time claimed the price hikes were about "enhancing" subscriber broadband services to create "a better Internet experience."

One user in our forum is having one hell of an "improved experience." According to a post to our forums, the user claims Cogeco never sent him a notice that they'd be eliminating the cap ceiling for his "Ultimate 30" service tier. That tier provides 125 GB of data transfer capacity per month, after which you're charged $1.00 for every GB. The result? A ridiculous broadband bill.

The user says Cogeco began automatically deducting his account for huge amounts, starting with $891.40. When pressed, the company informed him that his account had had the $50 monthly overage cap removed, and that he should have received a letter. When the user informed Cogeco he never received notification of any kind, Cogeco initially doubted his claim, but was eventually nice enough to give him a $50 credit -- which they'll kindly deduct from the $2,500 he now owes for just three months of service.

To be clear the user was consuming a lot of bandwidth, one month clocking in over 689 GB of overages -- something he attributes to a six-user household with heavy video consumption and HD project file transfers. That said, he says he obviously would have dropped to a lower Cogeco tier if he had known he'd need to take out a second mortgage to pay his bandwidth bill.

The problem remains that such a price point for residential bandwidth borders on insane, and is literally a markup of thousands of percent over the pennies Cogeco pays for each additional gigabyte. Again, the problem also persists that that (unlike power utilities) there's absolutely no regulatory oversight of this process, which makes things immeasurably worse for consumers who feel they were unfairly billed. Cogeco also didn't feel it was necessary to inform the customer that his broadband bill was quickly spiraling out of control, something that at the very least could have been done as a courtesy before auto-billing him for hundreds of additional dollars.

We've dropped a line to Cogeco to get their comment on the matter, and will post any response we receive. The move to eliminate the overage penalty ceiling for some users comes as smaller independent Canadian ISPs are trying to lure annoyed users with new unlimited broadband tiers. You have to think this kind of behavior is a sales pitch for these independent ISPs, assuming such a choice is even available. The reality is this kind of predatory pricing is only made possible because many of these users don't have the choice of an alternative, more reasonable ISP.
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Cablevision Employees Unionize For First Time Ever - In a Cable Industry Where Just 2-4% Are in Unions

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 6:25am MST

"It s very hard to retire here," a Cablevision installer complained to the New York Times earlier this month. "You get hurt, you can t work as hard and you disappear." A little more than a week later, despite claims from unions that Cablevision tried heavy-handedly to stop it, 282 technicians and dispatchers in Brooklyn have voted to join the CWA. The move marks the first time that Cablevision employees have unionized, in a cable sector where just 2% to 4% of cable TV workers are unionized. That's compared to 90% of telecommunications workers, most notably Cablevision's primary competitor, Verizon.

Cablevision issued a statement noting disappointment:

"We are disappointed by the outcome of this vote. In the worst economy in memory, Cablevision has not laid off a single technician, unlike our competitors who have cut thousands of unionized positions. In fact, Cablevision has created jobs. We value our employees and the work they do and believe the CWA has little to offer them. We are assessing our options."

Cablevision workers make about one-third less than their counterparts at Verizon, according to the CWA. As we recently noted, there are some on Wall Street who'd like to see Verizon get out of landline entirely in large part because of union costs, instead fully focusing on wireless where labor remains ununionized and therefore pension, health and other costs are reduced.
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New CRTC Boss is Ex Rogers, Bell Exec - The Revolving Door Spins Ever Faster

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 5:58am MST

We've often talked about how Canada was actually seeing some significant growth in their broadband sector early on, with users seeing faster speeds at fairly reasonable prices. The country also consistently ranked very high in the global broadband penetration rankings -- despite the evil bogeyman known as "geography" -- which many here in the states use to justify the United States' broadband failings. Things were going well for Canadian broadband. But then Canada decided to start mirroring United States broadband policy.

That policy being to pretend that the market is competitive. Terrified of upsetting powerful political constituents, and stocked with executives from the incumbent ISPs, Canada's CRTC rattled off a series of anti-consumer policies that ensured that just like their neighbors to the Sourth, Canadian consumers would pay more -- for less broadband -- than dozens of developed nations.

The CRTC's Bell/Rogers friendly agenda wound up biting them last year, when CRTC boss Konrad von Finckenstein was forced to actually defend at hearing the CRTC's blissfully-ignorant decision to impose expensive new usage-based pricing on already-expensive bandwidth for wholesalers and consumers. Users in our forums notes that von Fickenstein has left the agency, replaced with interim boss Leonard Katz, who spent eleven years with Bell and seventeen with Rogers, mostly in their lobbying and policy units.

"It's like they aren't even trying to pretend the CRTC is a rubberstamp stop for the oligopolies," laments one of our forum users. On the positive side, Katz, who has served as the CRTC vice-chairman since 2007, is expected to be swapped out with a replacement by the end of the year.
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Hawaiian Politician Backs Away From ISP Tracking Law - 'We Do Not Want to Know Where Everyone Goes on the Internet'

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 5:42am MST

Yesterday we noted that a new law being proposed in Hawaii would require that ISPs log the subscriber information and websites visited by every user for two years -- with no included provisions to ensure that data be adequately secured. It only took one day of bad press for the bill's primary backer to back away from the law. "We do not want to know where everyone goes on the Internet," Rep. Kymberly Pine said. "That's not our interest. We just want the ability for law enforcement to be able to capture the activities of crime." Granted, somebody might want to inform these politicians that the tools already exist to track and punish criminals online,.and there's no need to create huge new databases for hackers to covet.

update: Techdirt looks a little deeper into what motivated Pine in the first place and it's a very amusing read.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: January 27th, 2012, 5:32am MST

Hawaiian politician backs away from Web dossier law cnet.com
Europe drops Phorm-related UK Internet privacy infringement case ispreview.co.uk
802.11ac: Don t Believe Everything You Read businesscomputingworld.co.uk
Consumer 'White Spaces' Gadgets, Chipsets In The Works forbes.com
How WiFi could squeeze wireless carriers zdnet.com
Google takes the staqnd at the UK Leveson Inquiry and says, "We are not the Internet" thenextweb.com
Debate rages as Spotify, MOG, and Rdio kill / save the music industry theverge.com
Symantec: We didn't know 2006 source code was stolen wired.com
Microsoft is ready for game downloads; it's a shame our broadband isn't electricpig.co.uk
Nintendo to include NFC in its next games console nfcworld.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 4:43pm MST

Hawaii make keep track of all websites visited cnet.com
For the good of the nation, broadband for all cio.com
Cheap internet: The poor's new civil right nypost.com
Google, Bing, other search engines "overwhelmingly" direct users to illegal copies of copyrighted tracks: Coalition of entertainment industry groups guardian.co.uk
MegaUpload Users Plan to Sue the FBI over Lost Files torrentfreak.com
European Parliament Official In Charge Of ACTA Quits, And Denounces The 'Masquerade' Behind ACTA techdirt.com
North Korea threatens to punish mobile-phone users as 'war criminals' telegraph.co.uk
AT&T blames FCC for price hikes lightreading.com
Survey: consumers confused on cellular network generations telecomengine.com
RealNetworks to sell patents, software to Intel for $120m totaltele.com
Take Your Wi-Fi Broadband Router On The Road cable360.net
1% of all smartphones activated by AT&T in Q4 were iPhone 4S's thenextweb.com
iPhone 4S helps Apple edge Android in US cnet.com
Android tablets finally catching on networkworld.com
Leaked RIM roadmap hints at Paybook 3G+ technologytell.com
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Cable is Eating DSL's Lunch in Un-Upgraded Markets - Telco Investors Get What They Were Willing to Pay For

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 3:23pm MST

Both AT&T and Verizon saw continued strong growth in wireless in this week's earnings reports, but took a bit of a beating in terms of DSL subscriber counts in their un-upgraded markets and overall broadband growth. Verizon lost 103,000 DSL lines during the fourth quarter of 2011, while AT&T lost 636,000 DSL lines. In AT&T's case the company wound up posting a net loss of 49,000 broadband customers thanks to the addition of 587,000 U-Verse Internet customers. Neither company is keeping pace with cable industry additions, however.

Where are the DSL users going? Neither company breaks down market or subscriber specific defection paths. Some are obviously migrating to the faster FiOS or U-Verse options being offered by the telcos. However, many are signing up for faster cable services in markets neither AT&T or Verizon wanted to spend money to upgrade.

Last summer, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson went so far as to call DSL "obsolete" -- a problem when that's the only broadband product you're selling.

As we noted earlier this week, despite Verizon's $24 billion FTTH FiOS investment, there's still 30% of their footprint that won't be joining the modern broadband age anytime soon. AT&T's initial investment in U-Verse was significantly less aggressive and costly, but the number of customers not upgraded to U-Verse sits around 50% of their footprint. Even when upgraded to U-Verse, AT&T's not matching cable when it comes to speeds. The reasons for the AT&T DSL departures and slow broadband growth are clear: AT&T didn't put enough money back into the last mile network.

Both cable companies and customers stuck on slow DSL can thank telco investors for the stagnation. Investors whined, griped and complained ceaselessly over the last few years about any attempt by AT&T and Verizon to put money back into the network -- even when cash was clearly on hand. Now neither company can seriously compete with cable in the markets investors never wanted upgraded in the first place, which will result in a subscriber hit -- that investors will then complain about.

Annoyed customers stuck on slower DSL may eventually see faster speeds, but right now both U-Verse and FiOS expansion plans are frozen, meaning cable broadband will rule the roost for the foreseeable future. While there are a variety of new DSL technologies that bond lines and quell crosstalk pushing last mile DSL speeds higher, they've not yet been seriously deployed and still face distance constraints. Right now the focus is on wireless, with the telcos pretty clearly not caring what happens in a large number of landline markets where millions of users are still clodding along at 1.5 to 3 Mbps.
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Wilmington First to Deploy White Space Broadband - Wilmington Park Deploys Improved Range 'Super Wi-Fi'

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 1:18pm MST

User uid://1421422 directs our attention to the fact that New Hanover County, North Carolina this week became the first county in the United States to deploy a "Super Wi-Fi" network. Also known as white space broadband, the technology makes use of unlicensed wireless spectrum freed from the migration to digital television. FCC rules governing such devices were approved in 2010, with the FCC creating new databases used by devices to confirm that they won't create interference to nearby devices.

There have been trials of the technology elsewhere, but Wilmington, North Carolina today became the first city to see practical deployment. A press statement by the Wireless Innovation Alliance (whose members include Microsoft, Google and Dell) notes Wilmington was chosen because of their quick digital TV transition:

Wilmington was the first city in 2008 to make the successful transition from Analog to Digital Television. As a result of this transition, the city had early access to the broadcast spectrum "white spaces" that emerged from the shift. These white spaces are ideal for Super Wi-Fi deployment since their physical properties allow for stronger signals that provide better penetration and allow Wi-Fi to travel further distances than more common, traditional Wi-Fi networks. A subsequent trial of the Super Wi-Fi network took place in 2011.

The press release offers absolutely no quality details on the launch, probably because the actual details are a little less thrilling than the release's claim that the deployment helps "drive innovation in the American economy." Forbes notes that the network will be used to offer Wi-Fi and connect a few video cameras in a few parks. White Space broadband was selected because its longer range meant a simpler installation, and the city "didn't want to cut trees or put in a ton of hardware."
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AT&T CEO Stephenson Pouts About T-Mobile Deal - Hints Hikes Are Due to T-Mobile Deal Being Blocked

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 11:25am MST

AT&T last week raised rates on all their wireless data plans, users now having the option of a $20, 300 MB plan or a $30, 3GB plan (up from $15, 200MB and $25, 2GB, respectively). Speaking during their earnings call today, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson tried to suggest that the rate hikes were because the government opposed AT&T's planned T-Mobile acquisition. The deal collapse, according to Stephenson, left them capacity constrained -- which then forced the company to raise rates and throttle wireless users. Kevin Fitchard at GigaOM points out how the only problem with that article is that it's not true:

If AT&T were really that constrained by network capacity, it wouldn t be lowering the price it charges to deliver each byte. AT&T s price hikes are simply a revenue play. By raising the prices of its data plan tiers, it s guaranteeing it will get $5 more a month on each new smartphone customer, but it won t be limiting their usage. Instead it s actually encouraging its customers to consume more.

There's really only so many times we can point out that AT&T's claims of spectrum crunch and capacity constraints are completely contradicted by AT&T's own publicly-available data, and that if AT&T is suffering any such limitations with their current resources -- it's due to poor network design and implementation. The truth is AT&T's raising rates because they can in an uncompetitive market they dominate. Stephenson's just pouting because for one of the first times in a generation, his company wasn't able to buy government help in keeping it that way.
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Permalink for 'The EU Starts Looking At Tough Online Privacy Protections - U.S. Government, Ad/Software/Content/Telecom Industries Immediately Whine'

The EU Starts Looking At Tough Online Privacy Protections - U.S. Government, Ad/Software/Content/Telecom Industries Immediately Whine

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 9:32am MST

Here in the United States the press and politicians pay a lot of lip service to caring about privacy, but given that the modern zeitgeist is that all-regulation-is-evil-no-matter-what -- lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have refused to actually implement privacy protections for the modern age. The result has been an avalanche of new barrier-pushing tracking technology with absolutely no consumer protection lines drawn. The result? AT&T works for the NSA, ISPs lie about the sale of clickstream data, supercookies are undeletable, and both your location and interests are tracked constantly -- down to the second -- without you really having much of a say about it.

EULAs only cryptically inform users of what's tracked and sold, and opt-out mechanisms may or may not work -- if they even exist. Good consumer protection laws would at least give some power back to consumers in terms of what data is collected, how long, and who it gets sold to. Instead, we've seen a total government logjam on this front punctuated by hollow lip service, courtesy of the lobbying muscle of the telecom, advertising/marketing, and content industries.

Interestingly in the UK the government has managed to stand up to this lobbying onslaught and is now considering new privacy protection rules that would give some power back to the consumer. According to a European Commission statement, a new overhaul to 1995 privacy rules would give consumers a slew of additional rights, including the "right to be forgotten" (having your collected data deleted) and making data collection opt in.

As you might expect, editorials galore sponsored by the content, software and marketing industries (some clearly disclosed, some not) are popping up Internet wide arguing that any privacy rules that actually work would "chill innovation and digital progress." The United States government (of the people?) meanwhile is threatening Europe on industry's behalf, arguing that protecting the privacy of consumers might actually cost some money.

There's no doubt the initial EU proposal has problems when it comes to nailing down moving targets, holes will be punched through the rules at the behest of intelligence organizations, and the very idea you can fully delete online activity is likely naieve. Getting privacy protection modernized in the age of deep packet inspection certainly won't be easy.

While the industries impacted are arguing that they'd like to "have serious conversations" on the "right" kinds of rules, these claims have proven repeatedly disingenuous. The "conversation" so far has consisted of lobbyists battling tirelessly to derail any real privacy law creation. All of the industries impacted have made it abundantly clear they do not want real protections of any kind hampering the billions to be made from new ad technologies -- particularly if the rules are of the opt in variety.
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Time Warner Cable Net Profit Jumps 44% - Guess Metered Billing Wasn't Necessary After All?

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 7:38am MST

A few years ago you might recall that Time Warner Cable executives claimed they wouldn't be able to survive financially if they weren't allowed to start billing users by the byte. Several years after that proposal was shot dead by public outrage, and flat-rate broadband pricing continues to treat the company very well. Time Warner Cable's fourth quarter earnings show a 44% jump in fourth quarter net profit, with double-digit gains in broadband, VoIP and wholesale transport services revenue. Though the company stoically continues to deny the impact of Internet video, they're seeing continued pressure from cord cutting and telcoTV, resulting in a loss of 129,000 video subscribers. Those losses were countered however by the addition of 130,000 broadband subscribers.
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'Jailbreaking' Exemption to DMCA Expires Soon - EFF Pushes to Ensure Jailbreaking Remains Legal

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 6:32am MST

As it stands, the often empowering act of jailbreaking your device remains perfectly legal thanks to an exemption embedded in the DMCA. In July of 2010 the government created an exemption, ruling that such tinkering perfectly legal as long as the intent wasn't to bypass copy protection. With the exemption set to expire, user uid://656685 writes in to note the Electronic Freedom Foundation is waging a campaign to convince the U.S. Copyright Office to extend the exemption and expand it to ensure it covers tablets. The USCO is fielding comments via this link until February 10 at 5 PM Eastern Time. If you actually like having full control over the devices you pay hundreds of dollars for, it might be worth making your voices heard.
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Hawaii Pushing Major New ISP Surveillance Laws - All User Behavior Recorded, With No Pesky Privacy Protections

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 6:15am MST

As we noted earlier this week, Senator Lamar Smith not only drafted SOPA, but he also is pushing a law that would require that ISPs track the personal online behavior of users for up to 18 months. Smith's pushing the law under the pretense of waging a tougher war against child porn, when in reality it's simply yet another in a long line of expansions of domestic surveillance capabilities. The push was a priority for the Bush/Gonzales Justice Department, and is also now being championed by the Obama Administration Justice Department.

User uid://1122567 writes in to note that Hawaii is getting a running start toward the mandatory ISP tracking age. Hawaii's HN 2288 requires that "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years by ISPs. Bill sponsor Democratic Rep. John Mizuno of Oahu isn't saying who pushed him to draft the bill (read: entertainment industry, intelligence/law enforcement), but he apparently didn't see fit to ensure that the bill include any privacy protections for consumer data whatsoever:

Mizuno's proposal currently specifies no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent are security requirements such as the use of encryption. Because the wording is so broad and applies to any company that "provides access to the Internet," Mizuno's legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii's local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

As we, and at least one ISP CEO have pointed out, the biggest problem with these laws is they're creating a treasure trove of personal data that hackers will most certainly lust after.
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AT&T Posts Quarterly Loss Due to T-Mobile Deal Implosion - Posted a Net Loss in Broadband Users Due to DSL Defections

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 5:46am MST

AT&T released their fourth quarter earnings, posting a fourth quarter net loss of $6.7 billion, or $1.12 a share, on revenue of $32.5 billion Don't feel too badly for AT&T, as $4 billion of that quarterly hit was due to their $4 billion T-Mobile break up fee, which the company admitted was probably only closer to $1.5 billion after tax deductions. AT&T sold a record 9.4 million smartphones on the quarter and added 717,000 new wireless subscribers to bring wireless sub totals to 2.5 million. The company added 208,000 AT&T U-verse TV and 587,000 U-Verse Internet customers, but posted a net loss of 49,000 broadband customers due to users in un-upgraded markets leaving for faster alternatives.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: January 26th, 2012, 3:29am MST

The human cost built into iPads nytimes.com
RapidShare Attorney: If We're Shut Down Like Megaupload, Then YouTube, Dropbox, Apple's iCloud Are Next fastcompany.com
Should the Fifth Amendment Cover Your Encrypted Data? time.com
Sprint 4G rollout will be very Texas-centric initially lightreading.com
UK ISP's BT and C&W fined for basically ripping up roads where ever and whenever they damn well wanted to ispreview.co.uk
Netflix subs rebound in Q4, regains 600000 of 800000 subs lost in Q3 price hike fiasco lightreading.com
Symantec: Anonymous stole source code, users should disable pcAnywhere arstechnica.com
UK ISP O2 fixes leak that gave personal info to websites zdnet.co.uk
EU warns five member states on telecoms rules; France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary risk court referral unless new rules pass into national law totaltele.com
Company claims new routing will breath life back into SMS, make it more profitable gomonews.com
Sprint vs. Verizon vs. AT&T wireless plans yahoo.com
Microsoft, not Apple, holds the key to smartTV success? thenextweb.com
Is iMessage Starting to Take a Bite Out of Standard Texting? nytimes.com
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Netflix's Demise Was Greatly Exaggerated - Total Subscribers up 25% From Last Year Despite Missteps

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 3:38pm MST

While Netflix still dominates the streaming video market to the tune of 65%, 2011 wasn't a particularly pretty PR year for the company. Netflix instituted a relatively-massive price hike, an announcement of a split off of their DVD and streaming services, a confusing reversal of that plan, and somehow found time to insult everybody in America. The company also decided several times to revamp a GUI that wasn't really broken in the first place -- instituting interface changes on both their website and Xbox 360 app that actually made their streaming product less useful.

Not too surprisingly, Netflix took a significant customer satisfaction hit. There was also oodles of hand-wringing analyst pontification about how Netflix was doomed. Forgotten amongst these dour tirades was the fact that Netflix is competing against a cable industry that institutes bi-annual rate hikes, with their obliviousness to consumer price sensitivity teetering into the obnoxious.

The fact is that even at existing price points, with a streaming catalog that's increasingly sparse due to studio suffocation, Netflix still offers good value to content consumers.

Despite the awful-terrible-no-good-2011, Netflix's fourth quarter earnings report wasn't as bad as expected, with the company posting better earnings (revenue of $876 million) than Wall Street analysts predicted ($857 million). Netflix had warned investors the company would be losing money, but those losses will be due to international investment plans, not because of their clunky 2011 missteps.

The real indication of how customers handled Netflix's bumbling is in subscriber numbers, and on that front Netflix ended the year with 24.4 million U.S. subscribers, up 25% from one year earlier. Netflix gained 220,000 U.S. streaming-only subscribers -- but lost 2.76 million DVD-by-mail customers during the quarter. That latter stat isn't too surprising, given that studios are waging all out war on Netflix's ability to offer new releases, combined with the inevitable shift toward streaming video and away from physical media.

All in all however, tales of Netflix's demise are greatly exaggerated. One bit of note, Netflix made it clear they don't expect their domination of the video streaming market to last, with Amazon being their biggest, baddest competitor in 2012. "We expect Amazon to continue to offer their video service as a free extra with Prime domestically but also to brand their video subscription offering as a standalone service at a price less than ours," says the company.
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 3:36pm MST

How Apple Support helps iPhone thieves MSNBC.com
Sprint Reveals More on Roaming, and AT&T Pounces wirelessweek.com
Analysts look for pattern in pay-TV subscribers decline; operators shift attention to broadband totaltele.com
UK privacy watchdog to probe O2 over phone number leaks zdnet.co.uk
Smartphones uptake limited by confused and indifferent consumers fiercewireless.com
Regulator allows UK 4G trial extension knowyourmobile.com
The bottom's dropped out of UK prepaid phones gomonews.com
Motorola sues Apple for patent infringement MSNBC.com
Cable prepares to blend DOCSIS and EPON lightreading.com
UK regulator CEO calls for creation of common set of principles to guide all aspects of digital media, including broadcasters and Internet publishers totaltele.com
Amazon looking into taking on NetFlix nypost.com
Open webOS 1.0 announced: HP to complete webOS open sourcing by September, Enyo 1.0 and 2.0 code available today theverge.com
Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful as Current Gen ign.com
iPhone is ready for production, indicates likely summer launch 9to5mac.com
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Industry Pushing Canadian Version of SOPA - Complete With Internet Filters, ISP Content Babysitting

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 1:17pm MST

While SOPA/PIPA is all but dead here in the States, Canadian law professor Michael Geist notes that the entertainment industry is pushing the Canadian equivalent through Canada's legislative corridors. In a blog post, Geist notes that Canada's Bill C-11 contains all the obnoxious things that generated such heated protest here in the States, including website blocking, Internet termination for alleged repeat infringers, and an new powers opponents worry -- just as with SOPA -- are overly broad and could make life difficult for legitimate businesses. From an earlier Geist post:

According to the music industry document, Bill C-11's "enabler provision" should be expanded to include "services that are primarily operated to enable infringement or which induce infringement." Those demands are echoed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, which called on the government to "amend the enabling provision to ensure that it applies to services that are "designed or operated" primarily to enable acts of infringement." Both groups also want statutory damages added to the enabler provision so that liability can run into the millions of dollars for a target website.

The result, of course, is that legitimate businesses are terrified they'll find themselves in the crosshairs of a trigger happy entertainment industry, their overly broad definition of what constitutes an "enabler" of piracy, and their personal police force (a growing list of easily lobbied governments). Also just like SOPA, critics wonder why the law is even necessary, given the government seems to have all the tools necessary to pursue Canadian websites like ISOHunt.
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Georgia Wants to Be a Broadband Backwater - Yet Another Attack on Community Broadband

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 11:28am MST

You'll recall that last year, after four years of lobbying by Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink, North Carolina passed a law seriously restricting the right of local communities to wire themselves for broadband -- even if local incumbents wouldn't. Neither Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink are what you'd call aggressive when it comes to upgrading last mile speeds, so the law made sure they wouldn't have to worry about locals getting fed up and say -- building a wholesale fiber ring that then allowed regional ISPs to compete.

Supporters of these bills proclaim they're interested in "leveling the playing field" and "free markets," when in reality they're interested in protecting regional duopolies and ensuring that community network building is immensely cumbersome. Creating a "level playing field" is always code for "creating pricing, funding, deployment and other bureaucratic restrictions private ISPs don't face." Why? If done right, municipal broadband can make lazy duopolists have to actually work for your money, driving down profits. The answer for ISPs? Throw money at lawmakers who'll gleefully work to kill community broadband.

Now Georgia is considering a bill that aims to take broadband-related decision making rights away from local communities while erecting barriers for community broadband. Christopher Mitchell at Community Broadband Networks takes a look at SB 313:

The bill first requires communities to ask the private sector to build the necessary network....The bill requires communities to pass a referendum before building a network and requires inaccurate, damning language be included on the ballot. Broadband referendums tend to invite deep-pocketed incumbent providers to spend heavily to buy the votes necessary to stop competition - see the Longmont saga for an excellent example of how hard it is for a community to stand up to these big cable corporations.

Communities that somehow get this far are then subject to all the regulations as are private providers in addition to numerous additional regulations imposed on them by this legislation and their inherent duty to operate in an open and transparent manner. Despite being nonprofit, they are required to pay taxes and still face additional barriers that private operators do not.

They will be restricted in how they price their services and where they offer services in ways the private sector is not.

As noted, ISPs particularly love bills that require endless public hearings and votes, where deep-pocketed carriers can can out spend supporters by millions of dollars on (often incredibly sleazy) PR campaigns aimed at shouting these services down. That same money could be used to upgrade last mile connectivity, but isn't thanks to the uncompetitive markets these companies are trying to keep uncompetitive. The result? Continued slow speeds, high prices and poor service, all protected by the very government ISPs claim they don't want involved in the market.
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Cablevision, Verizon Still Bickering Over Ads - NAD Gives Cablevision Wrist Slap for '3X Faster' Claim

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 9:39am MST

Cablevision took a massive public relations beating four months ago after an FCC study showed that the company failed to provide the speeds they advertised 50% of the time. Since then we'd noted that Cablevision had been quietly bumping delivered speeds, and yesterday the FCC confirmed that Cablevision had made serious strides over the last four months -- now delivering advertised speeds 90% of the time during peak hours. It didn't take long for Cablevision to seize on the announcement, filing suit against Verizon -- then settling that lawsuit with Verizon for an undisclosed sum.

