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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 4:08pm MST

Netflix CEO: Netflix Will One Day Be Part Of Your Cable Bundle paidcontent.org
Clearwire could sign 'large carrier' soon, pines for LTE iPhone fiercewireless.com
TeliaSonera will charge fee for using free OTT VoIP services on its network, throttle bandwidth for users who try to use these services without paying lightreading.com
Does A Cisco Wi-Fi And Carrier Merger Mean Big Bucks? seekingalpha.com
Time Warner Cable's new 'opt-in' 5GB cap once again raises questions for bandwidth-intensive services like Netflix and Hulu bariety.com
Provider UK Broadband flips switch on the UK's first 4G LTE network totaltele.com
Mobile money faces developed-world challenge totaltele.com
The global smartphone tipping point: $100 or less cnet.com
Services, not specs, will win the day in smartphones fiercewireless.com
How the bot-proofing ofthe Internet is bringing humans down scientificamerican.com
iPad may come in 3 flavors cnet.com
Powerful, wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out in seconds theregister.co.uk
Condoms with QR codes track sites of safe sex gizmag.com
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Cablevision Says They Won't Raise Rates in 2012 - Though They're Cutting Back on Certain Promotions

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 3:10pm MST

For several years Cablevision wasn't really feeling the heat in their pricing battle with Verizon FiOS, but if their recently release fourth quarter earnings are any indication, that's starting to change. The company's fourth quarter profits dropped 47%, in large part to the earnings lost from spinning off AMC Networks. Cablevision lost 14,000 video customers, but added 20,000 high-speed data customers and 31,000 digital voice subscribers.

Speaking on the company's conference call, CFO Gregg Seibert stated the company would be taking an additional hit by not imposing any rate hikes this year. On the flip side, Seibert also noted that they'll be cutting back on some of the lower-cost bundle promotions they've been using to keep pace with Verizon FiOS in the NYC metro area:

So, as Jim noted, 2012 will be a year of investment for Cablevision. I will reiterate that we are accelerating several capital projects and expect to see higher capital spending in 2012 than we incurred in 2011. And we expect that free cash flow will be lower in 2012 than what was generated in 2011....Our intention is to maintain discipline in our pricing and packaging, so though you may not have a rate increase this year, we have eliminated the very low price offers that have been in the market in the past few years.

There's still no word on why several Cablevision executives recently jumped ship (including Tom Rutledge, who became Charter CEO), but the analyst speculation points to either a possible sale, or yet another effort at privatization by the Dolan family.
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French Incumbents Fail to Stop Free - Regulators Find Incumbent Claims Bogus

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 1:23pm MST

Last month we noted how French ISP Iliad was shaking up the French wireless market with some creative pricing, which included an introductory basic free tier of service (an idea that's taking root in the States now). With the offering clearly popular among users tired of paying an arm and a leg to France's uncompetitive incumbents, those incumbents recently started to try and shut Free down through higher rates, arguing the upstart was causing too much congestion (no evidence was given for the congestion bogeyman) so they needed to scrap signed contracts and pay more.

Incumbents also tried to claim that Free was engaged in foul play, turning off their own overloaded mobile antennas and sending traffic over the infrastructure of France Telecom, thereby violating French regulations. Those regulations required the new company cover 27% of the population of Metropolitan France with their network within two years of getting their license, 75% by January 2015, and 90% by January 2018. French regulator ARCEP examined the incumbents claims, and found they're completely not true:

An inspection by France's telecoms regulator Arcep, undertaken to address competitors' accusations that the new entrant's infrastructure was not operational, found that Iliad was covering 27 percent of the French population with its own antennas, meeting the regulatory minimum, Arcep head Jean-Ludovic Silicani said in parliamentary testimony.

The languages may change, but the dirty tricks employed by incumbents to avoid having to compete on price remain the same. This is the same France Telecom that absolutely refused to compete on price when Free entered the market, claiming their competitive pricing would be "bad for network quality and innovation." According to the incumbent CEO, they didn't need to compete on price because they offered "security, reliability and innovation." Just not on pricing.
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Sprint Paid A Fortune For the iPhone - At Least $15.5 Billion in Four Year Deal

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 11:27am MST

When Sprint finally got the iPhone last fall, reports suggested the company paid an arm and a leg for the chance, reportedly doling out nearly $20 billion in a promise to buy nearly 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years. Sprint s 10-K report filed this week confirms the fact that Sprint will pay at least $15.5 billion for the devices, and expects to see a significant hit on wireless profits thanks to having to subsidize the devices. It's enough to make the data hungry wonder when exactly Sprint will buckle and stop offering unlimited data. From the filing:

In September 2011, we entered into a four year commitment with Apple, Inc. to purchase a minimum number of smartphones, which on average, are expected to carry a higher subsidy per unit than other smartphones we sell. Our minimum commitment under this arrangement is approximately $15.5 billion; however, we expect our actual purchases will exceed this amount. This will result in an expected increase in cash outflow and reduction in operating income in the earlier years of the contract until such time as we may recover the acquisition costs through subscriber revenue.

While that's a lot of money for a company that's simultaneously working on completely re-configuring their network for LTE, the steep payout at least resulted in significant new subscribers last quarter for Sprint, who added 1.8 million new iPhone subscribers alone in the quarter. Roughly 40% of them were new customers to Sprint, many fleeing T-Mobile under fears of an AT&T acquisition.
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Time Warner Cable Close to Brand Refresh - Will Eliminate Roadrunner Mascot, 'Wideband' Term

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 9:25am MST

Time Warner Cable has been talking about a brand change ever since they were spin off from Time Warner back in 2008. Like their DOCSIS 3.0 network upgrades they're taking their time accomplishing this, acknowledging last summer the refresh would involve the elimination of the Roadrunner brand, and possibly the Time Warner Cable name entirely.

Sources at Time Warner Cable inform Broadband Reports the brand change should finally come sometime in the next few months.

There's no word yet on what's going to happen to the roadrunner/rr.com domain and e-mail names, and it's not clear yet if the brand refresh will go so far as to give all services an entirely new name (think Comcast Xfinity) or eliminate the Time Warner Cable name.

"I've heard 'Time Warner Communications' a few times as a possible name," says the source.

What is confirmed is that the Roadrunner mascot is being shelved, and the plan will involve some name changes to Internet tiers. Those changes will be fairly simple, with existing tier names simply seeing the addition of the word "Internet" (the "standard" tier will simply become the "standard Internet" tier). The source also confirmed that Time Warner Cable will be eliminating the term "wideband" in reference to DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, which has proven confusing to some customers.
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Knology is Looking For a Buyer - Shopping Itself Around to ISPs, Equity Firms

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 7:32am MST

In August of 2010 we noted how cable operator Knology (see our user reviews) acquired Sunflower broadband, a small Kansas ISP that came to national "fame" by being one of the first ISPs to impose the low cap and high overage billing model here in the States. Now Knology is looking to sell itself. Anonymous sources tell the Wall Street Journal that the company is shopping itself around to potential buyers -- including private-equity firms. Knology, headquartered in West Point, Georgia, serves just under 800,000 residential TV and broadband subscribers. The report also notes that Wave Broadband is also still looking for a buyer.
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Comcast Still Not Interested in Usage-Based Pricing - Doesn't Want to Hurt Customer Satisfaction Rankings

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 5:45am MST

Responding to Time Warner Cable's latest usage-based pricing experiment, Comcast executives say they still have no intention of experimenting with metered billing. "We have a very high customer satisfaction rating and we don't really want to rock the boat on that product," Comcast chief financial officer Michael Angelakis told attendees this week at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom conference in San Francisco. "I give them credit for trying different things," Angelakis said of Time Warner Cable's efforts. "We have real momentum in that business and the goal is to keep it."

In other words, Comcast faces competition from uncapped Verizon FiOS in far more markets than Time Warner Cable does, and would prefer not to shoot themselves in the foot. While saying they have "very high" customer satisfaction rankings is a bit of a stretch (they've traditionally fallen into the bottom half of rankings), the company doesn't want to lose any of the ranking gains they've seen over the last few years by imposing confusing and/or punitive new pricing models that aren't really necessary in the first place.
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Only 1 Million Google TV Devices in Use - Half of Those Are Discontinued Revue Units

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 5:30am MST

It was kind of clear that Google TV landed with a bit of a thud, when Logitech CEO Guerrino De Luca recently stated their launch of the Google TV powered Revue was "a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature," and that Google's product was a glorified beta. But how big of a thud? Janko Roettgers dug through some data to find out that there's less than a million Google TV devices currently in use, and about half of those are the discontinued Revue. That of course won't include those who bought Google TV devices and never turned them on for some reason, but it doesn't paint a very flattering picture of an effort Google hoped would revolutionize television.
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T-Mobile E-mail Says Roaming Caps Arrive April 5 - 5GB Plan Has 100 MB Off Network Roaming Cap

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 5:17am MST

Last month leaked information suggested that T-Mobile was preparing new charges for users who roam off network, and now users are receiving e-mails confirming them of this fact. The e-mail (see enlargable image below) informs users that the company will begin imposing roaming data limits and overages starting April 5. As of that date, 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 sever data connectivity for users completely until connection to a Wi-Fi hotspot is made. The precise limits and the e-mail: att=1731722
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 29th, 2012, 4:03am MST

Broadband stimulus scandals: Missteps in the buildout, and what's at stake fiercetelecom.com
Metro-PCS warns new promotion could raise subscriber prices totaltele.com
Apple snags multipoint touchscreen patent - can sue the bejeezus out of everyone now theregister.co.uk
Phone apps help themselves to our contacts,Google tracks our web history,and supermarkets monitor our buying habits: The end of online privacy? guardian.co.uk
802.11ac ready to scream into the marketplace fiercebroadbandwireless.com
The five biggest U.S. cable operators, plus Time Warner, are trying to prevent Dish Network from securing trademark on TV Everywhere multichannel.com
Sources: New Apple TV launching in March, near-immediate availability hinted for new iPads 9to5mac.com
Less than 1M GoogleTV devices in use gigaom.com
GSM mobile standard wide open for attack; corrupt telcos, more computing power to blame theregister.co.uk
Apple to reveal iPad 3 on March 7th fiercewireless.com
WiFi from LED lights? mobile-ent.biz
Raspberry Pi credit-card sized Linux PCs are on sale now, $25 Model A gets a RAM bump engadget.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 4:26pm MST

Mobile net kingpins v the world: 'Why should we pay the 4G tab?' theregister.co.uk
Apple developing new audio file format to offer 'adaptive streaming' guardian.co.uk
Cisco first out the door with next-gen hotspot gigaom.com
Fox, Warner want secure, high-def film players cnet.com
Why the vaunted spectrum auctions won't cut it cnet.com
The Forces Shaping Broadband in Western and Eastern Europe ecommercetimes.com
Serious Internet outage strikes East Africa after several undersea cables cut ispreview.com
Comcast launches "smart home" program gazette.com
How mobile broadband can transform Africa CNN.com
Duracell Powermat WiCC could bring wireless charging to all smartphones pcauthority.co.au
FTC Chairman: New Google Privacy Plan Forces Consumers to Make a Brutal Choice allthingsd.com
The Pirate Bay, Now Without Torrents torrentfreak.com
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HBO Go Coming to Xbox 360 - More Walled Gardens Arrive April 1

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 3:41pm MST

Back in October Microsoft announced that they'd soon be bringing significant additional broadband video content to the console, including content from Comcast and FioS TV. Upon closer inspection the offer left a little something to be desired, with users needing to have a cable TV subscription and broadband subscription from a particular ISP to access most of the content. They're now adding to that lineup, with Engadget being told by HBO's Eric Kessler that HBO Go will be arriving on the Xbox 360 starting April 1. You'll of course need to subscribe to traditional cable (and it has to be a cable company with an HBO Go agreement with HBO), traditional HBO, and have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to access this content via the 360.
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Verizon Family Data Plans Coming Mid Year - Busy Trying to Figure Out How Not to Lose Money

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 1:45pm 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 seems closer to a launch, telling attendees (transcript, pdf) at the Deutsche Bank Media and Telecommunications Conference that family plans will be dropping very soon. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo told investors that the company has been slow on the idea because it's a "a very complex equation," and Verizon has wanted to make sure such plans would be "good for Verizon and...good for our customer." Shammo gave mid year as a vague launch window, starting with LTE users:

"Now it's also important to realize that the day we launch this account billing, everybody won't be migrating to the account billing day one. This is going to be a long-term migration into where we want to get data plan sharing, but this will be more of a 4G play for us and I think it will be critical for us. And you'll see something launched--even Lowell alluded to it--you'll see something launched mid-year this year from us."

As it stands, Verizon makes plenty of money charging each individual member of a family an individual data plan for each device, with most of their allotments left unused. Verizon and AT&T pricing is very carefully crafted so that the least expensive option (usually around 200-300MB) is too little, but the next step up (usually 2-3 GB) is too much.

People clearly want pooled data if we're moving to per byte wireless. However, shifting away from the existing model, which is carefully designed to get everyone paying as much money as possible, has clearly confounded both companies. Both AT&T and Verizon will introduce new plans that try to give the impression of value, without eroding existing profits. In other words, expect oodles of caveats when these options finally arrive later this year.
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LightSquared CEO Resigns - Falcone Insists They'll Continue to Try

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 11:04am MST

With the company all but dead after being denied a necessary FCC spectrum condition waiver, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja is getting out while the getting is good. The company released a statement this afternoon announcing that Ahuja resigned his position, but will continue to serve as chairman of the board. While the company hunts for a new CEO, they're appointing chief network officer Doug Smith and CFO Marc Montagner as co-Chief Operating Officers.

Sanjiv has shown great leadership in bringing the LightSquared vision to this point, including leveraging his experience in the telecom industry to sign dozens of critical partnerships across the country," said LightSquared's chief financial backer Phillip Falcone in a statement. "As the company takes the next step forward, we continue to be excited about the prospects and look forward to working with new leadership to accomplish our goal of building and operating an innovative, competitive wireless network."

The next step forward is most likely into nonexistence, and the thirty-five wholesale partners Ahuja signed deals with will likely now simply look to Sprint or Clearwire for their connectivity needs. The FCC doesn't appear eager to bend on the necessary condition, and it remains unclear if LightSquared intends to sue the agency as they had once promised. Despite dwindling hope and resources, Falcone insists they still hope to build an actual network someday.

We are...committed to working with the appropriate entities to find a solution to the recent regulatory issues. We, of course, agree that it is critical to ensure that national security, aviation and the GPS communities are protected. I am confident that working together, we can solve this problem and bring the American consumer the lower priced 4G wireless alternative they need and deserve," Falcone said.
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Time Warner Cable Returns to (Optional) Metered Billing - Promises Users Will Always Have Option of Unlimited

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 8:13am MST

Time Warner Cable suffered a PR disaster back in 2009 when they tried to impose incredibly low caps and high overages on their customers, arguing at the time that flat rate pricing simply wasn't economically viable -- and that they simply had to starting metering usage or the Internet would see brown outs. Several years later and the Internet has survived just fine -- as have Time Warner Cable earnings, which have consistently shown flat rate broadband to be increasingly profitable. In more blunt terms, Time Warner Cable was completely and utterly full of crap.

As I noted at the time, it seemed likely the effort would return eventually with a new coat of PR paint, given the lust investors have for the idea of imposing overages on usage in the age of Internet video. On cue, Time Warner Cable has announced over at their blog that they're giving metered billing another shot -- albeit this time on a voluntary basis to begin with.

According to Time Warner Cable's Jeff Simmermon, the company is introducing a new optional usage-based pricing plan called "Internet Essentials" in several markets in Southern Texas, including San Antonio, Laredo, Corpus Christi, the Rio Grande Valley and the Border Corridor. In his post, Simmermon acknowledges Time Warner Cable's first attempt on this front didn't go so well, and promises that users will always have the option of an unlimited tier:

Yes, we did try this before, a few years ago. And yes, pretty much everyone agrees that it didn t go so well. So we listened to customer complaints. A lot. Consequently, Time Warner Cable customers will always have access to unlimited broadband at a flat monthly rate. Usage-based consumption is optional, and it s designed to save light users money. Customers can switch back and forth as often as they like, but if they choose not to switch, nobody s switching anything for them.

Time Warner Cable customers will always have access to unlimited broadband at a flat monthly rate.

-Time Warner Cable

As for pricing, the company says that users on the company's Standard, Basic and Lite tiers are all eligible to switch to the plan at any time. Prices for these tiers vary by market and local competition, but usually start at $30 if bundled with TV. Users on Turbo, Extreme and Wideband customers can't switch to metered billing and continue as usual. Should you switch, the company claims users can see up to a $5 monthly savings, depending on usage. In their own words, the company says the option provides users:

1) Up to 5GB/month of data transmission for a $5/month discount from one s current monthly bill. All Standard, Basic and Lite broadband customers will be eligible. Turbo, Extreme and Wideband customers will continue as always, with access to unlimited broadband and no optional tiered plan or discounts.

2) The ability to opt-in and opt-out of a tiered package at any time.

3) A meter that tracks usage on a daily, monthly, weekly or even hourly basis, enabling customers to accurately gauge usage. Below is an example of the hourly meter:

3) (sic) A 60 day/2 billing-cycle grace period to allow customers to adjust usage patterns. During this time we will notify customers of overages but won t charge for them.

4) Overages will cost $1 per GB, not to exceed a maximum of $25/month.

The company has been working on a new usage meter these customers can use to track consumption. There's no word yet on when the company hopes to expand the offer into additional markets. Obviously we'll have to see how this measures up when put into actual use and users start seeing real bills, so keep an eye on our Time Warner Cable user forum. Aside from suggesting users could save $5 a month, actual details aren't really being offered here. While the optional part is certainly nice, and it's warming that Time Warner Cable actually listened to users this time, there's still obviously some concerns here.

Usage-Based Billing in the U.S. is Never, Ever About Saving you Money or CongestionA lot of Time Warner Cable's website rhetoric still suggests that Time Warner Cable's motivation here is simply to save users money and "enhance the value of the subscription." Wanting users to spend less has simply never been a goal of any publicly traded cable company, and in fact most cable operators go out of their way to avoid actually competing on price. As such, the argument that this is about cost savings remains disingenuous. On the TV front, while Time Warner Cable has been paying a lot of lip service to less affluent customers lately, their TV essentials product aimed at this segment has a ridiculous number of caveats and lacks any real value.

While real usage-based billing might save a user money (a $5 a month tier with reasonable overages), what Time Warner Cable is proposing again isn't real usage-based billing -- it's flat-rate pricing with overages layered on top. Real flat-rate pricing would be welcome by consumers, but it would lose ISPs money -- as every grandmother in the country -- with their diet of just e-mail and occasional weather forecasts -- would wind up paying virtually no money.

If usage-based billing isn't about saving you money as carriers claim, it's about managing congestion, right? Nope. You'll recall Time Warner Cable originally tried to insist that they needed to meter because if they didn't, the Internet would grind to a halt and suffer "brownouts." You'll note that nowhere in the blog post or their website does the company mention congestion as a reason for the service this go round, so we'll assume they've finally given up on that argument.

So what is this really about? Despite the flowery language, trying to impose this kind of pricing comes from executives and the investment community, who simply can't give up this dream. These folks are solely interested in imposing usage surcharges and creating artificial scarcity on a product that's getting increasingly less expensive to provide. It's about ramping up profits in the face of Internet video and imposing control out of fear of becoming a "dumb pipe" -- it always has been.

ISP Meters Aren't Accurate and Regulators Don't CareEvery single company that has imposed meters and overages across North America is having trouble metering and billing users accurately. That's not hyperbole. Every carrier that's imposing overage fees -- from AT&T in the United States to Cogeco in Canada -- is having trouble accurately monitoring your usage. Worse, despite these ISPs claiming they should be able to bill like a utility, there's no regulatory agency overseeing any of this -- meaning it's up to you to make sure you're not overpaying. We've seen absolutely no interest from any regulatory agency in North America when it comes to making sure you're not being ripped off -- and as a result, many broadband users are.

I am Altering the Deal. Pray I Don't Alter it any Further. While it's nice that Time Warner Cable has promised to always keep an unlimited option available, there's obviously nothing holding them to such a promise. In their first attempt at metered billing Time Warner Cable failed to heed the old boiling frog anecdote, and threw users into the pot at full boil. This time you can be sure that they'll turn up the heat more slowly. Why? There's absolutely nothing stopping them. Regulators don't care -- they think this kind of pricing experimentation is "creative." That leaves the free market to keep this pricing experiment in check, but most users live in monopoly or duopoly markets.

In more than half of their markets, Time Warner Cable's most intense competition comes from sluggish DSL -- where speeds often top out at just 3 Mbps. Real competition drives real price competition, and Time Warner Cable simply doesn't face the kind of competitive pressures that would drive real price competition. Both Verizon and AT&T have halted their next-gen upgrades, and Time Warner Cable's looking at a decade of easy phone company pickings.

With such tepid competition, there's really nothing stopping them from making this a mandatory affair over time. Don't believe us? Ask Canadians, who thanks to limited competition now enjoy some of the lowest caps and overages in the world. Meanwhile, while it's nice that Time Warner Cable created a $25 monthly overage ceiling, but as we've seen in Canada that ceiling is constantly nudged upward resulting in some ridiculous user bills. Getting the picture yet?

Does it remain possible for an ISP to creatively offer usage-based pricing that really works? Sure. Is it likely that a United States ISP with limited competition in their footprint and a track record of relentless rate hikes is going to? Not so much.
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Time Warner Cable Returns to (Optional, For Now) Metered Billing - Save $5 on Slower Tiers if You Agree to 5 GB Cap

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 8:13am MST

Time Warner Cable customers will always have access to unlimited broadband at a flat monthly rate.

-Time Warner Cable

The company has been working on a new usage meter these customers can use to track consumption. There's no word yet on when the company hopes to expand the offer into additional markets. Obviously we'll have to see how this measures up when put into actual use and users start seeing real bills, so keep an eye on our Time Warner Cable user forum. Being able to save $5 off of a slow-speed tier if you agree to a 5GB cap is not a revolutionary value proposition. While the optional part is certainly nice, and it's warming that Time Warner Cable actually listened to users this time, there's still obviously some concerns here.

Usage-Based Billing in the U.S. is Never, Ever About Saving you Money or CongestionA lot of Time Warner Cable's website rhetoric still suggests that Time Warner Cable's motivation here is simply to save users money and "enhance the value of the subscription." Wanting users to spend less has simply never been a goal of any publicly traded cable company, and in fact most cable operators go out of their way to avoid actually competing on price. As such, the argument that this is about cost savings remains disingenuous. On the TV front, while Time Warner Cable has been paying a lot of lip service to less affluent customers lately, their TV essentials product aimed at this segment has a ridiculous number of caveats and lacks any real value.

While real usage-based billing might save a user money (a $5 a month tier with reasonable overages), what Time Warner Cable is proposing again isn't real usage-based billing -- it's flat-rate pricing with overages layered on top. Real per-byte pricing would be welcome by consumers, but it would lose ISPs money -- as every grandmother in the country -- with their diet of just e-mail and occasional weather forecasts -- would wind up paying virtually no money.

If usage-based billing isn't about saving you money as carriers claim, it's about managing congestion, right? Nope. You'll recall Time Warner Cable originally tried to insist that they needed to meter because if they didn't, the Internet would grind to a halt and suffer "brownouts." You'll note that nowhere in the blog post or their website does the company mention congestion as a reason for the service this go round, so we'll assume they've finally given up on that argument.

So what is this really about? Despite the flowery language, trying to impose this kind of pricing comes from executives and the investment community, who simply can't give up this dream. These folks are solely interested in imposing usage surcharges and creating artificial scarcity on a product that's getting increasingly less expensive to provide. It's about ramping up profits in the face of Internet video and imposing control out of fear of becoming a "dumb pipe" -- it always has been.

ISP Meters Aren't Accurate and Regulators Don't CareEvery single company that has imposed meters and overages across North America is having trouble metering and billing users accurately. That's not hyperbole. Every carrier that's imposing overage fees -- from AT&T in the United States to Cogeco in Canada -- is having trouble accurately monitoring your usage. Worse, despite these ISPs claiming they should be able to bill like a utility, there's no regulatory agency overseeing any of this -- meaning it's up to you to make sure you're not overpaying. We've seen absolutely no interest from any regulatory agency in North America when it comes to making sure you're not being ripped off -- and as a result, many broadband users are.

I am Altering the Deal. Pray I Don't Alter it any Further. While it's nice that Time Warner Cable has promised to always keep an unlimited option available, there's obviously nothing holding them to such a promise. In their first attempt at metered billing Time Warner Cable failed to heed the old boiling frog anecdote, and threw users into the pot at full boil. This time you can be sure that they'll turn up the heat more slowly. Why? There's absolutely nothing stopping them. Regulators don't care -- they think this kind of pricing experimentation is "creative." That leaves the free market to keep this pricing experiment in check, but most users live in monopoly or duopoly markets.

In more than half of their markets, Time Warner Cable's most intense competition comes from sluggish DSL -- where speeds often top out at just 3 Mbps. Real competition drives real price competition, and Time Warner Cable simply doesn't face the kind of competitive pressures that would drive real price competition. Both Verizon and AT&T have halted their next-gen upgrades, and Time Warner Cable's looking at a decade of easy phone company pickings.

With such tepid competition, there's really nothing stopping them from making this a mandatory affair over time. Don't believe us? Ask Canadians, who thanks to limited competition now enjoy some of the lowest caps and overages in the world. Meanwhile, while it's nice that Time Warner Cable created a $25 monthly overage ceiling, we've watched Canadian ISPs constantly nudge these ceilings upward over time, resulting in some ridiculous user bills.

Getting the picture yet? This is a soft sell with a hard landing. Is it possible for an ISP to creatively offer usage-based pricing that really works and saves consumers money? Sure. Is it likely that a U.S. ISP with limited competition in their footprint and a track record of utter disdain for price competition is going to? Not so much.
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People Aren't Buying AT&T's New Troll Toll Proposal - Consumer Groups Urge FCC to Investigate

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 6:35am MST

Yesterday we noted how AT&T was back with yet another controversial pricing idea: charging app and content developers a fee so that their content didn't impact a user's cap. In pitching it to their friends at the Journal, AT&T did their best to dress this up as a high-value proposition for the consumer, insisting this would be like a "1-800 number" or "freight included" for apps. As we noted however, if you've watched AT&T operate at all, you realized this was simply some new makeup on an old AT&T pig: namely AT&T's effort to unnaturally impose their will on the wireless ecosystem and levy totally unnecessary additional network usage tolls.

Some in the press didn't quite understand the potential pitfalls of AT&T's latest idea. We saw one outlet insist that this idea means that AT&T would "essentially be providing data free of charge to its customers." In reality what it means is you pay the same and app developers pay more to get a preferred status from AT&T, a cost passed on to you the consumer.

A few bloggers and reporters understood this, such as GigaOM's Stacey Higginbotham, Techcrunch's Jordan Cook and Time's Sam Gustin. Harold Feld over at Public Knowledge was one of the few to clearly break down what AT&T's really attempting here:

1. Create an artificial scarcity with an arbitrary bandwidth cap for its wireless services;
2. Charge users who exceed this arbitrary bandwidth cap;
3. Claim to do consumers a favor by letting the ap developer pay for exceeding the arbitrary bandwidth cap.

Feld goes on to note how these kinds of schemes actually create a disincentive to invest in the network, and puts AT&T in an artificial position of power determining content winners and losers. Feld and his group are urging the FCC to take a closer look at AT&T's scheme. That's unlikely to happen, since the FCC has never really taken an interest in stopping sophisticated nickel and diming (look at below the line "unfees" as a shining example), and generally pretends these kinds of plans are simply "creative pricing."
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Charter: 93% Completed With DOC 3.0 Upgrades - 95% of Users Now at 15 Mbps or Higher

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 5:43am MST

Charter this week unveiled their fourth quarter earnings, which show the company took a fourth-quarter loss of $67 million, down from $70 million one year earlier. The company lost 45,500 basic video subscribers during the fourth quarter, but managed to add 67,700 residential Internet customers. Charter's new president and CEO Tom Rutledge spoke publicly for the first time since leaving Cablevision, noting in a conference call that the company has deployed faster DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades to 93% of the company's footprint. After a recent round of speed boosts, Charter says that 95% of their customers are now on speeds 15 Mbps or higher.

With the relatively inexpensive cost of DOCSIS 3.0 versus DSL to FTTN/FTTH upgrades, it's not too hard to begin seeing how more rural telcos are struggling to compete with cable. Rutledge spoke briefly on the call about how Charter differed from Cablevision:

Well, as I just said Charter isn t Cablevision and it s a different time and place for me with the issues in front of Charter. But inherently the physical asset the cable system that passes 12 million homes at Charter is a highly capable network. And we can design products on that network that are superior to our competitors and I think we can drive into the marketplace. It is true that it s less clustered which requires different kinds of marketing strategies and tactics, but I think those tactics are available to us.

