Author Archives: Jesse

Some of Verizon's union workers are accusing the telco giant of letting its older copper lines rot while it builds fiber optics elsewhere. The accusers have alleged that training and repair equipment have been almost exclusively focused in areas where FIOS is being built out. Based on Verizon's history in Virginia, where the complaints emanate from, it seems that lengthy repairs of old copper lines aren't unusual for the company.

As happy as I am that Verizon is building FIOS (better late than never), doing so while letting the poor and rural copper customers get second-rate service just can't fly.

(See full articles here and here.)

In a move that surprised pretty much nobody, AT&T's CEO, Ed Whitacre, took a few more potshots at Net Neutrality in a speech that used alarming candor. Referring to getting anti-neutrality legislation passed, he said it's not 'cashing in', it's 'deregulation'. It seems that his replacement is taking a similar tack, wanting to double-dip content providers and destroy the "inter" part of Internet.

Time Warner hasn't wasted a lot of time on scrapping Net Neutrality before legislation goes through. They're recently implemented packet shaping to slow down certain kinds of traffic. Tops on their list are data-intensive applications like BitTorrent and Joost. Essentially, Time Warner is selling high-speed connections with the promise that you get fast downloads… right up until the point you actually want to use it. That smells like lawsuit in the air with a hint of false advertising.

Even cell phones aren't safe. Despite AT&T just about getting its head chewed off for blocking certain numbers in Iowa, T-Mobile has started blocking calls to numbers from a competing provider in the UK. So far, the block seems to only extend to users in the UK, but it'll be a matter of time before they start trying to pull the same stunt in the US. 

Maine, however, isn't content to sit this one out. In response to the assaults on Net Neutrality, they've passed a resolution demanding that more be done to ensure that all data is treated equal. Given Maine's history as a maverick state, this is none too surprising.

(See full articles here, here, here, here, and here.)

Salt Lake City is home to major fiber optic cables, a renowned university… and a city government that has no idea what to do to get better broadband. Three years after rejecting UTOPIA membership, candidates to succeed Rocky Anderson as mayor can't say what exactly they'll do about increasing speeds or lowering prices. It seems that Ralph Becker is the only one to speak up and support reconsidering UTOPIA, though it comes in the form of a "put it to the voters" cop-out, a fancy way of saying "I don't want to personally commit to it before I get some poll numbers." Even then, the council has already shown that it favors bringing in private competitors, neglecting that building a universal network to rival Comcast or Qwest requires a deep-pockets company like Verizon or AT&T. Is that really progress?

(See full article here.) 

San Francisco is intent on using WiMax to reach more rural areas around the Bay Area's numerous hills. Clearwire has bought access from AT&T to start operating a national WiMax network and Qualcomm is set to laugh all the way to the bank. In a move all too reminiscent of Rambus sneaking their patented bits into memory standards, Qualcomm owns a series of patents covering the 802.16 WiMax standard after purchasing a small company that was involved in defining those standards. With that club in hand, they'd had no issues with threatening companies looking to deploy services with heavy royalty fees. With this case of patent trolling likely to drag on for years, WiMax seems like the wrong technology for new wide-spread broadband platforms.

(See full articles here, here and here.)

iProvo might still be some time away from breaking even, or so says the "we'll print anything negative about iProvo" Deseret News. According to the article, a miscalculation places the break-even point with current projections as far away as 2012. The original calculation failed to take into account repayment of funds borrowed from the city's electric department. In the meantime, iProvo plans to increase revenues more quickly by adding one or more additional service providers, marketing more aggressively to individual homes and businesses and exploring new services such as security monitoring and teleconferencing.

Personally, I think they need to bump wholesale rates up slightly for some of the services, especially the Internet service, to reach a break-even point faster. Even paying $45/mo for 15Mbps is a steal at just $3 per megabit and that's still lower pricing than what Qwest or Comcast can offer for the closest comparable service. It'd also pump an extra $600K per year into the project just from higher Internet fees. Tack a few dollars each onto the phone and television and the project could be paying off debt early, lowering rates as the revenues increase.

Whatever they do, they need to start erasing the red ink more quickly. All the bad press is going to soften the resolve of the city in holding onto the network.

(See full article here. And remember, it's the Deseret News: they hate iProvo.)

In a move only a die-hard monopolist would dare engage in, Qwestar Gas is moving to keep individual consumers out of rate hearings. The move is designed to prevent upset customers from criticizing the company and questioning its witnesses at Public Service Commission hearings. This is all despite very few people actually appearing at the meetings and has been prompted by a citizen activist raising Cain over some proposed rate increases.

What does this have to do with broadband policy, you might ask? The Public Service Commission also oversees telecommunications companies. I'm betting that Qwest and Comcast won't waste too much time in supporting Questar's efforts.

(See full article here.)