Cablevision recently escalated the dispute with a new series of ads claiming Cablevision's faster than FiOS -- at least as long as you're comparing Cablevision's 50 Mbps service to Verizon's slowest-available FiOS speed. In a new press statement, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau has given Cablevision a wrist slap for the ads, several of which insist Optimum Online is "3X faster than FiOS" well, aren't true:

NAD recommended that the advertiser modify the challenged advertisements to make the basis of comparison for the 3X Faster claim clear to consumers by adding it to the main claim rather than disclosing the basis of comparison in a fine print disclosure. NAD noted in its decision that the upstream speeds available to consumers who subscribe to the Optimum Online Ultimate Triple Play bundled package with Optimum Boost are not "3X Faster" than the upstream speeds available via Verizon s Triple Play bundled package.

The NAD process is a self regulatory system where cases can be handed off to the FTC for false advertising enforcement. However, most ads have already run and had their impact by the time competitors get around to retracting misleading claims.
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Google Fiber Runs Face First Into Bureaucracy - As Unfounded Rumor of Surewest Acquisition Swirls

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 7:52am MST

Last week we noted that Google's effort to deploy 1 Gbps fiber in Kansas City had run face first into some bureaucracy, with delays being caused over debate about pole fiber connection rates and the physical placement of lines. Google apparently believed their brand name would be enough to help them float over and above the annoying red tape hurdles faced by all ISPs. There's a few unsubstantiated rumors that have surfaced since, suggesting that Google could acquire SureWest to help move things along. As Benoit Felten over at Fiber Revolution notes, such a deal would be rather unlikely:

The original lofty goals of the Google Fiber initiative have already been considerably watered down, and the "blueprint" nature of the project is already seriously in question, but if Google needs to buy an existing and successful business to achieve its goals, not only is it admitting failure, it's throwing out the window any pretense that their model is replicable and that other municipals could do what they're doing.

The rumor was likely started to pump stock, and the delay likely isn't severe enough to acquire an entire ISP. While Google's schedule has been dented slightly, the original story noted that an agreement with the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities should only be a few weeks out. Google certainly has the money for pole attachment fees (which they apparently felt they should be allowed to bypass), especially given all the free marketing the deal provided. If Kansas City wants to be too difficult in negotiations, there's a long list of cities clamoring for faster connectivity.
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CRTC Officially Cites Rogers For Neutrality Violations - ISP Has Until February 3 to Resolve Issues

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 5:25am MST

Recent data shows that Canadian cable ISP Rogers is the worst ISP tracked by MLabs when it comes to meddling with, throttling, or otherwise restricting user traffic. As Canadian network neutrality complaints rise sharply after the nation imposed new neutrality laws, Rogers is busily responsible for more than half of them -- as the company continues to use network management platforms that impact legitimate traffic, applications and games (just ask our users).

This is something that has been going on for at least five years, and is well documented by our regular readers, several of whom have been instrumental in complaints to the Canadian government. The CRTC finally sent Rogers to their enforcement division last October after years of complaints about the throttling of legitimate applications and games like World of Warcraft. Now the CRTC has sent Rogers a letter officially stating the ISP is violating the rules and has until February 3 to respond:

Based on the preliminary results of our ongoing investigation, Commission staff is of the belief that Rogers Communications Inc. ( Rogers ) applies a technical ITMP to unidentified traffic using default peer-to-peer ( P2P ) ports. On the basis of our evidence to date, any traffic from an unidentified time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports will be throttled resulting in noticeable degradation of such traffic. Enclosed please find a summary of our evidence.

...Within two weeks, I look forward to you either presenting us with a rebuttal of our evidence or providing us with a plan to come into compliance with the Act. Failure to provide a meaningful rebuttal or an effective plan will result in my recommendation to Commissioners to hold a show-cause hearing. I look forward to your response by 12:00 pm, February 3, 2012.

The CRTC's enforcement of their own rules has been somewhat glacial, and the CRTC ruling comes just after current agency boss Konrad von Finckenstein left his post. If the CRTC had hoped that "naming and shaming" ISPs would force compliance -- that certainly hasn't yet worked with Rogers. Despite ample documentation of their dysfunctional throttling practices, Rogers issued a statement claiming the company was "surprised" by the CRTC's ruling. Rogers now has to present evidence and counterclaims or face hearings before the CRTC (a prospect that's clearly not terrifying Rogers) -- after which they might be subject to a small fine.
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Lamar Smith's Other Really Awful Law - Expanding Domestic Surveillance Under Guise of Child Protection

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 5:14am MST

For much of the last decade the U.S. government has been trying to force data retention requirements on ISPs, most frequently under the banner of fighting child pornography. New bills seem to pop up every year or so, though privacy advocates have traditionally beaten such efforts back. Mandatory ISP data retention was something you'll recall was a priority for the Bush/Gonzales Justice Department, and (much like warrantless wiretapping) is now being championed by the Obama Administration Justice Department.

The latest effort is H.R. 1981: Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act (pdf), a bill that would require ISPs retain user data for 18 months. Its primary champion is SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith, so SOPA's defeat is drawing renewed attention to the bill. While Smith pushed SOPA (an Internet filtering effort) as a jobs creator, he's pushing HR 1981 (an expansion of domestic surveillance authority) as an effort to stop child porn.

Civil rights groups charge the law isn't needed because existing laws are more than suitable to target and stop child pornographers. Law enforcement and intelligence supports the law because they claim they lack the adequate tools to monitor suspects, despite a decade of unprecedented new intelligence law (read: Patriot Act). As Sonic CEO Dane Jasper recently explained, the biggest problem may be that storing all of that data makes a delicious hacking target:

Do the wheels of justice or investigation move too slowly, and should data be retained for a long time to allow for legitimate investigation? No, there are already tools in place that law enforcement can easily use to ask ISPs to preserve log information of real online criminals. The 1996 Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act allows law enforcement to require an ISP to keep data for 90 days upon law enforcement request, giving time for a legitimate search warrant to be reviewed by a judge and issued. But, keeping data on every online user for a full year presents far too much potential for abuse.

It has been interesting to watch folks jostled awake by SOPA suddenly noticing all of the bad laws and trade agreements currently in play. Of course if they had been paying attention all along, laws and trade agreements like these wouldn't get so easily shoveled through the legislative process.
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Was MegaUpload Crushed to Stop MegaBox Launch? - U.S. Government: The Best Weapon Money Can Buy

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 5:12am MST

After the entertainment industry and their personal police force (aka the United States government) wiped MegaUpload off the map last week, questions were circling as to why the government would exert so much force on a company that was showing up in civil court, adhering to takedown requests, and likely could have been shuttered without all the fanfare. So why the rush? Apparently the entertainment industry was concerned about MegaUpload's upcoming launch of a product called Megabox, which would have offered an entirely new, artist-friendly distribution model for music and video to the company's existing 50 million users:

The kicker was Megabox would cater to unsigned artists and allow anyone to sell their creations while allowing the artist to retain 90% of the earnings. Or, artists could even giveaway their songs and would be paid through a service called Megakey. Yes that s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works, Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak in December. Megabox was planning on bypassing the labels, RIAA, and the entire music establishment.

Again, critics charge MegaUpload wasn't simply crushed by the government for breaking the law. If the government truly cared about the law, they would have actually punished the financial industry for running a con so massive they caused global economies to collapse. If the government truly cared about the law, they wouldn't work in concert with companies like AT&T to break surveillance and privacy law at every conceivable opportunity. The idea that this police action was solely about the "LAW" (TM) is a simplistic aerial view of the global police action taken last week in the shadows of SOPA protests.

As the article above suggests, it seems very likely that MegaUpload was crushed primarily for protectionist reasons. MegaUpload was dismantled not simply because they were ignoring copyright law, but because they were successfully building a system that bypassed the traditional entertainment industry -- and crowing about it.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 25th, 2012, 4:27am MST

President Cites 'Incomplete' Broadband Buildout broadcastingcable.com
The revenge of the Baby Bell's washingtonpost.com
UK ISP O2 caught sharing customers mobile phone number with websites itproportal.com
Companies Face Fines as Much as 2% of Sales Under EU Privacy Law bloomberg.com
Beyond the Box: Thinking Through Next-Gen TV huffingtonpost.com
Study: Job growth follows growth in wireless broadband zanesvilletimesrecorder.com
More than half of Verizon smartphone sales in Q4 were iPhones cnet.com
MegaUpload founder denied bail in New Zealand as he waits for US extradition hearing totaltele.com
Wireless bandwidth: Are we running out of room? computerworld.com
Piracy and privacy roughtype.com
Super-powered 'frankenmalware' strains detected in the wild theregister.co.uk
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 4:33pm MST

Is France's 'three strikes' anti-piracy banhammer working? theregister.co.uk
Dish pitches revised LTE plan wirelessweek.com
Verizon eating Sprints 4G lunch lightreading.com
MPAA Honcho Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a 'Watershed Event' hollywoodreporter.com
World's First 700 MHz Active Antenna Solution? cable360.net
Analyst: Shorter Windows Could Reduce Movie Piracy; Proposes $20 to $25 Price Point For In-Home Viewing of New Movies multichannel.com
A little spending cash: Apple reports record $13.06 billion profit loopinsight.com
The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed physibles as the next frontier of piracy extremetech.com
Five Important Ways Windows 8 Will Embrace Mobile Broadband pcworld.com
Verizon: 44% of subs use smartphones informationweek.com
Apple's 'thermonuclear war' against Android is a very expensive fail (so far) venturebeat.com
Google s New Terms Of Service & Privacy Policy: Anything You Do May Be Used To Target You? marketingland.com
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What Happens to Customers Waiting For Verizon FiOS? - 30% of Verizon Customers May Wait Years for Upgrades

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 2:01pm MST

We've noted often how with the exception of a few major existing franchise obligations, Verizon's FiOS upgrades are essentially over. That means around 40% of Verizon's broadband customers on slower DSL and in a lot of major cities (Boston, Baltimore, Buffalo) are still waiting for next-generation upgrades. The company is now focused on far more profitable wireless ventures (read: no unions, no pensions), and if you're currently stuck on DSL the understanding has been that you can expect it to stay that way -- assuming your market isn't sold off to a smaller phone company.

Verizon's still a little murky on exactly what the next phase of FiOS entails (if there is a next phase). Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM noticed a few interesting new comments made by Verizon CFO Frank Shammo during today's earnings conference call. According to Shammo, there is going to be a concerted effort this year to upgrade people to FiOS if they're dealing with highly problematic copper lines. Said Shammo on the conference call:

So what you re going to see this year is a very strategic initiative, that we go out and we look at areas where there are chronic copper problems and we start to transform them onto our FiOS network. And the math would say if there is a chronic problem that we have to visit more than two times a year, the actual financial benefit of us transforming that to FiOS pays for itself within that year."

Shammo's comments give the impression that Verizon wants to single out any and all costly copper repair markets and upgrade those users for cost efficiency's sake, but in a follow up conversation with Verizon we found that's not entirely the case. We're told Shammo was simply saying that in markets where a customer has the choice of both FiOS and DSL, Verizon's going to push DSL users on lines that require numerous truck rolls to upgrade. Shammo's not saying that if you're just out of range that Verizon will try to upgrade you, even if the economics of running fiber are cheaper than copper.

The math would say if there is a chronic problem that we have to visit more than two times a year, the actual financial benefit of us transforming that to FiOS pays for itself within that year.

-Verizon CFO Fran Shammo

"We're leveraging our multi-billion investment in fiber optics, at no additional cost to the consumer, as we begin transitioning customers who've had chronic problems with their copper-based services over to FiOS," Verizon's Bill Kula tells Broadband Reports. According to Kula, as of the end of 2011 Verizon passed (not necessarily served, customers may be just out of range) 16.5 million households with fiber.

The last available statistics show that after selling off a significant chunk of their DSL and landline networks to Frontier, roughly 60% of Verizon's existing broadband footprint is covered by FiOS. That still 40% of Verizon broadband users on DSL at a time when investors are unwilling to wait for the long term returns of further upgrades. Verizon says their goal is to have 70% of their overall broadband footprint covered with FiOS as they reach 18 million homes passed.

The majority of the users that will bump the hopes passed total from 16.5 to 18 million will come from ongoing obligation builds in New York, DC, Philadelphia, and other cities that have signed franchise agreements. However, not all of those users can expect coverage, either. In New York City Verizon's franchise agreement promises they'll cover 100% of the city by 2014, but the agreement fine print allows Verizon to buy or wiggle their way out of that agreement if they're not seeing the kind of TV subscription uptake they'd like.

That still leaves about 30% of Verizon's broadband customers without upgrades, and it remains unclear what happens to them. You still get the sense that Verizon certainly wouldn't be opposed to offloading a few more undesirable markets like they did with Fairpoint and Frontier, though criticism about the more under-handed nature of those slick deals has grown a little loud. Between selling off some additional smaller markets and making piecemeal upgrades, progress for those remaining users may be glacial. If you're in a city like New York where there are franchise obligations

Keep in mind there continues to be concerns that Verizon's new wireless deal with the cable industry includes a gentlemen's agreement that Verizon won't push FiOS into any new cable partner markets beyond their already scheduled build. There has also been some pressure recently by Wall Street for Verizon to fuse with Verizon Wireless and get out of wireline completely, given the higher costs associated with workers who unionize to protect their rights. Whatever happens one thing remains clear: about 30% of Verizon's customer base could be waiting a long time for upgrades.
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If You're Waiting on FiOS, You Could Be Waiting a While - 30% of Verizon Customers May Wait Years for Upgrades

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 2:01pm MST

Shammo's comments could give the impression that Verizon wants to single out any and all costly copper repair markets and upgrade those users for cost efficiency's sake, but in a follow up conversation with Verizon we found that's not entirely the case. We're told Shammo was simply saying that in markets where a customer has the choice of both FiOS and DSL, Verizon's going to auto-upgrade DSL users who've had particularly troublesome lines. Shammo's not saying that if you're just out of range that Verizon will try to upgrade you, even if the economics of running fiber are cheaper than copper.

The math would say if there is a chronic problem that we have to visit more than two times a year, the actual financial benefit of us transforming that to FiOS pays for itself within that year.

-Verizon CFO Fran Shammo

Cox Playing With Discount TV Tier - Launches 'TV Economy' Tier in Select Markets

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 11:40am MST

Over the last year cable operators have paid a lot of lip service to families that are struggling financially, but has stubbornly refused to compete on price. That's thanks in part to the fact that despite complaining a lot about price hikes, many families continue to shell out the cash for TV service. Companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have rolled out some new discount tiers, but they fail to offer real value, given they can't be bundled, lack many standard channels, and can't be used with a DVR. In other words, it's a way for the companies to say they're addressing the growing annoyance at cable prices without actually doing so.

Cox Communications is now jumping into the mix. According to a letter (pdf) obtained by Fierce Cable, Cox is quietly rolling out a discount TV tier called "TV Economy" in parts of New England, Louisiana, Virginia and San Diego. Obviously the biggest cost savings on this bundle comes from pulling the most costly cable channel to operators out of the lineup: ESPN.

At first glimpse at the new tier's website, there doesn't appear to be the same restrictions we've seen from other tiers of this type, but if you notice any, please tell your fellow users in the comment section below.

"The TV Economy package was initially introduced as a trial offer in certain markets and was not a permanent part of Cox's standard tiers of service. Cox is now adding TV Economy as one of our standard service offerings as part of our continued effort to provide a variety of options that serve our customers' needs and suit their budgets," says Cox.
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Comcast Takes Heat for Interrupting NFL Playoffs - Eli Manning Versus Comcast Xfinity Advertisements

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 9:17am MST

Comcast is taking some heat this week after key moments during the NFC Championship Game were interrupted by Comcast ads taking aim at Verizon FiOS. In addition to normal advertisements, users in several markets were greeted with ads that prevented users from watching them from watching live gameplay on at least four occasions. "When I leave Comcast Xfinity for Fios, this will be shared as exhibit one," says a user who posted a video of the problem to YouTube. Comcast tells the Washington Post the problems were restricted to the DC area, and were caused by local-ad insertion equipment failure at local affiliate WTTG Fox -- not by something done by Comcast.

Update: Fox 5 issued the following statement about the problems:

Sunday night, FOX 5 experienced technical problems that affected the airing of Comcast Xfinity commercials during the NFC Championship Game. We apologize for the impact these technical issues had on the viewing experience of Comcast subscribers and have taken additional steps to ensure that these problems do not happen again.

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Verizon Posts $2 Billion Loss - Largely Related to Pensions, iPhone Subsidy Costs

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 7:39am MST

Verizon has released their fourth quarter 2011 earnings, and while the company posted a whopping $28.4 billion in sales, they posted a $2 billion loss. Why? According to Verizon, the company posted a $3.4 billion pre tax pension charge, but they also took a hit due to their up front subsidizing of the Apple iPhone. On the wireless side growth continued strong, with Verizon posting 1.5 million retail net additions for a total of 108.7 million total wireless connections, 92.2 of which are retail. On the wireline front Verizon added 201,000 new FiOS Internet and 194,000 FiOS Video customers, but only saw a net gain of 98,000 broadband users due to continuing to bleed DSL users in un-upgraded markets. At the end of 2011 Verizon served 4.8 million FiOS Internet and 4.2 million FiOS Video connections.
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Instead of SOPA, Beat Piracy With Better Product - Cable, Broadcast Wants to Have Cake and Eat it Too

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 6:11am MST

For years the entertainment and cable industry have wanted to eat their cake and have it too, insisting they want to stop piracy, then fighting tooth and nail when it comes to making their content available via low cost, high quality distribution platforms. When someone comes along and tried to make an Internet video service that was innovative (Netflix) they've tried their best to drive them out of business. When the industry does deem it worthy to offer that content, they offer it only to customers who already pay an arm and a leg for cable (aka the TV Everywhere walled garden) in a misguided attempt to protect legacy business models.

Danny Sullivan has an interesting letter to Rupert Murdoch urging that instead of supporting crap legislation like SOPA and accusing Google of being a villain, he might want to make sure he's actually competing in the space he's trying so hard to protect. Sullivan points out that while Murdoch bitches and moans about people pirating his content, News Corporation (and all the other major media companies) are doing their best to ensure that users flock to piracy by making watching his content as difficult as possible:

Despite paying for Hulu Plus (and DirecTV), I cannot watch The Simpson on any device like my Roku player that is designed to play The Simpsons direct to my TV. I gather this is because you don t want me to buy Hulu Plus and stop paying for DirecTV, right? I get that. But it s not like I have the same option to watch archived episodes on DirecTV, If they re offered on demand, they are impossible to find.

I can t even authorize my Hulu account to know that I m paying DirecTV already, as I apparently could if I had a Dish account. Why not? Who knows. You or DirecTV or Hulu are all probably fighting with each other over rights issues. But hey, it s not like I can get HBO GO on my Hulu, either. Despite paying for HBO through DirecTV, they don t let me enable my Roku with it, either.

Sullivan doesn't even touch on recent retransmission disputes, which have driven users to pirated sports streams (News Corp. took this to an entirely new level of annoying by including a Hulu blackout during their dispute with Cablevision). Walled gardens, obnoxious DRM, and poor distribution platforms have been the standard over the last five years as broadcasters continue to believe they can stop piracy by suing everyone and anything, implementing Internet filters that don't work, turning ISPs into expensive baby sitters, and passing awful protectionist legislation.

In reality you simply cannot stop piracy you can only hope to slow it -- and the best way to slow it is to provide inexpensive, easy access to content so that piracy becomes a less tempting alternative.
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What Now for the UK’s Digital Economy Act? - UK's File Swapping Assault Not Working Out So Well

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 6:05am MST

Earlier this week Andrew Crossley, sole solicitor ACS Law, finally went before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal: he was suspended for two years and fined 76,326.55. ACS Law, which is now dissolved, became infamous over a number of years for sending out thousands of letters accusing people of downloading files illegally. Over several pages of legalise the letters threatened court action unless a fine, usually of just under 500 (about $770) was paid.

However, only around 20 people that ACS accused of illegal downloading ended up anywhere near a courtroom and the firm failed to actually prosecute a single person. In the final case before the firm s collapse the judge presiding said that he was, "getting the impression with every twist and turn since I started looking at these cases that there is a desire to avoid any judicial scrutiny."

In his final summing up the same judge added that the cases bought by ACS, "based on untested legal and factual propositions and issues of technology." As a result of the whole affair, Crossley faced the tribunal on seven counts. Perhaps the most concerning of the allegations were that he had acted against his clients best interests when there was a conflict of interest between them and that he used his position as a solicitor to take advantage of others.

Nevertheless, Crossley only objected to one charge that he failed to take adequate steps to protect his clients' data and it seems unlikely that he ll appeal the tribunal s decision, as he is entitled to within 28 days of the hearing, given that he accepted the vast majority of charges.

Some watchers of the case might have cause to wonder whether ACS should have been subject to sanction from the criminal courts or, indeed, whether other people in the company should have been held accountable for their actions.
After all, ACS took the, already too hot to handle, filesharing caseload over from Davenport Lyons and it was that firm that actually drafted the letters, cribbed from a similar German law. Yet Davenport Lyons have never faced any action and further prosecution seems unlikely.

Crossley s disciplinary action is, in other words, the final word in long and very sorry tale for ACS Law.
What now for the DEA?

The conclusion of the affair does raise some interesting questions for the future, however.

In early 2013, the UK is set to introduce a controversial three strikes and you re out rule on filesharing under the terms of the Digital Economy Act (DEA). The idea is that ISPs themselves turn filesharing police on their users: monitoring IP addresses, matching those to real names and addresses and then sending out notifications. In draft, there s even a provision for those notifications to include a warning that the recipient could go to court, although the law they d be charged under remains unclear.

But the ACS cases show how difficult actually identifying from IP can be: piggybacking on a connection is fairly common and, as several lawyers in the case have noted, filesharing sites increasingly insert spoof IP addresses into BitTorrent clouds. Both Davenport Lyons and ACS Law actually started pursuing those it accused of illegal downloading before the DEA was made law but both used the, then nascent, three strikes rule as justification for their actions.

Even so, pressure is growing for the UK to go ahead and implement.

Just this week the industry-backed Film Policy Review Panel said that it "...recommends that as soon as possible the Government and Ofcom implement the provisions in the Digital Economy Act designed to reduce significantly online infringement of copyright. As it stands, though, implementation is likely to seem to sanction the actions of ACS Law and pave the way for more firms in their image.

Julia edits the consumer guides at Choose, a UK price comparison site, which among personal finance and shopping, helps people to compare TV, phone, broadband and mobile deals.
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CenturyLink Shutters Qwest VoIP This Month - Forgets to Tell Some of the Service's Users

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 5:59am MST

Back in November CenturyLink sent many customers notices saying they were shutting down Qwest's VoIP service in a few months, after acquiring Qwest last year for $22.4 billion. Users were of course nudged away from the less-expensive VoIP service and toward CenturyLink's pricier legacy phone service and all the usual fees that entails. However, not all customers say they got the notice. Windows-focused writer Ed Bott says CenturyLink never sent him a notice that his Qwest VoIP service would be going dark, and that he needs to pay twice as much for POTs service with half the feature, and now risks losing his old number. Progress courtesy of mergers and acquisitions?
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 24th, 2012, 4:09am MST

802.11ac 5G Gigabit Wi-Fi potentially coming to Apple s iPhone 5 and iPad 3 knowyourmobile.com
Small cells taking off, femtos leaving home fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Supreme Court says GPS tracking requires a warrant theregister.co.uk
Consumer watchdog group urges EU to block Google's Motorola deal pcworld.com
UK Mobile Broadband Operators Block Access to the Tor Project Website ispreview.co.uk
Global 3G subs pass 1 billion mobile-ent.biz
US warns of mobile radio bandwidth crunch to come totaltele.com
5 technologies that will plug the Internet directly into your brain dvice.com
Judge: Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops cnet.com
Charter Lights Up EBIF On 1.6 Million Set-Tops multichannel.com
Cox launches $35 monthly 'TV Economy' programming packages fiercecable.com
Canada's CRTC introduces policy to bolster IP network migration fiercetelecom.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 4:33pm MST

MPAA threat sparks White House petition for bribery probe theregister.co.uk
Bill in Senate will limit public broadband ajc.com
Megaupload Shutdown Means Other Companies Turning Off Useful Services techdirt.com
Why cable needs EPON over coax lightreading.com
The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada michaelgeist.ca
LTE spectrum: How much do the big carriers have? networkworld.com
Verizon Wireless Could Raise Government Eyebrows Over Bandwidth Deal with SpectrumCo ibtimes.co.uk
AT&T, T-Mobile file request for spectrum transfer fiercewireless.com
UK regulator Ofcom to borrow spectrum for London Olympics tmcnet.com
MegaUpload shutdown actually made global Internet traffic drop ispreview.co.uk
Microsoft gives details on mobile broadband improvements in Windows 8 itbusiness.ca
AT&T adjusts Playastation Vita data pricing slashgear.com
Anonymous dupes users into joining Megaupload attack networkworld.com
Senator Says LightSquared E-mails Smack of Improper Contact multichannel.com
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AT&T, Verizon Have Plenty of LTE Spectrum - Verizon's Just Been More Efficient With Theirs

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 3:49pm MST

We've noted in recent weeks Wall Street analysts, trying to boost acquisition rumors and stock holdings, have been insisting AT&T needs to buy somebody really soon because they're desperate for spectrum. Except as spectrum holding audits show, AT&T is in a prime spectrum position (especially after the Qualcomm deal) -- they just need to use the spectrum they have more efficiently. Verizon's unsurprisingly in the driver's seat with an average of 62MHz of spectrum available in the top 100 markets after their huge cable spectrum deal. AT&T will be in just as good of shape once they start migrating users away from 2G networks:

AT&T's trouble is that, despite having roughly the same overall spectrum holdings as Verizon, the company is still using a lot of its spectrum for its legacy 2G services. This in part helps to explain why AT&T has been behind Verizon in terms of overall LTE deployments. As of this month, Verizon has rolled out LTE in 195 markets covering 200 million points of presence while AT&T has set up LTE in 26 markets covering 74 million PoPs. UBS analyst John Hodulik says it will take AT&T some time to migrate its 2G users away from its spectrum on the PCS and cellular bands, but he also says AT&T will be in a comparable LTE spectrum situation to Verizon once it frees up those frequencies.