Things like the networked DVR (RS-DVR) which Rutdledge focused on at Cablevision will have to wait, according to the new CEO, who says things like deploying the TiVo Premiere DVR are taking priority for the company.
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T-Mobile Skips HSPA+ 84, Heads for LTE - As Long As They're Refarming 1900MHz PCS Spectrum

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 5:24am MST

T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom last week confirmed that they'll be keeping T-Mobile in the U.S. market, using the $4 billion in cash, spectrum and roaming deals from AT&T to build out an LTE network. Speaking at the Mobile Congress in Barcelona this week, T-Mobile says the LTE build will begin once they've finished their HSPA+ 42 (theoretically capable of 42 Mbps) upgrades, and that they won't be proceeding to HSPA+ 84 as they had originally suggested. Both HSPA+ 42 and LTE would require time, money and the refarming of spectrum, and while HSPA+ may still have plenty of legroom for the average user -- it simply makes sense to get the LTE migration rolling sooner rather than later.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 3:45am MST

Netflix is now primarily an Internet streaming service for television shows, not feature films nytimes.com
AT&T Announces Worldwide Mobile Broadband Platform Via Single SIM dailytech.com
Sony Music Boss says the Internet is a blessing for the music industry, but restrictive copyright enforcement is a problem - censored YouTube videos cost Sony millions torrentfreak.com
AT&T's Dual-Sided Pipe is Bad for Developers readwriteweb.com
'Silent Roamers' to cost operators $1.2bn in 2012: More than 50% of subs avoid using mobile voice while roaming, up to 70% do not use data totaltele.com
EPIC Isn t Taking No For An Answer, Files Emergency Appeal In Google Privacy Case techcrunch.com
Look for the smartphone's future in the PC's past cnet.com
Law would let parents see kids' text messages MSNBC.com
Ford calls on wireless industry to help prevent global gridlock fiercewireless.com
German ruling spells trouble for Motorola's 3G patent lawsuits arstechnica.com
NTT researchers develop breakthrough optical memory device physorg.com
Yahoo accuses Facebook of violating up to 20 of its patents, threatens to sue if FB doesn't pay up now techcrunch.com
Mercedes-Benz Brings Siri To Their Cars psfk.com
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 28th, 2012, 3:45am MST

Monday Evening Links -

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 4:23pm MST

Time Warner Cable Revives Usage-Based Internet Plan, But Now It's Optional: 'Essentials Broadband' Service Capped at 5 GB Monthly for $5 Off multichannel.com
Pakistan Asking For Proposals On A System That Will Let The Government Censor 50 Million Websites eff.org
AT&T Mobility CEO says there is enough spectrum for US mobile broadband needs but regulators need to start clearing it now globaltelecomsbusiness.com
Sprint to Raise $2 Billion Debt, May Use to Fund Clearwire bloomberg.com
Carrier IQ lets carriers open their network quality stats to subscribers theverge.com
Record-Speed Wireless Data Bridge Demonstrated: Takes High-Speed Communications the 'Last Mile' tmcnet.com
Mobile broadband usage is skyrocketing - and so are the number of projections fiercewireless.com
LightSquared debacle strengthens AT&T, Verizon duopoly; fallout could impact future spectrum auctions totaltele.com
New Samsung Galaxdetails leaked online cnet.com
Opt-Out Provision would halt some - but not all - web tracking nytimes.com
Mozilla, Telefonica promise open web phone - does the world need another mobile operating system? informationweek.com
Nokia s 41-Megapixel (not a typo!) Camera Phone: Five Years in the Making allthingsd.com
U.S. Court of Appeals Denies Challenge to FCC Pole Attachment Payment Regime multichannel.com
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Google Tries Making Fiber Installs Less Expensive - Patents Edging System to Hide Fiber Runs

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 3:31pm MST

After some initial bureaucratic tangles, Google recently started to finally start hanging fiber in Kansas City, where by the end of the year they'll begin offering users there 1 Gbps fiber and TV service. The project was always intended to be an experimental test bed for data, next-gen content and ad delivery, but Google also wants to tinker with ways of making fiber installs easier and more affordable. Fierce Cable found a patent Google recently filed for a way to hide fiber runs without digging:

The edging device may have decorative color or pattern on the outside surface for aesthetic purposes," Google says in the patent application, adding that "different styles of coatings may be separately available to the customers." A diagram Google includes in the application shows an edging device that is concealed at the edge of a subscriber's driveway, running from the street to an optical network terminal (ONT) attached to the side of a home.

It's not clear if Google would bury lines instead on request for customers worried about how an edging system like this would look, or whether it would hold up to weekly weed whackings.
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Just 5% of Verizon Customers Using LTE - One Year On From Launch of LTE Network

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 1:26pm MST

Verizon has made great strides in the year since they launched their LTE network, but not all that many of the company's users have switched to the new network. The network reaches about 200 million Americans in nearly 200 markets, but according to data from Verizon CTO Fran Shammo, just 5% of Verizon Wireless customers have switched to the faster data network.

"It is very critical for us, and we re playing a very delicate balancing act here that I don t want to spend any more money on my 3G network," Shammo is quoted as saying in a speech to investors today.

Verizon keeps running a promotion where customers can get double their data allotments if they buy a new contract LTE phone, a deal intended to not only nudge users toward LTE, but to free up space for iPhone users on the EVDO network.

You'll see these numbers shift quickly once Apple starts offering an LTE phone later this year, and more efficient chip design and smaller batteries result in LTE Android phones that aren't quite as bulky. As it stands, Apple has been reluctant to offer an LTE iPhone yet due to battery size and life, which is why the iPhone 5 isn't rumored to launch until this fall.
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Why Did Sprint Walk Away From MetroPCS Deal? - Wary of Integrating MetroPCS on Top of LTE Build

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 11:07am MST

It was revealed last week that Sprint was just hours away from acquiring MetroPCS before the deal was scrapped. While Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was sold on the deal, the Sprint board was not -- voting the deal down at the last minute. Analysts have been scurrying about giving their thoughts on why the deal wasn't approved, and one consensus is that Sprint didn't want to tack MetroPCS subscriber and system integration on top of an already significant cell station overhaul and LTE transition. In a research note to clients, J.P. Morgan analyst Philip Cusick put his thoughts on why the Sprint board fleed the deal this way:

For Sprint, we think the reasons to walk away from such an accretive deal are likely due to 1) it s already complicated technology transition and 2) the ~1/3rd of pro forma equity given up in the deal. Either reason likely indicates to us that Sprint isn t prepared to do any deal in the next 6-12 months, and instead has chosen to focus on its own network transition.

After that though we believe Sprint could look to consolidate the prepaid space. If, as was reported, the deal had the support of senior management but was rejected by the board then it could indicate that the board has limited confidence in management s ability to forecast the business and execute its technology transition.

While Sprint seems to finally be recovering from the Nextel acquisition, that certainly can't be far from anyone's mind at the company. Sprint is only just starting to see recovery in consumer satisfaction studies after that deal, and adding in a new company integration in addition to what's a fairly massive network rebuild could have simply been too much.

Add in the fact that Sprint just ponied up a massive amount of dough for a new iPhone exclusive, and may be on the hook for additional cash in both their LightSquared and Clearwire relationships, and it makes sense that the board would have doubts as to whether adding more moving pieces to an already busy and tenuous equation was a great idea.
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AT&T Devises Entirely New Wireless Troll Toll - Wants App Makers to Pay for Lower Impact on User Cap

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 8:11am MST

In 2005 then-AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre told Business Week that because people use Google, Google should help pay for AT&T's network deployment (or as Ed put it, Google "ain't usin' his pipes for free"). ISP executives have long tried to offload upgrade expenses on to others, adding a new content toll despite the fact both content companies and consumers already pay a considerable sum for bandwidth. Whitacre's comment triggered years of ugly network neutrality debate, and now AT&T is back with another idea.

According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T's planning a new service whereby content or app developers could somehow pay for their app to have a reduced impact on user caps. AT&T technology boss John Donovan tries to sell the idea to the Journal as sort of a 1-800 toll free line for data or "freight included" for developers. The idea, pitched first by AT&T to a friendly outlet, remains a muddy AT&T board room pipe dream at the moment:

"A feature that we're hoping to have out sometime next year is the equivalent of 800 numbers that would say, if you take this app, this app will come without any network usage," Donovan said on the sidelines of a mobile-industry conference here. It's far from clear how willing technology companies would be to pay wireless carriers for data use. Mr. Donovan said there was interest from companies who could use the feature to drum up new business from customers wary of using data-heavy services like mobile video.

While this sounds slightly different, this is still AT&T's dream vision to retain control by imposing strange and unnecessary new tolls on the companies using their network. Years back, AT&T wanted to charge content makers a toll so their traffic saw network priority. In this new idea, AT&T wants to charge content or app makers a toll so that their apps have less of an impact on a user's cap. The end result is the same, with AT&T imposing bizarre tolls on content companies to obtain preferred customer status, picking winners and losers while retaining power in the wireless ecosystem.

It's an idea we're sure AT&T will pitch as a cost-saving endeavor for consumers, but given this is AT&T, you'd be naive to think cost savings will be in the equation. You'll still pay the same data rates, content companies will now just pay a fee to obtain preferred "reduced cap impact" status, then pass the higher development costs on to you. It's a ridiculous and dangerous idea, and the fallout will likely be similar to AT&T's "free ride" comments. AT&T executives either don't care how bad these ideas make them look, or don't realize it thanks to too many isolated meetings at headquarters packed with telco-think yes men.

Eventually you start to think that AT&T executives should just stop thinking before they hurt someone or themselves. If AT&T put half as much energy into running a top-flight network with quality support as they did cooking up hare-brained troll toll schemes -- they might just stop coming in last place in all major customer satisfaction studies.
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Ars Gives Sonic.net Some Love - Treating Customers With Respect Pays Dividends. Who Knew?

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 6:18am MST

Ars Technica has a nice write up on independent ISP Sonic.Net, which against all odds not only survived the U.S. CLEC-pocalypse, but managed to thrive and proceeded to build their own network. Sonic's current the top rated U.S. ISP in our good, bad and ugly rankings. It's a success that has come from not only offering a good product (they're now offering 1 Gbps fiber for $70 in parts of California), but by treating customers well. Instead of trying to nickel and dime his users at every opportunity, Sonic CEO Dan Jasper can often be found over at his blog arguing how caps make little technical sense, or how most ISPs don't respect your privacy and sell all of your information and online activity (like clickstream data) under the table.
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Journal Explores 'iPhone's Subsidy Crutch' - Android Winning in No Subsidy Markets...

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 6:00am MST

The Wall Street Journal notes that the iPhone is significantly less successful in markets where carriers aren't willing to subsidize the device and where users traditionally don't sign contracts. In the U.S., where carriers pay $400 to subsidize each device and users sign long-term contracts, Apple reigns supreme.

In markets like Denmark and Spain, where carriers are tired of underwriting the devices, less expensive Android devices tend to take the lead because of the extreme Apple price tag. While there have been attempts to change the U.S. market to rely less on subsidies, it hasn't gone well -- given the two-year contract and pricey ETFs are the playthings of a largely duopoly-dominated market intent on keeping competition to a bare minimum. More competition? More unsubsidized phones.

"Our competitors are much more dependent on such subsidies," John Lagerling, Google's director of Android partnerships tells the Journal. "From a sustainability standpoint, if you have very expensive devices as the only ones available to access your ecosystem, then that can come with a pretty severe hangover in the long run."
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Throttled iPhone User Wins $850 From AT&T - AT&T Says They'll Appeal Ruling...

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 5:45am MST

AT&T has been waging a quiet war on those "unlimited" users they grandfathered in 2010 when the company ditched unlimited data for new users. Not only is AT&T automatically putting those users on tiered data plans should they jailbreak their phones and tether unofficially (totally legal, for now), they've started throttling those users after 2 GB to quietly force them to tiered data plans. According to the Associated Press, an unemployed truck driver has beaten AT&T in small claims court because of AT&T's claims his connect was "unlimited." AT&T says they'll appeal the ruling. "At the end of the day, our contract governs our relationship with our customers," says an AT&T spokesman. A Validas study last week confirmed AT&T's throttling is simply an effort to push users onto metered tiers and isn't actually related to usage or congestion.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: February 27th, 2012, 3:54am MST

Study Confirms What You Already Knew: Mobile Data Throttling About The Money, Not Stopping Data Hogs techdirt.com
Are specs becoming meaningless in the smartphone wars? cnet.com
Averting a spectrum disaster: Now for the hard part cnet.com
Australia's biggest ISP's NBN plan: Fiber to people's houses, but phone calls over the copper network delimiter.co.au
Wireless Operators Turn to Merger Lite as Watchdogs Deter Deals businessweek.com
What Does It Mean to be "Pro-Technology and Pro-Internet?" eff.org
Most Smartphone Subscribers Use Wi-Fi As Their Primary Connection For Data Usage According To New Research thestreet.com
IPhone's Crutch of Subsidies Wall Street Journal
Report: Facebook Read Facebook App Users' Private Text Messages readwriteweb.com
CableLabs CEO: Interactive TV As Relevant As Ever R&D Consortium Affirms Support for Canoe's VOD Advertising Efforts multichannel.com
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 3:50pm MST

No Cancellation For You! Why Won't Anyone At AT&T Answer The DSL Cancellation Line? consumerist.com
Irony Alert: The government body that oversees France's 3 Strikes laws (HADOPI) caught infringing again; one more time, and it must disconnect itself from the Internet techdirt.com
BrightLine plans to pick up where Canoe left off cable360.net
Duopoly Money lightreading.com
Ouch! Netflix: no plan to support BlackBerry, PlayBook reuters.com
Rapidshare slows download speeds to discourage pirates torrentfreak.com
Mozilla partners up with LG to combat Apple and Google with its own device extremetech.com
Continental Divide: The Forces Shaping Broadband in Western and Eastern Europe ecommercetimes.com
Will Britain get Europes best broadband? pcpro.co.uk
TiVo transcoder and IP-based set-top box coming 'by the end of summer' theverge.com
How Microsoft is killing off the Zune and Windows Live brands in Windows 8 theverge.com
Flashback Mac Trojan Horse Infections Increasing with New Variant intego.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Please Deposit Your Thoughts

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 3:49pm MST

The weekend is here. Have any plans?
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Sprint Almost Just Acquired MetroPCS - Deal Scrapped at Last Second by Sprint Board

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 2:49pm MST

CNBC is exclusively reporting that Sprint was literally inches away from an $8 billion deal to acquire MetroPCS last Wednesday -- but Sprint's board ultimately voted against the plan. According to anonymous sources, both companies were literally hours away from announcing the deal after months of negotiations, but the board voted down the deal for unknown reasons despite CEO Hesse's approval. The scrapped deal would have given MetroPCS one third ownership of the combined company and a 30% premium over the price of MetroPCS shares, with Sprint gaining MetroPCS' 9.35 million subscribers.
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DOJ Pressures Supremes to Drop Warrantless Challenge - As Government Proposes Privacy Bill of Rights

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 1:21pm MST

Wired notes that the Department of Justice is urging the Supreme Court to halt a legal challenge to the government's warrantless wiretap efforts. At the center of those efforts are the phone companies, who whistleblowers have alleged are shoveling all phone and data traffic from numerous companies right into the lap of the NSA -- and the FISA Amendments Act, which gave those companies immunity from criminal penalties for violating privacy law. The Supreme Court is being asked to review the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program that has subsequently been expanded by the Obama administration. That this is occurring while the White House professes a dedication to online privacy is more than a little amusing.
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MetroPCS Promises to Be Among the First to VoLTE - Will Offer Two VoLTE-Capable Handsets This Year

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 11:35am MST

Wireless voice traffic continues to travel over the 3G (EVDO, HSPA) portion of carrier networks until LTE carriers deploy voice over LTE (VoLTE), which should provide users will significantly better call audio quality. Verizon recently delayed their deployment of VoLTE until 2013, in part because incomplete LTE build outs and the inability to handoff calls between 3G and 4G networks mean the user experience would be highly clunky (for lack of a more technical term).

MetroPCS this week reiterated they'll be among the first to launch VoLTE in the U.S., and that they'll have two VoLTE-capable (not necessarily working) handsets available this year. The company complains the predominant VoLTE chipset, the Qualcomm 8960, is not quite fully cooked. Qualcomm only just announced the first successful "seamless" call handoff between an LTE and WCDMA network.

All of that said, MetroPCS being first to VoLTE may not mean all that much. The company was the first in the country to deploy LTE, but their implementation was more like "LTE light," in some cases barely offering downstream speeds up to 1 Mbps over crippled devices prohibited from accessing the full Internet.
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AT&T Deploys Self-Healing Wireless Network Technology - Should Ease Problems With Overloaded Cell Towers

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 9:23am MST

John Donovan, senior EVP of AT&T technology, today revealed via the company's blog that AT&T will soon deploy "self healing" technology that should result in a more resilient wireless network. AT&T's self-optimizing network (SON) technology is being developed by Intucell, and AT&T says they're the first to deploy it. According to Donovan, the technology can automatically detect when a tower is overloaded, and recruit nearby towers for assistance in real time without human intervention.

"Initial field trial results from California and Georgia have shown as much as a 10 percent improvement in call retainability, 10 percent improvement in throughput speeds and 15 percent reduction in overloading," says AT&T, offering a video with a little more detail. att=1730527
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Verizon Quickly Reverts to Pretending There's a Spectrum Crisis - After Clearly Stating There Wasn't One Weeks Earlier

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 7:29am MST

Years ago then-Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg clearly stated the company would have more than enough spectrum to fully offer nationwide LTE wireless broadband. That was before the company moved to nab another 122 Advanced Wireless Services spectrum licenses from the cable industry. Studies show both AT&T and Verizon have plenty of spectrum, particularly after re-farming spectrum currently being used for 2G and 3G (EVDO) services.

Taking that one step further, Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead stated just last week Verizon has plenty of spectrum and won't have to even worry about refarming existing spectrum anytime soon. So it's interesting to read a post at Verizon's policy blog that, after patting themselves on their back for their quick LTE deployment and efficient use of resources, goes right back to chirping about a supposed "spectrum crisis" that we really should do something about:

Rather than waste time arguing about spectrum efficiency, let s focus on the issue on which we all agree: America s wireless consumers face a spectrum crunch that won t be relieved by Verizon s spectrum purchase. It s up to the industry, as well as policymakers, to help ensure that more spectrum reaches the marketplace soon, so America s wireless industry remains the global leader in innovation that it is today.

So Verizon has plenty of spectrum, but there's still a spectrum crisis? If there's a crunch, it's being felt by smaller companies who can't afford to outbid industry giants AT&T and Verizon at auction. Should a company obtain spectrum, lobbyists attempt to sabotage the process and obtain that spectrum anyway. With the help of the press, AT&T and Verizon keep a "crisis" narrative afloat, allowing them to gobble up spectrum for anti-competitive reasons, justify ridiculously low caps and extremely high per byte overages, and scare lawmakers into passing protectionist regulations.

If there's a crisis, it's an anti-competitive one.
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Mozilla: We Offered 'Do Not Track' Before it Was Cool - Chides Google for Not Yet Offering it Via Chrome

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 6:12am MST

As we noted yesterday the White House introduced a new privacy bill of rights which consists largely of a bunch of initiatives started by industry in the hopes of pre-empting real privacy regulations. The completely voluntary measures include adding "do not track" functionality to browsers, something Mozilla noted this week they've been doing for some time. Mozilla makes some not-so-subtle jabs at Google for not-yet offering the functionality via Chrome, since Google's primary game is advertising, and it's already available in Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera. Says Mozilla:

We re encouraged to see increased momentum for Do Not Track. And as of today, it s safe to say it s here to stay Mozilla will continue to work at the W3C, which has a vital role to play in creating an international standard We want to continue to see Do Not Track evolve through the Internet s rich tradition of open development and collaborative innovation. Do Not Track is too important to become a product of closed-door meetings rather than through open, multi-stakeholder efforts.

While the functionality is available, not all that many Firefox users use it, with Mozilla noting that just 18% of mobile and 7% of desktop Firefox users currently have it activated.

Google says they'll soon add the functionality to Chrome, but as Consumer Reports notes there's several instances where it won't really work to protect you -- like when you're signed into Google accounts or your browsing is tied closely to your Facebook account. There's also nothing guaranteeing that more malicious and less ethical players will cooperate with the effort. The government says they'll push for more unified privacy protections by conducting "open, transparent multistakeholder processes," which unfortunately is quite often code for the exact opposite.
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Google Sells Stake in Clearwire - Sells $500 Million (2008) Stake for $47 Million

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 5:42am MST

An SEC filing notes that Google has sold their 6.5% stake in Clearwire, purchased for $500 million back in 2008. Google's taking quite a loss on the investment, selling that same stake now for just $47 million. Clearwire's losing friends rather quickly, having just lost the entire cable industry as an investment source after their new marketing arrangement with Verizon. Google's exit is only the latest indicator that Clearwire wasn't the wireless revolution it hoped to be. The company has since largely exited retail and is focused on being a wholesale operation that still relies heavily on Sprint to maintain financial viability.
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Study: AT&T Throttling of Unlimited Makes No Practical Sense - Confirms Carrier is Simply Pushing Those Users to Tiered Plans

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 5:34am MST

Last week we noted that AT&T has been waging a quiet war on those "unlimited" users they grandfathered in 2010 when the company ditched unlimited data for new users. Not only is AT&T automatically putting those users on tiered data plans should they jailbreak their phones and tether unofficially (totally legal, for now), they've started throttling those users after 2 GB to quietly force them to tiered data plans. A new study by the folks at Validas studied 55,000 cell phone bills and confirmed what we already knew -- AT&T's decision to throttle the top 5% of unlimited users is simply a way to force those users onto tiered plans:

When we look at the Top 5% of data users, there is virtually no difference in data consumption between those on unlimited and those on tiered plans and yet the unlimited consumers are the ones at risk of getting their service turned off. So it s curious that anyone would think the throttling here represents a serious effort at alleviating network bandwidth issues. After all, Sprint gets by fine maintaining non-throttled unlimited data to its customers.

How hard users are throttled or how low caps are usually aren't tied in any way to real world economics or network performance -- they're tied to executive desire for improved quarterly earnings. By making wireless data ever-more precious and costly -- they can offset the expected SMS and voice revenue losses as everything becomes just data. Validas also found that on Verizon, unlimited users actually use less data than users on metered plans, something that runs in stark contrast to recent Cisco analysis. Verizon also throttles its heavy grandfathered unlimited users, but nowhere near as heavily as AT&T does.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: February 24th, 2012, 4:43am MST

First Responders Broadband Network Lacks Crucial Features; report says network, which just got $7 billion in funding, lacks many key voice capabilities, forcing use of current system for another 10 years informationweek.com
MPAA's Chris Dodd extends olive branch to Silicon Valley thewrap.com
Study: Throttling unlimited data plans is kinda pointless bgr.com
Court: Australia's commercial radio stations won't have to pay out extra royalties for online simulcasting of recorded music billboard.biz
CenturyLink picks up former Qwest's fiber slack in Oregon fiercetelecom.com
Aussie woman in hot water - for scamming Nigerian scammers out of $33000 couriermail.com
UltraViolet passes million download mark reghardware.com
Fight Over iPad Name Spills Into U.S. Court Wall Street Journal
Google may enter tablet market with 7-inch design cnet.com
Best Buy faces criminal investigation for WiFi hacking resulting in porn playing on 52" display TV slashgear.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 4:40pm MST

Thinktank reveals the Internet of the future: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot access the internet" express.co.uk
With New Standard,Wi-Fi Could Become As Widespread As Cellular Popular Science
New Rules To Block 'Distracted Driving' Will Likely Make Things Worse, Not Better techdirt.com
Mobile Web and App Usage Now at Parity gigaom.com
$13.9 Billion Gone, and the Wireless Disruption Has Just Begun forbes.com
T-Mobile USA to spend $4 billion on LTE buildout totaltele.com
2020: The Rise or Demise of Wireless Carriers? mashable.com
How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually Enable Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists techdirt.com
European MVNOs get crunched on price and turn to data foercewireless.com
Google Music not living up to expectations cnet.com
Google Allows Do-Not-Track Button in Browser to Protect Consumer Data bloomberg.com
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FCC Urges ISPs to Improve Security - Highlights Comcast, CenturyLink as Having Done it Right

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 3:31pm MST

FCC Boss Julius Genachowski this week gave a speech on cybersecurity during which he held up security practices at Comcast and Centurylinkas ones for other ISPs to emulate. During the speech, Genachowski called on all ISPs to create a botnet threat and protect the public. "Comcast and CenturyLink have already taken the lead in developing and promoting solutions like this," Genachowski said, referring to improving user notification of infected PCs. "If other ISPs employed similar best practices, it could significantly reduce the botnet threat."

ISPs needing to step up in terms of infections is nothing new, nor is some ISPs making an extra effort to find new ways to tackle the threat (see our report on Cox using walled gardens against botnet infections from 2006). There have been no limit of ISP security analysts employed at ISPs that have told us over the years that ISPs see plenty of security problems, some ISP bean counters sometimes don't want to properly provide resources to deal with them.

Genachowski also urged ISPs to adopt Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), something we've noted that Comcast has taken the lead on and already finished. While a little nudge for some of the lagging ISPs might help, the current FCC seems to like taking already established industry efforts toward goals (be they security, offering $10 broadband, or digital literacy) and then dressing them up as FCC policy for political points. It's unlikely Genachowski's informing anyone at an ISP of threats they're not already well aware of.
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Dish's Ergen: We've Got 80% Chance of Launching LTE Network - Notes that the Plan's Future Rests in FCC's Hands

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 12:52pm MST

Last summer Dish Network made it clear that the company was very seriously interested in launching a wireless network, despite previous executive assurances that the company was accumulating spectrum just for fun. Run from a subsidiary, the company is hoping to launch an LTE-Advanced network under the brand "Ollo." Dish is planning to use the spectrum they acquired from DBSD North America and TerreStar Networks, but is waiting for FCC approval.

Speaking about the company's earnings today, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen stated he thinks the company has roughly an 80% chance of getting their LTE network up and running. Like LightSquared, Dish needs the FCC to grant a waiver on some of the conditions attached to the spectrum they plan to use. Unlike LightSquared, Dish's spectrum holdings won't interfere with GPS technology.

"As we get into that business, I would say we have an 80% chance of success. If so you go full bore and give your best effort," says Ergen. "If by chance we were not granted a waiver or it was kicked down the road without a decision through rulemaking, then I think that we'd have to consider the risk, and at this point, I'd say we probably don't have an 80% chance of success," Ergen said.

Dish is expected to get the FCC waiver, and had previously stated they'd accept some buildout conditions "consistent with FCC precedent and based on the buildout principles established." In Sprint Nextel's combination of its spectrum assets with Clearwire, they were required to offer service to 15 million POPs in four years and 30 million POPs within six years. Tim Farrar at TMF Associates has a pretty good idea what kind of spectrum repositioning Dish's deal with the FCC will entail.

Should Dish get FCC approval, the LTE Advanced equipment for its S-band spectrum they plan to use likely won't even be available until 2015 -- meaning any real Dish LTE network would be several years out. AT&T is lobbying hard to get Dish's build out obligations increased to the point where they'd be unreasonable, which would force Dish to sell the spectrum to AT&T. Dish would at least net the cash from their spectrum holdings, but it would be an unfortunate event given the death of LightSquared and the tenuous footing of other AT&T Verizon would-be competitors like Clearwire.
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CNN Fans The 'Spectrum Crisis' Flames - Informs Consumers They Should Happily Pay More

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 9:49am MST

As we've been discussing lately, there's many people who like to insist we're always facing an unavoidable "capacity crisis" that never arrives. If you find someone engaging in capacity scare mongering, they're usually selling hardware (Cisco, Sandvine), bad anti-competitive policy and high price justifications (carrier lobbyists), or eager to make a buck off of spectrum auctions (FCC). The weak link in this equation is usually the press, who takes whatever congestion statistics are fed to them without so much as a question, then repeats them ad nauseum (see AT&T's claim that DSL, U-Verse caps were necessary on a landline network that isn't congested).

Exhibit A is a series that CNN has been running this week on the "spectrum crunch" that literally reads like it was written by carriers, proclaiming loudly that "America's airwaves are full."

In part one, CNN claims a spectrum apocalypse will soon result in more dropped calls, slower data speeds and higher prices. Absolutely terrifying! The proof? A statistic provided by AT&T showing wireless network growth of 20,000% since the iPhone's debut. CNN forgets to mention those numbers recently were artificially bloated to include Wi-Fi, or that both AT&T and FCC wireless growth numbers have been shown to be wildly overly-inflated.

In part three of the CNN series, CNN informs readers that the capacity crisis -- not the carriers themselves -- are to blame for all the ridiculous nickel and dime fees carriers are imposing, and that you'd really just better get used to it, amusingly insisting that the "ideal customer is someone with a smartphone they use sparingly." Reporter David Goldman even goes so far as to trot out the old telco-think idea that content companies should subsidize carriers (hey, just because!):

Netflix is an oft-cited culprit behind the looming spectrum crunch....so would Netflix consider subsidizing its customers' streaming movie addictions? A company spokesman would say only that "consumers deserve access to the content they want at a reasonable price."

