Archive for June, 2008
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Report From the Initial Meeting of U-CAN
Today was the inaugural meeting of the UTOPIA Citizens Advisory Network or U-CAN for short. Attendance was about a dozen and we had some great conversations getting caught up on the status of UTOPIA and an idea of where it's going. Some highlights:
UTOPIA is looking at using Special Assessment Areas to expand services in non-member [...]
20 Comments » - Posted in Events, U-CAN, UTOPIA by Jesse
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Comcast Makes Final Four in Comsumerist’s Worst Company in America 2008
Most companies would normally be excited to be a semi-finalist for an award, but not this time. Comcast has managed to bump off Menu Foods, The American Arbitration Association, Ticketmaster and even Exxon in its quest to become Worst Company in America 2008. It now faces off against Diebold, stealer of elections and maker of [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in News by Jesse
Friday, June 27th, 2008
Reflecting on Carterphone: Why Open Networks Are Needed
Bring up the term "regulation" and you're often going to think of heavy-handed mandates, byzantine rules and unresponsive bureaucracies. Despite this popular image of regulation, it sometimes works.
Ars Technica reminds us of the 40-year-old Carterphone decision that the FCC handed down 40 years ago yesterday. The landmark decision allowed third parties to start attaching [...]
No Comments » - Posted in News by Jesse
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
Caps Without Meaning: Japanese Telco NTT Caps Uploads at 30GB… Per Day
It seems like caps are popping up all over. Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint and Verizon Wireless all have talked about or instituted caps that make users weep, wail and gnash teeth. Now that Japanese telco NTT is getting into the business of caps, we have to wonder if it's just trying to make American [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in News by Jesse
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
ICANN has .cheezburger: New TLDs Approved for Sale
ICANN decided to open a virtual Pandora's Box and approve the sale of any domain name that can be dreamed of. While it's no secret that the existing domain space is really REALLY crunched, letting imagination run wild seems to just be another invitation for spammers and phishers to snap up domains by the thousands. [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in News by Jesse
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Mstar Customers on iProvo Lose Phone Service Because Mstar Didn’t Pay Their Bills
In an unbelievable move, around 200 Mstar customers on iProvo have been without phone service since Friday after New Global Telecom, the VoIP provider that Mstar uses, cut them off. NGT claims that Mstar is behind on their payments for iProvo customers and that UTOPIA customers are not affected. John Hansen, Mstar's interim president, says [...]
33 Comments » - Posted in News, iProvo by Jesse
Friday, June 20th, 2008
The Need for Speed: Comcast, Verizon Start Boosting Bandwidth
The race for the speed crown continues as Verizon rolls out 50Mbps/20Mbps service to all of its current FIOS customers. The super-fast tier of service comes at a price of around $150/month, not far off from what Qwest is charging for inferior 20Mbps/896Kbps DSL service. This also prepares Verizon for a fight to the [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in News by Jesse
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Clearwire Promises Open Network; Is This the Mythical Third Pipe?
Everyone was buzzing about the prospect of a wide-open network during the 700MHz auction (don't hold your breath on Verizon making good on it), but Clearwire is giving it to us now. The company, a joint venture with Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner and others, is promising open everything on its new WiMax network. Bring your [...]
2 Comments » - Posted in Cheers, News by Jesse
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Website Updates: WordPress 2.5.1, bbPress 0.9.0.2
Since the old forums have stopped working and WordPress was badly out of date, I decided it was time to do some big upgrades. The website is now running on WordPress 2.5.1 instead of 2.1.3 and I've updated a bunch of plugins to match.
Bigger news is that I've ditched the old phpBB forums in favor [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Website by Jesse
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Shakeup at Mstar: CEO and Chief Marketing Officer Part Ways With Company
After several rounds of laying off the rank-and-file, it looks like executives are among those now leaving the company. Mstar CEO Ben Gould and Chief Marketing Officer Kirk Tanner are no longer with the company, reportedly having departed voluntarily. The word on the street, according to the Daily Herald, is that Gould got an offer [...]
