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The US Broadband Thread of "I can't believe these effers" (Page 5)
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Originally Posted by Snow-i
Comcast isn't the free market. It's a government sponsored monopoly.
My point exactly.
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Originally Posted by Snow-i
Ah, I gotcha.
Just for the record, I firmly believe any free market solution to this problem would involve government regulation to set an even playing field and to enforce antitrust doctrine before it gets out of hand. Just what that legislation looks like is a far more difficult question, but I believe Title II is a step in the right direction. It's just a question of how the FCC manages that new classification (jury will be out on it for a long time to come, so long as comcast et al exist in their current fashion).
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All I know is I want an upload speed faster than 896K. Centurylink at least has Cox (and a few others) to compete with. When I called and asked when they were upgrading our area to VDSL2, I was told our area was not on the list. I mentioned Cox was plastering our area with flyers and the CSR said we'll be sorry to lose you. Overall, Cox is more expensive.
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ADSL2+ is 3Mbit up. Do you have something even older?
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Originally Posted by Chongo
All I know is I want an upload speed faster than 896K. Centurylink at least has Cox (and a few others) to compete with. When I called and asked when they were upgrading our area to VDSL2, I was told our area was not on the list. I mentioned Cox was plastering our area with flyers and the CSR said we'll be sorry to lose you. Overall, Cox is more expensive.
I know, uploading a file to youtube is painful
Originally Posted by P
ADSL2+ is 3Mbit up. Do you have something even older?
I only get 768k up. Does distance (from node) factor in as well?
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Oh. My.
New homeowner selling house because he can’t get Comcast Internet | Ars Technica
Seth, a software engineer who works at home, bought a house in Kitsap County, Washington state after being told by multiple Comcast employees that he could buy the Internet service he needs to do his job, according to a detailed Consumerist article yesterday. …
"Before we even made an offer [on the house], I placed two separate phone calls; one to Comcast Business, and one to Xfinity," Seth wrote. "Both sales agents told me that service was available at the address. The Comcast Business agent even told me that a previous resident had already had service. So I believed them."
That turned out to be untrue. After multiple visits from Comcast technicians, he says the company told him extending its network to his house would cost $60,000, of which he would have to pay an unspecified amount. But then Comcast allegedly pulled the offer.
After getting nowhere with Comcast, Seth tried getting DSL Internet from CenturyLink, which told him it could provide service of up to 10Mbps.
"After that very first Comcast tech told Seth there was no cable infrastructure to his house, he contacted CenturyLink. The company promised to get him hooked up right away," Consumerist wrote. "But then the next day he got a call informing him that his area was in 'Permanent Exhaust' and that CenturyLink wouldn’t be adding new customers. Of course, that didn’t stop CenturyLink from billing Seth more than $100 for service he never received and will never be able to receive. Seth then had to convince someone with CenturyLink’s billing department to zero out the account that should have never been opened."
Besides Comcast and CenturyLink, the Kitsap Public Utility District operates a gigabit fiber network that passes near Seth's house, Consumerist wrote. "So why can’t he just get his service from the county? Because Washington is one of the half-dozen states that forbids municipal broadband providers from selling service directly to consumers," the article said.
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Originally Posted by Snow-i
Just for the record, I firmly believe any free market solution to this problem would involve government regulation to set an even playing field and to enforce antitrust doctrine before it gets out of hand. Just what that legislation looks like is a far more difficult question, but I believe Title II is a step in the right direction. It's just a question of how the FCC manages that new classification (jury will be out on it for a long time to come, so long as comcast et al exist in their current fashion).
This is drastic, but maybe we need to stop metropolitan cities and buildings from cutting deals with ISPs. They're just perpetuating their monopolies.
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Originally Posted by The Final Dakar
Yeah, that shit, right there...
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Barely related, but not really worth its own thread.
EU announces plans to banish geo-blocking, modernize copyright law | Ars Technica
At the heart of the European Union lies the Single Market—the possibility for people to buy and sell goods and services anywhere in the EU. So it is ironic that the European sector least constrained by geography—the digital market—is also the least unified. To remedy that situation, the European Commission has announced its Digital Single Market Strategy, which addresses three main areas.
The first is "Better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services" and includes two of the thorniest issues: geo-blocking and copyright. As the EU's strategy notes, "too many Europeans cannot use online services that are available in other EU countries, often without any justification; or they are re-routed to a local store with different prices. Such discrimination cannot exist in a Single Market."
Yesssssssss
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US cable/phone companies are jacking broadband prices while easing TV bundle prices.
Cable and phone companies will continue to raise the price of broadband-only service while also increasing the value proposition of bundled packages of broadband, television, and phone service to keep customers from cutting the cable television cord.
Throw in usage caps to hobble netflix/hulu/etc, and people may finally go back to traditional cable bundles. You just need to jack the internet-only price high enough.
Good thing the US broadband market is so competitive, like Comcast/Verizon/AT&T keep telling us.