It's amusing that the CNN series came the same week that Verizon was admitting they have plenty of spectrum, and on the heels of a report noting AT&T's also in fine shape once they start using what they already have efficiently. Sadly, there's no mention anywhere in the CNN series that if there is a spectrum shortage, it's in part thanks to anti-competitive spectrum squatting and inefficient use of existing resources. The latter can and will be fixed, the former the technology press simply refuses to admit is even real. It's cute, but CNN actually still believes that things like $10 per gigabyte overages and fee price gouging are tied to real provision costs, not greed.

While again there's absolutely a finite amount of spectrum, it's an issue we can engineer around provided we can handle anti-competitive spectrum squatting. The media seems utterly transfixed by the carrier narrative of an endless series of capacity crises, only fixed by more protectionist regulations, higher rates, more anti-competitive behavior, and less choice. The "capacity crisis" simply wouldn't exist if reporters asked tougher questions and started thinking for themselves. There is no spectrum apocalypse bogeyman.
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Here Come Next Gen Wi-Fi Hotspots - Offering Seamless Cellular to Wi-Fi Transitions, SIM Authentication

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 8:10am MST

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced today that the organization has finishes their trials of the Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) standard. One of the more compelling parts of the new standard is the ability to automatically log into hotspots using simply SIM card identification and not the traditional username and password, something that will be highly beneficial to carriers using Wi-Fi offload to ease congestion on wireless networks. The WBA notes that the goal is smoother cellular to Wi-Fi network transition and authentication where both data and voice sessions continue seamlessly:

Next Generation Hotspots allow smartphones and tablets to automatically roam from the cellular network on to Wi-Fi hotspots thereby augmenting the coverage and capacity of both. Fixed and mobile operators alike are leading a Wi-Fi hotspot renaissance in a renewed effort to sate the seemingly unquenchable desire for ubiquitous broadband connectivity. What has made this trial so unique is that the key players from both the mobile operator community and the Wi-Fi ecosystem have actively come together and supported each other for this industry-wide program.

The WBA says they've worked with AT&T, BT, China Mobile, Swisscom, LG, Intel, Aruba Networks, BelAir Networks, and Cisco on the project. There's obviously a lot of technical and security-related hurdles to overcome, but the WBA is hoping for a commercial launch of the technology sometime in the next four months.
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T-Mobile Outlines LTE Plans - As Earnings Highlight AT&T-Related Defections

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 6:37am MST

T-Mobile has released their fourth quarter earnings, which as expected show that T-Mobile lost 526,000 net subscribers and 802,000 contract plan subscribers. The mass defections were caused by the one-two punch of an AT&T deal consumers didn't like -- and the launch of the iPhone 4S by Sprint. In the third quarter, T-Mobile had added a net 126,000 customers.

More interesting perhaps is T-Mobile's announcement that the company will be using the spectrum acquired from AT&T as part of the deal failure fee to launch LTE in 2013. T-Mobile says they'll be installing new equipment at 37,000 cell sites and refarming spectrum in order to launch LTE in 2013, a tricky proposition given that the spectrum acquired from AT&T is a jigsaw of geographic locations.

"We want to be known for delivering the best value in wireless because of the advanced technology we deliver at an affordable price," T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm said in a statement. "Over the next two years, we re prioritizing and investing in initiatives designed to get T-Mobile back to growth in the years ahead beginning with the transformation of our network."

While AT&T did pay a $4 billion break up fee ($1.4 billion after tax write off), AT&T still won in that the damage done to T-Mobile is massive, not to mention the legal process gleaned AT&T a lot of confidential competitive documents that will allow them to more easily undermine T-Mobile (and Sprint) moving forward. For their part, a T-Mobile that was officially supporting the anti-competitive elimination of themselves has quickly reverted to pesky upstart status, this week fighting against Verizon's cable industry deal.

The big takeaway however is the fact that Deutsche Telekom has decided to stick it out in the U.S. wireless market -- thanks in part to AT&T.
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White House Unveils Privacy Bill of Rights - A Selection of Voluntary Guidelines Most are Already Following

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 6:17am MST

Despite the new age of smarter, undeletable cookies, behavioral advertising, deep packet inspection, clickstream sales and search result hijacking, there still aren't modern consumer protection regulations in place to protect consumers from privacy abuses. Given the collective lobbying muscle of the telecom, content, and advertising industries that's not particularly surprising, given none of those sectors want real rules with any teeth.

Realizing that at least the appearance of an effort has to take place, the White House this week unveiled their attempt at a Privacy Bill of Rights. Dubbed the "Framework for Protecting Privacy and Promoting Innovation in the Global Digital Economy" (pdf), the White House is requesting that "Congress should act to protect consumers from violations," and improve FTC enforcement capabilities.

"It is important that a baseline statute provide a level playing field for companies, a consistent set of expectations for consumers, and greater clarity and transparency in the basis for FTC enforcement actions," says the plan.

The "bill of rights" focuses on seven principles aimed at protecting consumers' digital privacy, including the right to opt out of data collection, the right to clear company privacy guidelines, and quick notification of security breaches. Bundled into these guidelines are recommendations for a litany of things industries are already doing, including snoopvertising opt out functionality that's already being implemented in several browsers.

The White House says they'll bring together stakeholders to help further refine the guidelines and that 90 percent of companies involved in targeted online advertising have agreed to comply. That's in large part because they already are complying, and they themselves are the ones that proposed most of these guidelines. You won't find anything industry finds detestable here, including the ability for consumer to opt in to snoopvertising, instead of putting the onus on the consumer to opt out.

To be very clear, hard privacy rules these are not. The White House is simply making a request for cooperation to enforce existing rules, with a layer of voluntary standards on privacy rights. Given that naming and shaming and self-regulation never really seems to work (CarrierIQ, NebuAD, Google and Apple's latest missteps), this effort will be greeted with skepticism, particularly given the White House has a rather unstable interpretation of what privacy laws they themselves have to follow. Actual enforcement of voluntary protections may be shaking, and getting any new rules through Congress and past lobbyists will be an epic challenge.
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Google Definitely Offering TV Over 1 Gbps Fiber - Regulatory Filings Confirm Company's Plan

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 5:41am MST

Google's 1 Gbps residential fiber service is officially underway in Kansas City, with consumers expected to be up and running sometime in the second half of the year. Building on earlier rumors that Google was planning to add an IPTV service into the mix, the company is reported to have applied for an FCC license back in December allowing them to run the antenna farm necessary to get into delivering television. Additional evidence has been obtained this week in the form of requests with the Missouri Public Service Commission and soon with officials in Kansas City, Kansas. Again, this is an interesting move given Google would control the network, the content, and even the set top box from end to end.

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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: February 23rd, 2012, 3:59am MST

Obama Unveils Consumer Privacy Bill Of Rights cnet.com
A Million U.K. Homes will need to have filters installed to prevent TV interference from 4G mobile signals at a cost of 108m ($169m) bbc.co.uk
Study: Users will cough up cash for superior mobile broadband fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Kineto Wireless offers an OTT Skype-killer techworld.com
Intense demand driving vendors' interest in Wi-Fi offloading fiercebroadbandwireless.com
T-Mobile USA Reports Huge Customer Defections, Says No LTE Until 2013
Why your cellphone bill is going up CNN Money
The next generation of Wi-Fi hotspots is coming gigaom.com
Microsoft blasts 'web video killer' Motorola Mobility in EU gripe theregister.co.uk
GOP Names Bright House Official Telecommunications Provider of Republican National Convention multichannel.com
PS Vita 3G hidden feature teases future functionality product-reviews.net
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 4:14pm MST

Verizon Says 4G Restored, Service Still Spotty laptopmag.com
Data throttling: Annoying but effective fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Feds Request DNSChanger Internet Shutdown Deadline Extension krebsonsecurity.com
FCC chairman calls on ISPs to adopt new security measures; says broadband providers should notify subs when their computers are infected with malware computerworld.com
Pirate Bay vows to go underground over blocking threat bbc.co.uk
Quitting Cable TV: Truth or Lie? abcnews.com
We re not out of spectrum. Let s talk terahertz gigaom.com
You've Heard of VoLTE; How About Voice over HSPA? marketwire.com
AT&T vs. Verizon: LTE Showdown in the Big Apple pcworld.com
Spam crashes to historic low as malware explodes on mobiles theregister.co.uk
MetroPCS joins opposition to Verizon Wireless spectrum deal bizjournals.com
AT&T launches trials for enhanced push-to-talk services fiercewireless.com
Apple battles to avoid iPad ban in China telegraph.co.uk
Google ready to launch pilot pay-TV program in Kansas City nypost.com
Google Patent Clearly Eying the Desktop Market for Android patentlyapple.com
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User Impressions of ViaSat's 12 Mbps Exede Service - Speeds as Advertised, but Meters Don't Work for Many

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 3:15pm MST

ViaSat's new Exede service, while well-hyped by the media and CES, offers faster speeds (12 Mbps) but has been somewhat underwhelming for customers. It isn't available to most users (and may never be available to some), and still features low daily usage caps that are worse than WildBlue's previous offerings. A trickle of additional users have now gotten the service, which for most won't even begin to become available until March 1 or later.

Users in our forums note that the promised phase-out of the Wildblue brand has started, with users getting new dishes with the new logo (see right). The transition isn't smooth and consistent for everyone, with at least one user claiming he's been told he has to pay off a year of current WildBlue service if he wants to upgrade to the new service.

While Exede will be capped, throttled, and use caching acceleration to beef up performance, users say throttling isn't live yet, and that the usage meter currently doesn't work. According to the Exede FAQ, users will ultimately be throttled to 128 kbps once they cross they caps of 7 GB ($50), 15 GB ($80), or 25 GB ($130):

If you exceed your data allowance prior to your monthly reset date, your service will be slowed to a speed of 128 Kbps. You will still be able to use your service, but you may not be able to do things such as watch movies online or use it for other streaming media. On your reset date, your usage will be turned back to zero. At that point, your normal speeds will be restored. Remember that you can upgrade to a higher data plan at any time and that there is never any charge to do so.

On a positive note, this thread in our forums notes that the customers who can get Exede's new service are largely seeing the speeds they were promised.
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Cable Industry Canoe Interactive Ad Venture Sinks - Four Years and $200 Million Later...

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 1:13pm MST

Charter, Cox, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Comcast and Bright House Networks have collaboratively been working on an advertising system dubbed "canoe" since 2008. The project was initially aimed at delivering different ads to different households depending on demographic data -- a data collection effort that even involved Comcast building a 500 terabyte data warehouse designed to store data on your viewing habits. However, the dream never materialized.

In 2010, the then-head of the Canoe venture scrapped the initial project, complaining that they were "trying to use 20th-century technology to enable a 21st-century advanced-advertising product." The effort then continued to bleed key executives without much of a product to show for their effort. This week Multichannel News notes that Canoe Ventures is shutting down interactive TV advertising operations -- closing its New York office and laying off 120 employees, including their CEO:

Canoe Ventures is shutting down interactive TV advertising operations -- closing its New York office and laying off 120 employees, including CEO Kathy Timko -- leaving about 30 employees to focus on VOD ads as its sole product, the company confirmed. The decision to abandon ITV ads and dramatically pare back Canoe's mission came after a review by its cable operator owners, according to a Canoe spokeswoman. "It's the result of what the marketplace told us," she said.

While Multichannel News and Canoe blames the failure on marketplace demand and Madison Avenue, history has shown the cable industry also isn't always particularly good at working collaboratively on a useful product (their wireless effort known as Pivot being example B). While a national cross-carrier interactive ad platform didn't float, many cable operators have managed to make significant strides with numerous ad innovations on their own networks.
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FCC's McDowell Stokes Fears of Commie-Controlled Internet - Though No Agenda Set and ITU Doesn't Want Responsibility

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 11:27am MST

Other countries have long been uncomfortable with the U.S. and ICANN's control over the Internet, and have consistently proposed new UN-based governance approaches designed to increase international input into Internet policy decisions. The push had been quiet for a while, but heated up this week when FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell out of the blue penned an editorial in the Wall Street Journal lamenting the fact that numerous countries want Internet governance put into the hands of the International Telecommunications Union. Laments McDowell:

On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

Scary! This is of course the same man who doesn't think there's any serious U.S. broadband coverage or competition gaps and warned that the Internet would grind to a halt if Comcast had their wrist slapped for throttling users. While McDowell's likely right that Internet governance wouldn't be free of political pressure at the ITU, he forgets to note the ITU has repeatedly stated they don't want and can't afford this authority. He also accidentally omits the tiny fact that there's absolutely no secret evil meeting taking place next week -- or even a meeting about wresting control of the Internet away from the United States:

McDowell claims there's a meeting scheduled for 27 February where the land-grab will be agreed, and that these things will pass into international law in December...He's referring to the WCIT (the World Conference on International Telecommunications), which starts in Geneva next week, but the agenda for that was set months ago and includes no clause to make a grab for cyberspace.

So the question becomes not if anyone is trying to take over the internet, but who stands to gain by spreading the rumour that such a takeover is on the cards. ITU reps, speaking off the record, are starting to fear some sort of conspiracy themselves: they've adamantly stated that they have neither the desire, nor the budget, nor the mandate, to interfere with governance of the internet, and yet the scare stories just refuse to die.

McDowell's vision of a freedom-lovin' current state of governance tends to clash with Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow's vision of how we currently govern the Internet, which seems more astute:

McDonnell describes a present-day Internet where wise American stewards neutrally steer the net's course. I see a world where political hacks and appointees from the lobbyist/regulator revolving-door are ready to destroy the Internet to maximize profits for one or another industry, and where an amok defense industry is ready to destroy whatever is left after Big Content gets through with its dirty work.

The current government lamenting top-down force-fed global regulatory efforts when they've been pushing copyright-related efforts like ACTA or SOPA is also something that's highly laughable. While it does seem like the U.S. will ultimately need to cede some control with much of the globe wanting a less U.S.-centric approach to oversight (which might not be bad given our tendency toward shoving repressive copyright law down the Earth's throat), the push so far from most countries has been a fairly measured one. Plenty of people hate the idea of a UN-controlled Internet, but the question is why McDowell suddenly felt the need to stoke these fears?

Some additional public attention and an FCC Chairman spot should Republicans win the White House seems the most likely culprit.
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Comcast Sues Sprint Over Network Patents - Companies No Longer BFFs After Verizon Deal

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 9:35am MST

Last December, right after the cable industry struck their massive spectrum and marketing arrangement with Verizon, Sprint filed suit against Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CableOne, and Cox for supposedly violating Sprint VoIP patents. Comcast this week returned the favor, suing Sprint for violating numerous patents related to core network services, SMS/MMS, and 3G modem technology. The lawsuits come as Comcast phases out their wireless bundle offerings from Clearwire and Sprint. Comcast is seeking an injunction, attorney fees and undisclosed damages.
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Verizon Suffers Yet Another Nationwide LTE Outage - Company Says Voice, SMS and 3G Data All Work Normally

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 7:25am MST

Numerous users have written in to note that Verizon is having yet another nationwide LTE outage. "I've been unable to get a 4G connection from Saint Paul through Minneapolis (MN) since I turned on my device this morning," writes in user uid://1331129, something mirrored by other users in other cities.

While no explanation has been provided, Verizon's Twitter account says they're looking into the matter, and that 3G data, voice and text services should all be working normally. Some users e-mail us to note that this isn't to case, and that they're also having connectivity problems with Verizon 3G (EVDO) service.

Verizon hasn't had particularly good luck on this front, suffering at least four outages last year as they rushed to deploy LTE service. Several of the outages were due to software glitches in Verizon's IMS core, something that usually only takes only a few hours to remedy.
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Is AT&T Easing Off Throttling? - Throttled Users Claim Slightly Faster Speeds

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 6:06am MST

Earlier this month we noted how AT&T's waging a quiet war on those "unlimited" data users it had agreed to grandfather when it eliminated unlimited data back in 2010. One, those that legally jailbreak and use unofficial tethering options are automatically being moved to metered service as punishment for refusing to pay AT&T a fee for doing nothing. Two, users on "unlimited" plans say they are being throttled after 2 GB so that they'll voluntarily make the shift to AT&T's metered plans (3GB is now offered for the same price).

Complaints about the AT&T practice recently reached a fevered pitch in the mainstream media, with thousands of news outlets picking up on the story. The news may have resulted in AT&T adjusting their practice a little. User uid://1792675 directs our attention to the fact that several users over at Howard Forums claim their "throttled state" is slightly less throttled, with users now seeing speeds of between 240 to 300 kbps, up from 100 to 150 kbps. Says one user:

Speeds have gone up to 280kbps here in SoCal. Sad thing was that I set my iPhone to 2g, and was getting better speeds than 3G. I might as well use 2g for streaming out here... It actually works decently.

Given that the throttling imposed on users can vary from market to market, we asked AT&T to comment on whether they'd nudged up the throttled state speeds and were told by a spokesman it was nothing the company could comment on. Throttled users paying $30 a month for "unlimited" data are finding it makes more sense to use AT&T's EDGE network in some instances.
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AT&T CEO Got Paycut For Failed T-Mobile Bid - Managed to Scrape By With $22 Million in 2011

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 5:46am MST

According to newly released federal filings, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson got a $2 million pay cut because of the T-Mobile deal collapse. The filing notes that "named officers" at AT&T all took a slight bonus pay cut related to the T-Mobile deal s collapse. AT&T did some executive shuffling back in January that included the "retirement" of Forrest Miller, AT&T's head of corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions. Despite the pay cut, Stephenson still hauled in $22 million in 2011 compensation. AT&T took roughly a $4 billion hit in spectrum, cash and network sharing arrangements with T-Mobile that the telco acknowledged would be closer to $1.4 billion after tax write off. The executive cuts as some investors grumble about the money AT&T pours into politics and their astroturfing efforts, the ridiculousness of which were partially to blame for FCC opposition to the T-Mobile bid.
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T-Mobile Wary of Verizon Cable Deal - Warns FCC of 'Excessive Consolidation' of Airwaves

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 5:36am MST

It's almost adorable how quickly T-Mobile reverted back to playing the pesky upstart after the failed AT&T deal. In a filing with the FCC, T-Mobile is warning the agency that Verizon's new spectrum and marketing deal with the cable industry would create an "excessive concentration of mobile service spectrum holdings that is contrary to the public interest." T-Mobile argues that Verizon already sits in a comfortable spectrum position with a lot of unused AWS spectrum, and the consolidation of AT&T and Verizon spectrum has limited options for smaller carriers to the higher frequency ranges "which are more difficult to deploy due to their propagation and building penetration characteristics." Like consumer advocates, T-Mobile also says they're worried the deal involves a gentlemen's agreement to limit competition between Verizon and cable.
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LightSquared Lays Off 45% of Staff - Allows Them "to Continue to Navigate Regulatory Process"

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 5:22am MST

With their LTE network plans all but dead, LightSquared has taken the inevitable action of laying off 45% of the company's workforce. The company employs 330 people and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia. "This and other cost savings measures will allow LightSquared to continue to navigate the regulatory process as it works with the appropriate government agencies to find solutions to the GPS interference issue and bring its $14 billion privately funded wireless broadband network to more than 260 million Americans," the company said in a statement. A "person familiar with the situation" tells Reuters the company is not yet facing bankruptcy.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 22nd, 2012, 4:27am MST

Freedom-crushing govts close to ruling our web, fears FCC commissioner theregister.co.uk
The spectrum war's winners and losers CNN Money
Video Streaming dominates 42% of global mobile broadband traffic ispreview.co.uk
WOW launches the Arris Whole Home Solution, centered on a six-tuner HD multiroom DVR with a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem and VoIP features multichannel.com
Mozilla to challenge big players in mobile web; plans to develop smartphone, app market mercurynews.com
Police Raid File-Hosting Site, Arrest Operator and ISP torrentfreak.com
Legal claims can be served via Facebook, English High Court judge rules telegraph.co.uk
Ericsson's vision of a networked society expands with "Thinking Cities" techi.com
NJ asks FCC to block Verizon spectrum deals totaltele.com
Wireless connectivity to mobile devices and the Internet will redefine the mainstream products within the home audio market eetimes.com
Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year s End nytimes.com
Why IT Sec pros are losing the security war liquidmatrix.org
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 4:22pm MST

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom wsj.com
The Downward Spiral: LightSquared to cut workforce by 45% reuters UK
The Internet won the mobile broadband war (but you could still lose) gigaom.com
Mobile telcos bleed $13.9bn as IM apps chomp on SMS theregister.co.uk
Chattanooga's municipal FTTP network surpasses subscriber projections, makes profit fiercetelecom.com
Mobile broadband traffic skyrocketed 83% in 2H11 fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Google Sued by Apple Safari-User Over Web-Browser Privacy businessweek.com
Researchers find leaks in location privacy of GSM cellphones arstechnica.com
Delta Airlines offers WiFi on all Delta shuttle flights prnewswire.com
Ericsson to Acquire Wi-Fi Player BelAir Networks cdrinfo.com
Connected Cars: The Future Of Communication Or A Plague Of Distraction? fastcompany.computer
Danish Court Orders ISP To Block Grooveshark torrentfreak.com
Sci-fi ad can scan your face, deliver gender-biased messages venturebeat.com
Android is most-used smartphone OS in UK guardian.co.uk
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Verizon Woos Young, Urban Apartment Dwellers - Tries to Increase Take Rate in Major Cities

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 3:32pm MST

With FiOS expansion over with the exception of large city franchise obligations (DC, Philly, NYC), Verizon for several years now has been focused on beefing up subscription rates in apartment complexes and MDUs (multiple-dwelling units). In 2009 Verizon started using smaller ONTs and bendable fiber for these installs, and now they're ramping up their FiOS marketing message in order to lure young urban dwellers. According to Verizon, they're running "hyper local marketing campaigns" in DC, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas/Fort Worth and Los Angeles. "To make it easy for young professionals to find MDUs with FiOS, we ve created region-specific microsites, or landing pages, that show the MDUs in each market where FiOS is available," says Verizon, who directs users in the above cities to this URL.
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Frontier Promises Faster Speeds That May Never Come - Company Additions Sluggish As Cable Preys on Slower Speeds

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 1:52pm MST

The cable industry' broadband 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 or even broad scale VDSL. Frontier Communications, having gobbled up a number of unwanted Verizon markets and debt back in 2009, continues to tread a precarious path where they're supposed to be a broadband company, but can't offer a compelling next-generation product that seriously competes with cable (or in some cases, 4G wireless).

Frontier's most recent earnings report and associated conference call brought a little insight to the company's sluggish plight. According to the latest data from the company, less than 20% of their users have access to speeds as high as 20Mbps. A huge majority of Frontier customers are lucky to see 3 Mbps, and we consistently see posts in our forums by users saying their connection has mysteriously gotten even slower.

In their earnings call, Frontier promises that things will improve soon for some users. "We ll be investing throughout the year to improve speed-reaching capability in all our markets," claims Frontier COO Daniel J. McCarthy. However, most of that investment will be on core network upgrades and the continued expansion in markets like West Virginia to meet regulatory requirements of their deal with Verizon.

Overall subscriber additions however remain tepid (9,300 in Q4), which Frontier blames on Verizon "systems conversions" -- not the fact that they offer an inferior market product. Again, the one reason Frontier doesn't go belly up is because they operate in a lot of markets where they simply don't have any serious competitors. That has allowed them to not only lag on upgrades, but to impose obnoxious new fees like their "high speed Internet surcharge," which simply tacks $1.50 on consumer bills -- just because.

Despite earnings dropping 8.1%, tepid subscriber growth, significant debt and the inability to field a competitive product (with no funds to do so in the future), some stock analysts still seem to like Frontier stock.
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Comcast Takes Aim at Netflix Defectors With Streampix - Available Only to Subscribers of Both TV and Broadband

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 11:27am MST

Comcast this week announced that the cable giant is going to take aim at Netflix by launching a new subscription video streaming service dubbed "Streampix." More specifically, the service will be aimed at customers who might drop traditional cable for Netflix. Streampix will cost users an additional $5 a month, but like so many cable industry anti-cord cutting initiatives (TV Everywhere), Streampix will only be offered to users who subscriber to Comcast cable TV and broadband services.

Streampix will be included free of charge to some triple play bundles. Comcast says they've struck content distribution deals with Disney-ABC, Comcast-owned NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers and Cookie Jar. A lot of the content that's being made available is the same you'll find on standalone services like Netflix and Hulu, including past episodes of NBC's 30 Rock, Heroes and The Office.

Comcast has tinkered with the idea of stand alone over the top video services, but the company claims such a service simply wouldn't be profitable. In other words, users socked with bi-annual rate hikes for content they don't watch would downgrade to the less expensive streaming offering were Comcast to make one available. The cable industry spends a lot of time worrying about cord cutting despite consistently insisting it's mythical. As you'd expect, Comcast's PR department puts things somewhat differently.

"Our goal is to consistently deliver greater value to our customers and to bring the best anytime, anywhere entertainment on multiple platforms," Comcast says of their latest anti-cord cutting endeavor. "Streampix is another step moving TV Everywhere' forward by giving customers access to an even greater library of popular choices to watch." Comcast's blog states that Streampix arrives on Thursday.
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Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile All Claim 'Largest 4G Network' - Apparently Everybody Wins.

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 9:38am MST

With the 4G term now abused to include everything from carrier pigeon to cans and string, it's not too surprising to see AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all now simultaneously claiming they offer the nation's "largest 4G network." Verizon has the largest LTE deployment by a wide margin, and AT&T and T-Mobile are both of course including their HSPA services as "4G." AT&T was only the latest to join the fun, adding the "largest" proclamation to their marketing over the weekend.

According to AT&T the carrier's competitors claim to cover around 200 million people with their respective 4G technologies, and AT&T says the company is "significantly ahead of them based on internal and third-party data."

That's quite a difference from 2010, when AT&T got mad at T-Mobile for considering HSPA+ to be a 4G technology. "I think that companies need to be careful that they're not misleading customers by labeling HSPA+ as a 4G technology," AT&T said in 2010 in response to the ads. "We aren't labeling those technologies as 4G," said the company.
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50% of Connected TVs Aren't Connected - 'Connected TV' Hype Seamlessly Replaces 3D TV Hype

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 6:45am MST

3DTV marketing started seriously ramping up in 2010, with companies like Comcast, Cablevision and Verizon all trying to out hype one another via "first" 3DTV sports broadcasts. However, the 3DTV bubble burst and 3DTV sales were tepid due to high price, limited content and annoying glasses. With 3DTV hype waning, set manufacturers have turned to the "connected TV" as their latest object of hype, with numerous vendors (and Apple) jumping into the market despite the increasing number of set top devices and game consoles that bring connectivity to the television.

One problem? People who buy so-called connected TVs aren't using them:

"People are buying connected TVs, but they are not all using them," said Norm Bogen, vice president for digital entertainment at research firm NPD In-Stat. In fact, according to a survey that In-Stat shared exclusively with TechNewsDaily, only half of all people who own Internet-capable TVs have actually gotten them online. Instead, they continue to use the set-top box from their cable or satellite company to access live TV or video on demand, said Bogen. And among people who are connecting their TVs, many features go unused.

When your satellite/telcoTV/cable set top, or your TiVo, or your Boxee, or your Xbox 360 offer connectivity options, why do you need a connected television?
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Aereo Latest to Try and Disrupt TV Sector - Streaming OTA Broadcasts Via Broadband For $12 a Month

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 5:56am MST

Barry Diller, founder of the Fox network, is the latest to try and disrupt the TV sector with a new service dubbed Aereo by IAC/InterActive. Aereo, which will first launch in New York City in March, will take over the air broadcasts from major networks and stream them to phones, tablets, and connected televisions. The service will cost $12 a month and is intended to be a supplement to those users who have cut the cord in favor of Netflix, Hulu, (and/or piracy), replacing the basic cable connection. As with so many other efforts of this kind, the established TV ecosystem won't take kindly to this effort, and you can expect legal assaults before the offering ever sees broader deployment.
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Emergency Broadband Network Stumbles Forth - FCC Giving Authority to Re-Allocate Spectrum

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 5:44am MST

Back in September the National Preparedness Group released a report stating that national U.S. emergency networks still aren't up to snuff a decade after the events of 9/11 and recommendations by the 9/11 Commission. Several Congressional efforts to build a nationwide LTE network have stumbled over the last few years courtesy of partisan gridlock. Fortunately the effort took a major step forward with the recent payroll tax extension, the bill authorizing the FCC to allocate the D-Block of the 700MHz band (758 to 763MHz and 788 to 793MHz) for a first responder network. The FCC has nine years to relocate first responder networks from their current locations, and the money will come from upcoming TV broadcaster spectrum auctions.
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U.S. Cellular Offers More LTE Rollout Details - 54% of Users Will See LTE by End of This Year

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 5:29am MST

Earlier this month U.S. Cellular announced that the company will be launching their LTE network next month. The launch, originally predicted for late last year, will initially cover 25% of the company's current footprint when it deploys in March. Initial coverage will hit "select cities" in in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma, in addition to the more-specific markets of Milwaukee, Madison and Racine, Wis.; Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa; Portland and Bangor, Maine; and Greenville, North Carolina. The company has since unveiled several more planned markets and launch devices, noting that by the end of 2012, 54% of customers will be able to enjoy the faster 4G LTE speeds.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 21st, 2012, 3:57am MST

Streaming Rights On Whitney Houston Movie Not Pulled In Order To 'Make Really A Large Amount Of Money On DVD Sales' - Rights Were Pulled Before Singers Death Dan McDermott via Google+
First IPv6 Distributed Denial of Service Internet attacks seen zdnet.com
Sorry, America: Your wireless airwaves are full CNN Money
The Crucial Difference Between Wireless And Mobile forbes.com
Why You Should Regret LightSquared's Setbacks techdirt.com
RIM gives Indian gov a permanent way to intercept and monitor BBM traffic theregister.co.uk
Over-the-Air TV Catches Second Wind,Aided by Web wsj.com
Intel To Integrate Wi-Fi Into Mobile Chips; will improve power efficiency and bring superior signal quality itproportal.com
BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Available Today marketwire.com
PlayStation Vita hits U.S., Europe - but will gamers buy it? tampabay.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 5:50pm MST

Where we're at with broadband stimulus and rural Internet access fiercetelecom.com
FairPoint gets approval to redirect Vermont penalty payments to broadband expansion fiercetelecom.com
SuperWiFi launched in Canada, but it's not U.S. Super Wi-Fi fiercebroadbandwireless.com
New HSPA+ Multiflow Tech Could Double Your Download Speeds gizmodo.com
Court ruling puts UK ISP's on path to blocking The Pirate Bay ispreview.co.uk
UK Government to relaunch proposed Internet snooping laws in May ispreview.co.uk
911 broadband network: brought to you by TV spectrum selloff arstechnica.com
Smartphone survey indicates tens of billions ($US) in revenue upside for service providers totaltele.com
Huawei to Enter U.S. Smartphone Market in 2012 electronics.ca
Sony s New Wireless Chip Prototype Can Transfer a Blu-ray s Disc Worth of Data in Under a Minute gizmodo.com
Barnes & Noble reportedly readying 8GB Nook Tablet cnet.com
Samsung scores Blockbuster movie streaming deal, eyes June for US/EU launch thenextweb.com
Google Developing Siri-Like User Interface for Google TV patentlyapple.com
Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too theregister.co.uk
RIAA: The Music Industry is collapsing; Reality: The RIAA is collapsing techdirt.com
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LightSquared Defaults on Inmarsat Payment - As LTE Effort Quickly Unravels...

