Best Broadband

Google Maps Charged With Unfair Competition In France For Daring To Be Free techdirt.com
Broadband Backhaul: the Necessary Link for a Successful 3G/4G Strategy xchangemag.com
Does Verizon Stand to Benefit From the FCC s Probe? gigaom.com
Apple Patches iPhone SMS Vulnerability yahoo.com
Arris Pumps Up the Docsis 3.0 Volume lightreading.com
Pirate Bay foundering under heavy fire v3.co.uk
The Dell MVNO xchangemag.com
Court orders shorter sentence for ex-Qwest CEO cellular-news.com
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The weekend has arrived. Chat among yourselves in the comment section below.
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Sacramento-based SureWest Communications offers consumers a mix of fiber to the home service and ADSL2+. Surewest already offers IPTV service to its fiber customers, who can get symmetrical service at speeds up to 25Mbps for $70 bundled, $84 unbundled. Customers out of range have had to make due with vanilla DSL, though last fall the carrier started offering users bonded ADSL2+ services at speeds up to 10Mbps ($31.99).

Surewest now says they’re going to offer IPTV services to those customers before the end of the year. The company says the new IPTV services will reach 25,000 customers; 15,000 customers will see the service by December 2009, and an additional 10,000 will be connected by the second quarter of 2010. According to the company, they’ve made the jump to MPEG-4 compression and are using the Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV platform.

Surewest remains an interesting mish-mash of DSL and fiber, older and recently acquired networks. In December of 2007, SureWest announced plans to acquire Kansas City-based Everest Broadband for $173 million. Actual integration was largely finished by February of 2008, but Everest customers didn’t officially take on the Surewest brand name until July of 2008. Many in Kansas City are still waiting for speed upgrades, and users in Sacramento say it often takes a bit of coaxing (and sometimes yelling) to get the faster speeds installed.

Given the expected constraints that face all efforts of IPTV over copper, we’ll be interested to hear customer thoughts on the quality of this service when it drops later this year. We know that Surewest was offering IPTV to some select, short loop length customers already, though only in standard definition.
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Blair Levin, the man in charge of the FCC’s national broadband plan, wasn’t impressed with the first round of public input on how best to achieve our national broadband goals. According to Levin, “sloppiness” and the “lack of seriousness and purpose” in most comments weren’t useful to the agency in formulating a plan. Don’t cry however, as it looks like you’ll be given another chance to impress Mr. Levin. The FCC’s new broadband-focused website has listed a slew of public workshops aimed at hashing through various broadband policy issues.

The FCC this week invited the public to contribute their thoughts on the list, or to add additional subjects for discussion. So far, the list of workshops include everything from how broadband can’t improve health care, to issues surrounding wireless markets and spectrum use. In a press release, new FCC boss Julius Genachowski insists the workshops are the roots of a transparent process:

The FCC is scheduled to unveil the plan to Congress by February 16, 2010. While the agency has stated that they’ll (frighteningly for the first time) use scientifically-sound data in making policy decisions, Genachowski’s otherwise been very murky in terms of what concrete ideas he plans to bring to the table.
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Cablevision has released their second quarter earnings, reporting income of $87 million, down 8% from $94 million one year ago. Revenue for the company rose 9 percent to $1 billion&#46 As most expected, Cablevision announced they’d be spinning off their Madison Square Garden unit into a separate business. While the company lost 8,700 basic cable subscribers during the quarter, it added 56,000 digital TV customers, 18,000 new broadband customers, and 38,000 VoIP customers, meeting most Wall Street estimates&#46

Cablevision’s spending $300 million to deploy both Wi-Fi and DOCSIS 3.0 across their entire footprint. In response, Verizon this week also started offering free Wi-Fi. In a conference call with analysts, Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge took a shot at Verizon’s marketing inconsistencies in recent weeks.

“Verizon is a me-too kind of product,” said Rutledge. “What we do, they tend to do,” says the COO. “When we did announce Wi-Fi, they described it as a parlor trick, so I’m surprised that they are actually going forward with it,” he says. Technically, Verizon called Cablevision’s Wi-Fi a “marketing stunt” and their new, 101Mbps broadband service a “parlor trick,” but we’re nit picking.

According to the COO, customers have accessed the Internet more than 3 million times since the Wi-Fi project’s inception, and the number of cumulative sessions have jumped by 50% in the last 45 days. Interestingly, Rutledge also said said putting a voice product on top of the Wi-Fi network was “inevitable.”

In April, Cablevision unveiled a 101Mbps/15Mbps tier for $99.95 a month, though it annoyingly features a $300 “activation fee”” in addition to a $35 installation fee. In contrast, Verizon’s fastest service tier is 50Mbps/20Mbps, which costs $134.95 when bundled with a phone line, and $144.95 without. Since FiOS appeared in 2005 Cablevision’s still seen gains, adding 108,000 TV, 1.5 million broadband, and 1.6 million VoIP users during that time. Verizon’s push into NYC apartments may change that.

