DSLreports - front page

Friday Evening Links -

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:17:24 EDT

Comcast To Launch 'On Demand Online' In Early December multichannel.com
Critical Infrastructure in the Cloud? Absolutely! networkworld.com
FLO TV Goes Retail multichannel.com
Would Google Be Liable Under The Pirate Bay Ruling? techdirt.com
Nortel Completes Wireless Sale to Ericsson internetnews.com
Droid Boasts 25% of Android Web Traffic internetnews.com
DNS problem linked to DDoS attacks gets worse networkworld.com
iPhone Costs Average Yearly Chinese Salary redherring.com
read comment(s)

Follow Us On Twitter - AKA: Weekend Open Thread

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:13:43 EDT

We've finally gotten off of our lazy duffs and created a new Twitter account we'd be absolutely honored if you followed. Those of you not on Twitter, those who don't know what Twitter is, or those who wish Twitter would burn in a pit of molten lava -- can simply entertain yourselves in the comment section below.
read comment(s)

Wi-Fi Network Shuttered By MPAA Re-Opens - After week of bad press, Sony suddenly feels cooperative

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:21:32 EDT

Earlier this week we reported how a free, tiny (1,000 feet total) municipal Wi-Fi network in Ohio was forced to shut down after an MPAA legal warning. A network user had apparently transferred a file copyrighted by Sony Pictures, and instead of risking a costly legal fight, the network decided to simply shut down. The news quickly spread across the Internet, something that apparently didn't make Sony all that comfortable. One local user sends us this local NBC affiliate report that says the network has been turned back on after a request by Sony:

Levine says the news of the shut down spread very quickly from D.C. to California in less than a week, and people from across the country bombarded Sony Pictures Entertainment with complaints about big companies picking on small towns. Finally, Levine explains that Jim Kennedy, SVP of Corporate Communications for Sony Pictures Entertainment, e-mailed the county and asked them to turn the wi-fi service back on because of the complaints.

Sony says they'll kindly "help the county identify ways to prevent similar offenses from happening in the future." Of course if the MPAA and Sony had approached the network owners like human beings in the first place -- instead of engaging in the kind of scorched earth tactics they've employed for several years now -- they probably wouldn't have gotten the bad press to begin with.
read comment(s)

Bell Canada's Profit Doubles - Without the need for usage-based billing

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:39:06 EDT

Last year Canadian incumbent Bell Canada throttled the bandwidth of wholesale competitors, so they couldn't offer unthrottled services that were better than Bell's own, throttled DSL service. The company then started pushing for usage-based billing (UBB) for wholesalers, meaning competitors would now be paying for bandwidth on both ends (smaller Canadian ISPs lament this as double dipping and a tactic designed to drive them out of business). Bell Canada has justified the moves by saying they're financially necessary in order to fund network expansion. However, BCE's earnings this week indicate the company's profit more than doubled. Why was usage-based billing necessary again? Surely someday, somebody is going to notice that the North American ISPs who claim expensive new metering models are financially necessary are never able to prove it.
read comment(s)

$13 For 100 Mbps - And the ISP pays YOU if you don't see 80% of your speed

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:55:42 EDT

Jeffrey M. O'Brien over at Fortune is the latest American with a sluggish DSL connection to suffer from Asian broadband envy, noting that Hong Kong provider City Telecom offers symmetrical 100 Mbps broadband service for about $13 a month. What's more, the ISP offers these users a money back guarantee: if they don't see at least 80% of their promised speed, their ISP pays them. Twice the amount the user paid for service. City Telecom CFO NiQ Lai tells Fortune the low pricing is part of a plan to blow all other Hong Kong ISPs out of the water:

"We have a big hairy audacious goal," says Lai, referring to the term popularized by "Good to Great" author Jim Collins. "We want to be the largest IP service provider in Hong Kong by 2016. And three years into our strategy, we're well on our way to doing it." If you live within coverage area of Verizon's FiOS service (VZ), you pay as much as $150 a month for up to 50 megs downstream and 20 upstream.

As ISPs and defenders of slow American broadband will be quick to tell you, population density helps: the market involved has 16,380 people per square mile versus 640 in Japan and 80 in the US. As such, the $400 million network cost $200 per home to build. Compare that to the $23 billion and $1,000 and upward (particularly early on) per home it cost for Verizon to wire 30-40% of their copper landline network. It's why Verizon is essentially hanging up on rural America.

