Best Broadband

Broadcasters Assess FCC Video Competition Report multichannel.com
Big telcos may still influence broadband stimulus bonanza fiercewireless.com
JiWire study dodges the big question: How many Wi-Fi hotspot users are there? venturebeat.com
Cox Picks Wireless-Messaging Platform multichannel.com
Analyst says iPhone to go to multiple U.S. carriers in 2010 yahoo.com
Clearwire Hires Fresh Face to Sell Wireless to the Wired gigaom.com
Peter Mandelson Defends His Sudden Conversion To Kicking People Off The Internet In The UK techdirt.com
Apple: ‘Exploding’ iPhones ‘not our fault’ networkworld.com
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Users in our Shaw forum note that the Canadian cable operator is prepared to kick off cable rate hike season with a September 1 $2 monthly bump to cable TV prices, and a $2 bump to broadband Internet prices. Shaw’s website places at least part of the blame on the new Local Programming Improvement Fund (LPIF) fee Canadian regulators have hit carriers with in order to retain local access programming, though certainly Shaw’s executive compensation needs paying for as well. This time of year usually means cable rate hikes for cable users across North America, though one analyst has predicted that cable hikes will be about 50% of what they normally are, thanks to competitive pressure from telcoTV in its limited deployment areas.
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A notice to customers by Verizon informs them that the telco will be discontinuing newsgroup service as of September 30. “Newsgroups were initially developed as a text-based way to share information on the Internet,” Verizon informs customers in the alert. “Today, demand for newsgroups is much lower, since most users have switched to more exciting ways of getting and sharing information via the Web, such as social networks, email and sites such as our Verizon Central Newsroom.” While there’s certainly no doubt that “Verizon Central Newsroom” is one of the great new content repositories of the Internet, most ISPs trim newsgroup access to save a buck. Under the guise of fighting child porn, Verizon had already seriously scaled back the number of newsgroups offered.
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JD Power and Associates has released their 2009 Wireless Call Quality Performance Study, which measures call quality in six geographical regions: Northeast; Mid-Atlantic; Southeast; North Central; Southwest; and West. The study tracks seven types of carrier performance: dropped calls; static/interference; failed call connection on the first try; voice distortion; echoes; no immediate voicemail notification; and no immediate text message notification. Verizon Wireless took the top spot for call quality in four of the six regions (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and Southwest regions) and tied for first with T-Mobile and Alltel (now part of Verizon) in the West territory. U.S. Cellular took the top spot in the North Central region. You can check out all of the ratings by region here.
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Cable operator Mediacom dropped the news earlier this month during their second quarter conference call that they’d be raising customer speeds in September. True to their word, the operator tells the Des Moines Register that as of tomorrow, they’re on schedule to bump the company’s 8Mbps tier to 12Mbps downstream with 1Mbps upstream. The company’s 10Mbps tier will be boosted to 15Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream. According to Mediacom, this is the fourth time they’ve bumped speeds since 2005, though the 15-20 Mbps maximum speeds fall short of the top speeds being provided by cable operators who’ve been upgrading their infrastructure to DOCSIS 3.0 technology. The 1Mbps upstream for a higher end product offering is also starting to show its age.
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While many proclaimed that 2009 would be the “year of the femtocell,” the Wall Street Journal suggests femtocell sales haven’t exactly been brisk, though that’s partially thanks to carriers. Femtocells give users the ability to make wireless calls over their home broadband connection, though carriers also get to ease congestion on local towers. In some cases, the carriers themselves get in the way of the service being useful for consumers. For instance, in Verizon’s case placing calls over your home broadband connection still ridiculously eats away at your mobile minutes. Verizon and Sprint also aren’t heavily advertising the devices, instead often using them as customer retention tools for users complaining of coverage issues.
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According to the New York Times, Cablevision-owned Newsday has decided they’ll no longer be running ads for Verizon’s FiOS fiber to the home service, which obviously competes with Cablevision’s Optimum Online service. Until a few months ago, Verizon had been buying full page ads for the service several times a month, but now tells the Times Cablevision “made it clear we didn t need to keep calling.” Newsday spokesperson Deidra Parrish Williams defends the move to the Times by insisting “every other media company, including The New York Times, accepts or rejects advertising at its own discretion.” While that’s true, most set the bar a little higher when it comes to what kind of ads the paper’s not willing to run.
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After a recent launch in Memphis, AT&T’s now expanding the company’s VDSL-based IPTV service into Alabama, as the company continues to push its upgrades into former BellSouth territory. Select customers in the Mobile and Pensacola areas now have access to the service, AT&T telling locals the launch is a great thing because “competition makes everybody better at what they do.” As in many other markets, some Mobile city council members were concerned about the visual impact of large AT&T VRADs on property values. “I know how it feels because I’ve got a utility box in front of my house,” says Council member Connie Hudson. “I planted a Sago palm in front of it.” AT&T this week is also pushing U-Verse into the Louisville, Kentucky area.
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The final 37 percent of Americans who do not have home broadband internet access are hindered in many cases by a lack of training and social support in using technology, according to the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband initiative.

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Qwest Communications, the country’s third-largest cable provider, announced today that Teresa A. Taylor has been named chief operating officer, replacing Thomas E. Richards, who is leaving the company to become president and chief operating officer of CDW Corporation.

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