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Yeah, I've been hearing for a while that cable is practically free when you get broadband. Though I took it to be more of a numbers game – hide the fact that no one is watching under subscribers.
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Hey, competition, how about that?
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Originally Posted by The Final Dakar
I'm guessing it will be in the $150 -200 range.
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My lord
St. Paul man whose home burned down had trouble canceling cable service - TwinCities.com
But when Jessica Schmidt had called Comcast for her father, customer service representatives asked for Ware's account number, saying they needed that to cancel his cable.
"Gone in the fire," Schmidt told them. Ware got on the line and provided the last four digits of his Social Security number, which Comcast told him was still not enough.
"I've said to Comcast, 'Here's your choice, disconnect the service or send someone out to fix the cable, because it's not working,' " Schmidt said. "The (Comcast) guy said, 'That doesn't make sense, because the house burned down.' I said, 'Exactly, shut the service off.' "
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Clinically Insane
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I didn't used to have my Comcast account number. I figured I could login if I needed it.
Then my login failed.
Had them reset my password. Login still failed. Different computers, different browsers, different IPs, none of it mattered.
No one on the phone would give it to me, and no one would reactivate paper billing so I could get the number... unless I gave them the number.
They'd accept payments from me, though. Funny how that works.
Several months later they randomly emailed me the account number.
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Verizon trots out analyst to say unlimited data is bad for customers | Ars Technica
"Let’s face it, if everyone had unlimited data and used it fully, the performance of the networks would suffer because of bandwidth restrictions and the 'shared resource' nature of wireless," industry analyst Jack Gold, founder of J. Gold Associates, wrote in an article titled "The Lure of Unlimited Wireless Data—Is It Necessary?"
Where Gold really reveals how stupid he thinks we are, however, is when he explains why we shouldn’t even want Verizon to upgrade its network to handle this increased traffic.
“Invariably, degraded networks would cause the carriers to seek upgrades to their networks to increase capacity,” he writes. “Much like highways that need to be widened for peak rush-hour traffic, this would require major investments that someone would have to pay for—that someone being the subscribers.”
This is ridiculous. If subscribers were really that fearful of price increases then they should have been begging Verizon to never upgrade from 3G to 4G. After all, the upgrade to LTE was a major investment and according to Gold, major investments are something wireless users should be fearful of.
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https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneu...feelings.shtml
"The quality of connection is important to wireless users, and when connections become slow or disconnections occur due to overcrowding, users become disappointed. Let’s face it, if everyone had unlimited data and used it fully, the performance of the networks would suffer because of bandwidth restrictions and the “shared resource” nature of wireless. The bottom line is: users agree that degrading the networks is something that they don’t want to happen." - part of statement from Verizon
Seriously, what did Verizon, et al. do with the $300B they've received (and continue to receive) in tax breaks and grants, from the federal and state governments, to upgrade the nation's infrastructure? It's the largest fleecing this country has ever seen that nearly no one has ever heard about. It makes the S&L and Wall Street bailout scandals look like peanuts.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Do you believe in miracles?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/bu...ml?smid=tw-bna
Comcast is planning to abandon its $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable after the deal encountered intense regulatory scrutiny over whether it was anticompetitive and in the public interest, people briefed on the matter said on Thursday.
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Originally Posted by The Final Dakar
Great news!
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I mean, its completely logical, but that hasn't stopped stupid mergers before. That said after the AT&T/T-mobile shutdown I figured chances here might be as good as 50/50.
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I didn't think it was ever going to be allowed, not without some very severe concessions from Comcast, to the point where it would almost cripple them. They couldn't prove it would improve competition (durr) no matter how many times they claimed white was black and vice versa.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
I didn't think it was ever going to be allowed, not without some very severe concessions from Comcast, to the point where it would almost cripple them.
My counter-poit would be the government doesn't do a real good job of enforcing those regulatory burdens it places on mergers.
Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
They couldn't prove it would improve competition (durr) no matter how many times they claimed white was black and vice versa.
That hasn't stopped stuff like NBC/Comcast
Still, good news all around. Let's hope Comcast doesn't try the same thing with someone smaller.
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Too late, rumor is they're after Charter.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
Too late, rumor is they're after Charter.
My lord they are predictable
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If Verizon were into FiOS expansion, I'd cheer this upsell. Big improvement for the poor DSL users. As it is, the upsell alone is just lame.
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I can stream HD on my pittance of a DSL connection though. The upsell would be being able to surf the web without the stream degrading to a lower res.
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Looks like Verizon has a soft cap of 4+ TB per month for several months. After which they send the warning letter. The objective is to switch heavy residential users to the Business plans.
However, it's also false advertising. Verizon claims unlimited, and there was no TOS violation here. They threatened his internet solely for using excessive data on an unlimited plan.
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After he gets cut off he needs to sue them into oblivion. Juries hate ISPs.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Comcast brings fiber to city that it sued 7 years ago to stop fiber rollout | Ars Technica
In April 2008, Comcast sued the Chattanooga Electric Power Board (EPB) to prevent it from building a fiber network to serve residents who were getting slow speeds from the incumbent cable provider.
