In a marketing ploy best suited to a used car salesman, Comcast announced they would be offering over 800 channels of HD content by 2009. Of course, it's very easy to get that many channels when you count pay-per-view channels in an endless loop as a single channel. It also… Continue reading
In another sure sign of our national infrastructure being poorly handled and neglected by the incumbents and their failed promises of '96, the US is now ranked 24th in terms of broadband availability, surpassed by pretty much every nation in Western Europe as well as South Korea, Japan, Macau and… Continue reading
There's about 2,000 towns with fewer than 60,000 residents that can't find companies to build city-wide WiFi networks. Despite many of them having issued RPFs, top-tier providers are set on chasing the big contracts in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia rather than Smallville, Kansas. Most of the cities are seeking these… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
A new bill in the House, introduced as a way to force the offering of "family-friendly" content, also includes provisions for being able to cancel one channel at a time to save the cost of distribution. The bill would require such a new tier of content to not show any… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
The day before the meeting, I got a call from the chair of the Council to offer the spot on the agenda I had been speaking. It was pretty short notice, but I was glad to have some real time to speak to them about bringing UTOPIA to the neighborhood…. Continue reading
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… Continue reading
The Provo City Council voted 5-1 to pay down part of iProvo's debt using a surplus of sales tax revenue. This replaces the previous proposal to fund another loan from the city's electric utility to make the remainder of this year's debt payment. The Council felt that it was wiser… Continue reading
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… Continue reading