AT&T continues to insist that they needed to buy T-Mobile for spectrum despite the fact their own data showed otherwise. Except any network legroom problems are of AT&T's own making, something competitors and consumer advocates recently pointed out during T-Mobile deal hearings. Rumors AT&T needs to continue gobbling up competitors aren't real; AT&T just wants that spectrum because the more spectrum they hold, the less potential for competing services there is.
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The National Broadband Map Goes Mobile - Now You Can Get Unreliable Data on the Go!

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 1:31pm MST

In February of last year the government launched the nation's first ever national broadband map. Unfortunately, the map was met with significant criticism due the fact the data collected from ISPs drastically overstated speeds, failed to include price, and the map often informed users ISPs serve their area when they don't. While the government insisted the $300 million map would improve given constant updates, the first update to the map since its February launch only just occurred late last year, and most users note the map still suffers from inaccuracy. On the plus side, the government has announced that users can access the map data from mobile devices, making it easier to obtain completely inaccurate information on service providers while you're out on the town.
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AT&T's Still Not Enforcing DSL, U-Verse Usage Caps - Still Clearly Having Problems With Internal Systems

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 11:24am MST

In March of last year we were the first to exclusively report that AT&T would be imposing caps on DSL (150GB) and U-Verse (250GB) users, with consumer having to pay $10 for every 50GB over the cap they travel. Our leak caught AT&T a little by surprise, as the company wasn't quite ready to announce the plans yet. Our users quickly started reporting that the meters AT&T was using were completely inaccurate, with home routers showing drastically different consumption readouts than AT&T's official website monitoring tool. As of August, AT&T still hadn't figured out how to bill for overages.

Last summer AT&T informed us that the company hadn't started billing users because they were "still providing time for customers to understand and learn about their usage."

We're getting closer to a year since we broke our story about caps and AT&T still isn't enforcing them. Several users tell us their usage has yet to trigger a single warning from AT&T, and at least one user seems intent to push his usage into the terabytes each month and hasn't heard a peep from AT&T. Users aren't complaining, they just find it -- odd.

You can be fairly certain that if a company like AT&T (breathlessly eager to please investors with new usage surcharges) was able to accurately bill users for usage they'd already be doing so. That they're not suggests the company still hasn't quite worked out the back end billing kinks in their systems. We've seen similar problems in Canada where companies like Cogeco have struggled to accurately measure usage. AT&T's at least holding off until their systems work, knowing how touchy this issue is to many U.S. consumers.

AT&T users: have you received any warnings from AT&T? Does your area have a working website usage meter in place?

Update: Some DSL users in select markets say they have started getting charged for overages.
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With SOPA Postponed, Attention Shifts to ACTA - As Activists Try to Keep Momentum Going

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 9:25am MST

As we've discussed, the ACTA took all of this country's worst copyright ideas --many of them enshrined in the controversial DMCA -- made them considerably worse, then foisted them upon much of the globe with little to no real public discussion. With SOPA temporarily derailed due to public disgust, attention is now shifting to the entertainment-industry-written awfulness that is the ACTA. Combined with the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) these agreements do a number of things, but most notable for our readership is the effort to ensure ISPs must be held liable for the content shared on their networks.

SOPA opponents are hoping some activism can rub off on attempts to stop the ACTA and TPP, and have started a new petition trying to erode ACTA support. Poland meanwhile is reviewing their decision to sign off on ACTA after the websites of the prime minister, parliament and other government offices were taken offline by Anonymous. Apparently the combination of the attacks combined with public outrage caused Polish leaders to rethink their position:

And Michal Boni, the minister for administration and digitization, acknowledged in a radio interview Monday that the government had failed to hold enough consultations with the public on the matter. An opposition party, the Democratic Left Alliance, also called on the government to not sign in it in a gesture of solidarity with those who warn it could hurt Internet freedom.

While there were victories had last week, the mindset and dysfunctional global political systems that allowed SOPA/PIPA to exist in the first place remain intact. It's driven by a United States entertainment industry that stubbornly refuses to adapt to the broadband age and has resorted to burning down the house in an effort to save the baby: passing awful protectionist laws to prop up dying middleman legacy business models, regardless on the repercussions for free speech, free markets, artist payouts or the proper functioning of the Internet.

As SOPA has shown, the growing U.S. public disgust at the actions of the government, MPAA and RIAA (now operating as one unified organization) could prove particularly toxic in the upcoming U.S. Presidential elections. Such actions are even less popular across the pond where citizens are already sensitive about their leaders becoming errand boys for American interests.
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MegaUpload Pops Back Up (Sort Of) - As Digital Locker Companies Run for Cover

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 7:01am MST

After being taken offline by the U.S. government in a massive global raid, MegaUpload appears to have popped right back online -- sort of. The website is only operating via a single IP address at the moment and not very well at that, but the site insists they're "working to be back full again." Meanwhile, digital locker storage services like FileServe and Filesonic have been running for cover, shutting down affiliate programs and shuttering services, disallowing all downloads except those "that you have uploaded personally." Mediafire meanwhile tells VentureBeat that they're not changing anything. We don t have a business built on copyright infringement," says CEO Derek Labian. "Like many other cloud-based sharing services like Box.net and Dropbox, we re a legitimate business targeting professionals."
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WildBlue Users: Exede Is Not What You Promised Us - Faster Speeds Come With Higher Prices, Lower Caps

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 6:19am MST

The other day we noted that while ViaSat heavily hyped their new "Exede" satellite broadband service at CES, now that the service has supposedly launched, many users note they can't actually get it yet. Existing users who have been waiting for this upgrade for years are being told they have to wait in line behind new users. Depending on where you live, you may never be able to sign up for the service. Worse perhaps, many of these users note that the new service actually comes with lower daily usage restrictions (dubbed the "fair access policy" or FAP) than WildBlue's existing service. One user in our forums puts his disappointment rather eloquently:

We have been living with low caps on Wildblue for years, then for several years they promise an upgrade that will change everything. Then they up the speed to something most people don't need, and REDUCE the amount of data available by a large amount, increasing the price as well significantly. It was not what we were lead to believe. This was supposed to be an upgrade, but the speed is useless without quantity, that point has been made over and over.

And it doesn't take someone sitting all day to go over the caps. It can take a little over an hour every day for one person to go over on the current 512Kbps plan, imagine with more speed how easy the person can go over with about 23% less data available.

Bottom line, it was not an upgrade, period, for many of us. Every neighbor I know is thinking the same thing, some currently drive 30 miles one way to get to a free hotspot to have enough bandwidth for online classes. The offered new plans are not enough for what they do either. Is anyone that understands the limits of satellite asking for anything unreasonable? NO.

The frustration is understandable, given that ever since ViaSat began building their new satellite in 2008, they promised users that this would be an evolution in satellite broadband. As we had warned however, the high cost of satellite launches meant that acquiring new users was going to be a priority, and that improvement of existing usage restrictions would be on the back burner. The only hope that many of these captive customers have is that LTE service from one of the major players (which suffers from similar caps) makes it way into their market.
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France Telecom Refuses to Compete on Price - Is it OK if we Just Pretend This Isn't Happening?

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 6:04am MST

Earlier this month new French wireless ISP Free started turning heads by offering some disruptive pricing, including a free level of base service that includes 60 voice minutes and 60 SMS's. Users also get access to the ISP's public Wi-Fi hotspots, and 3GB of data for 19.99 (roughly $25, or $20 if they bundle landline broadband service) per month. The initial response by competitors is somewhat amusing with incumbent operator France Telecom apparently deciding that the right reaction to the shake up of France's stale wireless sector is to pretend it isn't happening:

France Telecom will not match the low-cost mobile offers recently launched by new operator Iliad because such aggressive pricing would be bad for network quality and innovation in the long-run, said its chief executive. France Telecom's Chief Executive, Stephane Richard, criticized a race to the bottom on mobile prices and attacked what he cast as his competitor's reckless approach. "The real risk is that all the operators become 'low-cost', meaning less investment, fewer services and jobs," he told France's Journal de Dimanche. "We will never match prices because we offer security, reliability and innovation."

And by "innovation," they apparently mean not being innovative when it comes to service price tags, something made possible by the previous lack of real competition.
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RIM CEOs to Give Up Posts - Though Shake Up May Not Be Disruptive Enough

Posted: January 23rd, 2012, 5:46am MST

After product delays, multi-continent unexplained service outages and lackluster offerings, questions as to how and why RIM's co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs reached a fevered pitch over the last few months. Confirming recent rumors, a report in the Wall Street Journal claims both Lazaridis and Balsillie will officially be giving up their positions to new CEO Thorsten Heins. Many are lamenting the shake up as having not shaken hard enough to truly disrupt a corporate culture that has resulted in plummeting company fortunes. A new introductory video of Heins suffers from a lot of the same problems RIM has exhibited in recent months -- namely the delusion that continuing down the same path RIM is already on will result in fortune and glory.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 3:54pm MST

Megaupload raid seen as declaration of war; Anonymous launches 'biggest attack ever', brings down RIAA, Universal Music, the US Copyright Service, the US DoJ, & the FBI websites motherjones.com
How mobile data plans should be set up zdnet.com
LTE-Advanced - Think of it as broadband for cars gigaom.com
4G femto's to ship by year's end cable360.com
Sparks start to fly in Verizon/MSO deal lightreading.com
Carl Icahn buys up some of Lightsquared's debt yahoo.com
Femto Cells becoming more important to operators tmcnet.com
EU closely monitoring SOPA totaltele.com
Megaupload preparing world-wide crack copyright criminal defense team cnet.com
Windows 8 to manage your mobile broadband use for you arstechnica.com
The unrealized potential for wireless charging for tablets zdnet.com
New Google accounts now require Gmail and Google+ Google Operating System
Facebook in talks to replace YouTube as Vebo's host cnet.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Hello there. Have Something to Say?

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 3:54pm MST

The weekend is here, so please empty your thoughts into the comment section below. Just remember to clean up after yourselves.
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Untethered Jailbreak Arrives for iPhone 4S, iPad 2 - "Absinthe A5" Tool Arrives for Apple Owners

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 1:14pm MST

Those eager to avoid their carrier's monthly "because we can" tethering fee may be interested to know that a fully untethered jailbreak has finally been released for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. A new tool dubbed "Absinthe A5" has been released allowing iOS devices with A5 processors to be jailbroken, after which users need to visit the Greenpois0n website to complete the jailbreak. The release comes the same week as AT&T announced they'd be raising prices for wireless data (albeit with modest cap increases as well). Be wary: AT&T's been tracking heavy usage and then automatically upgrading users to their most expensive tethering tier.
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ITU Certifies New 100 Mbps Wireless Standards - LTE Advanced, WirelessMAN-Advanced (WiMax 2)

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 11:31am MST

With people already confused over what constitutes 4G wireless broadband, the International Telecommunication Union threw another wrinkle into the mix this week by approving IMT-Advanced, which some are already not-really-accurately calling "5G." According to the ITU press release, they've approved new specifications for the next generation of wireless broadband, IMT-Advanced, including LTE Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced (aka WiMax 2). The real benefit? Speeds up to 100 Mbps.

IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fibre optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your phone at least 100 times faster than today s 3G smart phones."

-ITU

"IMT-Advanced would be like putting a fibre optic broadband connection on your mobile phone, making your phone at least 100 times faster than today s 3G smart phones," claims Fran ois Rancy, Director of ITU s Radiocommunication Bureau, who adds it's not just about speed, but efficiency.

"IMT-Advanced will use radio-frequency spectrum much more efficiently making higher data transfers possible on lesser bandwidth, (enabling) mobile networks to face the dramatic increase in data traffic that is expected in the coming years."

The ITU's release is careful to avoid the term 4G or 5G, after the kerfuffle it caused when the organization kowtowed to the whims of U.S. wireless company marketing departments, and allowed pretty much everything but carrier pigeon to be defined as "4G". That resulted in significant consumer confusion to the point where the term was pretty much rendered utterly meaningless.

All you really need to know is that these new standards offer faster and more efficient connectivity -- particularly when the user is in motion. Both AT&T and Sprint have stated they plan to begin upgrading their networks to the standard sometime in 2013.

Surely the more efficient use of bandwidth means you'll be seeing higher usage caps, right? Probably not, since pricing is increasingly not actually tied to network and congestion realities but to investor demand for ever-escalating returns. LTE was supposed to give carriers the ability to raise caps given the added legroom (something engineers will confirm), but instead caps have gotten lower and we've moved away from unlimited data plans despite capacity improvements.
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Competitors Worry About Cozy Verizon, Cable Deal - As FCC and DOJ Begin Taking Look at Antitrust Issues

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 9:42am MST

Consumer advocates remain worried that Verizon's co-marketing partnership and spectrum deal with the cable industry contains either a documented or undocumented "gentlemen's agreement" that Verizon will limit future expansion of FiOS to prohibit more intense landline broadband competition. As we discussed, that would mean that the company's already stalled FiOS upgrades would remain that way as a courtesy, in exchange for being able to sell LTE service to millions of new cable customers.

T-Mobile, Sprint and DirecTV are also worried about the competitive impacts of the deal, and are urging the FCC to take a closer look. Verizon and Comcast have voluntarily provided some additional detail on the deals in a new FCC filing, though the majority of what was disclosed is private to the public, and there's certainly no guarantee a non-compete agreement was even put in print.

As they have in every instance where regulators have tried to actually regulate, Verizon is arguing the FCC lacks the authority to do anything about the marketing arrangements should the FCC find something they don't like in the deals:

Verizon Wireless and its partners argued that commercial agreements do not need FCC approval and "have no bearing on whether the spectrum sale is in the public interest" so they do not need to be part of the FCC review...The partners also told the FCC that the spectrum license agreement and the commercial agreements "are not contingent upon each other" so either could go ahead even if the other were not approved, according to the filing.

As we've noted the Verizon cable deal is of particular concern of smaller telcos like Windstream, CenturyLink, Frontier and Fairpoint. Such companies already lack the funds to seriously upgrade their networks to compete with faster cable speeds, and now have to deal with Verizon LTE services that in some instances offer faster speeds than these telcos' landline services. There's an added layer of insult for Frontier and Fairpoint since Verizon convinced them to gobble up unwanted Verizon networks and debt -- only to now face Verizon returning to these markets to erode those customer bases.

The combined marketing muscle of Verizon and Comcast (or Time Warner Cable) would likely erode already weak competition in many of these more-rural markets. Unfortunately, regulators have shown time and time again that they're perfectly ok with uncompetitive landline markets, so it seems unlikely that Verizon and their new cable BFFs have much of anything to worry about from a regulatory angle.
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Reid Delays Vote on PIPA - SOPA/PIPA Support Becomes Liability for Democrats

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 7:10am MST

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that he will postpone a test vote scheduled for next week on PIPA, indicating another victory for this week's anti-SOPA/PIPA activists. In a statement, Reid (just as the MPAA/RIAA is doing) insists that the problems with the bills can be fixed with some additional work, even though it's certainly clear that both Hollywood-written laws have become politically toxic. Still, Reid seems to insist that a consensus can be reached within a few weeks, even if this week's events were an early death knell for the MPAA/RIAA written laws:

I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks."

Originally PIPA/SOPA weren't about political affiliation or partisan politics; the bills were just awful -- period. But responding to this week's blackouts, most of the politicians backing away from SOPA/PIPA were Republican, and GOP Presidential candidates last night all came out against the laws. That placed a new layer of pressure on Reid and the Democrats to stop supporting the bills, lest they want to get swept away on a wave of public disgust.

It seems likely you'll only have to suffer through a few more weeks of empty rhetoric about job creation by the MPAA/RIAA (and the politicians who love their campaign contributions). It seems clear that SOPA/PIPA will be too much of a liability during election season and are headed out to pasture, replaced by new, slightly-less-awful MPAA/RIAA written legislation at a later date -- when you're paying less attention.
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PIPA, SOPA One Step Closer to Dead - SOPA/PIPA Support Becomes Liability for Democrats

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 7:10am MST

DOJ, ICE Shut Down MegaUpload - RIAA/MPAA's Personal Police Force Works Hard For Their Money

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 6:30am MST

MegaUpload, one of the world's largest file-swapping sites (actually one of the world's largest websites, period) was shut down yesterday by the US Justice Department and ICE. According to a federal indictment, seven individuals and two companies involved in the website are have been engaging in "a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement." The result? A massive sting operation resulting in arrests and property seizures across multiple continents.

The move is a curious one given that similar cyber-locker services have been declared legal around the globe, the company had been voluntarily showing up in court to civil copyright proceedings, and claims to have been adhering to DMCA takedown requests.

According to the DOJ however, this cooperation was only skin deep, and both ICE and DOJ are appear to have e-mails showing the company was consistently aware they were making a killing off of copyrighted files -- that documented awareness resulting in them losing their protection under the DMCA.

The width and breadth of the global police action are simply massive, and are, quite justly, being painted as a massive over-reach. The full indictment goes so far as to mention Canadian bandwidth provider Cogent, whose headquarter employees were even held and questioned during the raids this week. Indeed, anybody who provided bandwidth, rack space or Internet services appears to have been held, questioned, and/or pressured in the global raids.

There's plenty of questions popping up around the raids, most notably being why exactly the government feels the need to push for SOPA/PIPA when they were able to extend their copyright assault globally so easily. The intensity of the action is also being questioned, given the United States seized a Dutch citizen in New Zealand over a copyright claim, despite the fact the company involved had been cooperating in the courts. Despite the clear trade in copyrighted files, many of the files on MegaUpload were legitimate, and systems were in place to remove copyrighted content.

The reality is that the company was supported by many artists and had also been building a system that directly compensated artists. The crime wasn't conspiracy -- it was cutting out the RIAA/MPAA middle men. Then flaunting it.

The timing of the effort is also bizarre given the outrage surrounding SOPA/PIPA, layered on existing outrage over a lack of financial sector accountability for the U.S. economic collapse. While those crimes were ignored, this indictment is chock full of language that applies nefarious implications on routine business practices (routine money spent on advertising and other business expenses is repeatedly deemed part of the "Mega Conspiracy"), and the RIAA/MPAA-style language of the indictment certainly doesn't quell the notion that the entertainment enjoys using the full power of the United States government as their personal plaything.

With the White House's recent statement against SOPA/PIPA upsetting the MPAA and RIAA, the government apparently wanted to make it very clear that Hollywood's campaign contributions were still very much appreciated.
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Verizon Delays VoLTE Until 2013 - Initial Deployments Hurt by Incomplete LTE Upgrades

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 6:00am MST

Aside from the faster speeds offered courtesy of LTE, users should ultimately come to expect higher quality voice service over wireless networks, courtesy of VoLTE. Most analysts are still predicting that VoLTE should arrive in the second half of this year, which in telecom analyst parlance -- means 2013. During demonstrations last year Verizon stated they'd offer the technology sometime in 2012, though initially users would have to choose a 3G phone call or a 4G VoLTE call -- because the latter won't be able to hand off to the former. As this Ericsson white paper explores however, there was going to be some serious headaches caused by VoLTE implementations across only partially-built LTE networks. That appears to be part of the reason that Verizon's VoLTE launch is rumored to now be scheduled for early 2013.
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O3b Satellite Service One Year From Launch - Google-funded Effort Aimed at Connecting Have Nots

Posted: January 20th, 2012, 5:57am MST

A few years ago O3b Networks was getting plenty of press for a $750 million plan to bring broadband to many have-nots with the financial support of Google, HSBC, and Liberty Media boss John Malone. The plan was to use 16 new low-earth orbit satellites and create an entirely new satellite-based wholesale operator, with a focus on particularly unconnected areas like Africa, where bandwidth costs continue to be astronomical. Several years on and the company says they're about one year out from the launch of their satellites. Like many satellite efforts these predictions seem to slide rather easily, with the project originally slated for a late 2010 launch. The O3b website has more detail on the low-altitude technology for those interested.
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Virgin Mobile Starts Throttling March 23 - Use More than 2.5 GB, Get Slowed to 256 kbps

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 3:30pm MST

Last July Sprint-owned wireless carrier Virgin Mobile changed up their pricing plans significantly, and announced they'd be implementing a new throttling system that involved throttling user speeds back to 256 kbps if they consumed more than 2.5GB a month. In order not to sour the launch of a few new devices, last September Virgin announced they were postponing their throttling plan until "sometime in 2012." 2012 is here, and Virgin Mobile this week announced that the throttling will begin as of March 23.

According to the Virgin Mobile website, starting March 23 users will receive a text message informing them if they've consumed more than 2.5 GB of data in any given month on their "unlimited" data plan. Once you cross the line, your speeds are throttled to 256 kbps for the rest of your billing cycle, and when a new billing cycle starts, your speeds return to normal.

"By putting this data speed reduction in place, we're making sure we can deliver the same quality service you've come to expect from Virgin Mobile," says the company about their plan to slow you to 1999-era speeds. "We hope you understand."
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Boston Mayor Trying to Fight Relentless Comcast Rate Hikes - Begging FCC for Authority to Stop 80% Hikes Over Three Years

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 1:42pm MST

Boston is like many cities and suffers from a lack of cable competition and increasingly-eroded regulatory authority, meaning that local incumbent Comcast can generally overcharge for services as they see fit without competitive or regulatory repercussions. Since a price capping agreement expired three years ago Comcast has raised rates in the city 80%. Last May Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino filed an emergency petition with the FCC seeking authority to regulate the cost of basic cable in Boston for the first time in a decade.

Boston originally was able to regulate basic cable prices until Cablevision in 1997 convinced the FCC that with the arrival of RCN, the sector was so competitive regulatory price supervision wasn't necessary. The FCC deregulated price controls further in 2001. Six months after his request the FCC is still reviewing it, so according to the Boston Globe, with another round of major rate hikes by Comcast, he's trying again:

Menino said in a statement yesterday he is again asking the Federal Communications Commission to restore regulatory authority to Boston, the second such request in less than a year. His latest request comes after the Globe reported yesterday that Comcast was again planning to raise prices for its minimal cable offering, this time by 4.9 percent, to $16.58 a month. "We d like them to give us the tools to help protect consumers, especially those working families who are disproportionately affected, Menino told the Globe yesterday.

Given the growing revolving door (see graphic, above) between Comcast and the federal government, it's no wonder that they're not doing much to help put a lid on Comcast price hikes, or to encourage more competition in markets in order to organically drive prices down. A lawsuit in Philadelphia recently accused the cable giant of overbilling users in the city to the tune of $870 million, with accusations of similar anti-competitive behavior and price gouging in Boston and other cities.
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Charter Informs Users of Price Hikes - For Both TV and Internet Services

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 11:37am MST

uid://1813438 writes in to note that Charter Communications is just the latest in a long line of companies informing users of price hikes for the new year. A thread in our Charter forum details the notice Charter is sending out to customers, which alerts users that most hikes will range from $2 to $5, depending on the service. "Like other businesses, Charter has experienced a rise in our overall cost of doing business, in particularly relating to an increase in the cost we pay for programming as well as equipment," a Charter spokesperson insists.

While not always necessarily the culprit, programming is usually an easy and believable excuse for constant TV rate hikes. However, the cost to prove landline bandwidth is usually either fixed or declining, yet Charter is also informing users they're raising rates for all of their broadband service tiers.

On the positive side, it's the first Internet price hike for most Charter users in roughly half a decade, Charter did boost speeds significantly last December, and they haven't started charging per-byte overages (yet). The changes:

Internet Express (15 Mbps): Current price $44.99 -- New price $47.99

Internet Plus (30 Mbps): Current price $54.99 -- New price $57.99

Internet Max (Being discontinued): Current price $69.99 -- New price $72.99

Internet Ultra (100 Mbps): Current price $84.99 -- New price $87.99.

Happy cable rate hike season everyone!
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SOPA Protests Result in Political Backpeddling - The Rise of a New Age in Technology Activism?

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 9:30am MST

While the MPAA decried yesterday's SOPA/PIPA protests as a "publicity stunt," it seems clear that the protests did have their intended effect, with at least 18 Senators having withdrawn support for SOPA. ProPublica is keeping a running tally, and the numbers aren't going in the RIAA/MPAA's desired direction. Some, like Congressman Bruce Braley, did so in amusing fashion. Many politicians tried to placate the roaring hordes yesterday by using vague language saying they heard constituent concerns, but stopping short of actually saying they'll vote no when the bill(s) come up for a vote.

Google says their petition against SOPA netted 4.5 million signatures. According to Wikipedia eight million people looked up their elected representatives' contact information via the Wikipedia tool, and 162 million people viewed the blackout landing page. 75,000 websites are believed to have shuttered all or some of their functionality.

While PIPA and SOPA are still moving forward, support has certainly taken a hit. As the year moves on and election season heats up both bills are going to start becoming more toxic given uniform public outrage. The entertainment industry is going to do their best to salvage these bills with a lot of empty rhetoric about job creation, but it seems likely that the damage has already been done.

The lesson for lawmakers here appears to be that you don't piss off the Internet. Another lesson appears to be that allowing corporations to write awful laws in exchange for campaign contributions doesn't work quite as well when the public is informed and paying attention. Just-as-awful technology legislation is passed on a daily basis that doesn't get the same level of scruity PIPA and SOPA have received. Then again, there's few organizations that have cultivated quite the volume of public disgust as the RIAA and MPAA, and there's nothing confusing about the dangers of letting both irresponsible, incompetent and aggressive organizations dictate legal process, network security and website censorship.
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SOPA Protests Result in Political Backpedaling - The Rise of a New Age in Technology Activism?

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 9:30am MST

AT&T Raises Wireless Data Prices, Caps Slightly - $20 for 300 MB, $30 for 3GB, or $50 for 5GB

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 7:22am MST

AT&T ditched unlimited data pricing for the iPhone in June of last year, eliminating their $30 unlimited data tier and giving new users the option of either a 200MB $15 plan or a $25 2 GB plan (with $10 per gigabyte overage fees). Now the company is informing users that they're raising these caps ever so slightly -- but they're also raising the price of wireless data. The cap on their lowest tier is being bumped from 200 MB to 300 MB, but the cost of the plan will now be $20. AT&T's $25 plan will now be $30, with the usage cap raised from 2GB to 3 GB. There's also a tethering plan for those too afraid to jailbreak their devices.

In short, AT&T users have three options now:

•AT&T Data Plus 300MB: $20 for 300MB
•AT&T Data Pro 3GB: $30 for 3GB
•AT&T Data Pro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

Overages remain the same, with users on the Data Pro 3 and 5 GB plans paying a whopping $10 per each additional gigabyte consumed, while users on the Data Plus plan need to pay another $20 for each 300 MB of data consumed. AT&T says they've also changed their tablet data plans as well, with AT&T offering users either 3GB for $30 a month, or 5GB for $50 a month. So far AT&T's promised family plans, allowing you to pool data across family members or devices, is a no show.