Of course, the density argument only goes so far -- U.S. consumers pay more money for less speed than more than a dozen countries because of a lack of sustained competition in most markets. Even in many cities where wiring homes gets less expensive, there often remains a serious lack of competitive incentive to deploy faster and cheaper service.
read comment(s)

Virgin Expands 'Broadband2Go' Availability - Unfortunately, the underwhelming pricing remains

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:14:28 EDT

Back in June, Virgin Mobile announced a new wireless broadband service dubbed "Broadband2Go." Broadband2Go operates over Sprint's EVDO network, offering users the choice of buying pay-as-you-go cards in 100MB ($10), 250MB ($20), 500MB ($40) and 1GB ($60) increments. Not only are those not particularly impressive prices -- given Sprint itself offers 5GB of connectivity for $60 -- but Virgin Mobile puts an expiration date on the cards. While these caps are downright silly, such connections are marginally useful from a convenience perspective, assuming you don't have a 3G connection or can't find a (usually free) Wi-Fi hotspot. According to an announcement today, those of you not put off by the pricing can get the service from over 1,000 Best Buy Mobile stores, over 4,300 Radio Shack stores, Sam's Club kiosks via Radio Shack, Walmart.com and Target.com as of December 1, 2009.

read comment(s)

Netflix CEO: Netflix Is Broadband Killer App - And bandwidth is cheap...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:34:04 EDT

GigaOM directs our attention to an interesting video interview with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who dissects Netflix's role as the premier application for broadband. Hastings discusses how the future for Netflix is bright, given the tendency to embed every consumer device with a $10 Wi-Fi chipset, and the fact that bandwidth prices continue to drop. He doesn't get into specific bandwidth costs for the Netflix streaming service, but he cites the fact that "Moore's law is an amazing thing" in a world where Amazon now charges 5 cents a gigabyte for bandwidth and you can transfer a movie for about a nickel. "What's fueling the whole system is the end users, who are paying $40-$60 to their ISP, and that's funding the whole system," says Hastings.
read comment(s)

AT&T 'Sets The Record Straight' On Verizon Ads - And continues to give Verizon additional free advertising...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:21:52 EDT

AT&T and Verizon's fight over 3G coverage maps just keeps rolling along, with Verizon recently running new ads that mock AT&T's wireless network, and AT&T lawyers working very hard yesterday to get those advertisements pulled by the courts. The decision to fight the ads doesn't seem to be all that wise, given the debate has simply managed to push the ads (and AT&T's recent network issues) further into the spotlight. That said, AT&T has issued an entirely new press release that "sets the record straight" on AT&T's dispute with big red.

"As the U.S. market leader in wireless data service, we typically don't respond to competitors' advertising," insists AT&T, but "recent ads from Verizon are so blatantly false and misleading, that we want to set the record straight about AT&T's wireless data coverage."

AT&T's complaint all along has been that Verizon's ads, which use maps to highlight AT&T's limited 3G footprint (clearly labeled as "3G coverage"), give the false impression that AT&T doesn't offer service outside of their 3G footprint. To that end, AT&T is now reminding its customers that the company's 2.5G/EDGE network reaches the majority of Americans. Whether you think that's a good thing or not of course depends on your personal experience with AT&T's EDGE network.

"The EDGE network -- that as you know lets customers do all of the same things that they do in 3G areas -- apart from a difference in speed -- reaches 97% of the country s population, about 296 million people," AT&T's Seth Bloom tells us. "In total with our networks, we hit 300 million people, or 98% of the population with wireless data," says Bloom, who goes on to say that's "certainly not the impression left by the misleading ads."

Again though, AT&T's complaints simply bring additional attention to Verizon's ads, something we're sure Verizon doesn't mind.
read comment(s)

Comcast TV Everywhere WILL Work Outside The Home - According to a company interview this week...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:38:50 EDT

When last we checked in with Comcast's Internet video "TV Everywhere" initiative, it was looking more like "TV in some places, some of the time," given there were hints the service wouldn't be available to customers who weren't using a Comcast cable modem for broadband access. The idea of course is to provide existing TV customers access to free Internet video so they won't cut the cord -- but as we've explored, if the industry screw things up it could have the exact opposite effect.

Comcast of course is currently engaged in a trial of the service with about 5,000 of their customers, and is set to launch the program next month. As noted above, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recently suggested that the service would only work if you were on a Comcast broadband connection. But in an interview with NewTeeVee this week, Comcast's Amy Banse seems to dispel that notion, suggesting the service will work on up to three devices per household.