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 3:29pm MST

In addition to their chief financial backer facing two SEC investigations, last week's news that the FCC would not grant them a spectrum condition waiver, and an investor lawsuit -- LightSquared has also now defaulted on a $56.3 million payment under a spectrum-cooperation accord. Inmarsat says that LightSquared has 60 days to remedy the non payment, but with dwindling cash, no working network and no FCC green light things could simply get uglier. LightSquared issued a somewhat vague statement to the press claiming that "the terms of the agreement allow for additional time to resolve pending questions before phase one is complete and the final payment is due."
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ViaSat Shows Off 40 Mbps Satellite Broadband - Enterprise Only, as Many Users Wait for Residential Version

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 1:27pm MST

Recently 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. Engadget got an invite to ViaSat HQ to see a 40 Mbps version (enterprise) in action. Engadget was "so impressed" with Exede they forget to mention the usage caps or the fact nobody can really get it.
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'The Bodyguard' Pulled From Netflix to Prop Up DVD Sales? - Somebody Cashing in on Whitney Houston Death?

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 11:24am MST

After Whitney Houston died, the studio pulled the movie "The Bodyguard" from Netflix streaming in order to juice DVD sales, claims writer/producer/talk show host Dan McDermott. The movie is still available on Amazon, who may have more significant clout with Warner Brothers than Netflix due to their massive retail presence. McDermott got an interesting quote from a Netflix support rep when he called in to get an answer.

"Okay Dan, I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston's passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they're going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies."

There has been no official statement from Netflix, Kasdan Pictures or Warner Brothers on the move -- or which company made the call, but given Warner Brothers' previous attempts to strangle Netflix out of existence with new release delays and other licensing restrictions, it isn't out of character. Regardless of why it was pulled, the movie industry still doesn't quite understand that making your content more difficult to consume doesn't make sense when you're constantly complaining about piracy.

Update: Netflix has issued a statement saying that McDermott's report is "simply not true" and that the streaming license expiration has "nothing to do with Ms. Houston s unfortunate and untimely death." McDermott has issued a new post saying he was completely wrong, as was the support rep he quoted.
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FCC Still Looking For Home Speed Test Volunteers - Provide Custom Wireless Router For Network Testing

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 8:16am MST

Starting in April of last year, the FCC partnered with UK testing firm SamKnows with the goal of getting more accurate ISP performance data. That process has included giving out routers with customized firmware more than 9,000 (so far) volunteers who have signed up at the Test My ISP website to have their connections monitored. The data has not only informed policy making, but it has allowed the FCC to highlight which ISPs have failed to deliver advertised speeds during peak usage hours, resulting in at least one doing something about it. An FCC public notice (pdf) states the agency is still looking for volunteers and expanding some of the monitoring done; if you're interested head here.
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Clearwire Needs More Cash - Only Has Enough to Stay in Business One Year

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 5:59am MST

After obtaining $734 million in its latest stock offering, a new regulatory filing by Clearwire notes the company has $1.11 billion in available cash and short-term investments as of the end of last year. Clearwire claims the company doesn't expect positive cash flow from their operations this year and will still need to raise "substantial additional capital" to continue funding business beyond the next twelve months. The company's cable industry partners have all shifted to Verizon, though Clearwire should have help from the 35 or so wholesale partners now-likely-dead LightSquared will leave standing at the altar. Last week however Clearwire stated their new LTE network won't be up and running until June 2013.
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Time Warner Cable and MSG Strike Deal - Thanks to Linsanity, Annoyed Governor

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 5:45am MST

Ending one of the more annoying retransmission suits in a several year stretch chock full of them, Time Warner Cable and MSG have struck a deal that will finally allow the cable company's customers to watch their favorite local sports teams. After neither side budged for 48 days, the two parties were apparently nudged to action by the Knicks new starting point guard Jeremy Lin. The New York Times argues that customers who were missing out on "Linsanity," including the Governor, were starting to get incredibly annoyed at the blackout. "It is not good to annoy consumers," Cuomo said. It's also apparently not good to annoy the Governor.

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iPhone 4 AntennaGate Lawsuit Settled - Users Get $15 for iPhone 4 Design Flaw

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 5:38am MST

As we noted in July of last year, the iPhone 4 has an antenna design flaw that results in users losing signal when the phone is simply held. Given the flaw only rears its head in areas with weak signal, it wasn't a problem noticed by many iPhone 4 users, allowing Apple to brush aside the design flaw as imaginary, irrelevant and/or common to all smartphones. While the flaw was fixed in the design of the iPhone 4S, eighteen different lawsuits related to the iPhone 4 continued, but were only just settled after being consolidated last week. Users who were impacted by the flaw (only if you didn't return the device or get one of the free bumpers Apple was offering at the time) get $15 or a free bumper case. Thus endeth "Antennagate."
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: February 20th, 2012, 4:13am MST

SOPA author strikes back with Internet surveillance bill; no one is safe venturebeat.com
LightSquared defaults on Inmarsat payment courant.com
Legislators aim to turn states into broadband backwaters gigaom.com
Harbinger investors sue Falcone, Harbinger fund over LightSquared totaltele.com
Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears yahoo.com
UK anti-terror plan to sweep up email, phone, online records MSNBC.com
97 Las Vegas karaoke operators sued for $500 million for infringement vegasinc.com
Those darn, evil graphic designers are ruining the web guardian.co.uk
Researchers create on/off switch for credit cards to prevent RFID theft venturebeat.com
British firm develops cheapest wireless tablet at $35 terra.net.lb
Blockbuster Pulling On-Demand Support From TiVo zatznotfunny.com
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 4:13pm MST

T-Mobile clams up over Full Monty 'speed-cap' claims reghardware.com
Chinese firm may sue Apple for $2 billion in U.S. over iPad name bgr.com
Why the Wireless Spectrum Deal is a Win for Consumers and Industry time.com
Analyst says AT&T/Leap Mobile deal unlikely bloomberg.com
Telcos in Canada: Ethics, monopolies and regulation theregister.co.uk
'The RIAA Is Delusional and Must Be Stopped' torrentfreak.com
Attackers have All They Need From Leaky Cellphone Networks to Track You Down cio.com
China Faces Conflict of Law, Business in iPad Row wirelessweek.com
The FCC: Recruiting More Broadband Volunteers For 'Measuring Broadband 2012' cable360.net
US Returns JotForm.com Domain; Still Refuses To Say What Happened techdirt.com
Senators Ramp Up Fear Mongering To Try To Rush Through Cybersecurity Bill techdirt.com
Gamers Hit Cablevision's Free ITV Service 10 Million Times Monthly, Play Average Of Six Hours Per Month multichannel.com
One-Third of U.S. Households Watch TV Video via Internet multichannel.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Have Something You Need to Get Off Your Chest?

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 3:52pm MST

The weekend has arrived, so please dump your thoughts into our comment section below for inspection.
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LightSquared Lawyers Up For FCC Assault - While Investors Sue Falcone For "Squandering" Billions

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 1:41pm MST

With the FCC this week refusing LightSquared a necessary waiver on spectrum conditions, the company's future isn't looking particularly bright. As expected, chief financial backer Phillip Falcone has lawyered up for a possible lawsuit against the FCC. The company is also exploring several options, most of which won't work. LightSquared is apparently trying to convince the Defense Department to swap spectrum they're unlikely to give up for LightSquared spectrum nobody wants. Again, LightSquared lacks the cash to wage any sustained battle on this front, and Falcone faces two pending inquiries by the SEC for unrelated financial infractions. He's also now being sued by a group of investors in Harbinger Capital Partners who claim the effort "squandered billions of dollars."
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Utility Smart Meters Screwing Up WISPs, Home Routers - Charging Customers Fees to Disable Wireless Functionality

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 11:24am MST

Users in our forums direct our attention to claims that at least one small WISP has had their service put out of commission due to electric utility smart meters operating in the 900 MHz band. We've previously noted how utility smart meters are interfering with residential Wi-Fi routers, and we're seeing a growing number of complaints about the meters interfering with other residential gear as well. The solution from utilities so far appears to be the hope that all consumers migrated to 2.4GHZ and 5.8 GHZ bands so they don't have to change. However, some smart meters also use the 2.4 GHz range.

"Thankfully, as time goes on, less and less devices will be operating in this band as most commercial products seem to be moving onto the 2.4GHZ and 5.8 GHZ bands," says Chatham-Kent Hydro in Canada...This is a presumptive statement, and what it really means is that they expect their system to chase consumers entirely off the band. It makes no accommodation for the thousands of 902-928 MHz devices already in use. Forcing a migration to other bands is a poor precedent, since there is nothing to stop some other user from deciding to use those bands and chasing consumer equipment to the next band, ad infinitum.

California has been a focused hotbed in this debate because many people with proclaimed electromagnetic sensitivity disorders have been trying to get the wireless signals disabled. Whether it's because it "messes with your chakras, dude" or it just screws up your router, utilities in several markets are now charging an extra fee to turn the radio portion of the smart meter off. Ironically, many of the companies that failed to succeed in the broadband over powerline (BPL) business because of interference, jumped immediately into the smart meter technology business to run face-first into interference problems of a completely different sort.
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Comcast Gets Wrist Slapped for Mocking AT&T's 'Old Wires' - AT&T Doesn't Like Last Mile Shortcomings Highlighted

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 9:12am MST

The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus has given Comcast a wrist slap for a discontinued "tired wires" ad campaign targeting AT&T's U-Verse service. Comcast's ads (see example) targeted AT&T's service for running over "old phone wires" that are incapable of delivering the same speeds as Comcast's DOCSIS 3.0 based service. They featured what "appeared to be a pained or exhausted tangle of wires", something that caused AT&T to file a complaint. While NAD found Comcast could support most of their claims, the group found Comcast took things a little too far:

NAD determined that the advertiser's evidence was insufficient to support the broad implied claims that U-Verse Internet is slow, and always slower than Comcast. In addition, NAD determined that the advertiser's disclosres are not sufficient to avoid conveying the unsupported implied messages that U-Verse Internet is slow, and always slower than Comcast.

In other words, Comcast can correctly note that U-Verse is usually slower than Xfinity, Xfinity has better HD quality, and U-Verse suffers from HD image compression when multiple streams are in use -- but they somehow have to avoid generalities? NAD is a self-regulatory regime set up to manage ad complaints between ISPs to pre-empt regulatory action. Penalties for misleading ads are nonexistent and most offending ads have already stopped running by the time the agency rules, making the entire process more show than substance.

Comcast's marketing department has no shortage of things to focus on when attacking AT&T. In addition to the fact that AT&T settled on slower speeds via a cheaper fiber to the node investment, AT&T has left about half of their customers without next-gen upgrades with no plan to upgrade them anytime soon. They could also highlight the fact that in addition to caps (Comcast has a 250 GB cap on all tiers) AT&T is trying to impose overage penalties on DSL and U-Verse users. AT&T lost 680,000 DSL users last quarter, many of them in un-upgraded markets and tired of sub 5 Mbps connections.
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New DOT Guidelines Prohibit Most In-Vehicle Communications - Pay Attention to the Road, Numbskull

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 7:02am MST

As more and more auto-makers begin to incorporate broadband-tied services into vehicles, the U.S. Department of Transportation has proposed new guidelines that would ban the manual use (dialing, sending texts, entering GPS addresses) while a vehicle is in motion. "We recognize that vehicle manufacturers want to build vehicles that include the tools and conveniences expected by today s American drivers," said NHTSA Administrator David Strickland in a statement. "The guidelines we re proposing would offer real-world guidance to automakers to help them develop electronic devices that provide features consumers want without disrupting a driver s attention or sacrificing safety."
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Leap Struggles With Customer Defections - As LTE Build Out Continues On Target

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 6:13am MST

On the heels of reports that AT&T might be thinking about buying Leap, Leap Wireless issued fourth quarter earnings that missed many analyst expectations. The company saw a higher churn (customer defection) rate than expected of 3.9%, which the company attributed to "billing system problems that affected new and existing customers in the quarter." The company did add 179,000 customers in the quarter, but it appears the initial surge of competitive impact is starting to wane as the bigger four carriers focus more on Leap's target market. In their conference call with the media Leap stated their LTE deployment remains on target, with the company planning to cover 25 million people with LTE by the end of 2012.
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Heartland Institute Exposed for Astroturf Quackery - Leaked Docs Expose AT&T, Time Warner Cable as Donors

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 6:01am MST

For years we've watched as the corporate-funded "fauxcademic" group the Heartland Institute took tobacco-industry money, then argued that the industry's ties to cancer deaths were based on "junk science." They've been very active on the broadband front, taking money from incumbent ISPs and then arguing how there is no broadband price, coverage or speed issues, while also fighting tooth and nail against the rights of towns and cities to wire themselves.

Heartland isn't having a very good week, with leaked documents and e-mails showcasing how the firm takes corporate cash to then sow seeds of doubt about established science and indisputable data. While they have always hidden their funding, the documents show the company takes money from AT&T and Time Warner Cable. The documents also show how they're well funded by corporations to attack climate science, particularly in the classroom:

After complaining that "Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective," the document indicates that the $100,000 will go to David Wojick, an engineer with a PhD in the philosophy of science. Wojick will be funded to address "the absence of educational material suitable for K-12 students on global warming that isn t alarmist or overtly political." To that end, he'll produce a set of modules that explicitly borrows the "teach the controversy" strategy, with each module dedicated to terming different aspects of climate change controversial humanity's involvement, the accuracy of climate models, the role of CO2 as a pollutant, etc.

Except as Ars notes, the topics Heartland is trying to paint as controversy in the classroom aren't controversial among scientists:

This strategy is just as cynical as it sounds. Most of these topics aren't scientific controversies, and one document explicitly notes that the modules aren't focused on enabling teachers to handle climate science better; instead, Heartland hopes to dissuade them from teaching it at all. "Effort will focus on providing curriculum that shows that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science."

On the broadband side, Heartland has contributed to no limit of polluted discourse as the country has tried to improve its broadband fortunes, using completely bogus science to endlessly dispute clear data showing that U.S. broadband needs a lot of work. They were also instrumental in bogus claims of the Exaflood, or the idea that the Internet will collapse from traffic growth unless broadband provider get what they want (higher prices, no consumer protections, regulations written by their lawyers aimed at crushing smaller competitors). It's doubtful that either AT&T or Time Warner Cable want to go on the record to discuss their involvement with such a group.
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Heartland Institute Leaks Highlight Astroturf Quackery - Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable Exposed as Donors

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 6:01am MST

The public health community's campaign to demonize smokers and all forms of tobacco is based on junk science&#46

-Heartland Institute

Heartland isn't having a very good week, with leaked documents and e-mails showcasing how the firm takes corporate cash to sow seeds of doubt about established science and indisputable data. While they have always hidden their funding, the documents show the company takes money from AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. The documents also show how they're well funded by corporations to attack climate science, particularly in the classroom.

After the story percolated for a few days, Heartland released a statement claiming that one of the documents in the leak was a forgery. "One document, titled 'Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy,' is a total fake apparently intended to defame and discredit The Heartland Institute," says the group, which goes on to insist that "honest disagreement should never be used to justify the criminal acts and fraud that occurred in the past 24 hours." However, much of what's in the supposedly fake document is supported in the other documents Heartland apparently acknowledges as genuine.

If you're familiar with the group's actions in the slightest, it is clear that "honest disagreement" has never been on the agenda. On the broadband side, Heartland has contributed to no limit of polluted discourse, using completely bogus science from other incumbent ISP-tied organizations to endlessly dispute clear data showing that U.S. broadband needs a lot of work. They were also instrumental in pushing the "Exaflood" myth, or the idea that the Internet will collapse from traffic growth unless ISPs get what they want (higher prices, no consumer protections, deregulation, no net neutrality rules).

While the climate side of the story will see the most contentious debate, the most interesting bit here on the telecom front is that the ties between the company and their incumbent ISP donors have been clearly highlighted. It's doubtful that anyone at AT&T, Comcast or Time Warner Cable will want to go on the record to discuss their involvement with such a group.
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Verizon: We've Got Plenty of Spectrum, Thanks - No Need to Even Worry About Refarming Right Now

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 5:44am MST

Despite constant tales of spectrum crisis from some corners (including Verizon), Verizon was already on record years ago stating they had plenty of spectrum for their LTE deployment. Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead this week reiterated the company's solid spectrum position, saying that after their spectrum acquisition from the cable industry they're in a "solid spectrum position." Their position is so solid, in fact, that Verizon doesn't see the need to even sweat about re-purposing existing spectrum anytime soon. Refarming "is not something that is in front of us in the immediate future because those networks are growing for us," says Mead.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: February 17th, 2012, 4:31am MST

Feds propose blocking all in-vehicle communications by a driver, including texting, dialing, Internet browsing, and even entering GPS addresses pcmag.com
More iPhone Tracking: Google, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy wsj.com
Spectrum crunch: All talk, no action, and consumers suffer cnet.com
Mapping LTE: AT&T & Verizon's 4G Footprints lightreading.com
Clearwire says it may need more moolah, even after just getting a $1 billion infusion totaltele.com
Better Business Bureau's Advertising Division Says Comcast Can Keep Claiming Better HD, Faster Internet Than AT&T, But Cannot Claim Telco Offers Poor Quality Infrastructure multichannel.com
Technology and the election economist.com
'Nomophobia' up as more folks fear being mobileless cnet.com
Google looking to reduce Chromebook Wi-Fi connection problems techworld.com
Netflix brining DVD-only rentals back gizmodo.com
A 4G iPad Requires A Sensible Shared Data Plan techdirt.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 4:39pm MST

Music Industry Mulls Suing Google Over Pirate Search Results torrentfreak.com
Canadians revolt over draconian internet privacy bill theregister.co.uk
Milestone: 1 billion HSPA & LTE broadband connections cellphonedigest.net
How politics inflame the 'specdtrum crisis' cnet.com
Why Deep Packet Inspection Is(n t) Being Talked About blogcritics.org
FTC warns enforcement action may be next for mobile apps for kids networkworld.com
Android may account for 80% of developing markets by 2015 MSNBC.com
U.S. Cellular Announces Next 4G LTE Markets and Mobile Hotspot Availability globenewswire.computer
Nintendo offers Hulu Plus on Wii gamingevolution.com
Amazon Kindle Fire climbs to top of Android pack cnet.com
Microsoft creates mini internet to reliably test and improve Internet Explorer extremetech.com
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White Space Broadband Dodges a Bullet - Compromise Language Keeps FCC Authority Intact

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 3:31pm MST

"White space" broadband, a technology that rides on the unlicensed spectrum freed by the migration to digital television, only recently got off the ground and has great promise as a new, long range niche wireless alternative. Still, the technology faced being killed by regulation this week after AT&T tried to sneak language into the payroll tax extension bill that would have not only crippled the FCC's ability to place competitive rules on spectrum auction, but it would have also prevented them from allocating unlisenced spectrum in the TV white spaces.

According to consumer advocacy group Free Press, politicians reached a "compromise" this week ahead of the full vote. The FCC won't be restricted in their ability to manage white space broadband, and can continue to impose auction rules aimed at helping smaller competitors enter the market, but they won't be able to restrict larger companies from participating based on market dominance and spectrum holdings.

"We are glad that the agreement would preserve at least some of the tools the FCC needs to assign licenses in the public interest and prevent further erosion of competition among wireless providers," said the group. "Parts of the bill the House passed in December would all but ensure that AT&T and Verizon lock up all the most valuable spectrum in any future auction, further tightening the effective duopoly these companies already hold."

We've got a copy (pdf) of the full discussion draft, and pages 81-85 specifically cover the FCC's spectrum auction authority.
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March 8 D-Day for DNSChanger Infected PCs - As FBI Tries to Tackle Pervasive Scumware

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 1:12pm MST

Two months ago law enforcement in Estonia shut down a massive Internet traffic hijacking scheme that used the latest versions of DNSChanger Trojans to hijack search results while blocking victims from visiting security sites. According to security researcher Brian Krebs, DNS Changer remains on computers at 50% of Fortune 500 companies, and on PCs at nearly 50% of all federal government agencies.

The good news? Krebs notes that after the shutdown law enforcement was able to replace the scumware's DNS infrastructure with legitimate DNS servers. The bad news? Those DNS servers stop working on March 8:

Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan s DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web.

The FBI's effort to put DNSChanger to bed has resulted in some fairly silly headlines, such as "FBI might shutdown the Internet on March 8." While the date might not be apocalyptic, it's certainly going to be a busy one for ISP support reps unless the DNSChanger Working Group can somehow get the deadline extended.
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Verizon LTE Expands - One New Market, Four Expansions

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 11:36am MST

Keeping pace with AT&T's freshly-announced new LTE markets, Verizon has a few new market announcements of their own. According to a Verizon press release, they're expanding LTE network coverage in Little Rock, Arkansas; Rapid City, South Dakota; Clarksville, Tennessee; and San Antonio, Texas. The company is also turning on LTE for the first time in Cookeville, Tennessee. With this latest launch, Verizon says they now offer LTE service in 196 markets, which are broken down with Verizon's latest LTE availability map (pdf).
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France Tel 'Competes' With Free By Raising Rates - Tightens The Noose After Free Pricing Disrupts Market

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 9:31am MST

France Telecom said its network was being stressed by a rapid growth in traffic brought on by its hosting of new mobile entrant Iliad and vowed to protect its clients from service interruptions, its CEO told magazine Le Point...Iliad's Free Mobile service upended the French telecom market in January when it launched its main offer at 19.99 euros per month for unlimited calls to France and most of Europe and the United States, unlimited texts, and 3 gigabytes of mobile data.

This is the same France Telecom that absolutely refused to compete on price when Free entered the market, claiming their competitive pricing would be "bad for network quality and innovation." According to the incumbent CEO, they didn't need to compete on price because "we offer security, reliability and innovation." Just not on pricing. France Telecom negotiated a contract and did their homework, but with Free succeeding more than they expected -- it's time to change the terms and raise rates.

Whether it's AT&T claiming congestion to justify DSL caps and $10 wireless overages, or Canadian ISPs claiming congestion to justify predatory usage-based pricing, you do start to notice a trend wherein congestion is used by incumbents as a bogeyman to justify everything from massive overages to anti-competitive behavior. The best part about the congestion bogeyman is that telcos never have to provide actual data evidence of congestion -- and the press never bothers to ask for any.
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AT&T Brings LTE to Tampa, Sarasota, Raleigh - Faster LTE Now Available in 28 Markets Nationally

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 7:10am MST

AT&T has announced that they've turned on their new LTE network in Tampa, Florida, Sarasota, Florida, and parts of Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina. With the Durham launch AT&T has now launched LTE services in 28 markets nationwide, though they remain well behind Verizon's LTE launch footprint, which is nearing two hundred markets. While Verizon may have a big lead, early tests (at least on a largely unoccupied network) show that AT&T's implementation of LTE is somewhat faster in a number of markets. AT&T expects to have their LTE build out completed by the end of 2013.
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AT&T May Try to Acquire Leap Wireless - Or MetroPCS, or McDonalds, or JC Penney, or the Mars Rover...

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 6:51am MST

Back when they were hoping to salvage the T-Mobile deal, AT&T had been in talks with Leap Wireless about offloading some resources and subscribers to try and make the deal more palatable to regulators. Those talks have continued beyond the DOJ and FCC rejection of the T-Mobile deal, the Wall Street Journal claiming that AT&T has considered trying to acquire either Leap Wireless or MetroPCS. The former may be warm to the idea but an anonymous source tells the Journal the latter deal is unlikely, well, because MetroPCS doesn't really like them:

Trying to acquire prepaid wireless carrier MetroPCS, the country's fifth-largest cellphone operator, is also an option AT&T is considering, but is seen as less of a possibility because the relationship between the two companies has soured in recent months, the people familiar with the matter said. MetroPCS openly opposed the T-Mobile deal, and discussions with AT&T about possibly buying assets that would have been divested had the deal happened didn't go well, partly because of demands made by MetroPCS, the people said.

Leap's holdings really wouldn't make a substantive impact on AT&T, but AT&T's also busy trying to impose steep timeline requirements on Dish spectrum in the hopes those assets fall to them. Ironically, AT&T's also got their eyes on a new round of spectrum auctions that are about a year away, and reports emerged this week they were single-handedly holding up the Payroll bill in Congress in the hopes they could strip any conditions off of that auctioned spectrum.

As we've noted repeatedly AT&T's own data shows they have all the resources they need for 100% LTE deployment without another acquisition, even before considering their recent Qualcomm deal and the eventual re-purposing of older spectrum. While there's no doubt AT&T would like more spectrum simply for leg room, there's also no doubt AT&T would like to have as much spectrum under wraps as possible to ensure no major LTE competitors spring up during the next decade -- an obvious motivation news reports mysteriously omit.
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LightSquared Says They'll Fight FCC - Will 'See Where it Goes' in Terms of Lawsuit

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 6:01am MST

Yesterday the FCC put a nail in LightSquared's coffin by announcing that they would not be granting a previously-promised waiver on spectrum conditions necessary to get the hybrid LTE/satellite network up and running. As we noted yesterday, LightSquared's chance at survival at this point without that waiver is virtually nonexistent due to limited cash and the constant flood of negative GPS interference reports. For what it's worth, LightSquared says they'll fight the decision, but issued a statement accusing the FCC of "bureaucratic irresponsibility":

To leave this problem unresolved is the height of bureaucratic irresponsibility and undermines the very principles that once made America the best place in the world to do business. We remain committed to finding a solution and believe that if all the parties have that same level of commitment, a solution can be found. The American people send their representatives to Washington to solve tough problems and make our country better not to undermine and pull the rug from under private enterprise.