Why the hikes now? "Our new plans are driven by this increasing demand in a highly competitive environment, and continue to deliver a great value to customers, especially as we continue our 4G LTE deployment," AT&T says in their press release. In reality, AT&T's concerned about Verizon's lead in LTE deployment, and a promotion Verizon's been running that offers double data caps for the same price. Customers being hit in the face with ridiculously costly overages tend to leave, and AT&T's giving users a little more leg room to keep them around -- albeit in exchange for an overall price hike.
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DirecTV Joins the Rate Hike Season Festivities - Informs 20 Million Users of 4% Price Hike

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 5:53am MST

Several DirecTV users have written in to note that they're being informed of yet another round of rate hikes. An e-mail to users in several markets (you can let us know if you're impacted in the comment section below) informs them they're seeing rate hikes of around 4% on upcoming bills. "This year, the programming costs we pay to owners of TV channels will increase about 10%, but we have chosen to adjust the prices our customers pay by an average of only 4%," the e-mail informs users. "On February 9, 2012, new pricing will be applied to DIRECTV programming packages and services." Most programming packages will see $3 to $5 increases, while DVR rental rates are expected to increase anywhere from $1 to $8 a month.
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Windstream Raises Prices on All DSL Tiers - Plenty of Price Hikes With No Improved Speeds For Many

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 5:46am MST

User uid://1577646 writes in to note that Windstream is informing DSL customers of some significant price hikes. "3Mbps -- which is still the max for a considerable amount of their footprint, despite having received stimulus money -- went from 39.99 to 47.99," he notes, adding that Windstream's 6Mbps tier went from $44.99 to $49.99, and 12Mbps went from $49.99 to $52.99. "Since 2004 my Internet bill has gone from $34.99 to $47.99 while my speeds have stayed exactly the same." A representative in our forums notes that rates aren't rising for users who signed up for "price for life" promotions, though users note that this promotion was never offered for standalone broadband users. Windstream's full pricing breakdown can be found here.
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Google's 1 Gbps Fiber Quietly Seeing Delays - Debates Over Pole Attachment Rates, Installation

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 5:37am MST

It's hard to suffer a technical delay when you've consistently been a little murky about when your service will be up and running, but Google appears to be running into a few snags in Kansas City over fiber deployment. According to the Kansas City Star, Google is running behind schedule in part due to a debate over precisely how they'll hang fiber lines on area utility poles. Google originally suggested to locals they'd start signing up their first customers in late 2011 and lighting up the first parts of the network in early 2012, but some debate over attachment rates and technical specifics (like how far fiber has to be hung below power supplies) appear to have slowed progress.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: January 19th, 2012, 4:22am MST

A political coming-of-age for the tech industry nytimes.com
PIPA support collapses as 13 more senators announce opposition arstechnica.com
Verizon plans nationwide VoLTE by 2013 lightreading.com
Koobface virus infections stop after suspects publicly named reuters.com
Protest exposes Silicon Valley-Hollywood rivalry yahoo.com
Google: 4.5 million people signed anti-SOPA petition latimes.com
India may charge telcos for all excess bandwidth totaltele.com
Research Forecasts U.S. Bandwidth Usage by Time and Location, Quantifies Excess Bandwidth Demand marketwire.com
Kodak files for bankruptcy; digital cameras officially take over guardian.co.uk
Internode is first Aussie ISP to turn on IPv6 for new customers pcadvisor.co.uk
BT tops 3 million WiFi hotspots in the UK ispreview.co.uk
OPEN Act, opposition's answer to SOPA, officially introduced to Congress multichannel.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 4:44pm MST

Google Fiber work in Kansas City, Kansas is delayed by dispute over how its wires are hung kansascity.com
AT&T increases prices, usage thresholds on smartphone data plans fiercewireless.com
Samsung denies gong after RIM wirelessweek.com
When will operators bolt to VOLTE? lightreading.com
AT&T, FCC spar over incentive spectrum auction rules fiercewireless.com
WiFi has become a 'must have' feature on entertainent gear zdnet.com
Grooveshark blocks German users over licensing cost torrentfreak.com
Symantec 'fesses up: 'Code theft worse than we thought'; pcAnywhere users - batten down the hatches channelregister.co.uk
Five Koobface botnet suspects named by New York Times theregister.co.uk
More US Consumers Choosing Smartphones as Apple Closes the Gap on Android nielsen.com
Apple iOS, Blackberry tops among business users cnet.com
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Five More Markets Get Verizon LTE Tomorrow - With LTE Expansion in Atlanta, Houston and Spokane

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 3:37pm MST

Verizon today announced that the company will be pushing their shiny new LTE network into five additional markets tomorrow. According to big red, the company will be turning on LTE in the smaller markets of Glens Falls and Utica, N.Y.; Lawton, Okla.; and Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. Verizon says they're also expanding existing LTE coverage in three markets: Atlanta, Houston and Spokane. "As we enter 2012, Verizon s 4G LTE network remains the largest by far in the United States, and we continue to grow the network and bring Verizon s unparalleled 4G LTE services to more and more people," says Verizon CTO David Small. Hopefully that continued progress comes with fewer massive LTE outages in 2012.
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Bloomberg REALLY Wants AT&T to Buy Somebody - AT&T Really Needs Spectrum (Except When They Don't)

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 1:31pm MST

Last month we noted how some analysts on Wall Street have gotten the press to relentlessly push the narrative that with the T-Mobile deal scrapped, AT&T really needs to buy somebody. Since AT&T couldn't get T-Mobile's spectrum, the logic goes, AT&T is on the hunt for somebody else to acquire -- like Dish Network. Both Wall Street analysts and the press seem oddly insistent on ignoring that considering the Qualcom deal and eventually repurposed spectrum, AT&T doesn't need to acquire anyone. AT&T own data shows they didn't even really need T-Mobile's assets to reach uniform LTE coverage to begin with.

Yet here we are, a week later, with Recon Analytics analyst Roger Entner convincing Bloomberg to run yet another stock-pumping story based on the premise that AT&T oh-my-god-needs-to-buy-someone-for-spectrum-or-the-world-ends story:

AT&T wants to get more spectrum, Roger Entner, a Recon Analytics analyst in Dedham, Massachusetts, said in a telephone interview. They are a year behind Verizon in the LTE race. Dish would undoubtedly be a good combination and it would solve a lot of AT&T s problems."

Nowhere does Bloomberg note that AT&T has plenty of spectrum, squats on more spectrum than nearly any other company, never needed T-Mobile to complete their LTE deployment, and will have plenty of spectrum for the next decade if they use existing spectrum efficiently. Alongside anti-competitive concerns, these are reasons why the government rejected the deal. You'd think that the fact AT&T doesn't really need more spectrum would be important to mention in a story about AT&T needing spectrum. Instead, Bloomberg seems happy to pump a decade-old unfounded Dish acquisition rumor on command.
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LightSquared: GPS Testing Was Rigged - Company Claims Entire Process Bogus, Shrouded in Secrecy

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 11:29am MST

LightSquared has been under fire for the fact that tests have shown that their proposed hybrid LTE/satellite network interferes with GPS signals. LightSquared has proposed several low cost antenna solutions they claim could fix the problems (at the GPS industry's expense). The company's problems were compounded this week by a new report by a Federal Advisory board that there is "no practical solutions or mitigations" that will solve the GPS issues. Fighting for their network's life, LightSquared this morning held a press conference in which they effectively argued the entire testing process was rigged:

LightSquared said today that the process used to test GPS devices by Air Force Space Command on behalf of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM) was rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government end users to produce bogus results, and revealed details of the testing to document its accusations.

To help prove their claims, the company trotted out Edmond Thomas, who was formerly the chief engineer at the FCC but is now a paid consultant for LightSquared. Thomas and LightSquared claims that the testing conducted by Air Force Space Command on behalf of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM) was conducted in total secrecy, involved selectively choosing discontinued hardware with limited to no filters for testing, and that the process selected an "extremely conservative definition of failure" unrelated to real world GPS performance intended to increase failure rates.
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Comcast Swears They Didn't Lie About, Squat On Spectrum - Company Considered, Backed Away From Wireless Play

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 9:39am MST

Buried under the roar of CES recently was a little swipe at Comcast by Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who suggested that Comcast may have misled regulators by pretending to acquire precious AWS spectrum licenses for need, only to then subsequently squat on it. Alongside Time Warner Cable and Charter, Comcast recently offloaded that spectrum to Verizon for $3.6 billion. McDowell's concerns were triggered by a comment by Comcast's CFO, who stated the company "never really intended to build that spectrum" -- which McDowell argued means Comcast lied about intent.

To try and defuse the situation Comcast's top lobbyist and policy man David Cohen took to their blog this week, claiming their CFO's comment was "a shorthand reply on a subject with a long and complex history." According to Cohen, Comcast had every intention of building a wireless network, but found (just like Cox Communications did) that jumping in and competing with the likes of Verizon and AT&T simply wasn't feasible and wouldn't give adequate returns:

Focusing on one shorthand sentence in a lengthy Q&A simply does not tell the story. The complete picture is very clear: we acquired spectrum with the intention of using it to help position the company to offer wireless services, we analyzed thoroughly whether we could build a business case to do so, but ultimately concluded, as a business matter, not to become a standalone, facilities-based wireless provider, and having reached that decision, considered other alternatives that would promptly allow for the efficient use of that spectrum to improve wireless consumer experiences.

You could argue that even in 2006 Comcast knew a solo wireless play was not really feasible in the eyes of shareholders (given the CEO's on record saying even back then he didn't think wireless was worth it), but Cohen would probably prefer you didn't. Meanwhile the FCC would probably prefer you not mention that they have quietly condoned spectrum squatting deals just like this one for years.

Comcast's now content to sell Verizon the spectrum in exchange for Verizon being able to market LTE service to Comcast customers, a deal consumer advocates worry comes with the troublesome agreement to reduce real competition on the wireline front. The FCC meanwhile continues to push incentive auctions, while ignoring the problems with giant incumbents who squat on spectrum because there's no "use it or lose it" restrictions on supposedly publicly-owned airwaves.
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ViaSat's 12 Mbps Exede Arrives, Plays Hard to Get - January 16 Launch Actually Means March 1 (or Never) For Many

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 7:26am MST

Last month at CES ViaSat spent a lot of time hyping their new "Exede" 12 Mbps satellite broadband service, which the company plans to sell through WildBlue, Dish, and other rural-focused carriers&#46 Delivered courtesy of their new ViaSat-1 satellite, ViaSat's service will cost $50 for 7 GB of monthly usage (up & down combined), $80 for 15 GB of usage, and $130 for 25 GB of monthly usage&#46

Despite caps and latency, ViaSat has heavily marketed this services as having "feels like fiber" performance, in part courtesy of new web acceleration technology the company has yet to offer specifics on. ViaSat hopes the faster speeds mean Exede will improve satellite broadband's less-than-stellar reputation (see our user reviews).

Early indications on that front aren't good.

According to ViaSat, the service was supposed to launch this week. However, users in our forums note that many of the users trying to sign up for the service are unable to do so, given that satellite beam capacity mean only a portion of the country is being allowed to sign up for service -- and even then only in waves.

"We are rolling out service nationwide right now," says ViaSat's service qualification tool. "We plan to be fully launched with exede5 and exede12 services by March 1, 2012. Please note Exede service will not be available in certain limited areas of the US, even after that date."

Over at the Wild Blue forums a representative confirms that ViaSat-1's footprint won't cover the entire United States, so many customers on old, expensive tiers may not see faster speeds this decade. The rep also confirms that new customers are getting priority, so if you're an existing customer in a launched market you still may have to wait until April or later. Some existing users claim they've been told Exede is for new customers only. Existing users waiting to sign up complain they may actually see their usage caps become lower than existing service.

All in all it's rather par for the course for satellite broadband, which due to the inherent physical limitations and captive, un-competitive market continues to be the Rodney Dangerfield of broadband connectivity. It's faster and available to more people, but it's unlikely to get much respect.
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'Unlimited' Definition Confuses T-Mobile, Walmart - New $45 No-Contract Plan Offers Unlimited-But-Limited Data

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 6:46am MST

Last October T-Mobile did something a little uncharacteristic for a wireless provider: they released a plan clearly acknowledging the shift away from SMS and the idea of the voice minute (since it's all just data)&#46 The no-contract plan, launched in conjunction with Walmart, offered users just 100 voice minutes, but unlimited data (albeit throttled after 5 GB) and SMS for $30 a month. Dubbed "Family Mobile," Walmart and T-Mobile this week announced they've upgraded the offer, offering unlimited voice, data and SMS for $45 a month&#46

While a lot of companies have talked about "buckets o' byte" plans for the whole family, T-Mobile is one of the first to deliver -- albeit only in conjunction with Walmart ($35 each additional line). However, the idea that this is an "unlimited" family plan continues the wireless industry's proud tradition of beating the living snot out of the definition of that word.

The website oddly fails to mention a small catch -- namely that you'll only get unlimited data for the family (and by unlimited they mean 5 GB, after which you're throttled) until March 16. After March 16, each member of the family on this plan only gets 3G speeds for the first 250MB of data consumption each month, after which you're throttled back to something that barely resembles broadband.

un lim it ed uhn-lim-i-tid adjective

1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
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June 6: World IPv6 Launch - Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable On Board

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 5:54am MST

The time for testing is drawing to a close, as The Internet Society has announced that June 6 will be World IPv6 Launch Day. According to the group, they've gotten major websites (Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Bing), hardware vendors and delivery networks (Cisco, Akamai, Limelight) and three of the four largest ISPs (Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable) to sign off on delivering IPv6 services by that date. "No more 'test flight' this is the real deal!" insists the group, which notes that the list of cooperating companies is expected to start growing quite quickly. Those interested in keeping tabs as the date grows closer can visit this website.
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SOPA Lives, as Internet Protests - MPAA Slams Blackouts as 'Publicity Stunt'

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 5:40am MST

While SOPA didn't have a particularly good weekend, reports that the bill had been shelved appear to be premature. Bill co-sponsor Representative Lamar Smith issued a statement yesterday that the bill would see markup in February, after (at least according to Smith's hopes) much of the furor over the bills have died down. Meanwhile Reddit and Wikipedia have taken their traditional websites offline in protest, while Google's logo looks a bit different today. The MPAA issued a statement (pdf) today calling the protests little more than a publicity stunt:

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

At least the MPAA accusing others of skewing facts to further corporate interests ads a bit of comic relief to today's proceedings. Those interested in taking action can find plenty of forms (Google, EFF) making it easy to contact your representatives.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 18th, 2012, 3:49am MST

The Internet 2011 in numbers Royal Pingdom
RIM pushing for sale to Samsung bgr.com
802.11ac to become mainstream WLAN standard in 2013-2014, says Broadcom digitimes.com
MPAA blasts 'dangerous' anti-SOPA blackouts as 'stunts' cnet.com
Hackers steal $6.7M in Johannesburg, South Africa bank cyber-heist net-security.org
Mobile broadband shifts to tiered pricing in Europe -study telecompaper.com
Free.fr starts a wireless revolution gigaom.com
RIAA not suing in the USA anymore, but apparently Europe is still fair game torrentfreak.com
Co-Sponser removes name from SOPA omaha.com
Walmart and T-Mobile launch unlimited wireless plan mobilewhack.com
Yahoo co-founder leaves company; sale talk hots up totaltele.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 4:32pm MST

Sprint updates phones to eliminate Carrier IQ cnet.com
Comcast, TWC, AT&T To Join 'World IPv6 Launch 2012' Event; Aimed at Driving Transition to Next-Gen Internet Protocol multichannel.com
Clearwire to get buddy buddy with LTE TDD lightreading.com
New mobile data pricing plans include mobile hotspot usage lightreading.com
Wireless spectrum doomsday looms informationweek.com
Why is cable discovering the joys of WiFi, and not mobile? gigaom.com
Virgin Mobile suffers UK-wide service outage digitalspy.com
In-App Purchases will dominate the smartphone app business isuppli.com
Entertainment Industry Lobbyists Don't Want To Let Canada Into Secret TPP Negotiations Until Canada Passes More Bad Laws techdirt.com
Apple will not kill iPad 2 on iPad 3 debut reghardware.com
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Chattanooga Gets to See What Broadband Competition Looks Like - Lower Prices, Better Services, More Attractive to Businesses

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 3:28pm MST

For many years we've tracked Chattanooga, Tennessee's attempt to wire the entire city with fiber to the home using the local public utility, Electric Power Board (EPB). Back in 2007, the city council voted 8-0 to approve the $200 million project. Despite several failed attempts by Comcast lawyers to cripple the effort, the plan moved forward to offer some of the best speeds and prices anywhere. By late 2010 the company started offering 1 Gbps connections to locals at a steep $350/month price point, though they've since introduced several bundle options including 30 Mbps and 50 Mbps tiers.

The project was originally projected to take ten years, but wound up taking three. With Chattanooga residents also having the option of AT&T U-Verse and Comcast Xfinity services, they're getting to see what competition looks like. That has included lower bundle pricing and being the first in the nation to see new services deployed, as Chattanooga is now a new project test market. The network has had the added benefit of attracting businesses looking for cheaper bandwidth to the area:

"In a lot of places, you can get the same kind of high speed service as Chattanooga. The difference is the price," said Dan Thompson with Knoxville-based IT company Claris Networks. "Connectivity there for us is about eight to ten times cheaper in Chattanooga than it is versus Knoxville or other cities. That's a huge deal when you're comparing $100 a month or $800 a month." Claris is rapidly expanding its business in Chattanooga due to the city's infrastructure.

It's all precisely the sort of thing Comcast was frightened of when they tried to sue the project out of oblivion five years ago.
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CarrierIQ Still May Face Investigation - As HTC Keeps Promise to Remove Software on Sprint

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 1:31pm MST

The second half of 2012 wasn't very much fun for software developer CarrierIQ, after its stealthy and stubborn embedded handset software set off fire alarms among the security and privacy conscious. If the company was hoping 2012 would be better it doesn't appear to be the case, as several politicians have sent a letter to the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee urging that Congress investigate the company's practices. As of December the FTC was rumored to be investigating the company, and several carriers have been slowly backing away from using the company's software. From the letter:

"Data collection and transmission by Carrier IQ and similar software is widespread, and consumers appear to have little knowledge and even less control over the practice. There continue to be many unanswered questions about the handling of this data and the extent to which its collection, analysis, and transmission pose legitimate privacy concerns for the American public."

This latest push comes as HTC has announced they've kept their promise to remove the software from their phones on the Sprint network. "HTC can confirm that we're working with Sprint to provide maintenance releases that will remove Carrier IQ and provide security enhancements and bug fixes beginning in January," the company said in a statement to the press. Sprint stated they'd disabled Carrier IQ on 26 million devices last December.

The hysteria surrounding CarrierIQ continues to be amusing given the complete lack of larger context in press coverage and Congressional "outrage." Carriers are already sharing/selling every shred of customer location and usage data that isn't nailed down to governments, companies, marketers and civil planners -- often with little to no real transparency. Efforts to create any real consumer protection laws on this front remain mired in Congressional dysfunction and lobbyist cash.

Yet somehow, like NebuAD before them, CarrierIQ has become a small company lightning rod for privacy issues neither carriers or Congress want to seriously address.
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Rogers Unveils $2 Broadband Price Hike For All - Latest Hike Not Received Well by Users

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 11:30am MST

Users in our Rogers forum note that the Canadian cable operator is informing users that as of March 1, most broadband customers will pay $2 more a month for "the many enhancements" Rogers has launched. Needless to say that the price hike isn't going over well in our forums, with users noting that thanks to limited competition they already pay more for service than many developed nations. Rogers has also led the charge when it comes to throttling and capping services, leading all Canadian ISPs in network neutrality complaints. You can find our user reviews here, which can speak to service quality or lack thereof.

Given these failings, customers are a little curious about what "enhancements" Rogers is referring to. In a post in our forums defending the move, a Rogers representative insists that users are lucky that the hikes weren't worse, given Rogers had to "absorb much of these costs." The company insists the improvements include some additional TV channels and SpeedBoost, a technology that delivers a little extra bandwidth at the beginning of a download (Comcast users in the States know it as PowerBoost):

We ve recently added 38 new TV channels and 36% more content to On Demand. We re continuing to roll out the brand new Advanced Search function. We have also developed our Remote TV Manager App for smartphones, allowing customers to set and manage their PVRs while on the go. We ve added SpeedBoost to all of our High Speed Internet packages. We ve also increased monthly usage allowances and increased the posted download speeds on many of our packages.

Rogers is taking a bit of a beating in the thread from customers, many of whom note that Rogers for some time has been advertising Speedboost as a courtesy service offered free of charge. Others note they haven't seen any speed increases in several years, despite seeing annual (or bi-annual) rate hikes. The reality is that Rogers raises rates because the state of poor competition allows them to, something reps obviously can't address honestly. Fortunately for those who do have options, the Rogers hikes come as competitors like TekSavvy are unveiling new unlimited offerings that beat Rogers pricing and restrictions rather soundly.
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SOPA Protests, Blackouts Still Planned - Wikipedia, Reddit Among Sites Going Dark in Protest

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 9:19am MST

Despite SOPA and PIPA running into a bit of a brick wall over the weekend, politicians and entertainment industry lobbyists work overtime to save their controversial legislation. After initially engaging in some fairly major distortions the MPAA has come forward to acknowledge that DNS filtering is officially off the table. Critics contend both laws still have very serious problems when it comes to censorship and erosion of legal rights, and both still put immense pressure on ISPs to become content babysitters.

SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms.

-Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation

As a result, planned protests by several major websites will continue as scheduled, despite the community-driven victory against DNS blocks. Wikipedia/Wikimedia has issued a statement saying that the site will be taken offline for the entirety of Wednesday, January 18 to protest bills that "would seriously damage the free and open Internet." Unlike SOPA and PIPA, Wikipedia had broad community input in to whether to proceed with the planned blackout:

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills.

Wikimedia proceeds to note that SOPA and PIPA are just symptoms of a much larger disease:

The reality is that we don t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we're seeing the development of legislation intended to fight online piracy, and regulate the Internet in other ways, that hurt online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone.

Online community Reddit is also protesting by going offline for twelve hours (8AM to 8PM) on Wednesday.
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Retrans Blackouts Getting Out of Hand - Especially Considering How Much Subscribers Pay

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 6:54am MST

Time Warner Cable and MSG still haven't resolved their ongoing dispute, resulting in a significant number of customers being unable to watch their favorite teams. DirecTV customers have been blacked out from watching NBC and FOX stations. Verizon FiOS customers in Syracuse, NY have been unable to watch local affiliate NewsChannel 9, while FiOS customers in Harrisburg are also unable to watch several local channels. Time Warner Cable users in our forums say they've also been dealing with channel blackouts in South Texas.

This was on the heels of numerous, very ugly disputes in 2011, involving blacked out World Series broadcasts and even the filtering of Internet video services. Are we having fun yet?

It has become rather clear that the rate renegotiation for programming has gotten a little out of hand in recent years, with customers bearing the brunt in blackouts, annoying scrolling warnings, disingenuous PR campaigns and ultimately higher bills regardless of which side wins. So far regulators have been willing to let the kids play, but there's growing calls for some kind of regulatory intervention:

In cases where constituents are powerless and faultless, their elected representatives in Washington are supposed to speak up on their behalf. They are supposed to issue statements, hold hearings, make phone calls, threaten to enact crippling legislation -- do whatever's necessary to bring a quick and satisfying resolution to the impasse. This, after all, is all about their constituents. But what do we hear from Congress and the Obama administration? Nothing. Nothing at all.

As it stands, regulators will likely be unwilling to intervene, continuing to insist these are private business disputes that should be handled by the companies involved. Others will argue Congress has much more pressing affairs to attend to -- like pushing for awful laws written by the entertainment industry. Still, you do start to wonder if the cable TV and broadcast industry isn't pushing their luck at a dangerous time when one in five have (or will) cut the TV cord.