Comcast claimed that EPB illegally subsidized the buildout with ratepayer funds, but it quickly lost in court, and EPB built its fiber network and began offering Internet, TV, and phone service. After EPB launched in 2009, incumbents Comcast and AT&T finally started upgrading their services, EPB officials told Ars when we interviewed them in 2013.
Tennessee later passed a bill to make sure no more Chatanoogas could pop up.
"Comcast today announced it will offer residential multi-gigabit broadband service for up to 200,000 customers in Chattanooga beginning in June, and expects to expand availability locally over the next several months," Comcast said.
There's no word on Comcast pricing yet, but it could vary depending on the level of competition in each city. AT&T, for example, charges $70 a month for gigabit service in cities that have Google Fiber and as much as $40 more in cities that don't have Google.
Comcast has charged a whopping $399.95 a month for its existing 505Mbps service but says it will charge less for the 2Gbps plan, which it intends to roll out to 18 million homes nationwide by the end of this year.
EPB still faced another complication after fending off Comcast's lawsuit, in the form of a Tennessee state law that prevents it from expanding outside its electric service area, even though surrounding communities have requested Internet service. The law protects Internet providers from competition, but EPB petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to preempt that state law and won its case in February.
"EPB is an island of competitive high speed broadband service surrounded by areas for the most part with single or no provider of advanced broadband," FCC wireline competition official Gregory Kwan told commissioners before they voted to preempt the state law.
The fight isn't over, as Tennessee filed a lawsuit to overturn the FCC decision.
I'm sure Comcast will provide gigabit to those outlaying areas regardless of the lawsuit outcome.
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So that's all it took? A little FCC fire lit beneath them?
Also, I like the term "potential scolding from regulators."
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It's amazing what a little accountability does.
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Wheeler made a complete 180 and went from goat to hero, he's probably my favorite living politician right now.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Games Meister
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
Wheeler made a complete 180 and went from goat to hero, he's probably my favorite living politician right now.
I have a saying every time I see his name pop up in the news... "Mr. Wheeler, are you trying to seduce me?" He keeps talking the talk after everything that's happened.
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I still don't completely trust him.
Why the complete 180? It's never simple.
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Games Meister
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Originally Posted by Jawbone54
I still don't completely trust him.
Why the complete 180? It's never simple.
He was trying to forge a middle-ground, I think everyone shat on him for it, so he went nuclear (under cover of Obama?). It was more a 90º.
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Clinically Insane
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This feels like it belongs here...
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Broadband industry fears come true: FCC rules are costing them money | Ars Technica
Big Internet providers had been demanding payments from network operators such as Cogent and Level 3, which sell transit services to websites and other businesses that need to distribute Internet traffic to consumers. Cogent and Level 3 argue that they should continue exchanging traffic for free with Internet providers, while the Internet providers say Cogent and Level 3 should have to pay because they send more traffic than they receive. Cogent and Level 3 counter that they are merely sending traffic requested by the Internet providers' subscribers.
After threatening to lodge a complaint, Cogent struck a deal with Verizon and said it did not have to pay for interconnection. Level 3 signed new deals with Verizon and AT&T. All of these agreements will boost capacity at interconnection points, ending money disputes that degraded performance for websites that had to rely on congested ports.
The providers say they don't object to the core net neutrality rules preventing blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, but want to prevent the common carrier reclassification and other provisions in the FCC's Open Internet Order—including the right for companies like Cogent and Level 3 to lodge interconnection complaints.
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Aww, they don't want anyone complaining to them? Poor babies. Wait until the other shoe drops and more municipalities install their own networks, forcing them to compete. OMG!
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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AT&T CEO confident Title II will be overturned by courts or Congress | Ars Technica
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson last November claimed he would pause the company's fiber investments because of the impending broadband reclassification and imposition of net neutrality rules.
"We can't go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed," Stephenson said at the time.
AT&T is continuing with its investments as planned, he said. "Based on our reading of the Title II order that came out, we're operating and we're investing under the scenario that these rules will probably be changed," he said. "We don’t think this rulemaking is sustainable from a legal standpoint, but the courts will decide that. But irrespective, the Congress seems inclined to make a change here so we really think these rules will be modified to a format that will be conducive to investment in the long haul."
How convenient.
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WTF?! "Invest"? They've already been paid to do it, multiple times over!!! You lying, thieving, cheating mother****ers!!
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Originally Posted by Cap'n Tightpants
WTF?! "Invest"? They've already been paid to do it, multiple times over!!! You lying, thieving, cheating mother****ers!!
I wish this could be brought to the forefront in a well-researched way. Is there a way for citizens to sue them for not filling their obligations?
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Originally Posted by The Final Dakar
I wish this could be brought to the forefront in a well-researched way. Is there a way for citizens to sue them for not filling their obligations?
Likely not, but I'm not entirely sure. I do believe they can be made to pay all that money back, however, and that would be hilarious.
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"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
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Well that's never gonna happen.
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