LightSquared clearly hopes there can be some kind of technical solution, despite previous reports claiming there really was no way around the network's interference problems. The company had previously promised they'd sue the FCC if the waiver wasn't given. Meanwhile Sprint, who gave LightSquared two extensions to resolve problems, may have to return $75 million to the company.
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Clearwire LTE Lights up in June 2013 - 5,000 TD-LTE Cell Sites to Start

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 5:54am MST

Speaking on the company's fourth quarter conference call, Clearwire yesterday announced that they plan to switch on their first LTE-capable towers in June. "To satisfy the conditions for Sprint's LTE commitment, we are targeting at least the first 5,000 of these LTE sites to be on air by June of 2013, with a slightly longer-term objective of overlaying a total of approximately 8,000 sites," said CEO Erik Prusch on the call (full transcript here). Clearwire expects to begin the buildout near the end of the first quarter, though it's far too early for prices and device specifics. Prusch did say the company was on the hunt for more wholesale arrangements and will look to have plenty of opportunities with the collapse of LightSquared.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: February 16th, 2012, 3:59am MST

LightSquared accuses FCC of the height of bureaucratic irresponsibility and of being puppets of scheming politicians slashgear.com
Sprint on the hook for $65M for LightSquared FCC fail gizmodo.com
AT&T pursuing Leap Wireless for it's spectrum? theverge.com
MPAA: Ripping DVDs Shouldn't Be Allowed Because It Takes Away Our Ability To Charge You Multiple Times For The Same Content techdirt.com
Deutsche Telekom considering bailing out of UK after T-Mobile USA sale fail bloomberg.com
EU states must allow 4G Internet use on analog TV spectrum by January 2013 thenextweb.com
France Tel CEO says network stressed by ultra low-cost service Free Mobile reuters.com
Fiber is the future washingtonpost.com
FTTx connections rise 69% in Europe telecoms.com
Did FCC veto of LightSquared also put the brakes on widespread 4G deployment? infoworld.com
Sony completes Ericsson buyout, Sony Mobile Communications is born theverge.com
DARPA planning high-speed wireless for soldiers in the field engadget.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 4:30pm MST

The Case for Publicly Owned Internet Service bloomberg.com
Congress has questions for Apple as company vows to purge iPhone apps that swipe addresses after 'Path-gate' debacle networkworld.com
Billionaire Lightsquared Hedge Fund manager: No bankruptcy (yet), and we have a plan to deal with FCC rejection (but we're not telling you what that is) reuters.com
FCC votes to require VoIP outage reporting, but does not extend reporting requirement to broadband Internet service outages broadcastingcable.com
AT&T expands 4G LTE network to Florida and North Carolina slashgear.com
Verizon Expands Its 4G LTE Network In Four Markets cellphonedigest.com
Cisco Appeals Europe s Approval of Microsoft s $8.5 Billion Skype Acquisition allthingsd.com
The RIAA's Dream Turns to Nightmare - Inside The Pirate Bay's Torrent Purge dailytech.com
Clearwire surges after Lightsquared falters kansascity.com
Boost for Wireless in Europe As More Spectrum is Made Available cio.com
Apple finally embracing LTE? yahoo.com
"Femto" Cell out, "Small" Cell in lightreading.com
Gartner: Android captured half of global smartphone market in Q4 fiercewireless.com
Google says it has fixed major flaw, reactivates Google Wallet prepaid card provisioning fiercemobilecontent.com
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Google Offering TV Over 1 Gbps Fiber in Kansas City - Will Control the Pipe, the Content, and the Set Top

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 3:20pm MST

Google's 1 Gbps residential fiber service is officially underway in Kansas City, with consumers expected to be up and running sometime in the second half of the year. Building on earlier rumors that Google was planning to add an IPTV service into the mix, the company is reported to have applied for an FCC license back in December allowing them to run the antenna farm necessary to get into delivering television. While it's still unlikely that Google will ever really want to get into the broadband business, it should be interesting to see what kind of products they offer when they control the development of the content, the pipe, and the even the set top box. Both incumbent ISPs and privacy advocates probably have nightmares that look something like this.
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Comcast's 'Completed' DOCSIS Upgrades Left a Few Gaps - Though New Xfinity Branding Now in 100% of Markets

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 1:26pm MST

Comcast recently told investors their DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades had been "completed", though our users have a somewhat different definition of what that word means. During this morning's conference call the company clarified those comments a little by saying their "XFINITY brand is now launched in 100% of our footprint," but that doesn't mean 100% of their customers can get faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds. We've seen users in Ocala, Florida, Santa Cruz, California, and parts of Louisiana, Danbury, Connecticut saying they can't get the faster speeds yet. Still, Comcast's deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 was nothing short of amazing -- especially when compared to the more glacial upgrade pace of carriers like Time Warner Cable. Has the Comcast DOCSIS 3.0 fairy reached your house yet?
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AT&T Does Damage Control on Wireless Growth Claims - Includes Wi-Fi Offloading in Numbers to Keep Things Scary

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 11:27am MST

"Data consumption right now is growing 40% a year," John Stankey of AT&T recently told investors, numbers confirmed by CEO Randall Stephenson on a recent investor call. That was a startling admission, given that those entirely-reasonable growth rates were a far cry from earlier predictions. AT&T lobbyists are very busy trying to scare politicians into making numerous poor wireless policy decisions based on the idea they face a disastrous capacity crisis, when in reality the company squats on oodles of spectrum, and any capacity constraints are due to their inefficient use of existing spectrum.

A number of people noticed our story and had been talking about how AT&T shot their own super-scary-predictions in the foot with their brief moment of accidental honesty, so the company did a little damage control this week. On the heels of a new Cisco study showing explosive growth (Cisco ignoring their incorrect earlier predictions), AT&T issued a blog post insisting that things were just as scary as always, with data on their wireless network doubling annually:

Running year-end numbers that show the same result as previous years is typically a sign of stability. But when the year-end numbers show a doubling of wireless data traffic from 2010 to 2011 and you ve seen at least a doubling every year since 2007 the implications are profound. Over the past five years, AT&T s wireless data traffic has grown 20,000%.

Amusingly, Tim Farrar at TMF Associates notes that in order to downplay their previously incorrect predictions and keep things scary, AT&T changed some of the definition of what they measured, bloating the numbers by including Wi-Fi offloading (including AT&T's massive hotspot network and home femtocells, which don't even consume cellular capacity):

...AT&T s blog post is apparently obfuscating the issue by changing its definition from mobile data (in March 2011) to "wireless data (in the current blog post). In other words, AT&T s WiFi offloading (at Starbucks, Times Square, the Superbowl, etc.), which is helping to drastically reduce the growth of (on-network) "mobile data" traffic, is presumably now included in their statistics.

That's not to say spectrum isn't finite, or that AT&T isn't still seeing impressive growth, but it is to say that AT&T continues to play up the growth they're seeing because it's politically useful. Having politicians scurry to pass AT&T written anti-competitive laws because the nation's wireless networks will collapse if they don't -- makes for good motivation. It's also handy to have a national press believing the same thing, so when AT&T raises rates, or squats on spectrum to stop competitors from getting it -- the press can know it was necessary to save the universe. Capacity fear mongering is AT&T's way of justifying bad behavior and spectrum squatting.

Keep in mind AT&T never actually releases real network data because people could consistently see how full of crap they are and demand accountability. You'll recall that when AT&T imposed caps on their U-Verse and DSL customers they claimed it was due to network congestion, something the press mindlessly repeated without a shred of evidence -- while network engineers claimed congestion was minimal. When you over-state your resources as dangerously finite, you can more easily justify higher prices.

We recently noted how anyone proclaiming there's an unavoidable capacity crisis on modern networks is lying in order to sell something, and traffic predictions from Cisco, AT&T and the FCC all were recently shown to be over-inflated. Granted Cisco wants to sell more hardware, AT&T wants to scare the press and politicians into supporting anti-competitive policies, and the FCC wants to make money off of spectrum auctions, so there's not a high priority placed on accurate data on any front.
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FreedomPop Signs Clearwire Deal - Guarantees Second Half 2012 Launch

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 9:20am MST

Created by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstr m, hopeful-pesky-upstart FreedomPop planned to use wholesale access to the LightSquared network to offer a new tier of wireless services include a free basic offering. With LightSquared all but officially dead, the company recently stated they were looking for a new home for their free-centric new phone service. They appear to have found that home with Clearwire, both companies announcing a wholesale arrangement today with absolutely no useful details. FreedomPop still isn't offering full pricing for its services or clarifying their "freemium" model, but they "guarantee" that the service will launch in the second half of this year.
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Netflix Planning More Original Series - As They Try to Dodge Licensing Choke Hold

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 7:28am 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 the latter, 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 called Lilyhammer. The company is also now working on a new comedy series from the creator of "Weeds," a popular Showtime series. Now to just make sure they don't suck...

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LightSquared is Dead - FCC Revokes Waiver on Hybrid Network Spectrum

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 5:53am MST

The FCC has put a nail in the coffin for LightSquared, late yesterday stating they'd be revoking LightSquared's spectrum waiver. The waiver on spectrum that would have been used for the hybrid satellite/LTE network was doled out just about a year ago, with the FCC saying they hoped the network would help increase competition. However, LightSquared's technology was repeatedly shown to cause significant interference, and combined with a little political pressure on lawmakers from AT&T and Verizon (who for obvious reasons don't want this network built), the result was a massive political firestorm.

What happens now? Last October LightSquared stated they'd sue the FCC if they backed away from the waiver, so the network now hits the court and runs a bureaucratic gauntlet. With LightSquared cash limited the fight will be difficult, and the 35 wholesale partners who have signed network sharing arrangements need a new plan (read: Sprint).

Last July, LightSquared CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said he was so optimistic the FCC would approve the waiver that he wasn't planning for any other outcome. Recently however, with unresolvable GPS issues, fading cash reserves and backer Phil Falcone facing several unrelated SEC inquiries, LightSquared had begun giving off a particular odor. It's possible the plan survives this, but it's very unlikely.

The full FCC statement:

LightSquared s proposal to provide ground-based mobile service offered the potential to unleash new spectrum for mobile broadband and enhance competition. The Commission clearly stated from the outset that harmful interference to GPS would not be permitted. This is why the Conditional Waiver Order issued by the Commission s International Bureau prohibited LightSquared from beginning commercial operations unless harmful interference issues were resolved.

NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and other federal government entities, has now concluded that there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time. Consequently, the Commission will not lift the prohibition on LightSquared. The International Bureau of the Commission is proposing to (1) vacate the Conditional Waiver Order, and (2) suspend indefinitely LightSquared s Ancillary Terrestrial Component authority to an extent consistent with the NTIA letter. A Public Notice seeking comment on NTIA s conclusions and on these proposals will be released tomorrow.

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Beastie Boys Fight, For Right, to AT&T Net Neutrality? - Mike D Gets, AT&T Investor, Nudges SEC Move

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 5:34am MST

Beastie Boys member Mike D has made strides in getting AT&T one step closer toward being a fan of network neutrality. As an AT&T investor, he's been pushing to allow investors to have a say in AT&T's policies, and now the SEC has announced that telcos must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes. That's not to say investors will vote for neutrality, since anti-competitive behavior that violates the concept of neutrality (unreasonably slowing a competitor's TV service) can be quite profitable. Still, it's an interesting move. Said the SEC:

In view of the sustained public debate over the last several years concerning net neutrality and the Internet and the increasing recognition that the issue raises significant policy considerations, we do not believe that AT&T may omit the proposal from its proxy materials in reliance on rule 14a-8(i)(7).

Mike D's move comes as a AT&T investors are also starting to demand more accountability on money used for politics, after AT&T's defeated T-Mobile acquisition attempt resulted in some questions about the cost of all those sleazy astroturfing efforts. If AT&T investors are going to be annoyed when the company reinvests serious money into the network, it only makes sense they'd be concerned about the millions AT&T dumps into national policy and politics.
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Comcast Only Loses 17,000 TV Subscribers - Network Re-investment Pays Dividends

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 5:23am MST

Comcast has issued their fourth quarter earnings, which show that the cable giant has managed to somewhat slow the flow of subscribers to telco TV and satellite TV alternatives. The company lost just 17,000 TV subscribers on the quarter, compared to 135,000 one year earlier. Unlike some cable operators, Comcast has been aggressive on the DOCSIS 3.0 front, and has at least been trying to keep pace with some of the new TV-related service offers seen with FiOS and U-Verse. Comcast managed to add a whopping 336,000, as DSL subscribers from slower telcos head their direction -- again a benefit of network re-investment. AT&T and Verizon added a combined net 51,000 broadband subscribers on the quarter, and AT&T lost 636,000 DSL users on the quarter.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 15th, 2012, 3:28am MST

FCC bars the use of airwaves for LightSquared broadband plan mercurynews.com
Why Would You Pay $12 a Month for Free TV? allthingsd.com
Senate cybersecurity bill leaves Internet alone, exempts tech companies from oversight arstechnica.com
Canada unveils latest lawful Internet access law pcadvisor.co.uk
UK ISP TalkTalk joins BT and Sky in blocking Newzbin ispreview.co.uk
Mobile internet devices to outnumber humans this year theregister.co.uk
AT&T s data traffic is actually doubling annually gigaom.com
Google vs. the World precursorblog.com
HTC rumored to be working on a streaming music service gigaom.com
Chicago asked not to stifle wireless at summits yahoo.com
Leaked images purport to show new BlackBerry 10 UI gomonews.com
Sony looks at personalized charging ubergizmo.com
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 4:02pm MST

3 More Years Of Analog TV: FCC Wants To Extend Cable's Viewability Mandates multichannel.com
'Aereo' To Test Copyright Law With Internet-Streaming TV Service multichannel.com
SEC tells telcos they must include a resolution supporting wireless net-neutrality in annual shareholder votes businessweek.com
Wireless traffic could reach 10.8 exabytes a month by 2016 macworld.com
Authorities: Fake names are grounds for warrant-less wiretapping ubergbizmo.com
TW Cable Streams Live TV to PCs lightreading.com
Why your next smartphone could have better Wi-Fi gigaom.com
ICANN attracts 100 would-be Net domain operators cnet.com
UK authorities take down a U.S. domain: Could it happen to you? zdnet.com
Flaw found in online encryption method nytimes.com
Google Public DNS: 70 billion requests a day and counting Google Blog
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Google's Motorola Acquisition Approved - U.S., EU Regulators Approve Deal in Unison

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 3:33pm MST

In August of last year Google announced they'd be acquiring Motorola Mobility, which includes both Motorola's wireless and set top box units (and 17,000 wireless patents), for a cool $12.5 billion. At the time, Google proclaimed that the deal would "supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers." The deal annoys cable industry executives, who worry that given Google's record of trying (and so far failing) to disrupt TV, their integration with Motorola could threaten the rather cozy set top rental revenue wonderland cornered over the years. This week regulators both in the U.S. and Europe approved the deal saying it posed no significant threat to the competitive ecosystem.

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AT&T Throttling Story Reaches Dull Roar - As Mainstream Press Discovers Warped Definition of 'Unlimited'

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 1:41pm MST

Last week we noted that AT&T has been waging a quiet war on those "unlimited" users they grandfathered in 2010 when the company ditched unlimited data for new users. Not only is AT&T automatically putting those users on tiered data plans should they jailbreak their phones and tether unofficially (totally legal, for now), they've started throttling those users after 2 GB to quietly force them to tiered data plans. What started quietly as some complaining at telecom-focused blogs like this one has escalated into a full on media roar, with an AP story highlighting more than a few annoyed users. Even Fox News' Shep Smith has gotten in on the action, railing against AT&T for "charging him more for the same thing he's always been doing." Wait until next week when they discover AT&T's latest rate hike.
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Time Warner, MSG Retrans Feud Continues - Customers Pay Price as Neither Side Budges

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 11:26am MST

Retransmission disputes between broadcasters and cable companies were ugly in 2011 -- and have only gotten uglier in 2012 . Customers have been bearing the brunt in these money battles, dealing with blackouts, annoying scrolling warnings, disingenuous PR campaigns and higher bills regardless of which side wins. One feud that hasn't yet resolved is Time Warner Cable's fight with MSG, which has left consumers unable to watch their favorite sports teams.

The talks, which broke down into press sniping in January have not seen any traction whatsoever, and the blackout is expected to last at least until April:

Their broadcast carriage agreement expired on December 31 and the two sides have not been able to strike a new deal, which means Time Warner Cable subscribers in the New York area are unable to watch Lin's sudden rise to fame. And the dispute could last until April, the end of the National Basketball Association's regular season, MSG Media President Michael Bair said last week. Time Warner says subscriber cancellations have so far been insignificant, but New Yorkers affected by the dispute are not happy and threatening to switch cable providers.

Regulators have so far chosen not to regulate this, arguing that it's just another business dispute. However, calls for government involvement continue to grow louder as the disputes get more and more obnoxious.
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The Spray On Antenna? - Lower Energy Consumption, Better Range

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 9:24am MST

Chamtech Enterprises is hoping to make signal issues a thing of the past with a new form of spray on antenna the company demonstrated this week at Google's Solve for X conference. Chamtech's co-founder Anthony Sutera explains the idea in a video, claiming that the technology -- discovered by accident -- will allow wireless signal transmission at greater distances with a fraction of the energy consumption. It also could eliminate the need for massive and ugly cell towers, given it can be applied to everyday objects like buildings, rocks, and trees (they claim to have sent a VHF signal up to 14 miles via a tree). At the very least, it could be a mean way to pick on any locals claiming to have wireless electrosensitivity.
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Rick Boucher: From Fair Use Champ to AT&T Puppet - Helping AT&T's Anti-Competitive Efforts Post T-Mobile Deal

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 7:30am MST

Former Virginia Demoratic Congressman Rick Boucher used to have a lot of credibility in the technology field, urging regulators to aim high when it came to broadband goals, while being one of the pre-eminent voices for fair use rights. What's he doing since leaving Congress? Helping AT&T crush competition.

Fresh off of the rejected T-Mobile deal, AT&T's been on an anti-competitive lobbying tear of late (ok, they're always on an anti-competitive lobbying tear), trying to make Dish's LTE build fail, while burying a bunch of language in the Payroll Tax bill that erodes FCC authority and crushes any and all future AT&T competitors -- including White Space broadband.

Enter Rick Boucher, now employed by the law firm of Sidley Austin, which has been representing AT&T for most of the last one-hundred years.

AT&T has Boucher making the editorial rounds lately without fully disclosing he's an AT&T lobbyist. Over at the "Internet Innovation Alliance" (aka AT&T), Boucher argues it's not fair for the FCC to consider spectrum holdings when crafting spectrum auction rules -- rules that would prevent AT&T from simply squatting on additional spectrum for anti-competitive benefit. In a piece at Roll Call, Boucher uses language that will probably remind you of a certain lumbering, anti-competitive behemoth, lavishing praise on a wireless market whose constant price hikes suggest it's not quite so competitive:

During the past 10 years, consumers enjoyed plummeting prices per minute, per megabit and per message. The fact that wireless is a free and competitive market has led to this evolution, and estimates for future wireless growth hinge on it staying that way....A rule that disqualifies incentive auction bidders based on their size or their market position would be highly detrimental and severely undermine our effort to achieve these laudable goals.

While Boucher makes it sound noble, it comes down to AT&T wanting weaker regulators who'll let them squat mindlessly on publicly-owned airwaves while wireless competition stagnates and prices soar. The fact is AT&T doesn't want any new serious entrants in the market, whether via White Space broadband or networks built by Dish Network. As always the pretense here is that Boucher and AT&T don't like regulation and love free markets. The reality is incumbent telecom giants loathe free markets and love regulation, but only when it's written by their lawyers and designed to protect their revenues from competition.

While it's nice Boucher has found a way to keep food on the table, it's disappointing that it required selling nearly all of his principles down the river.
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Cisco: Metered Users Consume More Data - Tiered Plans Saw 169% Growth to 83% for Unlimited

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 6:03am MST

Cisco's latest data growth prognostications suggest mobile data data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years. The result will be the global transfer of 10.8 exabytes per month -- or an annual run rate of 130 exabytes -- by 2016. Interestingly noted in the latest data but not highlighted was the fact that tiered pricing seems to be driving more data usage, not less. The data shows that traffic on tiered planes increased 169% in the past 21 months versus 83% for unlimited data plans.

That's in contrast to previous studies we've seen that have shown users on Sprint unlimited data plans consume more data than their capped and metered alternatives. Cisco claims that this shift is due to consumers being "educated" about their data consumption by carriers and that they want to get more consumption for their money:

"You might think they'd grow faster with all-you-can eat, but I think it's a testament to the fact that service providers are educating users more on their impact and IP footprint," (Cisco's Thomas) Barnett says. "People understand they have a 2GB or 3GB cap or whatever, so they are consuming as much as they can to get their money's worth. Those with unlimited aren't concerned, but aren't using as much."

That runs in contrast with the narrative that carriers imposed such models solely for congestion reasons. The obvious reality is carriers imposed such limits to cash in on growth and offset the inevitable death of the SMS and voice minute. Tiered pricing is usually designed to push users up the pricing scale by offering an unreasonably low plan (usually 200-300MB) that forces them to pay more for a plan where they don't usually use all the available data (usually 2-3 GB). According to Cisco, 60 percent of mobile users, or 3 billion people, will use more than one 1GB of mobile data traffic per month in 2016.
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BitTorrent Creator 'To Kill Off Television' - New P2P Video Streaming Platform Demo'd

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 5:40am MST

BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has been trying to monetize his creation for the better part of the decade, and while it may have somewhat revolutionized file delivery, efforts to build a legal business model around the technology have seen mixed results. You'll recall the now-defunct BitTorrent store, which floundered in 2007 due to a clunky GUI, DRM, and games that came with complimentary spyware. Recently admitting these efforts were "pretty bad," the company is now focused on a live streaming platform using P2P, demonstrating the technology this week at the San Francisco MusicTech Summit.

According to GigaOM, Cohen jokes that "my goal here is to kill off television":

Cohen has worked on P2P live streaming for a number of years, and told us a while back that he completely had to start from scratch because traditional P2P algorithms introduce too much latency for live applications. BitTorrent Inc. hasn t said how exactly it intends to productize the protocol, but Cohen said on Monday that he is talking to a number of potential partners. BitTorrent has also started to run a number of field tests on its website in recent months, streaming weekly live music events with the P2P protocol.

As we've noted a lot lately there are no shortage of people who think they can revolutionize TV (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Bram Cohen) but the problem has been getting around suffocating licensing restrictions designed by the industry to prevent that from ever happening.
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iPad 3 Unveiled March 7 - LTE Version Sold by AT&T and Verizon

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 5:22am MST

Rene Ritchie at iMore scoops that Apple will unveil the iPad 3 at a press event March 7. The latest incarnation of the tablet will feature a 2048 1536 Retina display, a quad-core Apple A6 system-on-a-chip, and as previous reports have suggested will likely support LTE. Sources tell The Wall Street Journal the LTE version will be sold by both AT&T and Verizon. The Journal also claims that Apple is testing an eight inch version of the device.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 14th, 2012, 4:23am MST

Cisco: Tiered pricing drives more data usage lightreading.com
Global mobile data traffic to increase 18-fold by 2016 fiercewireless.com
BitTorrent inventor: My goal is to kill off television gigaom.com
Canadian Politician: You're Either In Favor Of Letting The Gov't Spy On Your Internet Usage... Or You're For Child Pornography techdirt.com
Android's Not Dropping CDMA Support informationweek.com
Tor's latest project helps Iran get back online despite new Internet censorship regime arstechnica.com
How Does The Penalty For 'Content Theft' Match Up With Similar 'Crimes' techdirt.com
European Parliament prez slams ACTA 'in current form' theregister.co.uk
Microsoft mulls touchscreen controller for next-gen Xbox reghardware.com
AT&T and Verizon will get 4G LTE iPad 3's macrumors.com
Spray-on antenna: Wireless in a can? cnet.com
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Monday Evening Links -

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 4:10pm MST

Ontario Catholic teachers' union urges ban on classroom WiFi theglobeandmail.com
LightSquared strums up political support cnet.com
AT&T customers surprised at just how limited 'unlimited' is wirelessweek.com
The good,bad and ugly of 802.11ac networkworld.com
The Pirate Bay will remove most torrent files on February 29th, magnet links taking over theverge.com
UK's biggest broadcastre, ITV, warns Apple not to brand smart television 'iTV' telegraph.co.uk
The smartphone apps battle for bronze hots up: Windows 7 vs BlackBerry broadbandgenie.co.uk
Sony considering porting PS Vita OS to smartphones? fiercewireless.com
EU Approves Google's Acquisition of Motorola Mobility wirelessweek.com
Google acknowledges Wallet debacle, pulls prepaid cards networkworld.com
TiVo And AT&T Partner On U-Verse Ad Data tvexchanger.com
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AT&T Close to Wireless Family Data Plans - Hopefully They Won't Screw Up Pricing

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 3:10pm 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. However Engadget has obtained internal documents showing shared family data is coming soon. The only questions are when, and how exactly AT&T will sock you with added fees and caveats to counter the added value.
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Competitors Want More Detail on Verizon Cable Deal - Fight Over What Should be Made Public Record Ramps Up

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 1:38pm MST

Responding to consumer advocate and competitor concerns that the new Verizon, cable industry deal could include some anti-competitive conditions ( we won't install new FiOS in your markets if you let us sell wireless to your customers and sell us spectrum), Senator Herb Kohl recently announced a February 23 hearing. Meanwhile, consumer groups and competitors like Sprint, T-Mobile and DirecTV are pushing for access to unredacted copies of the agreement. In a letter to the FCC Verizon and Cox argue competitors are simply trying "to gain access to proprietary pricing and marketing information." The deal's biggest impact will be on more rural DSL operators, who already weren't in a very competitive position versus cable.
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Canadian Leaders Follow U.S., Believe Warrants Are For Sissies - Massive Surveillance Law Overhaul This Week

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 11:42am MST

Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist notes that Canadian lawmakers are again pushing sweeping new surveillance laws. Mirroring U.S. leadership belief that warrants and privacy rights are a hindrance, the three-pronged legislative overhaul will focus on allowing the disclosure of ISP customer data without court oversight, requiring ISPs to rework their networks to allow real-time surveillance (AT&T can certainly provide tips), and expanding law enforcement authority to allow broader access to this newly farmed data. As in the States, a lot of the rhetoric supporting the bill focuses on stopping child pornography and other Internet bogeymen, while ignoring that current laws already work well to battle such crimes.
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RIM Director Scoffs At Your Idea of Hiring 'Children, Morons' - After Being Hired 5 Years Ago to Stop RIM Free Fall

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

After product delays, multi-continent unexplained service outages, drunken employee scandals and consistently lackluster product offerings, Research in Motion (RIM) finally decided to shake up their CEO spot, replacing co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with new CEO Thorsten Heins. Responding to criticism that Heins seems like "more of the same" for a company that has totally stagnated and is now on the verge of collapse, RIM chair Roger Martin (brought in five years ago to right the ship) gets a little defensive when talking to the Globe and Mail:

I laugh at the vast majority of critics when they say Oh, you should have made this CEO transition, like, four years ago. Yeah, right like, to who? Mr. Martin scoffs over lunch at Mideastro, a favourite restaurant in Toronto s Yorkville. "n a rare outpouring of candour by a RIM director, he heaps scorn on the notion that the board should have hired a star outsider to re-energize RIM a strategy that, he points out, failed abysmally at other stumbling tech giants, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and, in its troubled 1980s, the now seemingly flawless Apple. So we re supposed to hand it over to children, or morons from the outside who will destroy the company? he says.

Children and morons (no offense to either) might field a better product. Arguing that because bringing in outside executive leadership didn't help at three companies is hardly a convincing argument for why RIM leadership sat on their hands as iOS and Android dominated the market. RIM's one shot at salvaging their reputation lies with their Blackberry 10 smartphones, which won't even reach market until 2013 -- and even then probably will be more of the same from a company that simply is no longer competitive.
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South Korean ISPs Block Smart TVs - Ain't Gonna Ride Their Pipes for Free!

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 7:04am MST

For years we've discussed how incumbent phone company executives live in a bubble, believing that they magically deserve a cut of any traffic that so much as touches their network. It's the kind of logic that began the network neutrality debate back in 2005, when then AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre declared he "wasn't going to let Google ride his pipes for free." This idea that content companies get a "free ride" has been a cornerstone of telco think ever since, even if it's not supported by the facts.

That hasn't stopped this argument from being made time and time again by broadband industry lobbyists, assorted hired mouthpieces and fauxcademics as their employers try to argue that companies like Google, Netflix and the BBC (iPlayer) should pay for network upgrades -- simply because. The fact-free nature of the claim also hasn't stopped carriers from stupid behavior, as evidenced by the fact that ISPs in South Korea are now blocking smart TVs....because they consume data (via GigaOM):

KT started restricting internet access to Samsung s smart TV applications, starting at 09:00 am, Friday. This is expected to inconvenience 250,000 Samsung smart TV users who subscribe to KT s high-speed internet service. The dispute has been festering for a while as KT insists smart TVs share the costs of quality maintenance of the internet as they tend to hog the networks, while TV makers argue they have no obligation to do so.

The idea that Samsung should pay an extra toll simply because their device uses broadband (that consumers already pay for) is the same absurd logic used by AT&T to ignite the histrionic U.S. network neutrality debate. In this case the ISP in question not only wants an extra "just because" fee, but they likely want to protect their fledgling IPTV service (named "Ollie") from competition running along their network.

Despite significant profit margins and abundant new revenue streams (advertising via webmail, BVAS, selling clickstream data, DNS Redirection revenue, charging to get around spam filters, targeted behavioral advertising, fees to pay your bill in person or on the phone) you're supposed to believe that poor, cash-strapped telecom conglomerates can't survive unless they're allowed to play "troll under the bridge."
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Buffalo Residents Still Calling Verizon Racist - As City Continues to Clamor For FiOS Upgrades

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 6:47am MST

There's a long list of cities that were bypassed -- for a wide variety of reasons -- when Verizon upgraded half of their network from DSL to FiOS, including Boston, Alexandria, Virginia, Baltimore, Maryland and Wilmington, Delaware. Buffalo, New York is on that list, and for years a group called "Don't Bypass Buffalo" has been trying to change that. The efforts have included accusing Verizon of "redlining" along racial lines, though Verizon has repeatedly argued it's simply a matter of choosing cities that give the company the best return on its investment. Local residents are still at it, claiming Verizon is racist:

Buffalo isn't on Verizon's list for total coverage of the city for its complete FiOS service. Company spokesman John Bonomo says there's a five-year, $23-billion program underway which excludes most of the city. "The fact is that Verizon has often said that low-income residents and community of color are not worth their time," said Citizen Action's Danielle Judge.