Ultimately, both cable and broadcast companies are simply harming themselves. Customers are already tired of paying a premium for a product they believe is over-priced, with bi-annual rate hikes coming down the pike continually. Playing pinata with consumer interest aims to simply encourage those looking for less expensive alternatives -- including piracy.
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Sprint: No More WiMax Devices - Support Will Continue, But New Offerings End

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 6:19am MST

Late in 2010 Sprint announced a new plan to retrofit all of their base stations not only with more energy efficient gear, but also with 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz spectrum, 4G 2.5 GHz hardware that can simultaneously support Mobile WiMax, EVDO and LTE. As Sprint made clear last October they plan to run all three technologies simultaneously for a few years, and while Sprint has chosen their words carefully and insists they're still dedicated to WiMax, the writing has been on the wall for the technology. As you might expect, Sprint says they won't be unveiling any more WiMax devices as the company gears up for the launch of their LTE network and new LTE devices like the Galaxy Nexus sometime in the middle of this year.
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Comcast Still Faces Cable Modem Fee Lawsuit - Case May Move Forward After Clarification

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 5:53am MST

Last week a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against Comcast by a plaintiff who claims Comcast sells broadband service without disclosing the fact that the subscriber may need to pay to rent a modem. "The amended complaint fails to specify when or where Comcast advertisements were viewed, the content of those advertisements, or which of them in particular Plaintiff relied upon," the Judge ruled at the time. The lawyer in the case is now calling the ruling a good thing, insisting that once the plaintiff highlights specifically where and when Comcast failed to inform them about modem rental fees, that the case will be allowed to proceed. Comcast currently charges a $7 a month modem rental fee unless subscribers buy their own modem.
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Comcast, Verizon Partnership Begins - Seattle, Portland See New Service Bundles

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 5:47am MST

Early last month Verizon signed a massive deal with the cable industry that not only involved grabbing $3.6 billion of cable industry spectrum, but included Verizon being allowed to pitch bundled wireless services to cable customers. Comcast promised that they'd have the partnership up and running in some markets quickly, and the first markets appear to be Portland and Seattle. In both cities the focus is essentially on co-marketing both Verizon LTE and Comcast cable/VoIP/broadband services, with consumers who sign up for multiple services receiving pre-paid Visa card of $100 to $300. Ultimately both Verizon and Comcast say they'll integrate some video and other functionality across wireless and wireline, but initially this is purely a marketing play.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 17th, 2012, 4:49am MST

Google and Facebook say it's not possible to block offensive content that appears on their websites in controversial Indian court case yahoo.com
Netflix hit by class-action lawsuit by investors who claim they weren't informed of the company's (now infamous) price increase move paidcontent.org
Amazon's shoe outlet Zappos reveals that its recent hacking probably affects millions of customers personal info totaltele.com
Verizon, Comcast launch quad-play bundling effort philly.com
UK city's resident's on the (taxpayer's) hook after 92M fast Internet project epically fails yorkshirepost.co.uk
Oopsie! Virgin Media mistakenly sends email to all its subs saying they'll be getting speeds up to 120GB huffingtonpost.com
Europe determined to prevent US from dominating the Cloud bloomberg.com
Comcast sub moves forward with cable-modem rental fee suit multichannel.com
RIM plans 2 more Playbook tablets in 2012, Blackberry 10 in September? yahoo.com
Apple co-founder Wozniak sings praises of Android phones yahoo.com
Nissan introduces self-repairing iPhone case theverge.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 4:00pm MST

Freedompop cagey about revenue model for 'free' mobile broadband service fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Sprint done with WiMax gadgets fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Congress (still) looking into investigating Carrier IQ pcworld.com
Bright House rolls out WiFi in Florida fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Rupert Murdoch Lashes Out Against The White House For Asking Congress Not To Break The Internet techdirt.com
Hacker threatens to release full Norton Antivirus code Tuesday reuters.com
Everything Everywhere upses the whole UK 4G applecart gomonews.com
New broadband subs spike in 3Q'11; highest since 2009 lightwaveonline.com
House Members ask Homeland Security to monitor socil networking sites fiercetelecom.com
Skype coming to Windows phones - how happy will operators be about that? siliconrepublic.com
California imposes standards for battery chargers wirelessweek.com
Uh-Oh PC's: Half of computer sales are mobile gigaom.com
Demand for ebooks soars, libraries struggle to stock virtual shelves washingtonpost.com
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MPAA: Let's Rush PIPA, SOPA Through Anyway - Because Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and Jobs

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 3:03pm MST

SOPA effectively ran into a brick wall over the weekend after the White House came out with a statement urging SOPA backers to head back to the drawing board and draft legislation that doesn't involve censorship and breaking the Internet. As you might expect, SOPA supporters are still hoping to move forward with both bills, taking a number of tactics. One, folks like Rupert Murdoch are trying to vilify SOPA opponents like Google and OpenDNS, insisting they're secretly supporting foreign pirates. In reality, both companies simply highlighted how PIPA and SOPA are just awful pieces of legislation written by people with absolutely no technical understanding for the benefit of campaign contributors.

The second tactic of SOPA and PIPA supporters is to apparently pretend that the shelving of SOPA isn't a big deal, while repeatedly hammering the falsehood that their primary interest in passing these laws is saving and/or creating jobs. The MPAA has issued a statement downplaying White House opposition and the horrible weekend they had, going so far as to insist that "now it is time to stop the obstruction and move forward on legislation," while insisting the White House statement "clears the way for action on these important bills." Also, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs and did we mention jobs?

We applaud the continued leadership in the House and Senate for working to enact common-sense legislation to stop foreign websites from stealing American creativity and jobs. Misinformation simply can't be allowed to replace honest debate, and derail the critically important fight to protect American jobs. We hope the Administration s role in this debate now will help steer the attention now to what can be accomplished and passed into law to protect American jobs.

The problem, as always, is that the MPAA's credibility when it comes to job and piracy statistics simply does not exist. "More jobs!" is also the rallying cry of Democrat Harry Reid, who ignores the fact that the bills could harm the one part of the American economy that is actually creating jobs, the smaller technology startup sector.
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Cable ISPs Offered Fastest Speeds in 2011* - *At Least Among Largest ISPs, And Thanks to Slow DSL

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 1:07pm MST

Todd Spangler over at cable-industry trade magazine Multichannel News crows that cable operators came out on top in 2011 in terms of speed. According to data compiled over at the Ookla Net Index, the six fastest residential ISPs in the U.S. based on average download speed were Comcast, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems, Time Warner Cable and Insight Communications.

The rankings only included the nation's largest carriers (omitting smaller, faster municipal, independent Co-Op or Google fiber operations) and results from both DSL and FTTH/N were blended together, bringing down average speeds for both AT&T and Verzion:

Comcast and Charter delivered average download speeds of 17.19 Megabits per second, followed by Cablevision at 16.40 Mbps, Cox at 15.76 Mbps, TWC at 14.41 Mbps and Insight at 14.22 Mbps. Verizon Communications fared better than its telco peers with an average download speed of 12.94 Mbps, thanks to FiOS Internet, its fiber-to-the-home service that provides up to 150 Mbps downstream. And overall, Verizon had the highest upstream speeds with an average of 7.41 Mbps. Still, the company's legacy DSL services dragged down overall speeds.

Cable's dominance isn't expected to change anytime soon here in the States, with many more rural-focused telcos (Windstream, CenturyLink, Frontier, Fairpoint) lacking the funds to seriously upgrade to fiber to the home, and larger companies like AT&T and Verizon all but halting their last mile upgrades.
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Canadian Network Neutrality Complains Rise Sharply - As Rogers Continues to Bumble Network Management

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 9:38am MST

Back in 2009, Canada passed network neutrality rules designed to protect consumers from anti-competitive treatment of network traffic, though at the time there was a lot of concern about the rules being adequately enforced. Last year a request made of government data revealed that there were fifty two complaints made over the first two years the rules were in place, with roughly half of those having to do with Rogers and their total inability to keep their network management systems under control. Since last fall however, complaints have spiked with 51 complaints having been filed since last September.

The new rules have changed the way many Canadian ISPs tackle traffic management, with Bell announcing last December they'd be backing off throttling completely. However Rogers not only continues to throttle legitimate applications, they continue to insist they're in total compliance with CRTC rules -- despite that clearly and repeatedly not being true:

Rogers is not tipping its hand about any upcoming change to its traffic management policy, but says it operates in "complete compliance" with CRTC's traffic management guidelines. "It's something that our network people look at all the time, and we are constantly evaluating, but we have nothing to announce today," Ken Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs, said in an interview Thursday. Engelhart added that past technical glitches with its popular World of Warcraft game have been solved...

Users in our forums continue to complain that Rogers is engaging in some of the upstream-traffic-choking TCP packet forgery that got Comcast in so much trouble here in the States. It is expected that Rogers will ultimately buckle and move to more intelligent network management, but for now it remains clear that denial is their primary strategy. While Rogers broadband users may not be seeing more intelligent network management just yet, they are getting a new price increase as a new year's present.

Canadian Network Neutrality Complaints Rise Sharply - As Rogers Continues to Bumble Network Management

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 9:38am MST

Users in our forums continue to complain that Rogers is engaging in some of the upstream-traffic-choking TCP packet hijinks that got Comcast in so much trouble here in the States. It is expected that Rogers will ultimately buckle and move to more intelligent network management, but for now it remains clear that denial is their primary strategy. While Rogers broadband users may not be seeing more intelligent network management just yet, they are getting a new price increase as a new year's present.
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SOPA Runs Into Brick Wall - White House Opposes, SOPA Gets Shelved (For Now)

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 7:07am MST

Last week supporters of both SOPA (in the House) and PIPA (in the Senate) tried their best to downplay opposition to the controversial laws, in the process accusing law opponents like Google and Open DNS of secretly helping pirates. As of last Friday, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) were busily insisting the government should rush the laws through then worry about the potentially devastating impact of DNS filters at a later date.

As opposition grew, both Leahy and Smith began stating they really would pull DNS filtering to save the bills. Over the weekend those efforts ran into a brick wall. It began with the White House issuing a statement saying they wouldn't support the bills in their current form:

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity.

Congress also announced over the weekend they'd be shelving SOPA. While that's certainly good news for opponents, this is clearly an effort that the entertainment industry isn't going to give up on, and Harry Reid has stated he'll being sticking to the schedule in pushing PIPA through. It has been fairly clear all along that the primary target of this legislation has been The Pirate Bay, and SOPA likely would have failed in hurting the website.
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Report: LightSquared's Interference Fixes Won't Work - LightSquared: Your Report Suffers From Conflict of Interest

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 6:29am MST

Despite constant claims by LightSquared that they've developed low-cost solutions that will mitigate their planned network's interference with GPS, a Federal Advisory board has declared that that there is "no practical solutions or mitigations" that would allow LightSquared and GPS to peacefully co-exist. Back in June LightSquared proposed utilizing a 10 MHz swath of L-band spectrum in the lower portion of the company's spectrum assets to avoid interference. The company then proposed several antenna solutions high-precision GPS users could implement at their own expense to resolve issues.

The National Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing Committee last week issued a statement saying that none of these solutions were acceptable:

Based upon this testing an analysis, there appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS. As a result, no additional testing is warranted at this time.

LightSquared is responding to the report by claiming a conflict of interest by one of the panel's members, insisting that Bradford Parkinson, the vice chairman of a board, is also a director of GPS vendor Trimble Navigation.
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Hulu Takes Aim at Original Series - Like Netflix, Will Try to Bypass Licensing Lock Out

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 6:13am MST

As Netflix becomes more and more powerful, they're facing greater and greater challenges from the companies whose legacy business models they threaten, with ISPs trying to impose low caps and high overages -- and broadcasters raising rates on licensing. To get around this, Netflix has been pushing into original content, recently snapping up the rights to a new show by David Fincher and Kevin Spacey, the rights to the cancelled-but-popular Fox show Arrested Development, and developing a new gangster show starring Steven Van Zandt. This path is also appealing to Hulu, who plans to launch their first series this February and is putting money aside for more original and exclusive programming.
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LTE iPad Already Being Produced - Verizon, AT&T Compatible Device On Sale in March

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 5:57am MST

A report in Bloomberg proclaims that an LTE version of the iPad 3 is already in production, with Apple's manufacturing partners in Asia ramping up production of the device this month with the intention of reaching full volumes by February. In addition to supporting new AT&T and Verizon LTE networks, the new tablet will have a quad-core chip with a significantly higher-resolution display. There's no iPad chipset in the iPhone yet due to size and battery constraints, something the tablet doesn't face. The iPad 3 is expected to go on sale in March, according to the report.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: January 16th, 2012, 4:01am MST

Top tenth of Internet users use a heck of a lot of Internet: Study broadband-expert.co.uk
Lightsquared and GPS can't coexist electronicsweekly.com
How much does file-sharing resemble stealing, and does it matter? theatlantic.com
White House Comes Out Against The Approach In SOPA/PIPA techdirt.com
Systems at City College of San Francisco have been infected with viruses and transmitting data since 1999 sfgate.com
How the Internet of Things could make the world a greener place gigaom.com
Hulu plans to raise money for expansion into original programming bloomberg.com
UK student loses US extradition hearing, could face 10 years jail time guadian.co.uk
Motorola scores win in ITC Apple patent case bgr.com
iPad 3, with LTE and other updates, will be out in March washingtonpost.com
CES 2012 was biggest show ever theverge.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Talk!

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 3:55pm MST

Please deposit your thoughts into the receptacle below!
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 3:53pm MST

Cable had fastest downloads in 2011 multichannel.com
Smartphone usage can be addictive, cause axiety and stress telegraph.com
AT&T lashes out at FCC bid for spectrum auction flexibility adweek.com
Verizon gains more than customers with LTE shift informationweek.com
American Cable Association concerned FCC s latest EAS rules could force the S'shutdown of small cable operators americancable.com
Judge dismisses class action lawsuit against Comcast over hidden modem fees courthousenews.com
Survey says 100G service 'looks unstoppable' cable360.com
Court in India threatens Google, other giant Web companies with China-like Internet control reuters.com
UK student faces extradition to US, possible five years in US federal prison after piracy case ruling for linking theregister.co.uk
iPhone 5 may work on all 3G/4G networks foxbusiness.com
EU laws on blocking websites continue to contradict each other techdirt.com
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FreedomPop Still Promising Free Wireless - Despite Clear Issue With Potential LightSquared Implosion

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 1:10pm MST

Last month Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstr m announced he'd be launching a new wireless carrier in 2012 that provides free wireless service. Zennstrom and company are being a little murky about the specific financials behind the service, which is supposed to piggyback on the so-far-nonexistent LightSquared network. From a conversation with Fierce Wireless it sounds like FreedomPop is going to pursue a model that's somewhat similar to the new Iliad Free wireless service we discussed this morning . FreedomPop's marketing executive insists they won't be serving ads to help offset costs, but will simply use "free" to upsell to additional services:

We will not serve ads, can't get into too much detail here since the revenue model is part of the innovation we are delivering," wrote Tony Miller, FreedomPop's head of marketing and communications, in an email to FierceBroadbandWireless.
He noted the revenue model will be "similar to those proved on Web, whereby the heavy users subsidize the less active," and confirmed FreedomPop is actually pursuing a "freemium" model, where basic services are offered for free but premium services cost money.

FreedomPop's biggest obstacle is of course they're basing their entire project on a company that has yet to actually build a wireless network, and may never get the chance if political opponents, AT&T/Verizon lobbyists, and GPS industry executives get the final say. Still, combined with options like Republic Wireless, it's refreshing to see companies at least trying to be disruptive in the mobile space in terms of pricing.
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RIM Hires Goldman Sachs to Explore Sale - Stocks Jump on Rumor That Won't Go Away

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 11:51am MST

Looking to buy a one-time powerhouse wireless device maker who is now plagued by unexplainable service outages, launch delays, belligerently-drunk executives and perpetually underwhelming product offerings!? You may soon have your chance, as Reuters reports that RIM has hired Goldman Sachs to explore a possible sale of the free-falling company. More specifically Goldman has been hired to explore all potential options including sale, but with the company in free fall it's probably hard to nail down a price. RIM executives seem insistent they can still turn the ship around, despite their Blackberry 10 smartphones (their one, uncertain hope of competing with iOS and Android) being delayed until late this year or early next.
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Leahy: Let's Ignore How SOPA Breaks DNS For Now - And Maybe Get Back to it Later When You're Napping, Ok?

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 9:35am MST

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) co-sponsors and entertainment industry vessels Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) have had a very busy few weeks both responding to and ignoring the immense criticism to the DNS filtering aspects of SOPA. This week Leahy proclaimed that he'd be willing to make a not-really-concession by rushing the bill to a vote and then maybe studying the DNS impact at a later date. Leahy issued a statement urging everybody to essentially ignore the Internet-breaking aspects of the bill, while downplaying criticism coming from all corners of the Internet:

It is amazing to me that the opponents apparently don t want to protect American consumers and businesses. Are they somehow benefiting by directing customers to these foreign websites? Do they profit from selling advertising to these foreign websites? And if they do, they need to be stopped. And I don t mind taking that on

-Lamar Smith (R-Texas)

I remain confident that the ISPs including the cable industry, which is the largest association of ISPs would not support the legislation if its enactment created the problems that opponents of this provision suggest. Nonetheless, this is in fact a highly technical issue, and I am prepared to recommend we give it more study before implementing it. As I prepare a managers amendment to be considered during the floor debate, I will therefore propose that the positive and negative effects of this provision be studied before implemented, so that we can focus on the other important provisions in this bill...

In other words, please ignore the devastating, free-speech crushing, Internet breaking aspects of this bill and just pass it. You can trust me and my handlers in the entertainment industry to investigate and fix the problems later. Maybe.

As for ISP support, while myopic media executives at cable ISPs likely love SOPA because they incorrectly think it will stop piracy, the engineers at those ISPs realize the bill's fatal flaws. Unfortunately, that latter segment probably won't get their voices heard, just like when they warn bean counters of security vulnerabilities that are costly to correctly address. Leahy went on to suggest that people really shouldn't be upset about SOPA, because it was built with the input of everybody:

The process in drafting the legislation has always been an open one in which we have heard from all third parties, and have worked to address as many outstanding concerns as possible. It is through this process that we have gained the support of the majority of third parties who will be asked to take action under the legislation, as well as a bipartisan group of 40 cosponsors in the Senate.

Except like with most one sided, corporate lobbyist drafted bills, the bill creation process wasn't open in the slightest, with no hearings held on PIPA whatsoever, and consumer and expert input that disagreed with the MPAA/RIAA perspective being utterly ignored. The fact that you've assembled a group of bipartisan cosponsors who have absolutely no idea how technology works and are happily willing to gobble up entertainment industry cash and talking points -- isn't really anything to brag about and does not constitute consensus.

Meanwhile, Leahy's co-sponsor Smith has been taking aim at SOPA opponents like Facebook, Google and OpenDNS -- claiming that they're opposing the bill not because the bill is absolute and utter crap, but because they're secretly making money off of foreign pirate sites. Or something.

While Smith is busy accusing Google and Facebook of being unpatriotic pirate lovers, Smith himself is taking some heat for the fact he's pushing an anti-piracy law while quietly ripping off website backgrounds without getting permission from the artist. The raw, blistering hypocrisy and ignorance SOPA/PIPA sponsors are exhaling this week needs to somehow be harnessed and used to solve the world's looming energy crisis.
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French ISP Free Turns Heads With New Wireless Service - New Fourth French Wireless Carrier Shakes Things Up

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 6:57am MST

France took our discarded concept of local-loop-unbundling and implemented it successfully, with users in Paris now being able to get 100 Mbps fiber, VoIP service and a full television lineup for around $40. French ISP Iliad is also prepared to shake up the wireless space with a new service launch that is turning heads here in the States. Dubbed Free Wireless, the service operates on a new network built by Iliad and is severely shaking up a French wireless industry traditionally dominated by just three players&#46

Free is offering users a free wireless plan that includes 60 voice minutes and 60 SMS's. Should users want a little more, the next package up offers unlimited calls and texts, access to the ISP's public Wi-Fi hotspots, and 3GB of data for 19.99 (roughly $25). That 3GB data cap involves throttling after you've crossed the 3 GB mark, but it's still a good deal however you'd like to slice it.

If you're a subscriber to Iliad's landline-based services you can get the same package for 14.99 ($19). Following the traditional European approach there is no subsidized handset and you have to buy the phone at cost. However, Free will let you spread the cost of the device out over three years. For example, Free has announced (pdf) that they're offering the iPhone 4S starting at 1, allowing users to pay 19,99 per month over 36 months.

Users who stick on the free plan but don't want to upgrade to the more costly option pay one cent for each additional SMS they send -- compared to around twenty cents both directions here in the States if you don't get an SMS bundle plan. Additional phone minutes on the free plan cost just five cents. French users state that even at that low price point, tethering, VoIP, and P2P are allowed. Users suggest Free is also coming out with an unlimited data plan that should be priced between 10 and 15.

"Up until now you have been cash cows," said Iliad founder Xavier Niel during a press conference introducing France's fourth wireless carrier. "Now you can either call your current operator and ask for the same price or join us."
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Apple's Beijing iPhone 4S Launch Gets Out of Hand - Store Pelted With Eggs, SWAT Teams Called In

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 6:11am MST

Apple has delayed additional iPhone 4S launches in China this week after a launch of the product in Beijing got more than a little out of hand. Apple's carefully-cultivated hype backfired when the company announced a delay in iPhone 4S's at the store, resulting in users (many of whom had slept out overnight in the cold) pelting the store with eggs and brawling with SWAT team members who had to be called in to restore order. "Unfortunately we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, the iPhone will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being," Apple said in a statement.
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Verizon: All Future Phones Will Be LTE - VoLTE, Global LTE Roaming on Tap for This Year

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 5:40am MST

Verizon this week stated that all future smartphone releases will have LTE support, something that's not surprising given their desire to ultimately refarm the spectrum currently being used for their EVDO network. Verizon, who now offers LTE in 200 markets, says they should have every current EVDO market upgraded to LTE by the end of 2013. A few improvements to look forward to will be Verizon's upgrade to VoLTE, which should provide much clearer voice and should pop up sometime this year. None of Verizon's current 4G LTE phones support global roaming, something Verizon says should also change this year.
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Verizon's Phone Trade in Service Hits 11 States - Up to $300 in Store Credit for Old Devices

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 5:31am MST

Late last year Verizon started implementing a new phone trade in program that allowed users to trade in their old phones (from any carrier) for store gift cards. While an easy way to quickly get store credit, Verizon's estimates for device value were below what users could get through other online websites. While anybody could use this Verizon website to trade in your device, users couldn't get old phone store credit -- until now. In what appears to be a trial program to gauge profitability, Verizon's now offering credit up to $300 for phones in certain markets. The program is expected to last through the end of the year, and extends to residents of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: January 13th, 2012, 4:05am MST

Global broadband lines top 581 million convergedigest.com
The Pirate Bay will stop seving torrents torrentfreak.com
In order to quell opposition, senator hopes to rush PIPA tbrough now, and promises study DNS blocking later techdirt.com
Internet addicts have showed signs of changes in the brain similar to alcoholics and cocaine addicts telegraph.co.uk
SOPA author vows not to buckle in face of enormous opposition reuters.com
Smart TV's: The next tech war will be in your living room washingtonpost.com
iPhone 5 will be available on T-Mobile's network forbes.com
Carriers tout side benefits to NFC push totaltele.com
Demise of Open Range complete as asset auction ends denverpost.com
3D losing out to connected TV rapidtvnews.com
Windows 8 coming in Ocyober 2012? electronista.com
Tricked out tablet is the future of gaming? gizmodo.com
Xbox accounted for 40% of all video game sales in 2011 allthingsd.com
iPhone 4S crowds so big and unruly in Beijing and Shanghai, Apple stores refuse to open out of fear for safety of employees allthingsd.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 4:03pm MST

Broadband Over Powerline last mile - more hype than hope fiercetelecom.com
Cablevision, Verizon Still Bickering Over Broadband Claims; Telco Says MSO's Latest Ad Citing FCC Speed Data Is Misleading multichannel.com
The 4 biggest reecird companes sue the Irish government over music piracy siliconrepublic.com
Why Best Buy is Dying, or Retail Reinvented... Again huffingtonpost.com
BrightHouse lights up Florida WiFi lightreading.com
Renewed calls by lawmakers for investigation into Carrier IQ and similar software's privacy issues networkworld.com
Google pleads for more unlicensed spectrum instead of auctions networkworld.com
Telcos Ask FCC to Reconsider USF Reform Proposal; Reform Order Already Faces Court Challenges from AT&T, NTCA multichannel.com
MPAA attacks popular tech site Ars Technica for 'challenging efforts to curb content theft' arstechnica.com
All future Verizon smartphones will have 4G LTE bgr.com
Lightower lights up 40G and 100G commercial fiber services fiercetelecom.com
Charge your phone with new gizmo and about a tablespoon of water physorg.com
Target confirms bringing dedicated Apple Stores to 25 of its locations macrumors.com
Company combines MoCA and WiFi in new adapters fiercebroadbandwireless.com
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Falcone Meets With FCC About LightSquared - Hoping to Expedite Government Approval Process

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 1:19pm MST

LightSquared's primary backer, hedge fund billionaire Philip Falcone, last week met with FCC officials in the hopes of expediting government approval of the LightSquared network in the face of continued political opposition and concerns about GPS interference. "We discussed various alternative technical solutions that will effectively and economically allow GPS devices to work as intended, and still allow the deployment of the LightSquared network," the company said in a filing. Recently things have started looking more troubled for LightSquared, with the company running out of money and primary financial backer Phillip Falcone facing a potential SEC investigation for securities fraud.
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Cable Could Get FTTH-Esque Leg Room With EPoC - Could Offer Symmetrical 10 Gbps Over Coax

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 11:31am MST

The debate for cable operators has long centered about when and if they'll ultimately have to deploy fiber to the home as coaxial cable starts to run out of leg room. For most carriers this has yet to be a problem (particularly as upstream bonding gets established), and a new standard may help them delay that move a little longer, if not indefinitely.

A new Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard dubbed EPON-over-Coax (EPoC) is just getting developed, and could offer symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds over hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) networks. The standard however has numerous architectural hurdles to leap before creation, including to OFDM or not to OFDM:

EPoC could begin to steer cable away from its traditional QAM modulation schemes, and this part of the discussion is expected to be among the most hotly debated as engineers mull ways to modulate Ethernet on coax efficiently. One idea that will get much attention is orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a scheme popular in the wireless world that could help cable pump out more bits per hertz than they do today with QAM, says Shane Eleniak, vice president of advanced broadband solutions at CommScope.

If all goes well, the standard could take about three years to complete, which in IEEE's world likely means 2020 or so.
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T-Mobile: HSPA+ 42 Now in 175 Markets - HSPA+ 21 Now in 217 Markets, Covering 200 Million

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 9:59am MST

While T-Mobile may be in no rush to make the jump to LTE, the company continues to push out their HSPA+ 42 upgrades to numerous additional markets. According to a T-Mobile announcement, the company is now offering faster 4G (HSPA+ 42) service to twelve additional markets, bringing their total to 184 million Americans in 175 markets. T-Mobile says their slightly-slower (HSPA+ 21) network now reaches nine additional markets, covering a total of 217 markets and more than 200 million potential customers. While HSPA+ 42 is theoretically capable of 42 Mbps in perfect lab conditions, real world downstream speeds post-upgrade tend to be closer to the 10-12 Mbps mark.
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Did Comcast Just Admit They Can't Comply With SOPA? - DNSSEC Upgrades Likely Wouldn't Work With DNS Filters

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 7:05am MST

Yesterday we pointed out how Comcast had finished DNSSEC upgrades -- a very good thing in that it adds a layer of protection for users against DNS cache poisoning and phishing scams. We also noted that an added perk of the upgrades was that Comcast could no longer engage in DNS redirection, a practice whereby ISPs generate additional revenue by sending users who mistype URLs to ad-laden search portals -- instead of delivering a page-not-found result. The practice for years has annoyed some of our resident 'net purists, who argue it breaks key Internet functionality and some networking tools.

Mike Masnick at Techdirt raises an interesting point, noting that by acknowledging that DNSSEC and DNS redirection aren't compatible, they're effectively admitting that they cannot effectively use DNS filters to block websites as will be directed should the controversial SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) pass:

Just as NBC Universal and other SOPA supporters continue to insist that DNS redirect is completely compatible with DNSSEC... Comcast (and official SOPA/PIPA supporter) has rolled out DNSSEC, urged others to roll out DNSSEC and turned off its own DNS redirect system, stating clearly that DNS redirect is incompatible with DNSSEC, if you want to keep people secure. In the end, this certainly appears to suggest that Comcast is admitting that it cannot comply with SOPA/PIPA, even as the very same company is advocating for those laws.

Granted the debate continues as to whether ISPs could find some other way to filter content deemed unacceptable by our entertainment industry overlords, and some of the discussion on whether ISPs can effectively filter DNS results has even some lifetime DNS experts arguing among themselves. That's in contrast to the folks in Congress writing and editing SOPA at the entertainment industry's behest, who have shown repeatedly they don't have the foggiest idea about the technology they're trying to regulate.

