My RSS » broadbandreports.com

broadbandreports.com

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.
read comment(s)
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
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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.
read comment(s)
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
read comment(s)