While it would be naive to think race/class/income and a litany of other factors didn't go into Verizon's statistical analysis, much of the decisions were simply ROI and logistically based -- and there's a lot of affluent, white suburbs that are also waiting on Verizon upgrades. That said, about 30-40% of Verizon's current customers could be waiting a decade for next-generation upgrades, so the annoyance at the nation's duopolistic gridlock is certainly understandable.
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AT&T Doubles Phone Upgrade Fee - On Heels of Numerous Other Hikes...

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 6:04am MST

AT&T's been busy showing lately that wireless sector "competition" isn't all it's cracked up to be, and why the carrier has a bad reputation in some quarters. The company recently decided to eliminate their $10 SMS plan in order to push all users to their unlimited $20 SMS plan, impose new fees on users who don't use enough long distance, jack up prices on wireless data, and wage a quiet war against grandfathered unlimited data users. Now the company says they're doubling their handset upgrade fee to $36. "Wireless devices today are more sophisticated than ever before, and because of that the costs associated with upgrading to a new device have increased and is reflected in our new upgrade fee, says the company. This fee isn t unique to AT&T and this is the first time we re changing it in nearly 10 years." Verizon charges no such fee, while T-Mobile charges $18 and Sprint also charges $36.
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Apple Wants Galaxy Nexus Banned in U.S. - As Global Patent Feud Continues to Bubble Over

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 5:51am MST

Florian Mueller at Foss Patents notes that Apple has filed a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Nexus, which Apple claims violates four Apple patents. The Nexus, launched late last year, is Apple's latest and greatest competitor in the smartphone wars, and was the first device to showcase Google's new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. The four patents cover slide to unlock functionality, Siri-focused voice search technology, Apple's word completion patent, and a patent for "data tapping" (allows users to click on auto-linked phone numbers). Several of the technologies are already involved in legal disputes elsewhere -- slide to unlock is part of Apple's legal campaign in Germany, where a court denied Apple's attempt to have the device banned there.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: February 13th, 2012, 4:53am MST

Netflix Settles Class-Action Video Privacy Lawsuit For $9 Million multichannel.com
One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet techdirt.com
So Many Apologies, So Much Data Mining nytimes.com
Big Data's impact on the world nytimes.com
What to make of AT&T s vanishing spectrum crisis gigaom.com
Europeans protest ACTA totaltele.com
Apple seeks US injunction against Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone totaltele.com
MPAA Demands Hotfile Data From Google, Search Engine Refuses torrentfreak.com
Is Google planning to offer IP video to Kansas City? arstechnica.com
Traveling light in a time of digital thievery nytimes.com
New patent will give iPhone screen interactive 3D theregister.co.uk
AT&T to Double Upgrade Fee to $36, Says It's Covering Costs hothardware.com
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Weekend Open Thread - Que Pasa?

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 3:31pm MST

The weekend has arrived, so we're stepping away from the controls for a bit. Enjoy yourselves in the comment section below.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 3:24pm MST

Free Mobile's impact--we should have seen it coming fiercewireless.com
Uh Oh! Not a good sign: Broadband speed demon Korea starts throttling 'data hungry' smart TV's whathifi.com
Apple, Samsung own 95% of all mobile phone profits cnet.com
LightSquared Customers Plead with FCC wirelessweek.com
Amazon: No plans to launch a standalone video service soon gigaom.com
Surprise! BitTorrent Piracy Doesn t Affect US Box Office Returns, Study Finds torrentfreak.com
Amazon readying 9-inch Kindle Fire for 2012? cnet.com
iOS has surpassed Mac OS X in total Web market share for the first time cnet.com
Carrier Support Showdown: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Tested laptopmag.com
Ford making Bluetooth, app integration standard on Fusion, Flex cnet.com
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Iran Starts Blocking All Encrypted Traffic - As Tor Works on Solution to Bypass Iranian Filters

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

Late last year Iranian leaders made it a criminal offense to bypass the country's Internet filters using VPNs or any other technology. The announcement by Iranian Telecommunications Minister Reza Taghipour insisted the move was made to combat a "soft war being waged by Western countries against Iran (read: we want to spy on our own citizens and stifle information exchange among liberal thinkers). A post over at hacker news this morning notes that Iran has started blocking all encrypted traffic ahead of the celebration of 1979 Islamic revolution tomorrow. Says the local user:

Since Thursday Iranian government has shut down the [https] protocol which has caused almost all google services (gmail, and google.com itself) to become inaccessible. Almost all websites that reply on Google APIs (like wolfram alpha) won't work. Accessing to any website that replies on [https] (just imaging how many websites use this protocol, from Arch Wiki to bank websites). Also accessing many proxies is also impossible.

Forbes notes that the folks behind Tor are using the opportunity to test a new technology called "obfsproxy" (obfuscated proxy) that will help trick Iran's deep packet inspection filters into thinking encrypted traffic is unencrypted.
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Tribler BitTorrent Client Can't Be Shut Down - File Distribution Becomes More Decentralized

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 11:39am MST

Torrent Freak directs our attention to the development of a new BitTorrent client whose developers claim is impossible to shut down without pulling the plug on the entire Internet. Dubbed Tribler, the client uses pure peer to peer communications and doesn't require a central website to find or download content. The client has been in development for five years, but becomes increasingly relevant as the entertainment industry's war on filtering websites grows. It works rather simply:

When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down...According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.

As the entertainment industry (and the governments who love their campaign cash) ramp up their focus on filters and attacks on centralized distribution hubs, developers are simply shifting their focus toward more decentralized solutions. The very Internet was designed as a communication medium that persists regardless of regional shutdown, so the idea that piracy can ever really be stopped is a pipe dream. Thus, an endless game of (often taxpayer funded) whac-a-mole!

As we've seen time and time again, no matter how draconian the attempt to stop piracy is (be it filters, throttling, lawsuits, bad laws or ISP warning campaigns) -- piracy not only lives on -- but thrives. It's clear to everyone but the entertainment industry that you can't stop piracy, you can only slow it -- and the only way to seriously slow it is to compete with it through lower prices and quality distribution services. That's something companies like Valve Software have figured out with their Steam distribution platform for the game industry, but it seems to be an utterly inconceivable concept for Hollywood.
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Nielsen Almost Acknowledges Cord Cutting Is Real - 23% Spike in OTA and Broadband Only Subscribers

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 9:40am MST

Back in June of 2010, Nielsen proclaimed that the idea of TV cord cutting in favor of Internet video alternatives was "purely fiction." A year and a half later and the company's latest report (reg. required) almost goes out of its way not to acknowledge cord cutting exists, despite finding that homes with broadband but without paid TV are on the rise. The percentage of people who have just OTA and broadband rose 22.8% since last year, and while they still comprise just 5% of all TV households, it's a segment that's slowly becoming less "fictional" in the face of relentless cable industry price hikes.

As for pay TV options, there continues to be a migration away from traditional cable and toward satellite and telcoTV. The number of homes subscribing to wired cable decreased 4.1 percent in the past year at the same time that telco TV and satellite have seen increases of 21.1 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, more than 75% of TV viewers pay for broadband service up from roughly 71% one year ago.

While cord cutters are a very real niche, they do remain a minuscule part of the equation for several reasons. Traditional cable TV is familiar, it's easy, and newer streaming technologies confuse Luddites and the elderly. The cable and TV industry also does a very good job trying to viciously crush any and all disruptive Internet video operations (see their slow but steady licensing strangulation of Netflix as exhibit A).

Traditional cable is a massive and established industry, and it's not going anywhere. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of users watching traditional-but-time-shifted (DVRs, Slingboxes) television jumped by 66%, while the growth in those watching TV on the Internet jumped 21.7% in the same period. During that same stretch, mobile video consumption (mostly thanks to TV Everywhere offers that require a paid TV subscription) has exploded to the tune of 205.7%. Broadband bundles continue to grow, with homes with both paid TV and broadband increasing 5-1/2% last year.

Just like many blogs, analysts and other similar studies focused on video, Nielsen doesn't discuss piracy's impact on any of these numbers. In fact, Nielsen's eleven page study doesn't mention piracy once. Apparently if you don't mention piracy it ceases to exist, a reflection of the broader cable and broadcast industry belief that their services don't compete with piracy (tip: they do). It seems somewhat important to include those watching pirated content if you're seriously analyzing shifts in video consumption.
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With LightSquared Reeling, FreedomPop Looking Elsewhere - Talking to Other Carriers, June Launch at Earliest

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 7:13am MST

Late last year 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. With LightSquared increasingly looking like they may never build an actual network, FreedomPop has started looking elsewhere for partners:

FreedomPop s aim is to launch service this summer, around June at the earliest. Miller said service will be available nationwide, or close to it, at launch. Since its original network launch partner, LightSquared, is mired in regulatory delays, FreedomPop has been talking to other wholesalers and wireless carriers about renting network capacity. FreedomPop will announce a new partner in coming weeks, said Miller.

And by a "new partner" they likely mean Sprint.

As recently noted there's a significant number of new 2012 upstart MVNOs that hope to be disruptive in pricing while avoiding the fate that generally befalls MVNOs. What makes these upstarts more interesting is that many of them are exploring "free" options, where base tiers cost nothing and consumers have greater options when it comes to adding exactly the minute, byte and SMS totals they need. While these companies may not last, they may still add some much-deeded disruption to stale wireless sector pricing.
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Growing List of Countries Oppose ACTA - Germany Joins Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic in Opposition

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 6:06am MST

As we've discussed for months, 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 generating unprecedented public disgust, it helped draw a lot of attention to ACTA -- and now support in numerous countries appears to be falling apart. Poland, Czech Republic and Latvia have all withdrawn their support for the agreement, and now Germany has postponed their vote. Granted the the European Union and 22 of its 27 member states already signed the agreement in January, but it's clear that the growing public protests (which are expected to grow significantly louder Saturday) across numerous countries have started to make politicians nervous.
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Russian Wins $5,000 For Wireless Data Gluttony - Russian Carrier MegaFon Rewards 'Bandwidth Hogs'

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 5:58am MST

While carriers here in the States seem to do everything possible to demonize heavy bandwidth users as the worst sort of gluttons (despite benefiting from billing them out at $10 per gigabyte), one Russian wireless provider is doing everything possible to encourage users to use more data. Russian carrier MegaFon has been running a promotion encouraging 21 Mbps 3G users to consume as much data as humanly possible in order to win a 150,000 ruble (around $5,000) vacation. The winner of the contest managed to consume 419GB of 3G data in one week, and MegaFon got some delicious PR showing that their network works well, their definition of unlimited actually is unlimited -- and that they actually like it when people consume their product.
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ViaSat Phasing Out WildBlue Brand - Exede Branding Will Replace WildBlue

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 5:19am MST

In 2009 ViaSat acquired residential satellite broadband service WildBlue for $568 million, and now it appears they're phasing out the WildBlue brand and service entirely. The company has confirmed to Light Reading they're phasing out the WildBlue name to focus on selling the company's new Exede service, which will be sold directly to consumers as well as via Dish, DirecTV, and a number of other rural satellite operators. The move puts DirecTV's decision to stop selling WildBlue in context. ViaSat's new Exede service, while well-hyped by the media and CES, has been somewhat underwhelming for customers. It isn't available to most users (and may never be available to some), and still features low daily usage caps that are worse than WildBlue's previous offerings.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: February 10th, 2012, 3:46am MST

• Technology vs. people - how wireless evolves fiercewireless.com
• ViaSat phasing out Wildblue in favor of much faster Exede service lightreading.com
• Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll s Claim to Own the Interactive Web wired.com
• Market for in-flight Wi-Fi primed for takeoff fiercebroadbandwireless.com
• In world of copyright craziness, BitTorrent, Inc. soars to new heights arstechnica.com
• LTE Deployment Starting to Make an Impact cellphonedigest.net
• Who Gets Fined For This Violation? Major Label-Owned Vevo Caught Publicly Streaming NFL Game Off Of 'Rogue Site' techdirt.com
• Incumbent telcos step up to the EOC plate fiercetelecom.com
• How the iPhone is raising your phone bill yahoo.com
• 7 inch iPad coming later this year? slashgear.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 6:10pm MST

• FreedomPop Explains How It Will Offer Free National Broadband Starting This Summer forbes.com
• Nielsen: Cord Cutting, Internet TV Viewing on the rise foxbusiness.com
• Can WiMax 2 revitalize the WiMax industry? fiercebroadbandwireless.com
• RIAA: Misinformation May Be a Dirty Trick, But It Works. torrentfreak.com
• Filesharing in the post-Megaupload era Deepfield.net
• The Senate s SOPA Counterattack?: Cybersecurity the Undoing of Privacy Cato @ Liberty
• Telus turning on LTE across Canada on Friday gigaom.com
• Government to detail piracy website blocking code for UK ISP's ispreview.co.uk
• The FCC map of places your mobile data plan won t work gigaom.com
• Google building "home entertainment system" for wireless music streaming arstechnica.com
• Motorola exec blames slow Android updates on hardware cnet.com
• Apple will unveil the iPad 3 in early March allthingsd.com
• Apple now worth more than Google and Microsoft combined appleinsider.com
• End of an era: Kodak discontinues camera business cnet.com
• Second Google Wallet security vulnerability confirmed, affects all users theverge.com
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Verizon, AT&T Lobby to Weaken FCC Spectrum Authority - Duopoly Protection Language Buried in Jobs Bill

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 3:14pm MST

Since 1993 the FCC has had the authority to place restrictions on auctions or conditions on spectrum (like requiring auction winners offer wholesale access) -- depending on the bidders' market dominance and/or current spectrum holdings. As their spectrum and market positions attest, neither AT&T and Verizon have been harmed by the requirements. Still, both companies been busily lobbying for less FCC control over supposedly publicly-owned spectrum -- just because.

The dynamic DC duo's latest effort is a small-but-important bit buried in a House jobs bill stripping the FCC of the authority to try and keep spectrum auctions competitive. The language also prevents the FCC from implementing unlicensed spectrum for White Space broadband use, a new technology AT&T and Verizon would very much like to see killed in the technological cradle. The section in question:

Section 4105: Prevents the FCC from excluding bidders from participating in spectrum auctions for reasons other than citizenship, character, financial, and technical qualifications. Also prevents the FCC from using its licensing authority to impose net neutrality or mandatory wholesaling on licensees. This does not, however, alter the FCC's rulemaking authority in those areas.

Obviously smaller competitors, who benefit from these rules, aren't pleased. Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, C-Spire Wireless, Leap Wireless, NorthwestCell, Bluegrass Cellular, and Atlantic Tele-Network have sent a letter to Congress under the banner of the Rural Carrier Association. In it, they warn that AT&T and Verizon's ploy could have dangerous consequences and "creates enormous uncertainties and will impair every competitive carrier s ability to build out their businesses and seek investors."

A list of 45 other consumer groups and organizations (pdf) oppose AT&T and Verizon's version of FCC and spectrum "reform." Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, has also written a letter (pdf) calling AT&T and Verizon's provisions "a serious threat to consumers and the future of wireless competition in this country."

As we recently noted, incumbent carriers like AT&T and Verizon insist there's a "spectrum crisis," when in reality the problem is spectrum squatters or companies that use existing spectrum inefficiently (AT&T is arguably both). The idea of a spectrum crisis is useful in getting lawmakers to rush toward policy that helps keep the market less competitive. As it stands, their size and deep pockets already allow AT&T and Verizon to dominate both at auction and in market, and their lobbyists are working twenty-four hours a day to make sure regulators have increasingly-less authority to do anything about it.
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Shaw Unveils New 'Exo' Branding - Like Comcast 'Xfinity' and Telus 'Optik'

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 1:29pm MST

In 2010 Comcast decided that a good way to take aim at services like AT&T's U-Verse and Verizon's FiOS would be to change the name of all of their services to "Xfinity." Though the Xfinity rebranding did coincide with some substantive improvements to services (including the expansion of a 100 Mbps tier), most people generally found the move a little silly, noting the name sounded like a new porn channel. Following on the heels of Comcast in the States and Telus (their Optik brand which falsely suggests last mile fiber) in Canada, Shaw's launching new ads for their "Exo" branding, which this video attempts to explain. The idea of course is to sex up existing services with a brand refresh, but judging from the initial response in our Shaw forum, users aren't all that impressed.
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AT&T: The U-Verse Build is Over - Like FiOS, If You Didn't Get it Already, You Probably Won't

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 11:27am MST

In May of last year AT&T confirmed that at the end of 2011 they'd effectively be stopping their deployment of U-Verse upgrades, with 30 million homes passed (not necessarily served), leaving about 40-45% of their footprint on older, slower technologies. On their recent earnings call AT&T again confirmed that the U-Verse build is "largely complete," and the focus now is on ramping up adoption in deployed areas. As we recently noted, Verizon has also frozen any additional FiOS expansion outside of large city franchise agreements, leaving roughly 40% of their customers without upgrades.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who last year insisted that DSL was "obsolete" (a problem since that's all AT&T offers) also touched on the plight of the rural user during the recent call. In short, AT&T claims that despite consistent, healthly profits and recently having started charging data overages, they just can't find a financially appealing way to upgrade millions of users, and won't anytime soon:

"Our U-verse build is now largely complete, so we have in place an IP video and broadband platform that reaches 30 million customer locations, which gives us significant headroom now to drive penetration," Stephenson said. "We have been apprehensive on moving, doing anything on rural access lines because the issue here is, do you have a broadband product for rural America? And we ve all been trying to find a broadband solution that was economically viable to get out to rural America and we re not finding one to be quite candid."

Forgotten is the fact that AT&T and Verizon played major roles in passing state laws that ban many of these communities from wiring themselves -- even if the telcos won't. Unlike smaller telcos, it's not that AT&T doesn't have the resources or funds to upgrade more users to VDSL or FTTH, they simply lack the long-term patience for serious network reinvestment. Quarterly returns and executive compensation trump network health, customer satisfaction, and product quality. Like Verizon, AT&T's solution for many of these rural customers will be for them to sign up for expensive (up to $10 per gigabyte in overages) LTE service, assuming it's available.

While the big loser here is consumers, the big winner is the cable industry, who doesn't have to worry about any real competition from faster speeds in a significant chunk of their markets. In more than half of their markets companies like Time Warner Cable get to "compete" with sluggish DSL (in many cases still topped out at 3 Mbps) for the next decade. The lack of telco upgrades for millions of users has meant huge subscriber gains for cable, whose executives should be thanking phone company executives for treating telco network reinvestment like a diabolical cancer -- despite their core product being broadband.
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Google Drive is Finally Coming - Google Storage Arriving 'In Weeks or Months'

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 9:24am MST

According to a paywalled story in the Wall Street Journal, Google is getting close to finally offering their Google Drive storage locker service. The report cites sources close to the matter who claim the service will launch in "weeks or months." Like most storage options there will be a free version, with additional storage pricing not yet specified. Google Drive is a project that we've reported as rumor for more than half a decade, though rumblings of the service grew a little louder last September with a report at Techcrunch, which noted that Google Drive will essentially be Google Docs rebranded to include multimedia storage capabilities.
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AT&T Responds to Throttling Complaints - Says That 2 GB is Not the Magic Number for Everyone

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 7:48am MST

Earlier this week we noted how AT&T's waging a quiet war on those "unlimited" data users it had agreed to grandfather when it eliminated unlimited data back in 2010. One, those that legally jailbreak and use unofficial tethering options are automatically being moved to metered service as punishment for refusing to pay AT&T a fee for doing nothing. Two, users on "unlimited" plans say they are being throttled after 2 GB so that they'll voluntarily make the shift to AT&T's metered plans (3GB is now offered for the same price).

Responding to complaints, AT&T now says 2 GB may not be the magic number:

Mr. Siegel said that even if you do exceed 2 gigabytes of data usage and qualify as one of the top 5 percent, that doesn t absolutely mean you re going to be throttled. AT&T will only reduce speeds for the top 5 percent of users in areas where network capacity or spectrum is insufficient, he said. In other words, throttling is done on a case-by-case basis, not based on a hard number, according to AT&T s claims.

"There's a very good chance you wouldn t be slowed," Mr. Siegel said. He added that in the last month, less than 1 percent of AT&T smartphone customers were affected by the policy.

That kind of murky "there's a ceiling but it's never clear where it actually is" logic may work right now when many users don't get near the throttle limit, but as we've seen with Comcast, not having very clear usage limits on your expensive product just winds up confusing and angering consumers as usage grows. Users who frequently drop $100 a month on a service should have absolutely no uncertainty as to exactly what product they're buying.
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RIAA Whines About The Public Standing Up to Them - Insists That SOPA/PIPA Opponents Were Duped by Evil Wikipedia

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 6:00am MST

RIAA boss Cary Sherman penned an editorial in the New York Times this week that's effectively a very large pout against the recent backlash to both SOPA and PIPA. According to Sherman, opponents of the universally-considered-awful laws (including thousands of websites and technical experts in numerous fields) were engaged in a campaign of "misinformation" when they were pointing out how the law effectively created a system of website censorship while potentially breaking key components of the Internet:

The hyperbolic mistruths, presented on the home pages of some of the world s most popular Web sites, amounted to an abuse of trust and a misuse of power. When Wikipedia and Google purport to be neutral sources of information, but then exploit their stature to present information that is not only not neutral but affirmatively incomplete and misleading, they are duping their users into accepting as truth what are merely self-serving political declarations.

Given the outright lies and scorched Earth tactics employed by the RIAA over the years (and Sherman specifically), it's not exactly clear if anybody, anywhere honestly believes that Sherman has credibility on any issue (ok, except perhaps bribing Congress and suing grandmothers). Opposition to SOPA/PIPA of course wasn't the hysterical rantings of the misinformed, it was very clear technical opposition by folks like OpenDNS who actually understood the bill's impact on DNS and legitimate business models.

You really can't offer a more thorough dismantling of Sherman's logic than the one over at Techdirt by Mike Masnick:

The RIAA may have been a master at creating moral panics in the past, but doubling down on the same failed strategy after it's been exposed is just kind of sad. I know Sherman has been at the RIAA for ages, but it's time to get a new playbook. The moral panic strategy in which you lie, conflate different issues, and present some massive problem without any evidence is simply not credible any more.

On the plus side, Sherman at least acknowledges that SOPA and PIPA are dead, paving the way for new, incredibly awful legislation Sherman and his lobbyists can bribe Congress into supporting without understanding how the Internet works.
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T-Mobile Offering All Smartphones 'Free' Feb. 11 - One Day Valentine's Day Promotion

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 5:39am MST

Fresh off the failed AT&T deal, T-Mobile is back to playing the pesky upstart, running a new promotion that involves giving away any of the company's cellphones (and some of their tablets) for free if the user signs a new two-year contract. "New and existing eligible customers can take advantage of this deal receiving their device for free after a mail-in rebate card when they sign up for a new two-year contract on any qualifying Classic Plan or for a $0.00 down payment after mail-in rebate card when signing up on a qualifying Unlimited Value Plan," says the company. To get the phones (which you'll still pay tax on), users will of course have to sign up for supporting 2 GB or 5 GB data plans. att=1726134
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Sprint Adds Baltimore, Kansas City to LTE Launch List - As Company Preps for Mid-Year LTE Launch

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 5:21am MST

Last month Sprint announced that their first LTE launch markets would arrive sometime mid-year, including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and six other smaller markets. In a press statement, Sprint this morning announced that they'd be adding both Baltimore and Kansas City to that initial launch list. 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 says their goal is to cover 123 million "pops" (potential users) with LTE by the end of 2012, and 250 million by the end of 2013.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: February 9th, 2012, 4:49am MST

• Web Founding Father Tim Berners-Lee Takes the Stand to Keep the Web Free wired.com
• Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web And Might Win wired.com
• LightSquared's funder Harbinger borrows $190 mln reuters.com
• Sprint to expand 4G LTE to Kansas City and Baltimore this year bgr.com
• In-flight broadband deployments to surpass 6,100 planes in 2015,says NPD In-Stat eetimes.com
• AT&T and Verizon lobby for less FCC spectrum control, Sprint and other carriers respond engadget.com
• Justice Department set to OK Google-Motorola deal wsj.com
• Apple's patent plea: Stop Samsung and Motorola from holding us hostage yahoo.com
• Ixia Introduces New VoLTE Application to Put HD Voice to the Ultimate Test marketwire.com
• BT pledges to refund ISPs after overchargbing for cancelltion of cease orders ispreview.co.uk
• Alibaba in $3bn loan talks to buy back Yahoo stake totaltele.com
• A quad-core iPad 3? Not so fast cnet.com
• Oregon Tries to Criminalize Tweets forbes.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 3:58pm MST

DOT counters self-serving Lightsquared plans with it's own plan to ban services that interfere with GPS wirelessweek.com
French MVNO's rush to match upstart Free Mobile's low-cost price plans fiercewireless.com
Will we see unlimited data again one day? computerworld.com
Smaller Carriers Worry Big Two Will Buy Up All Wireless Spectrum adweek.com
Are the massive subsidies behind iPhones killing carriers? webpronews.com
NCTA: Boxee wrong about Basic Cable encryption multichannel.com
Number of broadband-fueled gamers increased 241% from 2008 to 2011, still increasing webpronews.com
More support for IPv6 World Launch Day cable360
New Nextel map tells subs when IDEN towers will be shut down; New Orleans is first cable360.com
Apple hoping to secure standardized royalties for 3G wireless patents arstechnica.com
Japanese vending machines offering free WiFi technologytell.com
Some satellite phones vulnerable to eavesdropping MSNBC.com
Airvana Sues Ericsson Over Femtocell Technology pcworld.com
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Boxee Warns of Push for Basic Cable Encryption - Cable Industry Busy Building Taller Walls

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 1:30pm MST

Boxee only recently unveiled their live TV dongle, and already it appears to have ruffled the feathers of a cable and broadcast TV industry that doesn't much care for video evolution. Like many other devices, Boxee's live TV dongle simply gives users access to the unencrypted basic cable content using the coaxial that runs into your home. It's perfectly legal, as regulations currently prohibit cable operators from encrypting these channels, most of which are also accessible over the air via antenna.

In a new blog post, Boxee's Avner Ronen warns the cable industry is petitioning the FCC to give them the right to begin encrypting these channels. Like most companies in telecom, the cable industry laments government intervention in "free markets" -- until the markets actually start looking somewhat free, at which point they want the government to pass new rules protecting incumbency from new technologies or competitive threats. Says Boxee:

The cable companies are losing subscribers every quarter. If they want to reverse that trend they should look into building better products, reducing prices and improving customer service, not going to the government asking for rule changes to force consumers into spending more money and blocking start-ups from competing...There is another interesting thing about the proposed rule-making. There are no benefits for consumers. None. Millions of users who currently connect cable directly to their TV or tuner (without a set top box) will see their screens go dark.

Groups like Public Knowledge have already jumped into the fray, offering users an easy form allowing them to contact their representatives. In a filing to the FCC, the cable industry swears that encryption of these channels will bring "substantial consumer benefits for tens of millions of cable customers" like fewer truck rolls to start or stop service. You just have to ignore the fact an entire segment of disruptive technologies get muzzled in the process.
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Deceased Open Range Somehow Still Billing Users - Company No Longer Exists, But Can Still Bill For Nothing

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 11:13am MST

Back in October Mobile WiMax operator Open Range Communications filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. At the time, Open Range still owed $73.5 million of a $267 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture s Rural Development Utilities Program (RUS) designed to improve rural connectivity. With a Congressional inquiry launched into what the company did with the money, somehow Open Range thought it was a good idea to threaten to sue the FCC for failing to give the green light to LightSquared.

Despite their offices being just a shell, the Denver Post reports that Open Range is still billing dozens of customers:

"Open Range just made another big withdrawal out of our account," Arkansas insurance agent Gary Henry said Monday. "They sent an e-mail in November saying they were done, and now they take out $87 and some change for January." Marlene Voss of Wisconsin said after no bill for two months, Open Range took out two monthly charges $59.95 and $64.04 on the same date. "There's no way to contact them," Voss said. "How can they be bankrupt and still send bills, and we don't have service? We want to know what's going on."

The Better Business Bureau has also been fielding complaints from users about a non-existent company billing users for nonexistent service -- but has nobody to contact because technically the company no longer exists. Company equipment has been auctioned off and sold, yet somehow someone's still running the phantom billing machine. Open Range lawyers are still working as well, this week asking a Delaware court to shift them from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy claiming no chance at company resuscitation.

The company's bankruptcy filing lists contact phone numbers and e-mail addresses which don't work. Open Range Communications former CEO Bill Bearns still exists on LinkedIn with Open Range as his current employer, but we're guessing he's no longer concerned about helping customers with phantom charges.
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Lightsquared Wants GPS Standards - A Hail Mary Pass to Keep Plans Afloat?