According to Banse, when it drops next month, you'll be able to use it "both in the home and out of the home," which suggests that Comcast either adjusted on the fly to criticism, or the planned improvements were ahead of schedule (both being good things). When the service launches next month, users will log in to either Comcast's Fancast website or the Comcast portal, download a video player created by Move Networks, and then gain access to Comcast's VOD library.

The proof will of course be in the pudding, and we'll have more next month. For those wondering, yes, the service does count against Comcast's 250 GB per month download cap.
read comment(s)

Friday Morning Links -

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:32:51 EDT

Google gives Voice to 'open standard Skype' theregister.co.uk
Comcast deal for NBCU would face regulatory hurdles totaltele.com
High-speed Internet gap between rich and poor widening, UN warns app.com.pk
There will always be home broadband techwatch.co.uk
Governor Schwarzenegger Endorses Siskiyou County's $23 Million Federal ARRA Rural Broadband Stimulus Bid dbusinessnews.com
Qualcomm combines 3G and 4G wireless technology theinquirer.net
France to announce national fiber plan in December totaltele.com
First Windows 7 zero day exploit is spotted theinquirer.net

Verizon Working With RIAA On New Warning Letters - New letter notification campaign began yesterday...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:12:45 EDT

Verizon already forwards copyright notices to customers who are tagged by the entertainment industry's intelligence-gathering organizations, but they don't disclose the customer who was actually using the IP address at the time the infringement occurred. In a move that signals a ramp-up in their cooperation with the entertainment industry, CNET cites inside sources at Verizon who say the company is about to launch a new letter notification campaign in cooperation with the RIAA. The new campaign is a "test" according to the source, and doesn't include references to account termination:

The letter the RIAA will send to Verizon, and will likely be forwarded to customers, is similar to those issued in the past by other ISPs, such as AT&T, Comcast, and Cox Communications. The RIAA's letter has typically notified customers that they have been accused of illegally sharing songs and informed them that such activity is illegal. In the letter, the user is advised to delete the content they distribute. It's important to note that not included in the letter are threats of service termination or interruptions, or any talk of a "graduated response." That's the term the RIAA uses to describe a deterrent program whereby an ISP gradually ratchets up penalties or warnings to suspected file sharers.

While the entertainment industry would like to see ISPs boot heavy P2P users from their networks (ignoring the fact these are potential customers), ISPs don't want the extra cost of playing content babysitter. Companies like AT&T and Verizon have instead suggested ramping up the user notification process. Carriers like citing a 2008 UK study that claims 72% of P2P users would stop with just a warning, or a similar 2009 study that puts that number closer to 64%. But other studies have suggested that users will, as they have for the better part of a decade, continue to ignore these warnings unless they come with the threat of disconnection.

Disconnecting users for P2P use however brings up a wide variety of problems however, including who independently confirms there's no false positives, who pays for the technology, and who tracks offenders across ISPs. There's also questions concerning the overall reliability of the DMCA notification process -- as well as fairness questions in terms of smaller ISPs being unable to shoulder the added support and hardware costs. If that's not enough to chew on, imagine setting this expensive, "graduated response" initiative up with government involvement, only to see users skirt around the restrictions by using encryption.

If you're a Verizon user who receives one of these alerts please send us a copy, as it would be nice to see how they vary from the letters Verizon is already sending to its customers who engage in the trading of copyrighted film and TV programs.
read comment(s)

Thursday Evening Links -

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:04:17 EDT

• Why the Two-Way Broadband Business Model Won't Work seekingalpha.com
• FCC Mulls Broadband Network for Public Safety internetnews.com
• ABI: 2009 Femtocell Shipments Downsized cable360.net
• Broadband map shows BT's superfast fiber network can't meet demand expertreviews.co.uk
• Netflix Is the iPod of Broadband gigaom.com
• Qualcomm CEO: AT&T will launch first smartbook fiercewireless.com
• UK Gov't Official: Innocent People Won't Get Kicked Off The Internet; Trust Us techdirt.com
• Vivendi Mum on NBCU/Comcast Deal multichannel.com
• Sprint faces possible credit downgrade fiercewireless.com
• UK ISP 3 to start shaping traffic on Monday theregister.co.uk
• Walmart to Offer $100 Gift Card for Purchased BlackBerry softpedia.com
• Google's Chrome beta for Mac expected early December theregister.co.uk
read comment(s)