Comcast engineers are just doing their jobs and likely wouldn't want to wade into this particular firestorm, though we'd still love to hear their thoughts below (anonymously, if necessary).
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Google Embeds OnLive Game Service in GoogleTV - Vizio Will be First to Market With Embedded Products

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 6:37am MST

Despite a fairly luke-warm initial response, Google isn't giving up on their Google TV platform, today unveiling a new effort that will involve pre-loading the OnLive streaming game service on all Google TV devices. OnLive delivers access to a growing catalog of games, streamed to your home while the heavy graphical lifting is done on the server end. According to the Google TV blog, right now users can only download the OnLive Viewer app -- allowing them to watch other people enjoying themselves playing games. But OnLive will soon be embedded in all Google TV devices allowing full game play, with Vizio being the first out of the gate with new products.
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Dish CEO Denies Sale Rumors - Insists Focus is on Building LTE Network

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 6:15am MST

Speaking at CES this week Dish Network CEO Joe Clayton said the company is open to all options when it comes to finding partners for their nationwide LTE network ambitions, but that the company has no plans to sell the company or its assets. Dish found itself at the center of rumors that the company could be sold to AT&T, as part of a press and Wall Street narrative insisting that AT&T need to buy somebody on the heels of the failed T-Mobile deal -- just because. Dish says they can have their new LTE network (supposedly branded "Ollo") three years after getting FCC regulatory approval.
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Verizon's Nonsensical LG TV FiOS Offer - 26 Lower-Quality Streams Users Already Get

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 5:46am MST

Last year Verizon began offering around 26 live FiOS channels to the Xbox 360 console, but the deal came with a few restrictions and didn't make a whole lot of sense. To access the content users not only needed to pay for an Xbox Live Gold account, but they also needed to subscribe to both broadband and television services from Verizon. Why would a user who already pays for Verizon FiOS TV and a set top really bother with using the 360 to access lower-quality versions of channels they already have access to?

The only clear answer is that Verizon's simply testing streaming out of curiosity with no real intent on entering the water quite yet. That, and evolution-terrified broadcasters are refusing to allow adequate licensing for fear of cannibalizing traditional TV revenues. Combined, you get a product that we're told is supposed to replace an extra, already-inexpensive set top, but really doesn't.

Along that vein Verizon and LG have announced a similar offer wherein users can get those same 26 channels streamed directly to their LG television:

LG Electronics and Verizon today announced an alliance that will offer a new entertainment experience for the LG Smart TV* platform, when LG introduces the Verizon FiOS TV app to current LG Smart TVs and Blu-ray players in 2012. The new app will allow Verizon FiOS TV subscribers to access 26 live HD channels directly through their connected LG Smart TV or Blu-ray Player without any additional hardware required.

In the process of trying to build hype LG's CES press release doesn't bother to tell you that to access this content you'll need to subscribe to both FiOS Internet and FiOS TV services. So again, why exactly would a customer who already has a FiOS set top use the integrated content being offered via their television? Verizon should either get into over the top streaming and offer a product that seriously offers a traditional TV alternative, or stop screwing around.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: January 12th, 2012, 3:59am MST

Dish CEO says company open to acquisition once it's done building out network, T-Mobile is #1 contender denverpost.com
Congress tests how dropping the DNS blocking provisions from SOPA would affect its 'acceptance' by tech companies techdirt.com
TomTom to better inform customers about data use; firm hit trouble after revealing local (Dutch) police used its data to position speed cameras totaltele.com
Internet companies ratchet up competition totaltele.com
FCC calls for free hand in spectrum auction eetimes.com
Europe calls for serious broadband bandwidth to boost ecommerce ispreview.com
UK Regulator Ofcom Officially Proposes to Extend 4G Mobile Broadband Coverage to 98% ispreview.com
Chinese vendor ZTE will try to enter US market in 2012 with smartphones and tablets fiercewireless.com
Next-Gen routers to hit 800Mbps soon itpro.co.uk
Barcelona becomes site of first large-scale tap & go deployment in Europe ft.com
Apple's HDTV and the challenge of subscription programming networkworld.com
TiVo CEO says AT&T could end up paying $300M+ to his company if U-verse TV service continues adding DVR subs multichannel.com
FCC chairman calls Verizon's Network Neutrality lawsuit a distraction multichannel.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 4:16pm MST

FCC chairmn at CES: America needs ubiquitous broadband forbes.com
NFC to come standard on Sprint LTE phones lightreading.com
T-Mobile eyes new strategy, may sell towers telecomengine.com
TiVo claims only 38% of users watch live TV techcrunch.com
Will the mobile industry take over the digital livingroom? fiercewireless.com
LTE explodes at CES as carriers show merits of the fast wireless technology to partners, and users of smartphones, tablets and other devices computerworld.com
Dish CEO says company will not sell spectrum wsj.com
Game streaming service OnLive to come pre-loaded on all Google TV's venturebeat.com
LG smart TV's and blueray players to stream Verizon FiOS sans set top box lightreading.com
Norton Security and Utilities purveyor Symantec taken to court over alleged scareware tactics zdnet.com
Google likely to face FTC privacy complaint over Search Plus Your World latimes.com
ICANN snubs critics, opens domain extension floodgates theregister.co.uk
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Time Warner Cable Launches HBO Go - Time Warner Empire Companies Finally Play Nice

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 3:17pm MST

Despite being a Time Warner Spin off, Time Warner Cable seemingly had a hard time settling a deal with Time Warner's HBO to get access to HBO Go. HBO Go is HBO's Internet video service, which allows users to access back catalogs of HBO content if you already subscribe to traditional cable and HBO. Confirming executive optimism from last December, Time Warner Cable has now announced over at their blog that they're launching both HBO Go and Max Go (that's exactly what you think it is) for all Time Warner Cable customers, with the iOS and Android versions now available in the respective marketplaces.
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T-Mobile Expands, Improves BobSled VoIP - Now Available for Android Tablets, Smartphones

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 1:23pm MST

After a few rough stops and starts, T-Mobile last year introduced a new VoIP service named Bobsled. As originally implemented, the service allowed users to make free calls to both other PCs as well as from any device to any phone number in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico -- by simply clicking on a Facebook friend's profile. T-Mobile this week announced that the company has both expanded and improved the Bobsled service, and is now offering it for both Android and iOS customers -- whether you're a T-Mobile customer or not.

T-Mobile also announced a new Bobsled Messaging app for Android phones, allowing users to send group text and multimedia messages to users across platforms. Piggybacking on the back of Apple's iMessage, the service is also soon going to be available for iOS, and takes aim at the slowly dying cash cow known as SMS.

With both the VoIP and messaging app you've got a mobile carrier actually embracing disruptive ideas and the evolution away from SMS and voice minutes. Hand in hand with the company's recently-implemented 100 minute unlimited data Walmart plan, these are exactly the kind of legacy-revenue-killing ideas the executives over at AT&T would have hated, ensuring they died a quiet but certain death.

"With Bobsled, we continue to leverage and embrace the power of IP communications to bring seamless, cost-effective connections to consumers across networks, devices, countries and carriers," insists T-Mobile. "With Bobsled, people can now make free voice calls from an iPad(R) or tablet, send free one-to-one and group messages anywhere in the world, and access their phone's contacts and text messages from their tablet or computer."
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MSG, Time Warner Cable Stand Off Continues - Both Sides Blame The Other, No Movement On Talks

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 11:14am MST

Since New Year's Day, Time Warner Cable customers have been unable to watch many of their favorite local teams -- courtesy of yet another retransmission dispute between a broadcaster and a cable operator. As has traditionally been the case this fight is about money, with Time Warner Cable refusing to pay what they claim was a 53% rate hike demand by MSG. More than a week and a half later and the companies still are at an impasse over prices, with each side blaming the other for the blackout. MSG continues to insist the 53% hike claim isn't true:

MSG says that the cable operator, the nation s second largest, has rejected all of its proposals for two years. Time Warner Cable says that MSG has twice reneged on a 6.5 percent rate increase and that its final demand was for a 53 percent boost. "That s just such a gross distortion of our conversations and it s not anywhere close to what we ve talked about, said Mike Bair, the president of MSG Media. He added, The sense of any movement to get the channels back on doesn t exist."

Meanwhile cable customers, already feeling like they pay too much money for cable, are being driven to watch pirated streams of sporting events -- the same pirated streams broadcasters and cable operators spend their time (when they're not engaged in retrans disputes) complaining about. Like with all of these disputes it will end with customers paying more money -- after dealing with blackouts and an ugly game of PR ping pong.
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CNN: AT&T Is Secretly Now Totally Awesome - As Long As You Ignore Every Major Satisfaction Study

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 9:44am MST

While AT&T certainly does offer quality service in some markets (something users in Boise often like to remind us), there's simply no debating that when it comes to service quality studies they've been a basement dweller for several years. It doesn't really matter if you're looking at surveys from the ACSI, JD Power and Associates or Consumer Reports -- there AT&T sits at the last place spot in terms of customer satisfaction.

It's a position they've earned, according to consumer advocates, because they've consistently put executive compensation and investor returns a little too high on the priority list (below you and, oh, running a working network).

That's why it's rather interesting to see CNN running a story claiming that AT&T's network is magically all better now -- it's just that nobody has noticed. CNN's basis for this claim? AT&T itself. They also make the claim based on "industry experts" (plural) -- by which they mean one firm giving one award largely unrelated to how well AT&T's network or support reps actually perform:

...the mediocre perception of AT&T's network quality lags behind the much-improved reality, according to wireless industry experts. Frost & Sullivan, an influential telecommunications industry analysis firm, awarded AT&T its 2011 strategy award for the North American mobile network market, praising the company for its dual-network improvement strategy.

If you don't follow the sector, Frost and Sullivan doles out an award to AT&T for something or other nearly every weekend, and in this case the award was simply for a migration strategy -- running HSPA+ alongside LTE. The award had absolutely nothing to do with customer satisfaction, network performance, or service and support. While it's possible that AT&T's network is improving in traditional AT&T trouble markets (New York City, San Francisco), the studies don't yet reflect any significant movement by AT&T -- making CNN's case that AT&T is secretly now really fantastic a little hard to make.

Yet CNN takes things one step further in an article that reads like an AT&T press release. Despite lagging Verizon in LTE deployment (200 markets for Verizon to just 26 for AT&T), CNN goes on to insist that AT&T is "better positioned for the long haul than any of its rivals." Ignoring for a moment that AT&T works very hard to ensure they don't have any rivals, we'd guess Verizon might have something to say about positioning, given they not only come in first place in all of the studies CNN ignored while giving AT&T a back rub, they also have a year head start on LTE deployment.
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Comcast Finishes DNSSEC Rollout - Network More Secure, DNS Redirection Goes Kaput

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 6:51am MST

Not only is Comcast taking the lead on IPv6 deployment, as we've noted in the past they're also taking the lead on DNSSEC upgrades. The security improvements allow both sites and providers to validate domain names to make sure they're correct and not tampered with, in turn helping to combat things like DNS cache "poisoning" and phishing scams. According to a new blog post by Comcast the company says they're the first large ISP to have completed DNSSEC deployment. Comcast's Jason Livingood, a Broadband Reports forum regular, has this to say about the accomplishment:

As of today, over 17.8M residential customers of our Xfinity Internet service are using DNSSEC-validating DNS servers. In addition, all of the domain names owned by Comcast, numbering over 5,000, have been cryptographically signed. All of our servers, both the ones that customers use and the ones authoritative for our domain names, also fully support IPv6.

One change (which will be considered a positive if these services annoy you) is that Comcast has had to shut off DNS redirection ads because they don't play nice with the DNSSEC upgrades. DNS redirection, adopted now by most ISPs, offer users ad-laden search portals should they mistype or enter an nonexistent domain. It's a way for a carrier to make additional revenue, but it sometimes came at the expense of breaking certain network diagnostic tools.
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Dutch ISPs Ordered to Block Pirate Bay - The Fact The Filters Won't Work Appears Not to Matter

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 5:49am MST

Following a demand from Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, the Court of The Hague has ruled that Dutch ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL must ban customer access to the Pirate Bay. In the two ISPs' case against BREIN, the ISPs argued that imposing filters (much like the debate over SOPA in the States) could compromise the security of their networks, threaten freedom of speech, and ultimately probably wouldn't work anyway. The Court didn't see things that way, noting that roughly 30% of Ziggo subscribers and 4.5% of XS4ALL subscribers use The Pirate Bay to share copyrighted content. Both ISPs now have ten days to implement filters or face fines of 10,000 euros per day.
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Surprise: Both Apple, Google Failed to Revolutionize Telecom - Thanks Largely to Two Tiny Companies Named AT&T, Verizon

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 5:43am MST

While the title is troll bait (especially coming from an Apple brand fanatic), blogger-turned-VC MG Siegler makes a few good points in a post over at his blog about how Google has failed in delivering their original Android vision when it comes to truly open platforms. Most of his tirade touches on things we've discussed over the years, like how Google's original plan to use the Nexus to completely revolutionize the wireless industry flopped, or how in order to protect billions they'd be getting from their Verizon partnership they were willing to completely sell their network neutrality principles down the river.

As you might expect from one of the industry's two largest Apple brand advocates, Siegler insists that this means that Apple has done a much better job at being "open" than Google ever did:

Apple, for all the shit they get for being closed and evil , has actually done far more to wrestle control back from the carriers and put it into the hands of consumers. Google set off to help in this goal, then stabbed us all in the back and went the complete other way, to the side of the carriers. And because they smiled the entire time they were doing it and fed us this open bullshit, we thanked them for it. We re still thanking them for it!

To get it out of the way: yes, both companies completely revolutionized the phone itself. However, revolutionizing the barely-competitive, lumbering, protectionist telecom sector is another matter entirely.

Siegler floats over and past Apple's own failures in this regard. While Apple may have revolutionized phone design, Steve Jobs' original vision of a carrier-less future culminated in an a multi-year exclusive deal with one of the most anti-consumer, closed carriers in the industry (AT&T). For all of Apple's good intentions, the network side of their product was (for many) culminated with a total inability to actually make phone calls. While Apple did fight AT&T on some issues, they oddly replaced AT&T's walled garden vision with a morally-schizophrenic closed application store of their own. Meanwhile with their record on secrecy, Apple really can't talk about being "open" on any level.

The fact is that Apple and Google made constant concessions in their principles because AT&T and Verizon are absurdly powerful. These are protectionist, cuthroat giants -- who for generations have spent more time and effort protecting legacy business models (like landline) using armies of lobbyists and every dirty anti-competitive trick in the book -- than they have on innovation. Both Apple and Google could only hammer their heads against such empires for so long before making major concessions -- if they wanted to make money in wireless.

That doesn't excuse either company for bone-headed decision making, but it does at least lend context to why Google quickly sold consumer interests down the river. Fighting AT&T and Verizon is not a profitable venture, and if you're going to work long enough with such companies, you're going to be impacted by protectionist "telco think." That said, this street runs both ways, and we've seen both AT&T and Verizon make small and subtle shifts toward open devices and networks, even if they've done so begrudgingly.

Apple and Google failing to completely revolutionize such a dominated market in just a few years is not surprising. However, the fact that both have at least managed to make a dent through competition and innovation (quality evolution in smartphone GUIs, disruptive products like iMessage or Google Voice) is still something worth appreciating. Still, singling out one or the other exclusively for their failures in this regard usually reeks of fanboyism, and is like screaming at your cat for failing to put out a house fire.
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Why Apple And Google Failed to Revolutionize Telecom - Two Tiny Little Companies Known as AT&T, Verizon

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 5:43am MST

To get it out of the way: yes, both companies completely revolutionized the phone itself. However, revolutionizing the barely-competitive, lumbering, protectionist telecom sector is another matter entirely.

Siegler floats over and past Apple's own failures in this regard. While Apple may have revolutionized phone design, Steve Jobs' original vision of a carrier-less future culminated in an a multi-year exclusive deal with one of the most anti-consumer, closed carriers in the industry (AT&T). For all of Apple's good intentions, the network side of their product (for many) culminated with a total inability to actually make phone calls. While Apple did fight AT&T on some issues, they oddly replaced AT&T's walled garden vision with a morally-schizophrenic closed application store of their own. Meanwhile with their record on secrecy, Apple really can't talk about being "open" on any level.

The fact is that Apple and Google made constant concessions in their principles because AT&T and Verizon are absurdly powerful. These are protectionist, cuthroat giants -- who for generations have spent more time and effort protecting legacy business models (like landline) using armies of lobbyists and every dirty anti-competitive trick in the book -- than they have on innovation. Both Apple and Google could only hammer their heads against such empires for so long before making major concessions -- if they wanted to make money in wireless.

That doesn't excuse either company for bone-headed decision making, but it does at least lend context to why Google quickly sold consumer interests down the river. Fighting AT&T and Verizon is not a profitable venture, and if you're going to work long enough with such companies, you're going to be impacted by protectionist "telco think." That said, this street runs both ways, and we've seen both AT&T and Verizon make small and subtle shifts toward open devices and networks, even if they've done so begrudgingly.

Apple and Google failing to completely revolutionize such a dominated market in just a few years is not surprising. However, the fact that both have at least managed to make a dent through competition and innovation (quality evolution in smartphone GUIs, disruptive products like iMessage or Google Voice) is still something worth appreciating. Singling out one or the other exclusively for their failures in this regard usually reeks of fanboyism, and is like screaming at your cat for failing to put out a house fire.
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T-Mobile: No Rush Toward LTE - CEO: "No Need to Move There Very Fast"

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 5:30am MST

In a continuing interview with T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm, the executive talks to All Things D about life for T-Mobile after the collapsed T-Mobile deal, and the new life given to the company by AT&T's $4 billion deal breakup fee. Humm notes that the company hasn't offered the iPhone because "we are on different band than globally the market was," adding that this "is something which will change over time" due to the evolution of chipsets. On marketing, Humm says they'll pick up where they left off -- trying to be a more consumer-centric carrier while picking on AT&T and Verizon in ads. On LTE, Humm says it will happen -- eventually. "We re not against LTE," Humm said. "We will over time evolve to LTE. We just don t see a need to move there very fast."
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 11th, 2012, 3:57am MST

We need better infrastructure to bridge urban digital divide gigaom.com
How Viasat's Exede makes satellite broadband not suck arstechnica.com
Sky Broadband in UK first with 100Gb fiber network pcadvisor.co.uk
Virgin Media to double customer's brodband speeds for free cbronline.com
T-Mobile releases updated Bobsled VoIP service for iPhone's, iPad's, and Android devices networkworld.com
T-Mobile USA's CEO: T-Mobile is back, and in fighting shape (thanks to AT&T's concession gifts) fiercewirless.com
Amazon is UltraViolet's first retail customer theverge.com
The public should be informed when a building or facility operator uses systems to track the location and movements of mobile phones theregister.co.uk
Foxconn employees, makers of all things Apple, threaten mass suicide over work conditions theatlanticwire.com
Kinect for Windows coming in February gamespy.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 4:10pm MST

Lightsquared in last minute, last ditch effort to get green light from Washington orlandosentinel.com
Chipset vendors prep 802.11ac Wi-Fi technology for big consumer push fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Skype killing long distance calling one minute at a time gigaom.com
Virgin Media study names broadband as the best value entertainment service cable.co.uk
Verizon shows off industry first 4G LTE mobile wireless storage prnewswire.com
LTE devices dominate at CES, price points start to come down fiercewireless.com
3D TV still suffering from 'black hole of content' multichannel.com
Comcast rolls out live TV streaming to subs iPads artechnica.com
Samsung 2012 smart TV's would access DirecTV without a set top box engadget.com
Nokia to deliver exclusive US phone devices to each carrier fiercewireless.com
Android powered goggles bring virtual reality closer theregister.co.uk
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AT&T Nabs LTE Windows Phone Exclusives - Unveils Growing Lineup of LTE Devices at CES

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 3:19pm MST

On the heels of unveiling eleven new LTE launch markets including New York City, AT&T is taking the wraps off of a slew of new LTE-capable devices. As had been rumored, AT&T's getting first dibs on the first round of LTE-capable Windows Phone devices, announcing that they'll exclusively offer the new HTC Titan II (and its sixteen megapixel camera) and the Nokia Lumia 900 Ace. AT&T's CES announcements included five new LTE smartphones and one tablet. The smartphones include the Samsung Galaxy S II, Skyrocket HD, Samsung Exhilarate, Pantech Element and Sony Xperia ion. If these smartphones (several of which have New Jersey-sized screen real estate) aren't enough, AT&T's new tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Note, which AT&T profiles in a video here.
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Comcast Offers Live Streaming For iPad - AnyPlay Service Being Tested in Nashville, Denver

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 1:17pm MST

Comcast today announced "AnyPlay," a device which enables Comcast TV subscribers to watch live television via their iPads. According to the AnyPlay website, homes get an Anyplay device that will stream any channels you get through traditional cable to mobile devices -- as long as you stay in your home. The service is free, though the website states there may be a $10 install fee involved. There's a few restrictions -- namely that the service is so far only being offered to HD triple play customers in Nashville and Denver. It's also fairly restricted in terms of which devices you can use, so far only supporting the iPad with Motorola Xoom support in the works. Comcast isn't giving a timeline on when all Comcast markets will see this -- only noting they'll be adding new, unspecified markets within months.
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T-Mobile: There Will Be No Backup AT&T Deal - Company Planning to Reboot Business

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 11:23am MST

Back when the AT&T deal was scrapped by a suddenly-and-uncharacteristically pro-consumer FCC and Justice Department, there was some talk that AT&T and T-Mobile might have a backup plan in place. That plan supposedly involved the two companies working on some kind of joint venture or spectrum sharing arrangement. But with T-Mobile getting $4 billion in roaming agreements, spectrum sharing and cash as part of a breakup fee they're apparently willing to go it alone.

T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm told the WSJ's AllThingsD that they're working on rebooting the company after the failed merger, with AT&T nowhere in sight:

After failing to sell itself to AT&T, T-Mobile is prepared to go it alone, says CEO Philipp Humm. "There is no second AT&T deal around," Humm told AllThingsD in an interview on Tuesday. Humm said the company is still ironing out its plans in the wake of the merger s derailment. "Now it s really a question about restarting the business," Humm said. "We will give you more details, probably by the end of the quarter. We are right now finalizing our plans."

What remains unclear is if T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom still wants to exit the U.S. wireless market, or if the AT&T break up fee changed their mind.
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Goldman Sachs Wants Verizon to Sell All Landline Assets - Merge With Vodafone, Focus on Wireless and Enterprise

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 9:47am MST

We've been pointing out for years that Verizon's renewed company strategy has been to upgrade their prized markets to FiOS, sell or ignore the rest of their landline customer base, then fill in the gaps with LTE wireless broadband. The strategy was shaken up slightly recently when Verizon struck a massive new deal with the cable industry that involved not only acquiring $3.6 billion in cable industry-held spectrum, but also an exclusive partnership that has Verizon selling wireless services to the cable industry's massive subscriber base.

Interestingly Wall Street wants Verizon to take this play even further. A new research report by Goldman Sachs suggests that Verizon should sell off their wireline division entirely and become solely a wireless operator. Why? Doing so could allow Verizon to purge their union workers, pensions, and other expenses tied to their landline network and focus (in union with partner Vodafone) on where the real money will be: non union wireless and business services:

The remaining wireless and enterprise businesses would have faster growth and a clear fit with Vodafone s assets and strategy, making it a more attractive merger partner, the analysts said in the report yesterday. Given that it no longer faces the threat of integrated cable competitors, Verizon could potentially spin off its remaining Consumer Wireline assets, along with large pension and benefit liabilities, the Goldman analysts said.

In this case what has Wall Street's heart all a flutter is the possibility for Verizon to shed all union-related workers and their pensions. While it seems likely that Verizon will shed some additional unwanted DSL territories (upstate New York seems like an eventual option), it's highly unlikely that Verizon wants to exit a fiber to the home business they just got done investing $24 billion into -- even if the new management is rumored to be less bullish on landline.

Verizon's new cable deal is an interesting one. It's worrying consumer advocates, who have urged regulators to investigate whether the deal came with a gentlemen's agreement not to expand FiOS further in order to limit competitive disruption in cable markets. That's obviously not good news for those in un-upgraded Verizon DSL markets waiting for faster speeds, and it's not good news for phone companies like CenturyLink, Frontier and Fairpoint (two of which gobbled up unwanted Verizon assets) who will now have to compete not only against cable, but Verizon LTE service that's faster than most of the DSL tiers they offer.
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More Details On ViaSat's New 12 Mbps 'Exede' Service - 7.5, 15 and 25 GB Monthly Usage Caps

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 7:36am MST

As we noted yesterday ViaSat's showing off a new $50, 12 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream satellite broadband service that the company will be selling through WildBlue, Dish and National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative ISPs. As we also noted yesterday, ViaSat was being a little murky about the limitations of the service, which include a low cap, potential throttling, and involves web acceleration. Today the company made most of the details official, announcing that the service will be called "Exede" and will in fact come with traditional usage caps.

According to ViaSat they're offering Exede in three flavors. $50 nets you a 7.5 GB monthly cap, $80 nets you a 15 GB monthly cap, and $130 will give you 25 GB of monthly usage. Despite very un-fiber-like usage limitations, ViaSat's insisting that their new service offers "feels like fiber" performance (perhaps "feels like desperation in the face of LTE" wasn't marketable).

ViaSat desperately wants this to be a service that seriously competes with landline broadband, but there's limitations in place satellite will never overcome. Since you can't beat physics and magically eliminate the latency that comes with all satellite broadband services, ViaSat's using a new web acceleration technology their press release still doesn't get very specific about:

The Exede service also includes advanced web acceleration technology to provide an Internet web browsing experience with feels like fiber performance. Through a constantly evolving variety of techniques that go far beyond simple caching of web content, this new web acceleration technology quickly delivers pages, even on media and video intensive websites.

In addition to the caps, ViaSat has stated they'll likely explore throttling users should they consistently exceed their allowances, something that won't be too difficult in the age of HD video. The company's new website for the service can be found here. We'll offer some user experiences with the new service once it officially launches next week.
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'One or Two' Qwest Markets to Get CenturyLink IPTV - As Company Slowly Plunks Away at IPTV, DSL Upgrades

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:35am MST

Despite pioneering in the IPTV field, latter day Qwest wasn't much on the idea of getting into the TV business, repeatedly insisting they supported the idea of an "over the top" solution. Granted that was partially because Qwest spent the last few years shopping itself around, and made debt reduction its first priority. In contrast, new Qwest owner CenturyLink offers an IPTV service dubbed Prism, but only in select markets. Initially the telco balked when asked about when and if they'd expand these services, but now they're offering new detail on just who'll be getting upgrades -- and it won't be many of you.