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 9:15am MST

LightSquared is taking their battle with the GPS industry to a new level. Just a few weeks after the company accused the GPS industry of essentially rigging the testing process used to determine whether their planned hybrid satellite/LTE network will interfere with GPS equipment (a recent report says it does horribly, and the problems are not fixable), LightSquared is asking regulators to develop entirely new rules for GPS receivers. LightSquared is trying to flip the debate, arguing that the FCC needs to jump in and regulate the devices using the 1559-1610 MHz band:

If sensible standards were in place, the GPS industry would not be facing the current interference problems and consumers would benefit from a more efficient use of spectrum. Furthermore, the way would be clear for LightSquared to launch its new nationwide wireless broadband network funded by a $14 billion private investment in the nation s broadband infrastructure....Given the FCC s previous statement on this issue, LightSquared believes it is time for the agency to take a close look at targeted rules aimed specifically at the 1559-1610 MHz band. LightSquared suggests that any new rules should ensure that spectrum is used more efficiently by allowing licensees the full use of their spectrum under FCC rules.

Surely the GPS industry will be thrilled at the idea of additional regulation after previously being told they needed to implement a $400 million fix at their own expense. Meanwhile LightSquared, who is running out of time and money to make their project work, is going to need some kind of magical help on high to right the ship. That's not going to be easy work given the political opposition from multiple industries, including AT&T and Verizon -- who'd like it very much if this network never gets built.
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Sprint Takes Big Financial Hit on iPhone - But Also Sees 1.8 Million in iPhone Additions

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 5:36am MST

Sprint unveiled their earnings this morning -- the first to be released since Sprint announced they'd finally be carrying the iPhone last October. According to Sprint they posted a loss of $1.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up from a loss of $301 million one year earlier. The losses were due to Sprint having to subsidize the upfront cost of each iPhone sold. We've previously noted how Sprint's deal with Apple involved agreeing to purchase at least 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years -- a commitment of around $20 billion. On the flip side, Sprint added 1.8 million iPhones in the quarter -- 40% of them new customers to Sprint -- only the second time Sprint has posted a subscriber net gain in four years.
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Frontier Lays Off FiOS Install Staff - Continuing Their "Dedication" to FiOS

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 5:23am MST

Frontier just got done swearing to the heavens they were dedicated to the FiOS TV customers they acquired from Verizon, after socking those customers with huge price hikes and whopping new $500 installation fees. The company can't afford to be in the TV business or expand fiber to the home services, but couldn't acknowledge as much pre-merger to regulators when they were busily promising new jobs in order to get the deal approved. Frontier's now reducing about a quarter of their Fort Wayne FiOS installation staff, something workers say will extend customer wait times -- which a local installer claims is already ten days for a technician visit. Verizon's other big deal with Fairpoint, which both companies also claimed would create jobs, has resulted in significant job losses for locals.
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AT&T Technician Saves a Baby - Installer CPR Training Again Pays Dividends

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 5:13am MST

AT&T technician Andrel Reid has only been on the job six months installing AT&T's U-Verse service, but those six months have already been immensely eventful. The tech recently saved the life of a customer's baby, which during a site installation visit began passing out and choking. "I put the baby in a position that I was taught in training, put the baby in my palm, flipped her over and gave her a light thrust to her back and that's when everything came up and the baby actually started laughing and smiling at me," Reid said. While some techs (particularly among Comcast subcontractors) find themselves in the news for all the wrong reasons, others often act heroically. The CPR training given to many installers has saved more than a few lives over the years, and hopefully never gets cut for the sake of quarterly earnings.
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Google Steps Into Georgia Broadband Fight - Argues SB313 Is a Job Killer

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 5:12am MST

Georgia is the latest state to try and impose restrictions on communities eager to deploy their own broadband after regional duopolists Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink convinced state legislators to erect roadblocks designed to keep the state's broadband market just how they like it: utterly uncompetitive. Such bills had fallen out of favor in recent years as locals realized they're crafted solely to protect regional incumbent ISP profits. That's despite ISP lobbyist claims that such efforts are about "leveling the playing field" and "fairness."

Google has joined the Fiber to the Home Council and Alcatel Lucent arguing (pdf) that Georgia's current community-broadband blocking bill, SB313, hurts the local economy, lessens job creation, and restricts consumer choice. The most terrifying prospect to uncompetitive ISPs like CenturyLink would be an open private-public network, supported by locals, inviting additional competitors to flood to the region. Google and Alcatel Lucent would obviously like to sell product and ads to those companies, but the bill is also opposed by city leaders and locals, who apparently didn't get their checks from either Time Warner Cable or CenturyLink.

From a letter to state lawmakers:

...this bill, if enacted, will harm both the public and private sectors, stifle economic growth, prevent the creation or retention of thousands of jobs, hamper work force development and diminish the quality of life in Georgia. In particular, SB 313 will hurt the private sector in several ways: by curtailing public-private partnerships; by stifling the ability of private companies to sell equipment and services to public broadband providers; and by impairing economic and educational opportunities that would contribute to a skilled workforce from which businesses across the state would benefit.

But that's ok because it's a bill that prevents Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink from having to work harder and upgrade their networks, right? After all, nothing says "level playing field" quite like imposing restrictions on private-public partnerships that neither of those two companies have to face. Especially when broadband competition in the region is so stagnant that neither incumbent ISP has to upgrade their last-mile networks.

ISPs working to stop communities from upgrading their infrastructure -- even when ISPs won't -- continues to be just as obnoxious as it was a decade ago when these kinds of bills were more common. Nearly two-dozen such bills were passed in States before locals became aware of what ISP lobbyists were up to.

Supporters pretend these blockades are erected in order to protect local communities, yet the rules they're pushing strip local rights and ensure locals will overpay for broadband services for decades. Supporters argue the restrictions are about protecting communities from government expansion, yet they're bribing government to protect giant, un-innovative, uncompetitive publicly-subsidized companies that don't deserve protection. What these laws are is old-school for-hire protectionism by government, and arguing that they're about helping anyone other than incumbent ISPs is absolute folly.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 8th, 2012, 3:38am MST

Defunct, now non-existant OpenReach still billing customers denverpost.com
Do users really care whether the web is open or not? gigaom.com
DDoS now protesters' weapon of choice theregister.co.uk
Wireless crunch faces political 'solutions' sfgate.com
Amazon close to deal with Viacom; last step in plan to launch Netflix competitor reuters.com
Hacker releases Symantec source code reuters.com
Apple s iTV and the carrier question gigaom.com
Bill Shock & Awe case #493: Canadian man gets a $10000 data roaming bill after stay in USA neowin.net
4G Phones Are Really Fast At Draining Batteries slashdot.org
Engineers Boost Computer Processor Performance By Over 20% ncsu.edu
Silicon Valley recovering faster than rest of nation wsj.com
Nokia axes 4,000 theregister.co.uk
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Tuesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 4:34pm MST

Rep. Lamar Smith: Enemy of the Internet? techdirt.com
The Perpetual War: Pirates and Creators nytimes.com
Dish: This year's Lightsquared? lightreading.com
Apple Might Lose A $1.6 Billion Lawsuit For Using The Word 'iPad' businessinsider.com
Lightsquared opens another front on GPS debate kansascity.com
Ohio governor announces &10 million, 10-fold boost to state's broadband network physorg.com
Elevate aims high, agrees to become Sprint's newest MVNO engadget.com
U.S. online spending hit $50 billion last quarter cnet.com
Study credits 'app economy' with 500,000 U.S. jobs cnet.com
Raspberry Pi's $35 Linux computer on track to launch later this month arstechnica.com
Judge denies EMI's bid to halt resale of digital music cnet.com
Apple in early discussions to open stores inside of Sam s Club locations 9to5mac.com
Apple eyes ISPs to sell 'iTV' reghardware.com
Fewer Wireless Companies Could Mean Lower Prices - Wait, What? multichannel.com
Super Bowl XLVI Drove Internet Traffic Down As Much As 20% multichannel.com
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Only 7% Use In-Flight Wi-Fi - Price Remains Too High for Many

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 3:20pm MST

The latest numbers from Instat suggest that just 7% of potential customers use in-flight Wi-Fi. Though that number is still up from 4% in 2010, usage is still low enough that making the services profitable continues to be an ongoing problem. Customers have grown increasingly used to getting free Wi-Fi from coffee shops, their ISPs, and even in airports courtesy of Google -- and most seem to feel that the price for in-flight service remains in the luxury range. Instat notes availability remains limited with just 16% of the North American commercial fleet being wired for Wi-Fi service in 2010. Airlines collected $155 million in charges for onboard Internet service in 2011, and are expected to collect $225 million in 2012.
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Sprint Details iDen Network Shutdown - New Map Gives Insight Into Tower Consolidation

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

When Sprint first announced they'd be spending between four and five billion dollars to retrofit all of their antenna base stations (and upgrading to LTE), the company noted that plan involved the slow phasing out of the formerly-Nextel iDen network, with that effort starting in 2013 and the network being shuttered completely by 2017. The company this week launched a new website that gives more detail on the company's base station consolidation and iDen network shutdown on a region-by-region basis. As iDen gets shut down, Sprint plans to use that 800 MHz spectrum to help supplement capacity for their new LTE network. According to Sprint, their new "next-generation" Push-to-talk coverage footprint will increase to nearly 2.7 million square miles and is expected to cover a population of 309 million, up from the iDen network's the iDEN network s 908,370 square miles covering a population of 278 million.
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Verizon RedBox Might Include Live Television - Company Wants to Take TV Brand Nationwide

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 11:11am MST

Yesterday Verizon announced that they'd be partnering with RedBox on a new streaming video service. Verizon had been considering such a project for some time, at one point even considering some kind of over-the-top live subscription TV play to be offered to customers outside of their traditional FiOS footprint. Eric Bruno, Verizon s SVP of consumer product management, tells Multichannel News that it's "to be determined" whether they'll offer Live TV. "From a FiOS perspective, we participate in about 30% of the marketplace," Bruno said. "We want to compete in 100% of it From a Verizon perspective, this lets us compete on a national basis." Given Verizon's cozy new relationship with the cable industry, and their walled-garden approach on the 360, expecting anything too disruptive to traditional TV would be a tall order.
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First SuperBowl Stream Disappoints - Despite Piracy Gripes, NBC Doesn't Try Very Hard

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 9:34am MST

It's fairly amazing to realize that this year was the first time the Superbowl was streamed online, despite the significant spread of faster broadband (DOCSIS 3.0, FTTH). However, the reviews of NBC's effort weren't particularly good, with users complaining of very poor stream quality, lag, and limited viewing options in the age of interactive Internet video. Chrome users couldn't get the Silverlight player to load whatsoever. Users who watch the Superbowl for the ads and halftime show didn't see either watching NBC's stream, since they somehow failed to get the appropriate licensing in place. In short, because NBC (already a decade late on this stuff) didn't try very hard, users who pirated the stream got a more complete experience than those who didn't. Cue Mark Cuban, who'll now insist this is all simply because Internet video can never work.

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Rogers, BCE Early Partners for Apple TV - Truly Revolutionary or More Walled Garden Junk?

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 7:32am MST

According to a report in the Globe and Mail, Canadian providers Rogers and BCE will be among the first ISPs to partner with Apple on their upcoming television sets. Apple's new televisions have been rumored for some time, and are expected to integrated the Siri voice command functionality found in the iPhone 4S. Like Microsoft's XBox Live video offerings, it sounds like Apple is signing on numerous partners for content. However as we've noted a lot lately, Apple doesn't have a magical formula to bypass the entertainment industry's restrictive licensing, which has been responsible for keeping numerous companies (Google, Apple, Microsoft) from truly revolutionizing Internet video.
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Study: AT&T LTE Outperforms Verizon LTE - 'The Mother of All Network Benchmark Tests'

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 6:08am MST

In the latest version of "The Mother of All Network Benchmark Tests," Signals Research finds that AT&T's LTE network performs "markedly better" that Verizon's LTE network in early tests in several markets, while noting that LTE performance overall lags somewhat due to an immature ecosystem and lower-quality early LTE devices. "Once normalized for channel bandwidth and MIMO, not to mention taking into consideration network loading, the performance differences across all technologies were relatively modest in the downlink," notes the report. "In a few cases, DC-HSDPA outperformed LTE, even without making these adjustments and EV-DO Rev A outperformed HSPA+." The firm noted that LTE upstream speeds are where the technology tends to notably outperform predecessors.
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Cablevision (Still) Cooking Up Wi-Fi Phone Project - "Optimum Mobile" Still Being Whipped up in Kitchen

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 5:48am MST

Back in 2010 we noted that Cablevision was tinkering with some kind of mobile phone service that relied on Wi-Fi, which would obviously be partnered with the company's significant investment in offering Wi-Fi to its subscribers along metro NYC commuter lines. "We are trialing phones that switch from Wi-Fi to cellular and back as you move in and out of Wi-Fi and cellular zones," then Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge said in a 2010 earnings call. Fierce Cable has since spotted some additional information in some patent filings, which note the cable company is working on a service called "Optimum Mobile" but has yet to iron out kinks such as getting suitable roaming partners in place for when users are outside of the range of Wi-Fi.
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Verizon's Double Data Cap Offer Returns Friday - $30 for 4 GB of Usage Offer Returns

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 5:42am MST

Last November Verizon Wireless launched a new promotion offering new LTE users double their usual data allotment for wireless data plans, something Verizon admitted was both to push users toward new LTE phones -- and away from their EVDO network in order to ease any possible iPhone congestion issues. The deal recently ceased, but was part of the reason AT&T raised their caps ever-so-slightly (unfortunately, their prices increased as well). Now, in addition to the launch of the Droid 4, Verizon plans to bring the deal back starting February 10. As of Friday, anybody that buys a new LTE smartphone can once again get double data for their selected plan, which for most of you means $30 for 4 GB of monthly usage.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 7th, 2012, 3:43am MST

Cablevision develops technology for WiFi-based mobile phone service fiercecable.com
Is the Open Web Doomed? Open Your Eyes and Relax techpresident.com
MPAA Sues LimeWire Back From The Dead torrentfreak.com
Since 2009, Mobile Internet Usage Has Doubled Every Year readwriteweb.com
Cricket Wireless has the music industry feeling chirpy: MuveMusic helps labels tap vast underserved audience - people who can't afford computers latimes.com
WiFi in flight has yet to soar pcworld.com
Wireless Firms Live Or Die With Smartphone Strategies investors.com
Simplexity MVNO Services will launch wireless service with Sprint cnet.com
Motorola seeking 2.25% of Apple's mobile sales for 3G patent use techspot.com
Antitrust hearing planned for Verizon-Time Warner deals jsonline.com
Hackers wanted $50,000 to keep Symantec source code private cnet.com
Woman fights copyright suit by claiming porn can't be copyrighted torrentfreak.com
Verizon's double data promotion reappears Friday cnet.com
HUD Google Glasses are real and they are coming soon 9to5google.com
EU takes its data privacy seriously; why won't the U.S.? fiercetelecom.com

Monday Evening Links -

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 4:27pm MST

Copyright lawsuit targets owners of non-secure wireless networks; Failure to secure routers may let others download copyrighted content computerworld.com
Global broadband snapshot: Hong Kong throttles the rest of the world networkworld.com
Voice and Video Calls Via Wi-Fi From 30,000 Feet? cio.com
Sprint details IDEN's death lightreading.com
Powerline Carrier Close,but Likely No Cigar networkworld.com
Solving the Snowballing Wireless Data Problem ecommercetimes.com
Android nabbing more than half of new smartphone buyers cnet.com
CheapAir.com First to Tell Travelers Which Flights Have WiFi, TV and More prnewswire.com
Prepaid iPhone Set to Disrupt Industry wirelessweek.com
Portable gaming: Is mobile the future? fiercewireless.com
Qualcomm is exploring the last 4G frontier: The sky gigaom.com
Amazon in the Process of Launching a Retail Store goodereader.com
SOPA/PIPA Opponents Tell Hill To Scrap Legislation, Period; All Efforts, including OPEN Act, Should be Deep-Sixed for a Do-Over multichannel.com
CableLabs: VOD Advertising Technically Ready To Roll multichannel.com
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ISP Six Strikes Plan Still 'Coming Soon' - Entertainment Industry "Education" Campaign Looms

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 3:24pm MST

Last summer major ISPs including Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision signed off on a new plan by the RIAA and MPAA taking aim at copyright infringers on their networks. According to the plan, after four warnings ISPs are to begin taking "mitigation measures," which range from throttling a user connection to filtering access to websites until users acknowledge receipt of "educational material." The plan, as with most plans of this type, was hashed out privately with the government's help -- but with no consumer or independent expert insight.

The EFF has already pointed out some serious problems with the plan, ranging from users only being able to use the "open hotspot excuse" once, to users having to shell out $35 to protest their innocence. It will also likely jack up the cost of broadband service further, as non-pirating users have to subsidize efforts that likely won't do much to impact piracy.

So where does the plan stand now? According to a report over at Ars Technica the plan's still still in the oven, the group that will spearhead the effort (the Center for Copyright Information) remains hard at work, and ISP users should start being "educated" very soon:

Curious if the consensus behind the deal was falling apart of proving harder to implement than expected, I spoke to several sources in the rightsholder and Internet communities; each agreed to speak off the record, as CCI has yet to make public announcements. Each confirmed that the project is pressing ahead and that it will in fact launch shortly. CCI has just hired an executive director, and the group plans a set of new announcements once the director is in place and up to speed.

Meanwhile ISPs like Verizon continue to send users letters at the entertainment industry behest, some going so far as to voluntarily insist that users will have their connections severed if the file transfers persist (in Verizon's case, we've found they're bluffing).
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Falcone's Hedge Fund Takes a LightSquared Beating - Loses 47% of Value Thanks to GPS Woes

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 1:51pm MST

Anonymous investors tell The New York Times that billionaire hedge fund manager and LightSquared backer Philip A. Falcone didn't have a very good 2011. Falcone's hedge fund, Harbinger Capital Partners, lost 46.6 percent of its value last year as LightSquared ran face first into political headaches and GPS interference concerns. "The investors who remain in the fund are not happy with the results, but at least some who spoke on condition of anonymity saw it coming," says reporter Azam Ahmen. "One felt that the valuation was overly rosy for too long." LightSquared's fortunes don't look to be improving anytime soon, and Falcone continues to face several SEC investigations.
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Google Starts Hanging Kansas City Fiber - 'We've Eaten Way Too Much Barbecue...'

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 11:27am MST

Earlier this month we noted that Google's effort to deploy 1 Gbps fiber in Kansas City had run face first into some pole attachment bureaucratic delays, Google apparently believing their brand name would be enough to help them float over and above the annoying red tape hurdles faced by all ISPs. This week Google suggests those problems have been resolved, a company blog post stating the company has started hanging fiber in Kansas City, Kansas. "We ve measured utility poles; we ve studied maps and surveyed neighborhoods; we ve come up with a comprehensive set of detailed engineering plans; and we ve eaten way too much barbecue," says Google's Kevin Lo. "Now, starting today, we re ready to lay fiber." Initially Google says they'll focus on the backbone build, and is giving no hard date for when locals will get their 1 Gbps connections.
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AT&T Wages Quiet War on Grandfathered Unlimited Users - 2GB Throttle Not So Subtly Pushing Users Toward Meters

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 9:31am MST

After eliminating their unlimited data option in 2010, AT&T grandfathered those users -- though most knew the fun wouldn't last. In 2011 AT&T announced they'd start throttling wireless data customers who consumed "more than their fair share" of network data. AT&T stated that the throttling would specifically focus on just the top 5 percent of the heaviest data users in a billing period. AT&T also stated targeted users consumed 12 times more data than the average of all other smartphone users.

Early on, AT&T's data line seemed rather high, with some users consuming up to 10 GB before getting warnings. Now that AT&T has been throttling for some time, more users are noting that they're getting warnings from AT&T after around 2GB of usage each month. As CNET notes, it's a not-so-subtle nudge to try and get grandfathered unlimited users to switch to AT&T's metered tiers:

AT&T's throttling program seems to target customers, who are just over the 2GB threshold. And its new higher priced data plans that offer 3GB of data for $30 looks like an attempt to get customers to switch from their unlimited data plans to the 3GB plan for the same price. Whether you can live with the slower data rates is up to you. But clearly AT&T is trying to entice people who use a lot of data to get off the unlimited and onto a tiered plan where the service is never throttled.

In other words, pay $30 for "unlimited" service where you're actually only getting 2 GB of data before your phone becomes useless, or sign up for a 3GB tier for the same price so you're in line to get socked with the usage overages of tomorrow. Having your fancy new smartphone throttled to near dial-up speeds isn't particularly fun, as this video attests. As we've noted previously, AT&T has also been automatically eliminating grandfathered unlimited user privileges if they're found to be tethering unofficially.
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Verizon and Coinstar's Redbox Form Joint Venture - Details Scarce, Launch Expected Later This Year

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 6:42am MST

Confirming rumors that popped up late last year, Verizon and Coinstar (operators of RedBox) today announced that they've formed a new joint venture that intends to take aim at Netflix's video streaming crown. Actual details in the announcement are very scarce, with the video service launching sometime during the second half of this year. The announcement says the service, which will likely retain the familiar RedBox brand, "will leverage Verizon's industry-wide relationships with entertainment content providers, its advanced cloud computing technologies and state-of-the-art IP network infrastructure to distribute video on-demand content to its customers."
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Rogers Study Says Canadian Broadband Secretly Awesome - Just Ignore the High Prices, Low Caps, Heavy Throttling

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 6:17am MST

Not only to Canadians lay claim to some of the most expensive broadband among all developed countries it's also among the lowest quality, with numerous ISPs heavily throttling data and imposing unreasonably low caps and high overages in the HD video age. What are you to do if you're an ISP like Rogers and the data repeatedly shows Canadian broadband is expensive and heavily capped due to weak competition? You fund your own study. A new study funded by Rogers insists Canadians now enjoy some of the fastest and least expensive broadband service anywhere:

The report, based on the results of 52 million speed tests of broadband users across the G7 countries and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) membership, was produced by Montreal-based consulting firm Lemay Yates Associates Inc. on behalf of Rogers Communications Inc., the country's largest broadband service provider. It disputes the OECD's own report, published in July, that ranked Canada's high-speed Internet offerings significantly below those of other countries.

You really only have to look at Rogers prices and caps, our user reviews, and the fact that Rogers is among the worst ISPs when it comes to clumsy network management to understand why Rogers would want to fund a new study of their own contradicting all previous studies. The speed tests used by Rogers to declare themselves supreme winners of the Internet benefit from Speed Boost technology (known as Powerboost here in the States) and don't really consider usage limits or Rogers' tendency toward slowing down legitimate traffic.

You can head to our Rogers forum to see exactly what the ISP's own users think about discovering they're getting such great broadband service.
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Cox Trims Staff After Wireless Plans Die - 100 Engineers, Product Managers and Designers Let Go

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 5:51am MST

Last October Cox Communications scrapped their entire wireless ambitions. Those plans started with them planning a new LTE network, which ultimately de-volved into another Sprint MVNO before being discarded entirely. Like other cable operators Cox then recently offloaded their spectrum holdings to Verizon, and is poised to join Comcast in re-selling bundled Verizon LTE services. Not too surprisingly, Cox is now shedding a lot of the hires acquired during their brief wireless effort, laying off roughly 100 engineers, product development managers and infrastructure designers tied to the wireless unit. Cox, which has roughly 60,000 employees, did not sell their 700 MHz spectrum licenses to Verizon.
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SureWest Sold to Consolidated Communications - $340 Million Deal For 145,700 Customers

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 5:43am MST

Recent rumors had suggested Surewest Communications was on the verge of being acquired by Google. As it turns out, that was only half right. Surewest Communications this morning announced that the company has been acquired -- by Consolidated Communications Holdings (see our user reviews) for $340 Million. SureWest currently serves 130,000 residential subscribers and 15,700 commercial businesses in the greater Kansas City and Sacramento regions, offering a combination of cable and limited fiber to the home services. "This transaction combines our cash flow-generating business with SureWest's growth-oriented strategy, resulting in a financially strong company with a robust balance sheet and attractive dividend payout ratio," Consolidated CEO Bob Currey said in a press statement.
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Monday Morning Links -

Posted: February 6th, 2012, 3:48am MST

AT&T Starts Throttling Unlimited Data Users after 2GB of Monthly Usage macrumors.com
CentMesh aims for first open-air Wi-Fi network newsobserver.com
Are we in the post-PC era now? cnet.com
Google abandons CDMA techeye.net
Why the Internet should be considered a luxury, not a right smartplanet.com
Unused Wi-Fi costs Minneapolis millions startribune.com
Is getting throttled a bad thing? coolsmartphone.com
Google may add WiFi, Bluetooth to Kansas City project kansascity.com
Southwest Airlines to offer football & baseball games via WiFi chicagotribune.com
WiFi and cellphone service finally coming to 30 NYC subway stations thenextweb.com
In Russia, downloading 419GB of data over 3G in 1 week wins you a $5000 vacation thenextweb.com
WalMart helping AT&T users figure out how to defect and avoid trouble denverpost.com
Google testing mystery entertainment device pocket-lint.com
BitTorrent Giant BTjunkie Shuts Down For Good torrentfreak.com

Weekend Open Thread -

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 3:24pm MST

We're headed out for a bit. Please keep each other entertained in the comment section below until we come back to get you.
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Friday Evening Links -

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 3:15pm MST

Why the House spectrum bill should be ditched: Q&A with Former FCC Chair Reed Hundt networkworld.com
Feature phones: Is the end near? fiercewireless.com
Is Google asking the FCC to allow gigabit Wi-Fi for its gigabit network? gigaom.com
Forget Super Wi-Fi! Go with Super Wi-Fi! Wait. What? tmcnet.com
EU regulators want Google to halt new privacy policy reuters.com
European revolt over ACTA treaty gains ground theregister.co.uk
Poles pissed: US embassy checking up on whether Polish politicians were following the party line on ACTA duringt voting? techdirt.com
Survey Sez: Virgin Mobile Best At Prepaid Customer Service cable360.net
Laptop Wi-Fi said to nuke sperm, but caveats abound ottawacitizen.com
Skype could hit Windows Phone soon, report says cnet.com
Ban on iPhones, iPads Suspended in Germany, Sales Resume foxbusiness.com
Galaxy Nexus and other CDMA devices removed from Google Support pages engadget.com
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Dish LTE Network Still At Least 3 Years Out - As Company Dishes New Details While Fighting AT&T

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 2:01pm MST

Back in August Dish Network made it clear that the company was very seriously interested in launching a wireless network, despite previous executive assurances that the company was accumulating spectrum just for fun. Run from a subsidiary, the company is hoping to launch an LTE-Advanced network under the brand "Ollo." Dish is planning to use the spectrum they acquired from DBSD North America and TerreStar Networks, but is waiting for FCC approval.

AT&T doesn't want the competition and wouldn't mind gobbling that spectrum up for themselves, and this week has been pushing for expedited build timeline requirements they know Dish can't meet. Fierce Wireless directs our attention to a new FCC filing from Dish that combats AT&T's efforts and holds a little more detail on Dish's plans. In it, Dish makes several new disclosures, among them that the company will be offering retail -- not wholesale -- service, and that they'll be jumping directly to LTE Advanced:

"A new, next-generation LTE Advanced retail network simply cannot be viably built in the S-Band at the pace AT&T suggests...Building a network before LTE Advanced devices are widely available would necessitate the use of an earlier standard, followed by a migration to LTE Advanced once network and consumer devices are available. Such a requirement would needlessly trigger backward compatibility and network modernization issues and costs for Dish's proposed network."

Is Dish Serious About LTE or Just Playing AT&T? - New Filing Dishes More Detail On Possible Dish Network

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 2:01pm MST

The filing also gives better insight into timelines, the company stating that the LTE Advanced equipment for its S-band spectrum they plan to use likely won't even be available until 2015. So, with LightSquared essentially D.O.A. AT&T could be positioning to crush the only real non-MVNO competitive threat that could surface in the next decade. Or, Dish's Charlie Ergen could just be playing everybody, never had any serious intent on building a wireless network, and is simply positioning itself for the biggest possible spectrum cash buyout with a specific eye on AT&T. Most likely? It's both.
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Rogers to End Throttling in March - Now That They Can Just Charge Users an Arm and a Leg

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 11:18am MST

For most of the last decade nobody has exemplified the clumsy, ham-fisted approach to network management better than Canadian cable company Rogers. From crippling encryption and VPNs to throttling legitimate apps and games like World of Warcraft, Rogers has accounted for nearly half of all network neutrality infractions in Canada. Recent MLabs data highlighted that Rogers was among the worst ISPs in the world when it comes to aggressively slowing user traffic.

It was Rogers constant and clumsy throttling of World of Warcraft traffic that finally got the company in hot water with regulators, the CRTC last week officially ruling Rogers was violating Canada's new network neutrality rules after years of complaints.

Many of those complaints originated right here in our forums, with anger from Jason Koblovsky, Teresa Murphy and the Canadian Gamers Organization leading to a campaign pushing the CRTC to finally act. In a response to the CRTC, Rogers today announced that they'll finally stop throttling user traffic starting in March. The move comes on the heels of a similar December decision by Bell.

"New technologies and ongoing investments in network capacity will allow Rogers to begin phasing out that policy starting in March 2012," said Kenneth Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs in the filing. "These changes will be introduced to half of Rogers existing Internet customers by June 2012 and to its remaining customers by December 2012."

While that's certainly a win for users, Rogers spends the lion's share of their filing taking pot shots at the CRTC and denying any wrongdoing in their implementation of Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMP). While acknowledging a "few isolated cases of misclassification," Rogers continues to insist their network management platforms rarely catch legitimate traffic in their net.

