Best Broadband

Why Internet connections are fastest in South Korea cnn.com
Cox Wireless launch details coming soon fiercewireless.com
Has AT&T’s network improvement plan helped enough? networkworld.com
LTE will bridge the digital divide fiercewireless.com
TiVo Faces Patent-Infringement Countersuits By AT&T, Verizon multichannel.com
FCC War Over Mobile TV: Airwaves or Cell Networks? How About Both wired.com
FCC begins rollout of national broadband policies washingtonpost.com
Court Says President Bush Violated Wiretapping Laws With Warrantless Wiretap techdirt.com
BT outage causes chaos in London v3.co.uk
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2009 was of course jam packed with people complaining about the performance of the iPhone on AT&T’s network — at least in congested markets like New York and The Bay Area. After taking a serious beating in the press, AT&T quickly got to work adding more backhaul and cell sites, converting their markets to 850Mhz, and according to a new report from Wall Street Journal this week, working more closely with Apple on ways to make the iPhone a little more efficient in terms of network use. According to the website, Apple engineers got a “crash course” from AT&T in networking:

The Journal got a lot of attention for this article yesterday, namely because it rekindled the rather obvious rumor — for what really is about the fifty-seventh time — that the iPhone should eventually make the leap to Verizon. AT&T has one of the lowest customer defection (churn) rates in the industry, and while AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson spent 2009 pretending this was because of the AT&T network — it was because of the cult of Apple. Should AT&T lose iPhone exclusivity, the AT&T network will of course be put to direct comparison with Verizon in terms of iPhone performance, so AT&T is apparently scrambling.

AT&T tells Broadband Reports that so far their efforts have involved adding 1,900 new cell sites, installing more than 100,000 new backhaul connections (that’s four times the number installed in 2008), doubling the number of towers served by fiber (as opposed to T1), pushing overall coverage out further to serve 360 markets, or roughly 75 percent of the population, and deployed HSPA 7.2 software at all of the company’s 3G (though not EDGE) towers.

“While this upgrade is not expected to provide a noticeable immediate boost in average speeds until backhaul is in place, it does result in a better overall customer experience by generally improving consistency in accessing data sessions,” AT&T’s Seth Bloom says about the 7.2 HSPA software upgrade. “It also prepares the network for faster speeds and increases network efficiency.” You of course need a 7.2 HSPA-capable phone to take full advantage of those speeds.

So far it appears that the efforts are paying dividends. Tests earlier this year by PC World show a marked improvement in iPhone performance, though other studies from JD Power and Associates indicate the company still lags in terms of call quality. While anecdotal of course, the number of dropped iPhone calls we’ve experienced in the NYC area has dropped considerably. It’s pretty clear AT&T is listening.
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Sprint today announced that the wireless carrier is now offering a thirty day money back guarantee for users who sign up for service with Sprint. Sprint actually started offering 30 day trials back in 2008 after being sued by Minnesota’s Attorney General for sneaky contract extensions. However, while the offer allowed you to escape paying an ETF if unsatisfied within 30 days, you still had to pay for any services used during that period, in addition to having to pay taxes and a restocking fee. Now, Sprint says they’re refunding the full thirty day amount (with the exception of ringtones or other third-party services purchased):

Sprint offers up a handy chart (above, right) highlighting how they’re the only carrier currently doing this. Several operators recently began offering 30 day trials allowing users to escape paying ETFs within thirty days, but it had nothing to do with altruism. It was in response to settlements over ETF practices, or to fight off proposed laws aimed at ramping up wireless industry consumer protections. Verizon briefly offered a money-back guarantee, but then subsequently backtracked.

Sprint of course needs all the additional subscribers they can get after weathering their botched acquisition of Nextel, and the resulting customer fallout. Sprint’s earnings last quarter indicate that their subscriber losses are slowing, and the company clearly hopes giving a little love to consumers may help improve things even more.
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Megapath and Covad have announced that the two companies will be merging their operations, depending on regulatory approval. According to a company representative, the transaction will create one of the largest managed service local exchange carriers (MSLEC) in the United States. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the companies say that barring regulatory approval, the deal should close sometime in the third quarter of this year. The combined businesses will be owned by Platinum and MegaPath investors.

“It seems that Megapath will become the ISP side of Covad and Covad.net will be going away,” one source who just attended an internal video presentation tells Broadband Reports&#46

Both Covad and Megapath were huge players in the early residential broadband market, and should be more than familiar to most of our readers. Like many independent carriers, both companies found it difficult to compete in the residential sector against the nation’s deep-pocketed incumbents.

As such, both companies focused more intently on the (at the time) less incumbent-laden small/medium business and managed services market. In some instances, the brush-off of residential customers was brusque, to be polite.