"We pass about a million homes today with our IPTV service and expect to provide service to at least one Qwest market in 2012 and potentially two markets," said Stewart Ewing, EVP and CFO of CenturyLink. Overall however their total number of IPTV customers sits at roughly 50,000.

Speaking at the recent Citi Entertainment, Media and Telecommunications Conference, CenturyLink, Ewing insisted that once the carrier gets at least 20 Mbps service deployed they feel they're "well positioned" to participate if over the top streaming video services like Netflix "eventually takes some of the traditional TV market."

The problem for most of these second and third shelf telcos is they're losing customers quickly to cable operators, who are offering true triple (and soon quadruple) play services in addition to faster speeds. While the company passes 5.4 million homes with FTTN, the majority of their customers (and those acquired by Embarq and Qwest) are on older DSL. 20% of CenturyLink's customers can get 20 Mbps or higher, half can get 10 Mbps or higher, and two-thirds can get 6 Mbps or higher.

That leaves a lot of customers of slower speeds, and while the company insists they'll slowly get around to upgrading these customers -- it's not clear if they'll be quick enough to prevent a significant erosion to cable competitors (and their new friend Verizon).
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Cox Joins the Rate Hike Party - As Cable's Relentless Price Increases Continue

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:14am MST

Cable rate hike season continues right into the new year, and it seems likely you'll soon be able to enjoy the festivities all year round. Users in several Cox markets in our forums note they've been informed of price hikes on numerous TV, DVR and phone-related services. A letter sent to users in Florida and Arizona notes that Cox's local channel TV Starter package will change from $19.55 to $22.85, in addition to hikes to pricing for various Cox premium channels and TV pack bundles. Cox DVR rental prices are also going up, with the rental price for Advanced TV Standard Definition receivers going from $5.55 to $6.99 per month, and the rental cost of Advanced TV High Definition and High Definition/DVR & DVR receivers going from $7.45 to $8 per month. Users in some markets say they're also getting notices of increases to broadband, VoIP and caller ID services.
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Sprint Unveils First LTE Launch Devices, Including Galaxy Nexus - Available Sometime in the Second Half of 2012

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 5:03am MST

Sprint last week announced that they'll be launching ten initial LTE cities (including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio) sometime before the first half of this year, though LTE handsets won't show up until later this year. Confirming some premature advertisements, Sprint at CES this week confirmed that one of the first LTE smartphones they'll offer users will be the Google Samsung Galaxy Nexus, in addition to the LG Viper smartphone and a Sierra Wireless mobile hotspot that will support the company's EVDO, LTE and Mobile WiMax networks. Sprint didn't give launch dates or pricing for any of the new devices, but says they plan to offer 15 LTE-capable devices before the end of 2012.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 10th, 2012, 3:55am MST

Apple, RIM deny providing backdoor to customer data for government of India theregister.co.uk
How France's Free.fr service will reinvent mobile gigaom.com
Homeplug Power Alliance announces AV2 standard to support broadband speeds eetimes.com
After beating Verizon in false advertising lawsuit, new Cablevision ad claims Optimum Online faster than FiOS fiercecable.com
Entrepreneurs see opportunity in new race for domain names wsj.com
Doubts cast over EU funding for UK broadband projects ispreview.com
Will Microsoft's new WiFi-NC set a new network standard? networkworld.com
Nokia looks to AT&T for US comeback lightreading.com
In-Game purchase revenues to increase to $4.8BN in 2016, up from $2.1BN in 2011 marketwire.com
Half of smartphone owners willing to watch ads for free apps arstechnica.com
Mobile app usage further dominates Web flurry.com
MySpace to re-invent itself as "over the top" Web TV experience allthingsd.com
CenturyLink to bring IPTV to Qwest markets, expand FTTN network fiercetelecom.com
In-Car wireless raises security, safety concerns firecebroadbandwireless.com

Monday Evening Links -

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 4:18pm MST

FCC chairman says Lifeline program will help bridge the digital divide huffingtonpost.com
Android as we know it will die within 2 years? The Grain
Gigabit WiFi taking center stage at CES macworld.com
4G LTE in the car: The best use of next-gen wireless broadband yet? zdnet.com
Surprise! AT&T's network is pretty good CNN Money
Sprint launches initial 4G devuces, including a 4G hotspot businesswire.com
AT&T to drop PS Vita on Feb. 22nd, also unveils pricing slashgear.com
Android passes iOS for market share during December cnet.com
The Pirate Bay Shows Futility of Domain and DNS Blocks torrentfreak.com
RIM unveils Playbook OS 2.0, Blackberry 7.1 totaltele.com
Buy a one year NYT or People Nook sub, get a Nook free paidcontent.org
Company claims emergency phone's battery has 15 year standby time gizmodo.com
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Mozilla, Others Launch WhatIsMyCap.org - Site Urges FCC to Investigate Usage Caps

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 2:51pm MST

"Although many carriers tout the ability to stream video and interact with the cloud on their networks, strict data caps make actually doing those things expensive or impossible," laments consumer group Public Knowledge. In conjunction the Mozilla Foundation and the Open Source Democracy Foundation, Public Knowledge this week launched a new website called WhatIsMyCap.org aimed at simplifying wireless usage caps and overages. With SMS and voice revenues expected to decline, AT&T and Verizon are now imposing low caps and overages as high as $10 per gigabyte (and Sprint probably not far behind). With one survey suggesting that 86% of Americans don't even know what a gigabyte is, it's not hard to imagine that as HD video over wireless accelerates you're going to see a lot of people crying over their wireless bills.
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Dish Starts Selling Satellite Broadband Bundles - Also Launches New Whole Home DVR Platform

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 1:15pm MST

Dish unveiled several announcements today at CES, including the fact they'll soon start offering bundled broadband services in conjunction with ViaSat -- courtesy of the recently-launched ViaSat 1. According to a company press announcement, they'll be bundling ViaSat's new 12 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up service (which we'll have more details on tomorrow) with satellite TV as part of bundles starting at $80 a month.

The company has also announced the "Hopper" and "Joey" set top and DVR platform that offers users up to 2 TB of pre-recorded content. Dish is playing catch up here to some existing cable, satellite and telcoTV options, though these new set tops try something a little bit new by recording pretty much all prime time content for your perusal at any time:

The Hopper's new, unparalleled feature, PrimeTime Anytime allows customers, with one click, to record using a single tuner all of the primetime TV programming from ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC -- the networks that deliver the most popular shows during primetime. Once activated by a customer, PrimeTime Anytime records network programming in high definition, where available, every night and stores them for eight days after they have aired. This creates an on-demand library of approximately 100 hours of primetime TV shows, and makes it easy to catch up on episodes from last night and last week's airing.

The new DVRs will also give users easy access to Dish's so-far-underwhelming Blockbuster streaming services, which the company has decided to rename Blockbuster @Home.
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Wireless Mobile Payment Protections Lacking - Consumer's Union Urges Improvement

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 12:09pm MST

We've noted how AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile all are incredibly interested in having your smartphone ultimately replace your wallet, and are busily working on new services (like Isis) to make this happen. There's obviously already privacy and security concerns from consumers who don't really trust these companies with the personal data they already have -- and now the Consumer's Union has issued a report noting that most of these services lack the fraud protection you'll find with your existing debit and credit services when your phone is lost or stolen. The group is urging carriers to adopt consumer protections that mirror regulations issued by the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
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Comcast Close to Launching Set Top Skype Service - New Set Top Camera Shows Up in FCC Database

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 9:31am MST

Last year we were the very first to report that Comcast was working on a simple way to integrate Skype video chat functionality into the Comcast Xfinity cable set top box using an inexpensive external camera. A few weeks later, Comcast made their plans official at The Cable show, stating they'd be launching the service sometime later in 2011. Comcast missed their original projections, but Wireless Goodness spotted the service, code-named "Astro" internally, winding its way through the FCC approval process.

They've got a little more detail on the service, which should cost users an additional $10 a month when it launches:

The device consists of a camera and microphone accessory that attaches to the top of a TV, and a small adapter box which manages connections between Xfinity s set top box and the camera array. The system also comes with a QWERTY remote that should make typing Skype messages pretty painless. User manuals for Skype for TV show a 10-foot style interface that does a good job of bringing Skype s interface to a TV screen. You can make audio or video calls, as well as send instant messages.

Comcast's entry in to the residential videoconferencing market comes just as Cisco announced they've scrapped the Cisco UMI service, which we first discussed back in late 2010 when it launched with a fairly ridiculous $600 (plus $30 a month) price point.
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ViaSat & WildBlue Launching $50, 12 Mbps Service Next Week - Though Company's Murky on Caps, Other Restrictions

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 6:34am MST

ViaSat this week is at CES promoting their new 12 Mbps satellite broadband service, which they say they'll launch next week for $50 a month. Aided by their recent successful launch of ViaSat 1, the company's new tier will be offered starting January 16th through both WildBlue and -- according to this press release -- National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative ISPs.

As we've noted previously there's the usual satellite catch: the service will not only be throttled, it will come with a usage cap ViaSat's being murky about (it looks to be around 7.5 GB), and may even include overage fees or the ability for users to buy additional buckets of bytes.

In a video presentation recorded at CES, ViaSat insists they're over-provisioning bandwidth so consumers have a good experience -- something traditionally not the case if you examine our users' WildBlue service reviews.

Historically satellite providers have struggled to deliver advertised speeds on loaded satellites. As seen in the video the ViaSat representative also references the fact the new service uses new "web acceleration technology" which, like the service's cap, ViaSat hasn't been particularly clear about.

Still, when you consider WildBlue's current 400,000 customers pay $80 for 1.5 Mbps, it won't take much to improve on existing offerings. When you also consider the fact that at several points over the last few years WildBlue has had to turn away paying customers because they lacked the capacity to serve them, the new capacity offered by ViaSat-1 is certainly a good thing.

We'll hopefully have some hands-on impressions by customers next week who can help clarify the new service's cap and other limitations. If you're giving the new service a spin, please drop us a line with your impressions.

Update: We've been told by ViaSat that the company should have more details on price and caps tomorrow when the new service is officially unveiled.
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Deloitte: 1 Out of 5 Have (or Will) Cut The TV Cord - 9% Say They Already Have, 11% Say They Will Soon

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 5:36am MST

The debate over TV cord cutting clearly isn't going away, with how severe of a trend it is depending entirely on who you ask. Folks in the cable industry continue to insist it's an irrelevant and tiny trend, while those covering streaming video sectors noting that endless price hikes and Internet video are setting the stage for a complete revolution in the way television is viewed. 2012's first debate topic comes courtesy of a new Deloitte State of the Media Democracy Survey.

According to Deloitte, one in five Americans say they've either cut the TV cord, or plan to do so soon. More specifically, the study found that 9 percent of respondents recently say the cut the cord, and 11 percent say they'll do so soon. Not surprisingly the report notes that video streaming is exploding, with the number of Americans saying they've streamed a movie jumping from 28 percent in 2009 to 42 percent today.

The results claiming that so many customers are eliminating pay TV doesn't square with industry statistics that show cable operators continue to bleed basic cable subscribers -- but it's usually to a telcoTV or satellite alternative. Overall traditional pay TV growth was simply flat last year -- with most TV customers simply switching between cable, telco TV or satellite to grab the best overall deal.

We've fired Deloitte an e-mail asking what accounts for the difference but have yet to hear back. While still minuscule in the face of overall cable business, the trend toward online streaming is a significant one -- especially for a cable TV industry that continues to insist on bi-annual rate hikes for already pricey service. Even some of Wall Street's most bullish cable analysts argue that the price hikes simply can't continue if the cable industry doesn't want a major backlash.
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Sprint Streamlines, Fires Four Execs - As Company Trims Down and Builds New Network

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 5:29am MST

Sprint is streamlining the company's operations by merging sales and marketing for their business and consumer operations. The streamlining, which comes as the company is starting to build a new nationwide LTE network, will include the departures of four top Sprint executives, according to Reuters. "We believe that we no longer need to support two separate business units (consumer and business), and that it is more logical now to evolve to unified marketing and sales organizations," Hesse told employees in a memo.
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Netflix Streaming Arrives in UK and Ireland - As Company Expands Streaming Industry Foothold

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 5:25am MST

After a series of missteps in 2011 that resulted in their stock price being punished and subscribers leaving in droves, Netflix is trying regain momentum in the marketplace by launching their streaming service in the UK and Ireland. The Telegraph reports that the service will offer older BBC shows and series, with movies from Lionsgate UK and MGM. The Inquirer also notes that the services offers subscribers access to stunning cinema such as "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" and "the Expendables". Part of the beating Netflix stock took was in part due to the fact that 2012 profits will be hampered by this expansion.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: January 9th, 2012, 4:34am MST

Hacked memo: Apple, RIM, Nokia providing backdoor for Indian government? computerworld.com
Lawmakers intent on passing SOPA & PIPA despite mass opposition? infoworld.com
T-Mobile parent company wants it out of the house, may sell towers slashgear.com
The wireless world: Is there chaos around the corner? humansinvent.com
NinjaVideo Admin Gets 22 Months In Jail, 500 Hours Of Community Service & Has To Pay MPAA $210k techdirt.com
Microsoft re-invents WiFi for White Spaces technologyreview.com
Netflix live in the UK cnet.co.uk
Symantec says hack poses no threat to its security franchise totaltele.com
Lenovo announces first Android 4.0 TV (but it's no Google TV) venturebeat.com
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Our DNS service provider is not working great -

Posted: January 7th, 2012, 1:42pm MST

Easydns.com announcement

I hope they sort it out.
You can switch to the IP address 209.123.109.175 if you like.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 3:43pm MST

O2 to roll out Europe's largest free wireless broadband zone in London cable.co.uk
All that free music you've been enh'joying from Spotify is about to end businessinsider.com
Vodafone/Verizon merger would make sense fiercewireless.com
Leap mulls LTE tie-up with Sprint wirelessweek.com
Comcast starts to kiss analog TV goodbye lightreading.com
Fujitsu wants its 4G femrocell to go global cnet.com
Home Depot will be first brick & mortor presence for PayPal techcrunch.com
FTC asked to probe Facebook Timelines for privacy violations zdnet.com
Android in-app system robs users? MSNBC.com
Symantec Confirms Hackers Accessed Source Code of Two Enterprise Security Products securityweek.com
Beast SSL fix in super size Patch Tuesday theregister.co.uk
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Weekend Open Thread! - So, What's New With You?

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 2:56pm MST

Deliver your bytes and bits into the comment section repository below.
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Indian ISPs Forced to Block Entire Domains - Simply to Try and Stop Trading of One Film

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 12:46pm MST

Movie studio Reliance Entertainment has somehow convinced courts in India to block entire domains -- simply to try and stop the trading of a single movie. According to Torrent Freak, not only have ISPs been ordered by the courts to block BitTorrent websites like BtJunkie, but they've also been ordered to block legitimate storage locker services like MegaUpload. Unsurprisingly, first in line to enthusiastically block entire domains is Reliance sister company Reliance Communications. MegaUpload insists that this will be a great opportunity to test anti-blocking technologies:

Commenting on the censorship, Megaupload s Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak that the effects of these blocks are usually resolved in a week, but while they stand they give the company a chance to do some analysis. "For us the India block is a great opportunity to see how users respond. In India we have one of the highest installation rates of our Megakey application. It gives users direct access to our servers. The Megakey instantly cures any kind of ISP or DNS blockade and always finds the fastest route to our servers, Kim adds.

In other words, those who want to get the copyrighted file will simply find a workaround, while less tech savvy users will be greeted with a broken Internet. The effort illustrates concerns many have with SOPA here in the States, in that filtering entire domains to try and stop piracy simply erodes free speech rights while breaking core Internet functionality -- all to protect the revenues of companies that failed repeatedly to adapt their business models to the modern age.
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Sprint: We Don't Throttle Postpaid Users - Though We Reserve the Right To Kick Users Off Network

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 10:35am MST

This morning we noted that much was being made of the fact that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told investors at a conference this week that the company is throttling the top 1% of "unlimited" users. That seemed odd, given that Sprint has made a big deal out of their unlimited offerings, and has been running ads claiming the company doesn't throttle anyone. Sprint has since come out with a full statement stating that the claims, which originated with a report by Dow Jones newswires, are false.

Sprint says the company does not throttle any postpaid phone data users for on-network or off-network usage. They also continue to insist they're still the only major wireless carrier that offers truly unlimited data plans with no throttling, metering or overages for smartphone users. Apparently the Dow Jones reporter hallucinated the fact Hesse said they throttle, as Hesse was simply noting that Sprint boots extremely heavy users that violate Sprint's terms and conditions:

Sprint does have terms and conditions which prohibit certain types of data use that may impair other customers' usage or harm or interfere with the network. At yesterday s investor conference, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was referring to Sprint s right to terminate service of data abusers who violate Sprint s terms and conditions. Customers who abuse our network by violating the terms and conditions will be contacted by Sprint in an effort to have the customer change their usage to comply with their subscriber agreement. Customers who do not change their usage and remain in violation of the terms and conditions may be subject to actions reserved by Sprint, including but not limited to termination. Consistent with our advertising, engaging in such uses will not result in throttling for customers on unlimited data-included plans for phones.

Booting the really ridiculously heavy users (after having conversations with them) is pretty much par for the course. Still, as we noted this morning, Sprint's dedication to unlimited likely won't last long as their LTE build budget gets tight.
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Where's C Spire's LTE Network? - Apple iPhone Deal May Have Cost Them Network Cash

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 9:54am MST

In 2010 C Spire Wireless (formerly Cellular South insisted they'd have a new LTE network up and running by the end of 2011. That didn't happen. As last year rolled on the company became more vague about an LTE timeline, putting more PR emphasis on the improvements they'd made to their EVDO network. Fierce Wireless notes that the company's LTE ambitions may have taken a hit for several reasons. The huge premium they had to pay to get the iPhone may have seriously damaged deployment funding, already tight from having to buy and test more expensive gear using 700 MHz spectrum in the band class 12 range. C Spire's CEO will only state the company is "working diligently toward" LTE, but the company refuses to give any solid timeline.
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Comcast Says DOCSIS 3.0 Upgrades Complete - Hopefully You Got In On Them?

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 7:25am MST

Some companies (like Time Warner Cable) don't see significant competitive pressure from FiOS or U-Verse -- and with slow DSL as their only competitive threat, have been somewhat glacial in getting faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds deployed. Comcast, facing FiOS competition in many markets, dedicated itself to deploying DOCSIS 3.0 quickly, a move that enabled greater HD channel lineups and downstream speeds up to 100 Mbps. Comcast CFO and Vice Chairman Michael Angelakis told attendees of a Citigroup investor's conference this week that their deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 has been "completed."

It's not clear if the company means they completely upgraded their entire footprint or if they've simply upgraded most of it -- with markets they don't really care about getting the short end of the stick. From perusing our forum comments I'm guessing the latter (Albuquerque remains un-upgraded), though you can let us know if you've been upgraded in the comment section below.

Recent data suggests that only about 43% of consumer cable modem hardware is DOCSIS 3.0 compliant, meaning that most cable companies still have a long way to go before they get most of you upgraded. Numbers from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) are more optimistic, insisting that 77 percent of the country should have been upgraded by the end of 2011.

In Comcast's case the company covers a whopping 52.38 million homes and businesses. Their next priority will be in completing trials of upstream channel bonding, a technology that should deliver faster upstream speeds and was supposedly supposed to have started popping up last year.
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Siri is a Little Bandwidth Pig - iPhone 4S Consumes Twice the Data of iPhone 4

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 6:52am MST

According to network firm Arieso, Apple's voice-powered personal assistant gimmick service Siri results in the iPhone 4S using twice as much data as the iPhone 4, putting additional strain on carriers who were already struggling to accommodate the device. Their full study on smartphone data usage is worth a read, noting that heavy users are getting even hungrier, with just 1% of subscribers now consuming half of all downloaded data on wireless networks.

"The introduction of increasingly sophisticated devices, coupled with growing consumer demand, is creating unrelenting pressure on mobile networks. The capacity crunch is still a very real threat for mobile operators, and it looks set to only get harder in 2012," said Dr. Michael Flanagan, CTO, Arieso and study author. The mobile industry needs new investment and new approaches to boost network performance and manage the customer experience."

The firm notes iPhone 4S users download 276% more data than the average iPhone 3GS user. The next heaviest smartphone users are Galaxy S users, who consume 199% more data than iPhone 3GS users. Still, you wonder how much of the surge in iPhone 4S data traffic is just early adopters having fun with their phones, and if this is anything more than a radar blip as users show off their new devices.

The firm also has a vested interest in highlighting congestion to sell products that can resolve it, so their suggestion that there's some unmanageable bandwidth apocalypse afoot is par for the course for these kinds of reports. The story remains the same: carriers that fail to adequately invest in network infrastructure tend to have problems. In an age where quarterly investor returns trump consumer interests or even network health, there's more than a few companies that fall into that category.
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Sprint CEO Says They're Throttling Unlimited Users - Then Company Proceeds to Insist He Misspoke

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 6:26am MST

While Sprint has continued to insist they're dedicated to offering unlimited data, the writing has been on the wall for some time that this dedication is going to have a short shelf life. Sprint has killed off unlimited data for everyone but smartphone users, and now CEO Dan Hesse is acknowledging that they are throttling the heaviest unlimited users. At a conference Hesse acknowledged that Sprint throttles about 1% of those users, telling investor attendees that "for those that want to abuse it, we can knock them off."

While you'd expect network management, the problem is their ads say they don't throttle.

Sprint insists that their CEO somehow misspoke, and that he was only referring to Sprint prepaid providers Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. Other outlets seem to be claiming that Hesse was misquoted in the Dow Jones report that started it all, and was only referring to users who roam.

False advertising or not, as SMS revenues dry up and mobile VoIP erodes traditional voice revenues, Sprint's going to inevitably kill off their purported love of unlimited data. The company has already been on a roll in mirroring the behavior of larger competitor giants AT&T and Verizon, jacking up ETFs and eliminating numerous discounts in order to help fund their LTE deployment. It would be fairly surprising if Sprint's unlimited smartphone offers survive 2012.

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HBO Makes Netflix Pay Retail For DVDs - As Their Battle Against Video Evolution Continues

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 5:56am MST

You might recall that HBO didn't exactly rush to embrace broadband video. The company initially poisoned copies of their TV shows available for download via BitTorrent, petitioned the FCC to make DVR recording of subscription video-on demand illegal, and threatened Slingbox for place shifting technology. It took years for HBO to finally offer their HBO Go broadband video service, but they've walled it off so that it's only available to users who subscribe to traditional cable.

Now in a one-two punch for Netflix, Time Warner has decided to not only double the new release delay window to nearly 60 days (someone should tell executives that simply drives users to piracy), they're also going to stop selling HBO content on DVD directly to Netflix at a discount:

Netflix typically buys the film and TV show DVDs that it rents to customers through wholesale venues, thereby taking advantage of volume discounts. But from now on, Netflix will have to buy DVD sets of shows like True Blood and Boardwalk Empire at retail in order to rent them to customers. It's not a huge financial hit to Netflix, but it is a signal about what the competitive landscape looks like. Asked about the change, a Netflix spokesman said, Netflix will continue to provide HBO titles on DVD and Blu-ray to our members."

This move comes as HBO and Time Warner already prevent Netflix from streaming HBO shows. HBO executives believe that by making content available to fewer people, they'll somehow retain HBO's reputation (in their minds) of HBO as a premium entity. In reality, HBO's doing what many cable operations are doing, trying to wall off and jack up the price of content in the false belief this can protect legacy business models from both piracy and competitors. Netflix meanwhile is getting into original programming, something that terrifies the folks at traditional outfits like HBO.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: January 6th, 2012, 3:44am MST

iPhone 4S is biggest network hog; just 1% of mobile users consume 50% of all downlink data totaltele.com
Sprint admits to throttling 1% of unlimited customers, but says there are no plans to adopt tiered tariffs totaltele.com
Ad mix-up reveals Sprint Galaxy Nexus 4G cnet.com
US Cellular pushes back 4G rollout; hints at probable first areas to get service engadget.com
UK ISP mocks regulator by re-releasing just-banned commercial claiming "safest broadband" ispreview.co.uk
Facebook ready to launch the last piece of its "frictionless sharing" plan venturebeat.com
All major labels now suing GrooveShark nytimes.com
Kodak heading for Chapter 11, finally done in by digital imaging? theregister.co.uk
RIAA: We Must Take A Shoot First, Ask Questions Later Approach To Censorship techdirt.com
The 550 Challenge: Can We Connect Everyone In The World Online (Yes, Everyone) By 2018? techdirt.com
LG, Samsung, Sony And Vizio On Board With Google TV 2.0 multichannel.com
Time Warner Cable Kicks Off HBO Go Beta Test; Initial Access to 'TV Everywhere' Limited to MSO's SignatureHome Customers multichannel.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 4:03pm MST

Vint Cerf gets rebutted: Internet access IS a human right techi.com
Comcast 'completes' DOCSIS 3.0 rollout lightreading.com
Broadcom Unveils Next-Gen "5G Wi-Fi" Chips Capable Of Up To 1.3Gbps maximumpc.com
Dish Poised To Unveil Wireless Broadband Plans, Multiroom DVR: Reports multichannel.com
3G and 4G Handsets Will Capture More than 50% of Handset Sales in 2012 abiresearch.com
AT&T says it will complete network upgrade by 2013 yahoo.com
Clearwire's got capacity to share wirelessweek.com
RIM puts resources behind single Blackberry 10 device cnet.com
VP of Hughes says satellite is being ignored pcpro.co.uk
Telecomms industry revenue to reach $2.1 Trillion in 2012 bgr.com
Iran latest to clamp down on Internet guardian.co.uk
ICANN to expand top level Internet domains despite critics reuters.com
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Sprint Unveils LTE Launch Cities - Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 2:39pm MST

Speaking at the Citi Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications conference today, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse unveiled that the company will be offering their new LTE service first in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and six other smaller markets by mid-2012. According to comments made during the webcast event, Hesse stated that a total of ten markets will see service sometime before "midsummer."

While the launch will likely be accompanied by a USB modem or two, Sprint isn't expected to launch LTE-capable handsets until later in the year (a leaked ad on CNET this week suggests the first device could be the Galaxy Nexus).