Rogers says that "out of an abundance of caution" and "to allay any concerns which the Commission s investigation may have created," the company has reconfigured their Cisco hardware so that unclassified traffic that utilizes peer-to-peer ports are no longer traffic managed. In other words, Rogers has finally agreed to obey Canadian law but, despite being universally derided as one of the worst ISPs in the world when it comes to heavy-handed network management -- still swears they didn't do anything wrong.

Either way, users in our forums say they'll take it. Some argue the glacially-moving CRTC and Canada's new network neutrality rules are to thank for Rogers' begrudging change of heart. Others believe Rogers' moves are motivated by the fact that the CRTC recently allowed incumbent ISPs to drastically raise (already very high) rates on consumers and wholesalers, making dramatically degrading the quality of the bandwidth delivered less useful. In other words, cue the broadband price increases.
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DirecTV Stops Selling WildBlue - May be Working With Dish/Hughes On New Option

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 9:29am MST

DirecTV has traveled a somewhat rocky road when it comes to offering broadband, their effort at being a DSL provider failing rather spectacularly in 2002. They've flirted with several options since then, though aside from some finished fixed residential LTE trials with Verizon, ultimately settled on just reselling satellite broadband service from WildBlue. Interestingly, DirecTV is sending out an e-mail to customers saying they'll no longer be selling WildBlue satellite broadband service. More interestingly perhaps is the fact that DirecTV may replace this with a broadband service from HughesNet/Dish:

More interesting, however, is that the company says not offering an internet service "is a temporary situation" for resellers to manage. "Stay tuned for a DIRECTV satellite broadband bundle offering coming soon!" (Original emphasis.) While it is unclear how DIRECTV plans to launch such a service, rumblings from the dealer chain hint at a possible deal with HughesNet. Yes... Hughes. As in DISH's Hughes.

Dish is also eager to go beyond just satellite broadband, and is currently working on plans to deploy an LTE network. It seems inevitable that one or both companies start seriously exploring a fixed residential LTE service to bundle with satellite TV. While it still wouldn't seriously compete with landline broadband, such a service would likely offer faster speeds, lower latency and even more reasonable caps than current satellite offerings.
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New Wireless Provider Ting Unveils Pricing - New Tucows Effort Hopes to Shake Things up a Little

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 6:52am MST

Several new wireless carriers will launch this year, all trying to do things slightly differently. Republic Wireless plans to lower prices by offloading most of the daily traffic to Wi-Fi. FreedomPop promises to offer users a basic free tier of service with low priced data and voice options layered on top. The third upstart is Tucows' Ting, a company we explored back in December that plans to auto-upgrade users up (or down) the sliding tier scale to help users find the best price plan for them.

Ting is the first one out of the gate, and their new pricing was unveiled last night for your perusal. As the chart (right) notes, users are given six "size" no-contract tiers to choose from, allowing them to mix and match voice minutes, SMS, and data limits as needed. Voice and SMS rates are incredibly reasonable (500 minutes cost an impressive $9), while data coming over from Sprint's network is notably less so (2GB will run you $42).

According to Ting, if users consume fewer voice minutes, text messages or bytes than they planned, the user is credited at the end of the month. If they use more than they originally planned, users are billed for the additional amount. Families can all pull from one pool of minutes, SMS or data -- something larger wireless carriers have been talking a lot about but failing to deliver.

Another thing Ting gets right for the bandwidth hungry is they don't impose a "because we can" tethering fee on users who want to use their phone as a modem. Users are allowed to tether and then any data consumed simply comes out of their plan, a logical practice many carriers haven't been willing to follow in order to charge $15 more -- for doing absolutely nothing.

"What people are forced to put up with from mobile service providers just doesn't make sense. It's too complicated, too opaque, too adversarial, too expensive and frankly too inhuman," said Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. "We're changing that. Ting is a mobile service that makes sense." We're curious to see if users agree, or if Ting ultimately finds itself on a very tall heap of failed MVNOs that thought they could change the wireless market by treating customers with respect.
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Cablevision's Union Woes Grow - As Contracted Bronx Employees Walk Off the Job

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 6:27am MST

Last week Cablevision employees in Brooklyn voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history, a significant move given the fact that just 2-4% of cable technicians are unionized. Following last week's vote, roughly 120 contracted Bronx technicians briefly walked off their jobs in a "wildcat" strike Thursday protesting a 30% reduction in wages (to $35) for triple play installations. The techs, who work for Corbel Installations and do installations for Cablevision in the Bronx and Westchester. While the techs still say they want to unionize, they ultimately had their concerns addressed by Corbel, seeing triple play install pay rates bumped to $40, with a bonus of up to $10 for each home visited and a $7 payout for multiple-room installations.
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Qualcomm Tackles VoLTE Handoff Issues - One Step Closer to Better Wireless Voice Quality

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 6:01am MST

Despite the growth of 4G networks, wireless voice traffic continues to travel over the 3G portion of carrier networks until carriers deploy voice over LTE (VoLTE), which should provide users will significantly better audio quality during phone calls. Verizon recently delayed their deployment of VoLTE until 2013, in part because incomplete LTE build outs and the inability to handoff calls between 3G and 4G networks mean the user experience would be highly clunky (for lack of a more technical term). Helping a little this week is a Qualcomm announcement that the company has completed the first "seamless" call handoff between an LTE and WCDMA network. Despite the advancement, it's still not likely VoLTE sees widespread adoption until late in 2013.
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Only Pirates and Terrorists Enjoy Privacy, You Know - DOJ, FBI Memo for Cafes Paints a Very Paranoid Picture

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 5:47am MST

Users in our security forum direct our attention to a new flyer (pdf) designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes. The amusing flyer lists a variety of fairly standard privacy tools and practices as signs that the person you're watching while sipping your half-caf-no-fat-soy-latte may be up to nefarious activities. Among the items the government declares to be signs of terrorist activity include the use of encryption software, use of VPNs or PGP (often common in business), proxies, anonymity portals, and other privacy software. The flyer goes so far as to warn cafe patrons to be away of anybody who is "overly concerned about privacy" or attempting to "shield the screen from view of others." Be wary, citizen.
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Friday Morning Links -

Posted: February 3rd, 2012, 3:46am MST

Slovenian ambassador apologizes to public for signing ACTA; says her government made her do it techdirt.com
Public broadband once again on the way to being smacked down in the name of fair competition in Georgia washingtonexaminer.com
Congress Trying To Regulate Certain Wireless Spectrum Issues... In A Payroll Tax Bill? techdirt.com
Netflix under the Microscope broadbandandtvnews.com
UK to get 300Mbps courtesy of BT geek.com
Verizon to be first ever to stream Super Bowl live to mobiles multichannel.com
Feds Arrest Streaming Site Operator for Copyright Infringement torrentfreak.com
Will Verizon ever get a 4G Windows Phone? cnet.com
100 million domains now registered theregister.co.uk
RIM offering coders free Playbook if they make their Android apps available through its app store reghardware.com
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Thursday Evening Links -

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 4:26pm MST

Qualcomm proposes 300 Gbps in-flight mobile broadband technology fiercebroadbandwireless.com
Tucows Launches Wireless Carrier Ting webpronews.com
ICE Seizes 300 More Sites; Can't Have People Watching Super Bowl Ads Without Permission techdirt.com
Sprint customers 'at high risk of leaving' get discounts MSNBC.com
MetroPCS resuscitating $40 plan for 4G LTE smartphones cnet.com
What's so great about LTE Advanced? fiercebroadbandwireless.com
AT&T Blasts Former FCC Head For Dissing Spectrum Bill crn.com
VoLTE Inches Closer To Cutover cable360.net
Got a complaint about your phone company? You're not alone bizjournals.com
Google now scanning Android apps for malware cnet.com
As U.S. Smartphone Usage Grows, Android Nears 50 Percent Market Share techcrunch.com
Symantec: We've plugged up pcAnywhere holes theregister.co.uk
FCC Clears Time Warner Cable Takeover of Insight multichannel.com
Taiwan still backing WiMAX against LTE fiercebroadbandwireless.com
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Verizon Wireless Again Wins J.D. Power Customer Survey - T-Mobile Slips Behind AT&T Into Last Place

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 3:24pm MST

The latest J.D. Power and Associates customer care survey once again ranks Verizon tops in customer care performance, with a rating of 762 on a 1,000-point scale. Clumped together into second, third and fourth place among the four largest carriers was Sprint (745), AT&T (743) and T-Mobile (739). Virgin Mobile took the top spot for customer care among non contract providers. Interestingly, J.D. Power found that owners of 4G-enabled handsets have to contact their carrier considerably more than owners of older, less sophisticated devices. "In fact, it takes approximately five minutes more per contact, on average, to resolve issues pertaining to 4G-enabled devices, compared with issue resolution times for traditional phones," notes analyst Kirk Parsons.
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Boxee CEO: Someone Will Offer Subscription Internet TV in 2012 - It's Just Not Going to be Boxee (or Apple, or Microsoft, or Google...)

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 1:22pm MST

We've watched for years as companies from Apple to Google have promised to revolutionize TV only to fall flat on their face. More accurately, they run face first into a cable and broadcast industry that does everything in their power to try and crush disruptive video services, from protectionist laws to pricey and restrictive licensing arrangements. According to Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, however, 2012 will be the year somebody finally creates a "virtual MSO," or a cable operator selling Internet video live television subscriptions. It's just not going to be Boxee, he admits:

We don't have an appetite to become a virtual MSO in the sense of us going out and licensing those channels and providing...We'd much rather have somebody like Comcast Corp. or DirecTV Group Inc. or Netflix or Amazon do those deals and for us to support those over-the-top offerings on our platform like we do today for traditional over-the-top."

It's not clear who is going to bypass the ridiculously expensive licensing barriers that have keep even the most deep-pocketed companies in America from being able to offer subscription TV, or how exactly they're going to do it. Companies keep thinking they want to offer such a service, but after they run the studio/broadcaster restriction gauntlet what they actually wind up producing ends up being bland, paywalled, undisruptive, and kind of silly.

Many people seem to be waiting on Apple to disrupt this sector, but it's not as if they have some magical formula for bypassing the protectionist studios and broadcasters. One route is by having Internet video companies create original content themselves, and idea being pursued this year by both Netflix and Hulu. Even then, a smattering of exclusive programming (assuming it's even good) doesn't magically break the TV industry's evolutionary gridlock. While Netflix can be slowly strangled out of existence by licensing hikes, Hulu as a cable-industry company is designed to not be disruptive to traditional cable.

So, who is going to offer a disruptive subscription TV service in 2012?
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Verisign 'Hacked Repeatedly' Says SEC Filings - Execs Claim They Weren't Informed Until Late 2011

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 11:38am MST

According to SEC filings, Verisign was hacked repeatedly throughout 2010, losing "undisclosed information" throughout. The filings come as Verisign adheres to new rules requiring the disclosure of serious security breaches to investors. The filings fail to specify specifically when the breaches occurred, but claim security staff responded to the attack soon afterward but failed to alert top management until September 2011. Verisign says they "do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System network." It's also unclear if the Secure Sockets Layer process, a part of Verisign's business offloaded to Symantec in the summer of 2010, was corrupted.

Update: Symantec sent us this statement:

Symantec takes the security and proper functionality of its solutions very seriously. The Trust Services (SSL), User Authentication (VIP, PKI, FDS) and other production systems acquired by Symantec were not compromised by the corporate network security breach mentioned in the VeriSign, Inc. quarterly filing.

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Frontier Still Pretending They're Interested in FiOS TV - Blames Customer Uncertainty on Comcast

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 9:27am MST

Frontier Communications has been rather ungracefully trying to offload or otherwise scare away the 100,000 FiOS TV customers it acquired in its deal with Verizon because of high programming costs. First the company imposed a huge 50% price hike and botched DirecTV offer, then added a new massive $500 installation fee to frighten off new customers. Frontier can't afford to be a TV provider, doesn't want to be a TV provider, and has made life consistently annoying for TV customers -- yet when asked by the press about this they keep pretending it's a customer segment they actually care about:

"There are no truth to the rumors that were put out in the market through advertising through a competitor. That was just an opportunity for them to try to scare people to drop the service," Kelley said addressing the rumors. The gossip about whether Frontier will be going forward with its FiOS television product still lingers. "The future is bright, we're not going to disconnect or stop serving FiOS," Kelley said.

You'll note he said FiOS, not FiOS TV -- though Frontier can't afford to expand FiOS Internet service either.

While Comcast did run some ads highlighting Frontier's decisions to jack up prices on FiOS TV customers, this is a bed Frontier made for themselves. Frontier's pretense that they still have any interest in these customers stems from the fact they're still locked into some video franchise agreements. The company also likely doesn't want regulators thinking too hard about the fact that Frontier knew they'd be letting acquired FiOS TV services die -- but "forgot" to mention it during the Verizon deal approval process.
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All Across North America: Usage Meters Still Don't Work - U.S., Canadian Regulators Fall Asleep at the Switch

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 7:46am MST

With ISPs so relentlessly eager to move from flat rate to usage-based billing, you would think that they would have made sure they had the technical skills to do so first. Again and again however we've noted how U.S. and Canadian ISPs that implement usage meters simply aren't tracking and billing for usage accurately. In the States AT&T has stumbled through metered billing implementation, as customers continue to note AT&T's meters don't match customer router totals.

In Canada, customers of Canadian cable company Cogeco consistently complain of accuracy issues that appear to have persisted for more than a year, while Cogeco has busily started handing out bills for thousands of dollars in overages. Users are forced to install third party router firmware if they want an accurate picture of their usage, but even with evidence of problems ISPs aren't heeding customer complaints.

Bell customers in our forums continue to complain about meter accuracy, and in one instance a nuclear engineer struggles with overage billing confusion -- making you wonder how normal users fare. Rogers users in our forums also continue to complain about meter accuracy, noticing that some months the meters just stop working entirely:

Just got off the phone with their CS, they are having network-wide problems with their "monitoring" tool on MyRogers. (mine hasn't updated my usage since last week). He told me to continue using my internet as usual, and when they finally fix it (expected by end of this week), and if my usage is above my limit, that they will credit me any overage charges since I was not able to monitor it! He even told me: "enjoy it, go crazy and download stuff!"

Says another user:

The same thing happened to me a few months ago. I got the 75% notice, stopped using almost all internet, next day got the 100% notice anyways, then got overage charges. God damnit. Then I upgraded my internet package. You can get 20GB extra for $5 a month if you don't want to actually upgrade to the next package (at least, when I sign in online with my Express internet it gives me that option for purchasing more data).

I harp on this a lot but it bears repeating: not only are these limits unnecessary and anti-competitive, nobody, anywhere, at any level of U.S. or Canadian government is working to ensure that ISPs are metering usage accurately. ISPs for years insisted that they should be able to bill broadband like a utility, yet fought tooth and nail when it came to having their meters regulated like a utility. While an entirely new system of unreliable usage-based billing spreads across North America generating millions in new revenue, no regulator, anywhere, has deemed double-checking meter accuracy worthy of their time.
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Netflix Helps Capped Users With More Efficient Streams - New EyeIO Promises 720p Video at 1.8 Mbps

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 6:19am MST

Netflix several times last year took shots at metered billing, calling the shift anti-competitive, unnecessary, and an effort to try and slow or crush Internet video services that could one day pose a threat to traditional television revenues. In the interim they've tried to do several things to help users with low caps, including last year implementing new settings that help manage video quality and bandwidth consumption. The company is also working with a video encoding company named EyeIO to make their bandwidth consumption even more efficient:

Standard-definition Netflix streams can consume up to 2.2 Mbps of bandwidth. Netflix s 720p HD videos come in at roughly 3.8 Mbps, and 1080p videos go up to 4.8 Mbps. EyeIO CEO Rodolfo Vargas told me during a phone conversation on Tuesday that his company s encoding technology can achieve better-looking results than most established encoders with 20 percent bandwidth savings and that eyeIO can still deliver similar quality to other encoders with up to 50 percent bandwidth savings. Content in 720p could be streamed using 1.8 Mbps, he explained.

Such technology is of particular use in Canada, where broadband users see some of the most constrictive usage limits anywhere -- while also paying some of the highest prices for broadband of any developed nation.
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Senator Accuses LightSquared of Bribery - Insists They Promised a Call Center if Deal Approved

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 5:58am MST

Things haven't been looking so hot for LightSquared, which has trying to overcome numerous reports showing that their planned LTE network will significantly interfere with GPS signals. LightSquared's technical problems are bad enough, but their political problems keep getting worse. LightSquared's latest problems come courtesy of Senator Chuck Grassley, who has been accusing the company of trying to bribe him. Grassley (whose top campaign contributors aren't in telecom,) insists that LightSquared promised Iowa a call center if the deal was approved. LightSquared says the person Grassley is referring to was a private citizen not working for the company (though he does apparently know LightSquared billionaire backer Phillip Falcone) and that Grassley's claims are unsubstantiated.
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FCC Approves Time Warner Cable, Insight - Deal Should Close After July 1

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 5:46am MST

The FCC has officially signed off on Time Warner Cable's planned acquisition of Insight Communications, after the FTC approved the deal last fall. The deal gives Time Warner Cable an additional 750,000 broadband, voice and TV customers in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. Most of the companies interested in acquiring Insight Communications had dropped out of the bidding process, turned off by Insight owner Carlyle Group's steep $4 billion price tag. Waiting paid off for Time Warner Cable, who was among the first to balk at the price -- but was ultimately able to grab Insight for $3 billion. The companies say nothing will change for customers until after the deal closes, which is expected to be after July 1. Users can keep tabs on our Insight Communications and Time Warner Cable/Roadrunner forums for the latest news.
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Thursday Morning Links -

Posted: February 2nd, 2012, 3:32am MST

iPhone Data Debunks Recording Industry's Report On How French Three Strikes Law Increased Sales techdirt.com
Lightsquared rejects bribery claim politico.com
Netflix partners with company that promises to reduce bandwidth by 20% - 50% without sacrificing video quality lightreading.com
The Pirate Bay Moves to .SE Domain To Prevent Domain Seizure torrentfreak.com
Beyond ACTA: next secret copyright agreement negotiated this week in Hollywood arstechnica.com
Asian economic powerhouses are also broadband slowpokes arstechnica.com
Louisiana municipal fiber broadband battle highlights telco's & cableco's determination to kill similar projects usatoday.com
UK's average broadband speed is 7.6Mbps pcadvisor.co.uk
Pacific Gas & Electric can charge customers $10 to nix smartmeters desertnews.com
HTC admits some of its Android phones leak WiFi passwords thenextweb.com
World's first bamboo smartphone to enter production reghardware.com
Cable customer service is more important than a new brand fiercecable.com
Wireless displaces PC as top semiconductor spending area for OEMs in 2011 digitimes.com
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Wednesday Evening Links -

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 4:28pm MST

The End Of The Global Internet? Google's Blogger Starts Using Country-Specific Domains To Permit Local Censorship techdirt.com
Carlos Slim blasts OECD report; Report claimed lack of competition in Mexican telco sector cost economy $25 billion totaltele.com
IPv6 upgrade to cost ISPs 'hundreds of millions' totaltele.com
White House Declines Comment on MPAA Bribery Petition torrentfreak.com
Hands off our brand, Wi-Fi body warns 'white space' tech firms reghardware.com
Pirate Bay Founders Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected torrentfreak.com
Viacom CEO says 'mob mentality' hurt antipiracy bill totaltele.com
UK ISP 3 launches Web Cube offering 'broadband in a box' digitalspy.com
Scandinavia First For EV-DO Rev. B Wi-Fi Gateway cable360.net
France finds Google Maps guilty of unfair competition totaltele.com
Emerging rural markets will drive next billion mobile connections fiercemobilecontent.com
Photos Show Quad-Core iPad 3 With Wi-Fi, Global LTE Options foxbusiness.com
Nintendo Partners With free-hotspot.com For Free 3DS WiFi Access Across Europe techcrunch.com
Dubious Android apps may not be malware--just ads cnet.com
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Verizon Cable Deal Gets a Senate Hearing - Kohl Wants to Examine Anti-competitive Repercussions

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 3:28pm MST

Responding to consumer advocate and competitor concerns that the new Verizon, cable industry deal could include some anti-competitive conditions (hey, we won't install new FiOS in your markets if you let us sell wireless to your customers and sell us spectrum), Senator Herb Kohl has announced a new hearing looking into the deal. Kohl, who is Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights subcommittee, says the hearing will take place after February 23. The hearing will focus on whether the deal could pose problems for residential broadband. Says Kohl:

"Plans are well underway for a hearing to examine the impact of Verizon s spectrum purchase from a number of cable companies and a separate marketing agreement to cross-sell each other s products, Kohl said in a release. The subcommittee carefully examines questions about competition in the wireless and video markets, with the ultimate goal of protecting consumers and reducing their cable and cell phone bills, and these deals are no exception."

If there are any anti-competitive arrangements included in the deal, you can be fairly sure that neither Comcast or Verizon attorneys allowed them to be put into writing. Though maybe not sexy on the surface, the deal has huge ramifications for smaller telcos who already compete with Comcast, especially if Verizon follows through on trials and pushes into residential fixed LTE.
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U.S. Cellular to Launch LTE Network Next Month - Launch Devices: Galaxy S Aviator and GalaxyTab 10.1

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 1:43pm MST

U.S. Cellular today announced that the company will be launching their LTE network next month. The launch, originally predicted for late last year, will initially cover 25% of the company's current footprint when it deploys in March. Initial coverage will hit "select cities" in in Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, North Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma, in addition to the more-specific markets of Milwaukee, Madison and Racine, Wis.; Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport, Iowa; Portland and Bangor, Maine; and Greenville, North Carolina. There's no word on pricing yet, but the company says that the Samsung GalaxyTab 10.1 tablet and Galaxy S Aviator 4G smartphone will be the company's first two LTE devices.
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Red Box Stands Up to Warner 56 Day New Release Delay - As Warner Brothers Drives New Release Fans to Piracy

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 11:30am MST

The other day we noted that Warner Brothers had not only convinced Netflix to delay new release DVDs by 56 days, Netflix also agreed to refuse to even allow users to add upcoming releases to their queue until 26 days after release. Studio executives believe this will drive users to buy more DVDs, but as everybody except for the entertainment industry has figured out, simply acts to annoy users and drive them to explore piracy. In a statement, RedBox says they have refused the 56 day new release delay, won't renew their contract with Warner Brothers, and will get the movies from retail as they go on sale:

The Redbox contract with Warner Brothers to acquire movies directly expires today (January 31, 2012). Redbox will continue to provide our consumers with affordable access to new release movies from all major studios including Warner Brothers at our more than 28,000 locations nationwide. We will work to provide Warner Brothers movies through alternative means. Redbox maintains direct working relationships with every other major studio, said Gary Cohen, senior vice president of marketing and customer experience at Redbox.

When they do try to go against studio wishes and straight to retail, RedBox has run into problems with Warner Brothers and Fox going to retailers and striking deals that restrict the number of DVDs RedBox can purchase.
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Comcast Expands Home Security Service - Denver Latest to Get Comcast's New Play

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 9:32am MST

In late 2010 we noted that Comcast had jumped into the home security game, launching Xfinity Home Security service in Houston. The platform provides the usual range of home security options, including door and window intrusion detection and video monitoring via a Comcast">[https%253A%252F%252Fwww.xfinityhomesecurity.com%252Fsp%252Fhomepage.html%253FcheckAlarms%253Dtrue&pf_sp=www.ucontrol.com&passive=0&forceAuthn=1">Comcast] website, with the company's Xfinity Home Preferred Package starting at $39.95 per month. Comcast's slowly been expanding the service into additional markets, and today announced they're offering it in Denver. Peace of mind from Comcast doesn't come cheap, the service features a very steep early termination fee: $770 for the basic service, and $1100 for the Premier service. You'll also have to pay an activation fee (which Comcast waives for new markets, and an installation charge of between $200 & $300).
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Comcast, Verizon Partnership Arrives in San Francisco - Companies Offer Prepaid Gift Cards For Wireless Bundles

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 7:44am MST

In December Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Bright House announced a massive deal that not only involved the sale of $3.6 billion in cable industry spectrum to Verizon, but also gave the telco the right to bundle their wireless service with the cable triple play. Comcast is wasting no time moving ahead with the offers, last month bundling Verizon LTE service with cable TV, broadband and VoIP service in Seattle and Portland. They've now extended the quadruple play offer to the San Francisco area, where customers who sign up for wireless bundles can get prepaid Visa cards:

Bay Area consumers who sign up for a bundled service plan from Comcast and for new service from Verizon Wireless are eligible to receive a prepaid Visa card worth up to $300 under a marketing plan the companies plan to launch Wednesday. The amount of the discount depends on the number of Comcast services consumers subscribe to.

Right now the gift card offer isn't particularly thrilling, but Verizon and the cable companies say the deal will expand in time to offer new video and other services that work across both cable landline and the Verizon wireless network.

Competitors and consumer advocates continue to worry the new deal could spell competitive trouble, given that it brings the budgets and power of two of the nation's largest telecom companies to bear on smaller competitors. The deal must be particularly unnerving to a company like Frontier Communications, who gobbled up billions in Verizon debt and old landline networks, only to have Verizon return to their territory arm-in-arm with Comcast offering LTE services that are faster than many Frontier DSL offerings.
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Anti-Competitive Wireless Measures Buried in Payroll Tax - Buried Amendments Take Aim at Competitors, White Spaces

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 5:43am MST

Michael Weinberg over at Public Knowledge points out that several awful amendments are being shoveled into the upcoming Payroll Tax bill that could significantly impact wireless broadband. The FCC's current network neutrality rules (at Google and Verizon request), don't really cover net neutrality, and one amendment by Representative Marsha Blackburn would ensure neutrality rules could never be applied to wireless. Another, pushed by AT&T, aims at preventing the FCC from trying to ensure smaller competitors get easier access to spectrum while preventing anti-competitive incumbent spectrum squatting.

A third, notes Weinberg, takes aim at White Space broadband, in what's only the latest in a series of incumbent efforts to crush this technology before it gets off the ground and threatens their finances:

One of the greatest boons of the transition from analog to digital TV broadcasting was supposed to be the creation of unlicensed whitespaces or super-wifi. This new spectrum which is much better at communicating long distances and through walls than current wifi spectrum would be used cooperatively by everyone and usher in a new era of wireless devices. However, a third amendment would destroy the FCC s power to allocate some of this great spectrum for unlicensed uses. That means that opportunity would simply pass us by.

It's somewhat obvious that all three are the brain children of incumbent telcos eager to prohibit any effort to instill greater competition in the wireless market while further weakening the FCC's ability to actually regulate. On a related note, Rep. Thomas Marino is pushing a bill that hopes to "end the practice of including more than one subject in a single bill by requiring that each bill enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject." Ironically, "and for other purposes" is tacked on to the end of that bill's description.
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FCC Focuses Lifeline Program on Broadband - Changes They Claim Will Save $2 Billion Over 3 Years

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 5:32am MST

The FCC yesterday voted to make several changes to the agency's Lifeline subsidy program, revamping it away from voice services and focusing it on bringing broadband to additional U.S. households. Like the USF program, the FCC's Lifeline program has seen its fair share of abuse and waste over the years, something the FCC hopes to avoid with a few changes they say will save the government up to $2 billion over 3 years. Among them is a new National Lifeline Accountability Database aimed at preventing subsidies from being given to multiple phone carriers on behalf of the same individual (imagine that). The full release outlines some of the other additional changes, including changes in data collection that may also help reduce use of the program as an unaccountable telco subsidy party.
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Bright House Now Offering Direct Support in Our Forums - Private Support From Certified Bright House Technicians

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 5:24am MST

Bright House Communications has joined a growing number of broadband ISPs that have decided to offer private, direct support to users right here in the Broadband Reports forums. Now in addition to finding help and information from other users in our public Bright House forum, users who need more personal support for technical or billing issues can post their problems in the Bright House direct forum. The forum gives users a secure, private environment to discuss account information directly with certified Bright House support representatives. You can view our growing list of ISPs that are now offering official support via Broadband Reports here, and we're working on adding additional ISPs all the time.
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Wednesday Morning Links -

Posted: February 1st, 2012, 4:14am MST

Broadband-based Comcast enters home-security market long tied to land lines denverpost.com
A Virtual MSO Shall Rise, Boxee CEO Says lightreading.com
The Wi-Fi revolution shows how far the FCC is behind the curve wsj.com
Comcast To Widen Low-Income Broadband Program, Double Speeds multichannel.com
Voom Get Big Lift In Lawsuit Against Dish;
Judge Upholds Ruling That Satellite-TV Provider Destroyed Evidence In Breach Case multichannel.com
First Image of a BlackBerry 10 Superphone!! crackberry.com
Joel Tenenbaum, blah blah blah, piracy, blah blah blah, DoJ backs RIAA in (never-ending) case torrentfreak.com/
Light At The End of The Tunnel For Clearwire fool.com
3G confusion: Are phone users stupid, or just uninformed ? electricpig.co.uk
Samsung in hot water with EU over 3G FRAND patent lawsuits arstechnica.com
Redbox Puts the Kibosh on WB s 56-day Waiting Period gizmodo.com
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