In 2007, Covad was purchased by Platinum Equity for $304 million, a price tag many considered particularly fair given Covad’s national reach. Covad currently offers IP broadband services in more than 4,400 central offices nationwide.

“From my understanding, Megapath’s network will be integrated into Covad’s network for central offices that Covad is not currently in,” says our source. “They (in internal meetings) never outright said what would happen in CO’s that both companies are in, but I got the impression that the Megapath equipment would be shut down,” the source says.

“This transaction brings together two industry leaders who will focus on expanding service offerings and distribution channels to further our leadership positions in the SMB, enterprise and wholesale markets,” MegaPath CEO D. Craig Young said in a prepared statement. “By leveraging the strengths of each company, we will provide customers and partners with expanded expertise, broader innovative services and a powerful network that simplifies the way they communicate and conduct business online.”

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Vermont is one of the country’s less broadband-wired states, with Verizon leaving much of the state un-upgraded due to the cost of rural deployment. Verizon of course recently sold their DSL and landlines to Fairpoint Communications, who isn’t in much of a position to expand service in New England after filing for bankruptcy (though they’re busily lobbying to kill others from doing so). Vermont is home to some very interesting non-profit efforts like ValleyFiber, though those efforts have been slowed by the recent economic troubles. In a bit of good news for Vermont residents without broadband, Comcast this week announced they’ve completed a 300 mile expansion into Vermont that should bring service to 6,000 more people:

Comcast of course is leading the pack at expanding faster DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades into all of its territories, which is an additional bit of good news for Vermont residents.
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The U.S. Postal Service is considering eliminating Saturday postal delivery in order to help shore up their budget problems. Netflix will spend $600 million on postage in 2010, and of course Saturday delivery and higher postal prices could seriously dampen Netflix’s bottom line. If only there were some conceivable way to deliver films directly to people’s homes without relying on the mercy of the U.S. Postal Service? Slate (via Consumerist) argues that broadband streaming won’t help, given the high prices Netflix pays for licensing:

Of course Hollywood continues to be stingy with film licenses for streaming rentals, out of a misguided fear that streaming video will further cannibalize DVD sales. It’s amazing that Netflix has developed a fairly cheap, high-quality alternative to piracy, and they may wind up struggling because Hollywood can’t get out of its own way. Apparently, we’re sliding backwards toward suing potential customers as a revenue stream, instead of offering those users high-quality alternatives to piracy.
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Those of you who’ve been here for a while of course will remember broadband startup Rhythms NetConnections. Rhythms went public on April 7, 1999, and the company’s stock ended its first day of trading at around $70 a share. Of course then came the dot com bubble, Enron’s special brand of involvement in Rhythms stock (Enron owned 50% of the company at one point), and Rhythms ultimately stumbled into bankruptcy in August of 2001. The company’s collapse highlighted everything that was broken about the sector (insanely overvalued startups, fuzzy math, executives who somehow got away wealthy and clean), and shareholders and employees of the company have spent most of the last decade engaged in legal battle over the company’s implosion. Jim Shank, who worked for Rhythms and invested $10,000 of his own money into the company, blogs that he finally got his check last week: all eighty-three cents of it.
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Broadband rules target black families cincinnati.com
Coalition Calls For U.S. To Modernize Electronic Privacy Law multichannel.com
House Passes Ban On File Sharing Use By Government Employees techdirt.com
BT plans further fibre optic broadband deployment cable.co.uk
ZigBee searches for a new home theregister.co.uk
Rumor Mill: Google to thwart Android fragmentation fiercewireless.com
Ipad might face an import ban theinquirer.net
Hacker pledges to re-enable Linux on PS3 reghardware.co.uk
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Back in February we noted that a company named Novus Entertainment had started offering 200 Mbps fiber to the home connections to residents of Vancouver. The company’s been engaged in a public pricing feud with Shaw Communications, who dropped their prices to unheard of levels ($10 for 15 Mbps, $10 for VoIP and $10 for TV) in order to try to drive Novus out of business. Novus first responded by running an ad letting all Shaw customers know that Shaw was only offering that deal in Vancouver. Now they’re announcing that they’re opening up their network to other competitors:

According to Novus, they’ve also extended their fiber network to Richmond. If you’re interested in the 200 Mbps service, it’s $279.95 per month ($261 US).
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LTE to bridge wired Internet gaps in Europe fiercewireless.com
Google Gets in Bed with Verizon huffingtonpost.com
Cable ISPs: new broadband test makes our service look slow arstechnica.com
Ericsson Seeks North American Dominance xchangemag.com
PC Modems Drive Mobile Data Traffic cable360.net
AT&T can survive loss of golden egg (aka the iPhone) marketwatch.com
Verizon Intros Push To Talk For BlackBerry informationweek.com
Extortion-Like Mass Automated Copyright Lawsuits Come To The US: 20,000 Filed, 30,000 More On The Way techdirt.com
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