Sprint laid out their plan to deploy LTE back in October, noting they hoped to cover 123 million "pops" (potential users) with LTE by the end of 2012, and 250 million by the end of 2013. The company is conducting a $4-$5 billion network upgrade that involves retrofitting every Sprint cell site, eliminating the refrigerator-sized cabinets for each technology (800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz) in favor of small, more energy efficient multi-mode base stations allowing them to offer Mobile WiMax and LTE for the foreseeable future.

Sprint will obviously need spectrum for this new network, and with LightSquared currently bogged down in GPS interference political hell, Sprint says they'll need to re-purpose spectrum in the 800 MHz band for LTE after the company shutters their Nextel iDEN service sometime in 2013. Still, Hesse insists the company has enough spectrum to see them through 2014 -- or 2016 if you conclude the spectrum sharing deals with Clearwire.
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Broadcom Unveils Fifth Gen 1 Gigabit Wi-Fi Chip - Faster, More Energy Efficient, Better Range

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 11:06am MST

In preparation for CES, Broadcom today unveiled their first new chips adhering to the fifth-generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. According to Broadcom, the new 802.11ac chips are three times faster and up to six times more power efficient than equivalent current 802.11n chipsets. The new fifth generation chips utilize 80 MHz channel bandwidth two times wider than current 802.11n solutions while using a 256-QAM modulation scheme that should increase data transfer efficiency. In layman terms, Broadcom argues this means a product specifically tailored to in-home video, delivering speeds up to 1.3 gigabits per second with better range. You should start seeing the chipsets pop up starting in the second quarter of this year.
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AT&T Launches LTE In 11 More Markets - Bringing Total Launch Markets to 26

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 9:26am MST

AT&T today announced that the company has launched their faster LTE network in eleven additional markets: New York City metro area; Austin; Chapel Hill; Los Angeles; Oakland; Orlando; Phoenix; Raleigh; San Diego; San Francisco and San Jose. These launches join AT&T's existing footprint of fifteen markets which included Athens, Ga.; Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Charlotte; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; Indianapolis; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Oklahoma City; San Antonio; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington, DC. While AT&T's LTE footprint covers 74 million consumers in 26 markets, they're still playing catch up to Verizon, who's LTE network operates (usually) in over 200 markets. AT&T says their LTE deployment should be completed by the end of 2013.
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Consumers Save Canadian Unlimited Broadband - Something Almost Resembling Competition Springs Forth

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 7:36am MST

Yesterday we noted that as expected, the CRTC's ruling last year resulted in higher rates, with independent ISP Teksavvy unveiling new prices that for some users are up to 17% higher. The good news is that while Bell and other Canadian incumbents did get the authority to jack up prices on wholesalers (and by proxy consumers) they failed to get usage-based pricing imposed that would result in independents being unable to offer unlimited broadband tiers. As a result Teksavvy yesterday unveiled a number of unlimited broadband options for users, in addition to some interesting less-expensive value tiers.

On the heels of TekSavvy's announcement Canadian independent ISP Electronic Box has also taken to our forums to highlight their new pricing for 2012. Like TekSavvy, Electric Box was forced to raise rates on some tiers because of the CTRC ruling. However, also like TekSavvy, Electric Box is offering users a number of new options that are cheaper than incumbent pricing. They're also offering new unlimited options for users tired of the low cap, high overage price gouging imposed by Canadian incumbents. The new pricing for cable customers (click to enlarge): att=1716249 And here's the new pricing for DSL users: att=1716250 Yesterday's TekSavvy announcement noted that the company is now not running the meters for users on their 300 GB capped DSL plans between 2 AM and 8 AM. Electric Box is taking that idea further (thanks to fewer users and less network strain), saying they won't run the meters on any DSL customers between the hours of 2 AM and 12 PM. Some users will see lower rates, especially if they're making the shift from incumbent ISP to independent. Still, by and large, broadband prices continue to rise for all Canadians because of the cap and overage pricing model (that's precisely what it's designed for).

While part of the story here is that the CRTC effectively allowed incumbents to jack up prices (already among the most expensive in the world according to OECD data) for all Canadians, organized consumer outrage forced the CRTC to back off a Bell and Rogers plan for usage-based billing that would have prevented independent ISPs from offering differentiated product. As a result of Canadian consumer activism, consumers at least now have a variety of choices (most importantly unlimited) should they not like the often draconian pricing and network management practices of companies like Bell and Rogers.
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Piracy Becomes a Religion in Sweden - Missionary Church of Kopimism Approved by Authorities

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 6:09am MST

In what's either a joke or a failed effort to protect their activities from legal assault, a group of pirates in Sweden have successfully turned piracy into a religion. According to Torrent Freak, the Missionary Church of Kopimism was founded in 2010 by Philosophy student Isak Gerson, and was this week confirmed as an official religion by Swedish authorities. According to the religion's website, Sunday service apparently consists of getting together and swapping the Led Zeppelin discography:

Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution, says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism. The Church of Kopimism is a religious organisation with roots from 2010. The organisation formalizes a community that's been well spread for a long time already. The community of kopimi requires no formal membership. You just have to feel a calling to worship what is the holiest of the holiest, information and copy. To do this, we organize kopyactings - religious services - where the kopimists share information with eachother through copying and remix.

Apparently the plan is to claim religious persecution when they're busted for copyright infringement, so we'll have to see how this adventure works out for them.
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Some Users Still Paying AOL -- For Free Services - From the People Should Check Their Credit Bill Department

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 5:40am MST

Just five years ago AOL was still the nation's largest ISP. However, the company exited the ISP business, failed in attempts to migrate those users to broadband, then lost them all as the company shifted focus toward being a marginally-interesting content and advertising farm. Amazingly, it was recently observed that AOL still has 3.5 million subscribers, though it's not clear how many of those are people too lazy to check their credit card bills for canceled services.

Indeed, Local news outlets in Arizona have noticed that there's still a significant number of people also paying AOL for e-mail -- something AOL has offered for free since 2006 when AOL was still the nation's largest ISP with 18.6 million users:

Although Casale upgraded from dial-up to high speed, she just now realized that she has still been paying AOL $14.95 a month for email -- a service that's been free since 2006. "One day I just looked at, you know, you're going through your bills and every bit helps right now and I'm like, Why am I paying for email? No one else is,'" she said.

Of that 3.5 million you do start to wonder how many actually know they're still an AOL subscriber. AOL's cancellation systems were notoriously obnoxious, leading you to wonder how many of those are dead grandparents, with families being continually billed for services never used?
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Press Notices Other ISPs Impose 'Pay Your Bill Fees' - Verizon Certainly Not Alone in Obnoxious Cash Grab

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 5:29am MST

The other day Verizon was hammered for their decision to charge users an extra $2 if they wanted to pay their wireless bill either online or over the phone. While Verizon backed off the plan, we noted at the time that the press seemed to not notice that their plan isn't that unusual, with many, many ISPs charging extra fees to pay bills online, over the phone, or in person. Even Verizon charges such fees for some landline and DSL customers.

The Boston Globe is one of the few mainstream sites to notice this, pointing out that if users are going to be outraged at Verizon, they should also be outraged at AT&T, RCN, Comcast, DirecTV and plenty of other companies who -- as we noted some time ago -- have created a trend of forcing customers to pay a fee -- just to pay their bills. They break out the long list of ISPs doing similar fees highlighting RCN, who charges up to $7 in some instances but didn't want to talk about it:

AT&T Wireless charges $5 to make a payment in person with a clerk or via phone with a live agent. And T-Mobile USA: $5 by phone with an agent. Many cable TV providers levy similar fees. Comcast Corp., the region s largest cable television provider, charges $5.99 to make a payment via phone with the aid of a representative. And the two largest satellite TV providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, both charge $5 to make a payment through a representative. RCN, which charges as much as $7 for some types of payments, could not be reached for comment.

It's all part of a long-standing practice in the ISP industry (and now most other industries) to break out costs of business and place them below the line, allowing them to advertise a lower price -- then sock you with a variety of annoying fees. In this case Verizon didn't get away with it because users collectively complained, though you wonder why these folks weren't paying attention when other carriers implement such fees.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: January 5th, 2012, 4:23am MST

Internet inventor Vint Cerf: Internet is not a human right nytimes.com
Lightsquared's bad news = good news for Clearwire? fool.com
Verizon's rejected 'convenience fee' isn't that unusual boston.com
9% have cut cable, another 11% considering it gigaom.com
SKTelecom opens era of 100Mbps wireless mbmagazine.co.uk
Spotify's Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music forbes.com
Congress addresses GPS interference threat linuxfordevices.com
Verizon doubles iPhone sales to 4.2M units cnet.com
Irony alert: Righthaven sued by company it used to sue others arstechnica.com
AOL users still paying for free email azfamily.com
Apple struggling to secure TV rights for their HDTV? hdtvuk.tv
Patents show next Xbox may be a DVR too kotaku.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 3:51pm MST

File Sharing recognized as an official religion in Sweden torrentfreak.com
Roku unveals streaming stick; goodbye set-top box? MSNBC.com
Spain adopts its own version of SOPA techdirt.com
Metro-PCS to offer live local TV on smartphones cnet.com
Is C Spire's (Cellular South) LTE buildout dead in the water? fiercewireless.com
All smartphones in Chile must now be sold unlocked theverge.com
TD-LTE 4G standard gains momentum techworld.com
Windows Phone gives voice to its version of Siri cnet.com
UK ISP Talk Talk told to stop "safest broadband service" campaign because they're not thenextweb.com
Cisco finally drops Umi lightreading.com
Study finds piracy withering against legal alternatives theregister.co.uk
Lighttower extends fiber network to Mass Broadband Institute's middle mile initiativee fiercetelecom.com
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Mobile VoIP Use Will Triple This Year - Despite Carrier Best Efforts to Slow Evolution

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 3:09pm MST

We just got done noting how the carrier SMS cash cow is slowing dying, with the decline impacting foreign earlier adoption countries first and then impacting America's giant carriers starting over the next few years. Another industry mainstay going the way of the dodo courtesy of wireless broadband and smartphones is the idea of the voice minute. While carriers have tried to stall the evolution of mobile VoIP by crippling handsets and imposing usage limits, new data from NPD In-Stat notes the mobile VoIP revolution is coming whether they like it or not. Mobile VoIP users are expected to triple this year:

Driven by increased smartphone penetration and a growing breadth of offerings, mobile VoIP usage is on the rise. As the addressable market increases with smartphone penetration a greater number of providers are introducing services, including a growing handful of mobile operators that are beginning to embrace, to some degree, mobile VoIP. New NPD In-Stat research reports that active mobile VoIP subscriber rates will triple in 2011, growing from 9 million in 2010 to 29 million.

While they publicly like to pretend otherwise, carriers like AT&T and Verizon know this (r)evolution is coming, which is why this year they quickly moved to eliminate unlimited data. Jacking up the price of mobile data and annoying new fees are expected to offset some of the revenue lost as SMS and voice minutes become relics of a bygone telecom era.
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TekSavvy Announces Price Hikes - In Wake of New CRTC Ruling

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 12:43pm MST

Back in November Canadian regulators unveiled new rules that -- while preventing Bell from implementing their pure vision of usage-based billing -- allowed Canadian incumbents to jack up prices exponentially on wholesalers. As you'd expect those costs are now being passed on to Canadian consumers, with independent Canadian ISP TekSavvy this week taking to our forums to unveil new broadband pricing.

The new pricing will raise rates for both DSL and cable users by as much as 15% starting February 2. Not all of the news is bad, with TekSavvy introducing some unlimited options for users who don't like caps and don't mind paying a premium. The company's website breaks down the new pricing for both sets of users in detail. For cable users your new options are (click to enlarge): att=1716042 For DSL: att=1716043 Pricing will be different for Quebec users, who are still waiting for their price hike information. The company's website tries to find the silver lining in the massive thunderstorm by insisting that TekSavvy is the "the first in the industry to offer unlimited off-peak bandwidth" because the meter for customers with a 300 GB cap won't run between 2 AM and 8 AM when most people are asleep. There's an additional post on the TekSavvy website exploring how their hand was forced by the CRTC and Canadian incumbents.

In an e-mail to customers, TekSavvy insists that the company is "actively pursuing remedies at all levels to head off the additional dramatic cost increases that this model will impose on Internet users over time."
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BPL Takes Posthumous Beating With IBEC Closure - ISP Blames Tornadoes, Though BPL Failures Played a Role

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 11:32am MST

After years of hype as the "great broadband hope" (as former FCC boss Mike Powell put it) broadband over power line (BPL) technology exists as essentially a largely dead niche broadband solution, outperformed by even many modern wireless technologies. The technology always suffered from interference concerns, and the utilities the services were targeted at weren't sold on the idea of jumping into a duopoly market against companies like AT&T that enjoy regulatory capture.

Despite oodles of hype, most of the companies involved in pushing BPL gear have moved on to selling smart power network monitoring gear to utilities, while the nation's once-touted revolutionary BPL trials (like Manassas, Virginia) have closed up shop.

This week BPL took another belated hit with the news that International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC) will be closing their doors. In a message posted to their website (via Telecompetitor), the IBM-backed BPL provider blames April tornadoes for their closure.

"Due to our inability to overcome the financial damage from the April 27 2011 tornadoes that ravaged some of our major service areas, we regret that we have no other option than to close our doors and cease operations," says the company. "We expect that your service will remain active through the end of January 2012 but we cannot guarantee the quality and availability of your service during this period," adds IBEC.

While natural disasters are blamed for the company's problems, the fact that BPL was never a truly viable deliver option certainly takes much of the blame. IBEC and IBM initially claimed they'd invest $70 million to serve 340,000 homes in seven states, but the goal was continually scaled back as interference, costs, and deployment problems mounted.While the writing has been on the wall for BPL for at least half a decade, even last year Hunstville, Alabama-based IBEC was busily insisting BPL wasn't a dead technology. Just ignore the corpse laying squarely at their feet in plain sight to all.
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Bell Lowers Caps - Raises Maximum Monthly Penalty Limit

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 6:56am MST

Users in our Bell Canada forums note that the Canadian incumbent telco has lowered the monthly rate of several of their tiers, but they've countered that by lowering customer usage caps as well. A look at the Bell website reveals that the company lowered usage limits on all their tiers, in addition to raising the overage cap penalty limit (at $1 per gigabyte) an additional $20, to $80 per month in maxiumum usage penalties. Bell's Fibe 10 service went from a 75 GB cap to 60 GB, Fibe 12 went from 50 GB to 40 GB, Fibe 16 went from 75 GB to 65 GB and Fibe 25 went from 125 GB to 100 GB. Customers in our forums aren't pleased:

I'm keeping a close eye to my allowed quota on their portal. If they drop my package from 75 GB to 60 GB, then they better have a really good offer for me, or this might finally convince this 10+ year customer here to move elsewhere. I had been staying with them recently mostly because of the inconvenience of switching. If my bill is going to increase by another 10-20$/month due to that change, I'm gone.

Bell's "Fibe" service is named to make you think it's actually fiber, but the limitations on the DSL service are abundantly clear.
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Thanks Blogs! Verizon Unlimited Data Loophole Exposed, Closed - Users Who Exploited Ordering Glitch Get Downgraded

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 6:26am MST

Last summer Verizon followed AT&T and eliminated unlimited data, replacing the offer with low caps and overages up to $10 per gigabyte. Fortunately many unlimited users were grandfathered -- and if they weren't there has long been a loophole allowing users to get unlimited data if they were willing to use a little elbow grease. The effort, discussed by users here for some time, required that users call up and exploit a loophole in Verizon's automated ordering system. After the trick was discussed at Slickdeals and promoted by Gizmodo Verizon quickly got wise and fixed the loophole, with users who utilized it now being downgraded back to 2GB capped plans. On the bright side, Verizon appears to still be running a promotion where users get double data allotments if they sign up for a new LTE phone.
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AT&T Will Pay TiVo $215 Million for Patent Violation - TiVo Expects Similar Payout From Verizon

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 6:15am MST

AT&T Has become the latest tv provider to pony up cash for violating TiVo's DVR patents. The company this week announced that they'll be paying TiVo at least $215 million through June 2018, roughly $59.72 for each of AT&T's 3.6 million U-Verse TV subscribers. The first $51 million was paid by AT&T yesterday, with another $20 million due in the first year and quarterly payments each quarter after after that. TiVO says that they're pursuing a similar case against Verizon that should net them a similar payout. The company settled to the tune of $500 million with Dish Network back in May of last year.
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Comcast Cable Box Comes With Cockroach Suprise - As Company is Sued For Very 'Buggy' Gear

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 5:50am MST

Comcast is under fire in Illinois for installing buggy hardware -- literally. An Illinois resident says the company installed a set top box that came with a free cockroach infestation, and once installed resulted in the bugs "pouring out" into his home. When the user went to complain about the used device and his new friends, Comcast took several days to address the problem, the user going so far as to bring a bag of dead roaches into the Comcast office. While normally you'd think this was an isolated incident, Chicago's being sued by nearly a dozen current and former employees who say they were forced to install the "buggy" gear:

The employees claim they would find cockroaches crawling in and out of equipment, and in their lockers, trucks and equipment bags. They also claim the South Side facility had rats, a leaky ceiling and birds that flew in and out of the warehouse. The employees claim they saw cockroach eggs fall out of cable boxes that were supposed to be installed in customers homes. When an employee complained, the supervisor said, just put the box in you re in Englewood. They ll only have cable for a month. They won t pay bills, the suit said.

While Comcast was busily installing bug-infested equipment in low-income Illinois homes, the company was making great political hay from a low-income broadband offer most users can't get. "Comcast adamantly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend itself in court," a Comcast spokesman insists.
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Comcast Cable Box Comes With Cockroach Surprise - As Company is Sued For Very 'Buggy' Gear

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 5:50am MST

Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: January 4th, 2012, 4:36am MST

Billions alloted to extend broadband - to people who don't want it pressofatlanticcity.com
Beyond an Internet of Things towards a Sensor Commons techdirt.com
Is CES still important? pcmag.com
Verizon to deploy media gateway devices to FiOS homes fiercecable.com
Yahoo poised to name new CEO - with eBay's PayPal prez as top bet allthingsd.com
AT&T pays TiVo $215M for use of patents totaltele.com
Google gets hundreds of patents from IBM totaltele.com
Mobile App Devs to get their own professional organization inforworld.com
Rumored 3 iPad approach may mean a sub $300 entry unit cnet.com
Turn your phone into a game console latestgadgets.co.uk
Weak Sony Vita sales prompts price cuts already reghardware.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 4:12pm MST

Hackers Figuring Out How To Set Up Satellites To Route Around Internet Censorship bbc.co.uk
New law in Malaysia's largest city requires thay all restaurant's must provide WiFi thenextweb.com
LTE, VoLTE and HSPA+42 will highlight 2012 fiercewireless.com
Will 2012 be the 'Year of Convergence'? computerweekly.com
People want more wireless broadband, US needs to take care of that pesky digital divide huffingtonpost.com
Wilson Electronics announces first LTE signal booster wirelessweek.com
China adds 42 cities to integrated communications network trial totaltele.com
Carriers talking about building new trans-pacific network to handle data increases lightreading.com
EU politicians calling for lower Internet roaming charges (again) guardian.co.uk
Android, iOS app downloads top 1 Billion during Xmas week networkworld.com
Belarus digitizes its iron curtain, citizens banned from foreign websites theregister.co.uk
Secret Motorola XOOM project may be Androd 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update bgr.com
RIM cuts all PlayBooks to $300, gets ad hoc Android Market electronista.com
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Netflix to Launch New Original Series - As Company Focuses On Combating Licensing Hikes

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 2:42pm MST

As Netflix becomes more and more powerful, they're facing greater and greater challenges from the companies whose legacy business models they threaten. The cable and ISP industry is busy protecting TV revenues by imposing new caps and overages, even as the cost of delivering landline bandwidth continues to decline. The broadcast industry has been busy jacking up licensing fees in new negotiations with Netflix. As such, Netflix is focusing on new original content, snapping up the rights to a new show by David Fincher and Kevin Spacey, as well as the rights to the cancelled-but-popular Fox show Arrested Development.

The company today also announced they're launching a new series about a mobster (played by Sopranos actor and Bruce Springsteen pal Steven Van Zandt) under witness protection in Norway.

The one-hour show -- which is set in Lillehammer, Norway, where New York transplant Frank "The Fixer" Tagliano tries to make a new life for himself -- was developed by and is a production of Norway's Rubicon TV AS. "Lilyhammer" will also air on Norwegian TV, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos recently told TheWrap.

While Netflix made no shortage of stupid moves in 2011, they continue to be in the best position to disrupt traditional television in 2012.
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SMS Cash Cow Continues Slow Decline - Though Foreign Markets Are Witnessing Trend First

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 11:41am MST

As we've frequently covered, SMS is a huge cash cow for carriers as it costs virtually nothing for a carrier to provide. As the SMS cash cow slowly dies, they're getting their pound of flesh one way or another -- by either jacking up data rates -- or making your SMS options fewer and more costly. Other data has suggested the cash SMS cash cow won't truly start to die until after 2015 or so, but that fate is being accelerated by applications like Skype and iMessage. As erosion accelerates, SMS usage declines are popping up first in early adoption foreign markets:

Signs of consumers moving on from text-messaging to social media, email and IP-based messaging systems started cropping up in 2011 in advanced SMS markets like Netherlands and Philippines. What we seem to be witnessing is a situation where those countries where SMS took off first during Nineties are now the first ones to see a steep decline in SMS usage.

What's happening first in other early adoption countries will hit carriers like AT&T and Verizon next year and in 2013. Both companies anticipated this, which is why they were among the first to eliminate unlimited data. This attempt to revenue counter-balance is something that will likely force Sprint off of their position of selling unlimited data for smartphones sometime in the next two years.
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RIM CEOs May Get Demoted - As Titanic Deck Chairs Get Rearranged

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 9:34am MST

After product delays, multi-continent unexplained service outages and lackluster offerings, questions as to how and why RIM's co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs reached a fevered pitch last month. Anonymous sources tell the Financial Post that both Lazaridis and Balsillie will likely soon be forced to relinquish their titles as co-chairmen of the board as the company explores separating the chairman and CEO roles. The two co-founders collectively own 12% of RIM s outstanding shares, making them second and third largest shareholders in a company where no one owns more than 10% of the stock. Shuffling the Titanic deck chairs won't do much if RIM doesn't start fielding competitive product, and investors are growing increasingly impatient -- many asking for the company to be chopped up and/or sold off.
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Sprint Starts Charging $2 For Paper Bill - Belatedly Joins Established Industry Trend

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 8:03am MST

Users in both our forums and over at the official Sprint forums note that the company this week began charging users an additional $2 monthly surcharge if customers want to get a fully itemized, paper bill. Sprint customers can avoid the surcharge by enrolling in autopay. The effort is an attempt to offset printing costs and migrate more users to automated billing, and it's a fee companies like Verizon have been charging for some time.

Sprint had traditionally avoided such practices in the hopes it would differentiate them in the market, but as the company looks to build their LTE network they've been mirroring the behavior of their larger counterparts more closely in order to generate more income. The new paper bill fee comes on the heels of other Verizon-esque practices that have included Sprint raising their smartphone ETF to $350, shortening 30 money back guarantee windows and moving away from unlimited broadband.

Last week Verizon faced heated public opposition to a plan to begin charging wireless users a $2 fee if they wanted to pay via credit card or over the phone, a move Verizon backed off of after the FCC said they'd be taking a look at the move.
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Sprint Gives LightSquared 30 Days to Figure Things Out - As LightSquared's Future Looks Increasingly Dim

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 6:51am MST

Last October Sprint finally uneveiled their LTE plans, noting that in addition to partnering with Clearwire the company planned to partner with LightSquared, hopefully using LightSquared's 1600MHz spectrum for LTE FDD. That of course depends on LightSquared's ability to manage the problems they're having getting regulatory approval, which hinges in turn on whether or not they can fix their network's potential to interfere with GPS signals. Over the weekend Sprint announced that they've given LightSquared a thirty day extension in the terms of their deal to get regulatory headaches ironed out. Recently things have started looking more troubled for LightSquared, with the company running out of money and primary financial backer Phillip Falcone facing a potential SEC investigation for securities fraud.
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Court OKs Immunity For Domestic Telco Spying - Because of National Security. No, Don't Ask Why.

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 6:21am MST

You'll recall that a few years ago it was leaked that the government and phone companies were working hand in hand on a warrantless domestic surveillance system that had little to no oversight, with AT&T employees revealing (pdf) all phone and data being dumped wholesale in the government's lap. When civil liberty groups became justifiably outraged that the phone companies and the government were breaking the law -- the government simply had the law changed, granting retroactive immunity to phone companies.

A group of 33 cases against companies like AT&T, Verizon and Sprint were consolidated and last week finally made their way before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court ruled that the law giving the phone companies retroactive immunity was constitutional since it was done under claims of national security. In short, the ruling insisted that retroactively protecting companies against suits for breaking the law was ok -- because you want to ensure that companies help the government in the future:

When considering how to respond to lawsuits like this one, the Committee "recogniz ed the importance of the private sector in assisting law enforcement and intelligence officials in critical criminal justice and national security activities." ... The Report further states that "electronic surveillance for law enforcement and intelligence purposes depends in great part on the cooperation of the private companies that operate the Nation's telecommunication system."

Mike Masnick over at Techdirt makes a few good points about this, noting that there's serious potential for abuse of the new law, since the law puts the government's own Attorney General in charging of deciding who gets immunity (allowing the AG to abuse the law to aid his own investigations instead of making real impartial rulings). The ruling states the government can still be held liable, but as Techdirt notes the case can easily still be killed or end with the government getting a wrist slap -- then proceeding right along on their merry way.

In the end you've still got government and industry changing the law when they were found to be breaking it, something those with less power and money likely wouldn't get very far attempting.
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Time Warner Cable Pulls Plug on MSG - Insists MSG Wanted 53% Rate Hike

Posted: January 3rd, 2012, 5:54am MST

For the last few years we've seen increasingly contentious disputes between broadcasters and cable operators over retransmission fees. Such debates usually leave consumers stuck in the middle, left to deal with higher rates, lost programming and contentious ads by each side trying to pitch consumers against the other. This week's feud comes courtesy of Time Warner Cable and MSG, Time Warner Cable customers losing access to the latter due to what Time Warner Cable claims was a 53% rate hike demand by MSG.

While negotiations have frozen and MSG insists that the 53% fee hike claim is a "gross mischaracterization," as of January 1, Time Warner Cable customers can no longer watch Knicks, Rangers and Devils games. As an added bonus, consumers will face higher bills regardless of which side "wins" this dispute.
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