Rutledge also touched on the company’s recent court victory that will allow Cablevision to move forward with their network DVR. There’s been some hints that Cablevision’s negotiations with the entertainment industry may result in a less useful product. “We believe in copyrights,” says Rutledge. “We think that digital rights management is our responsibility and then ultimately the value that we create for customers comes from rights structures,” he says. “We are eager and willing to work with content providers to build products.”
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Worried about increased regulation under a Democratic Congress, broadband providers have been putting on their finest top hats and tap dancing shoes to put on a show for Uncle Sam. The name of the show? “The broadband and television market is simply so gosh-darned FABULOUS, there’s no need for government intervention.” We’ve seen it with Verizon’s recent half-hearted nods toward improved privacy and exclusive handset deals, and now the cable industry’s putting on one hell of a show of their own.

In comments to the FCC for its annual assessment of the state of video competition, The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) this week has proclaimed that customers are seeing up to $35 billion in savings every year thanks to “vigorous” competition and bundling. Surely those of you facing tight budgets will be happy to discover this phantom money in your wallets.

Forget the cable industry’s miserable customer satisfaction ratings (lower than the IRS), twice-yearly rate hikes for dozens of unwatched channels, and the fact that telcoTV “competition” hasn’t lowered prices a cent (Verizon and AT&T consistently raise TV prices too). An NCTA-sponsored study has found that the cable industry’s grace has delivered “enormous cost savings, lower prices and enhancement in value to consumers”:

Of course, nobody denies that the cable industry’s investment in fiber and other technologies have helped revolutionize the telecommunications landscape. What most consumer advocates have complained about are skyrocketing prices, miserable customer service, limited competition, and the cable industry’s unique ability to continually milk consumers in any way possible. As is usually the case with K-Street policy wonks, the NCTA has selective vision when it comes to the cable industry’s treatment of the American consumer.

While the NCTA likes to praise the bundle, such promotions are frequently about confusing customers with the illusion of value, often making it more difficult for consumers to make direct comparisons between different companies’ products. While carriers insist they’re rewarding you, bundles often act to punish customers for not taking on additional services they may not want — while locking them into long-term contracts with steep early termination fees. Not that 300 channels of unwatched Spanish religious programming doesn’t make it all worth it.

Since 2001, the NCTA’s lobbying budget has ballooned to $14.4 million, and its cable-industry members certainly get their money’s worth. The NCTA recently launched a new blog tasked with patting itself on the back and pushing the NCTA’s various “cost saving” and “consumer friendly” agendas, including endless TV rate hikes, metered broadband billing, a ban on White Space broadband, inaccurate broadband statistics, and so much more. When consumers have friends like these, they really don’t need enemies…
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For those companies who’ve sadly decided to milk copper (or have no financial choice), line-bonding is one way to grab additional bandwidth at greater loop lengths out of both ADSL2+ and VDSL. It’s something both Qwest and AT&T are eager to begin implementing next year, and Dane Jasper, CEO of California ISP Sonic.net, tells us they’re having good luck with ADSL2+ bonding in the labs and in employee trials. The company started offering ADSL2+ service over their own network last fall, offering tiers in 6Mbps, 8Mbps and 18Mbps flavors.

The CEO says this week they’ve demonstrated ADSL2+ connection speeds of 46Mbps downstream and 4.8Mbps upstream in a lab environment, on a short copper loop. In a blog post, the CEO admits that these aren’t speeds customers will see in the real world, but that Sonic does have 30Mbps service working at employee homes and will launch the tier soon. More technical specifics from Jasper:

Dane’s one of the few industry CEOs you can find wandering around our forums directly answering consumer questions on any given day. You can also check out our users’ Sonic.net reviews here.
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IPhone Probe to Focus on Markets Without Service, FCC Head Says bloomberg.com
Will Skype s Founders Put the Kibosh on eBay s IPO Plans? gigaom.com
Comcast: Telecom Likely Low On Legislative Agenda multichannel.com
UK provider O2 claims 200 per GB excess data fee is simply a deterrent broadbandgenie.co.uk
Router Would Block Sites on All Devices cbsnews.com
Cable Industry Values Bundle To Consumers at $35 Billion Annually: NCTA multichannel.com
Microsoft kills Zune phone talk theregister.co.uk
Comcast Colorado Debuts Caller ID On TV, PC multichannel.com
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The cable industry has released a report saying that consumers who buy bundled broadband internet, cable and voice services are getting a huge benefit, to the tune of $35 billion annually.

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The Federal Communication Commission’s initial public workshops in preparation for the National Broadband Plan will focus on ways government can be improved by broadband internet and how technologies will effect broad deployment of broadband.

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