The Senate passed the FISA bill today, which effectively puts an end to any chance of legal repercussions for telcos who helped the government spy on citizens. Senator Obama voted for it, Senator McCain didn't vote, and Senator Clinton, for what it's worth, voted against it.
Find out how your senator voted here. [
TechCrunch]
isps
Few consumers realize they can ditch their monopolistic service providers in favor of local, independent telecoms that often offer similar services at competitive rates. These smaller outfits depend on service, not size, as reader Sharpstick recently discovered:
In the Charleston SC area we are fortunate to have local a internet / phone / cable provider called Knology that has made customer service an art form.
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Wondering how undersea cables in Asia
recently interfered with AT&T's network? Wired ran an excruciatingly detailed piece in 1996 by the hacker tourist that explains how the worldwide network of undersea cables—tubes, if you will—connects us to our friends halfway around the world. [
Wired]
internet
You know telecoms are behaving badly when a business columnist who just a year ago argued for a hands-off government approach has reversed his opinion. "
I've changed my mind," he writes. "The behavior of the top telecommunications companies, especially Verizon Communications and AT&T, has convinced me that more government involvement is needed to keep communications free of corporate interference."
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Microsoft has said it will not participate in the upcoming wireless spectrum auction, because it wouldn't help their business model, which is to create and sell software to handset makers. [
Reuters]
broadband
Congress has added its voice to the
growing number of critics who have noted that the FCC is misreporting broadband penetration in the U.S. According to eWeek, last Wednesday a House subcommittee
"approved legislation to change the Federal Communications Commission's methodology for determining deployment." The FCC currently counts a single home in a zip code as representative of the full zip code—so one home having broadband access is considered the same as every home in that area having broadband access. By doing this, they inflate the number of homes with broadband access and present a picture of increased "natural" competition in the market, which is then used by telecoms and lobbyists to argue against policy decisions that don't favor existing corporations.
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FCC has rejected Verizon's requested changes of the new open-platform wireless auction, set for January 2008. Google has pledged to buy some of the available wireless bandwidth in order to launch an open-source Google phone to compete with the carriers. [
Reuters]
customer rebellion
A class-action lawsuit was filed on October 5th against the unholy duo of Apple and AT&T, charging that
they intentionally broke unlocked headsets via the last firmware update, and conspired illegally to monopolize parts of the mobile phone market by preventing consumers from using any services other than those provided by the two companies. The suit charges the two companies, either jointly or separately, with six formal counts, including "alleged violations of the California Business and Profession's Code, The Cartwright Act, The Sherman Act, The Federal Trade Commission Act, The Communications Act of 1934, and The Telecommunications Act of 1996, as well as rules and policies established by the FCC."
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Canadian telecommunications giant Bell Canada is pulling down over 50 ads placed around parts of Toronto and Vancouver, because they show a woman wearing a button that reads "Belsen was a gas," the title of a Sex Pistols song and a reference to the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. The button is one of many the model wears, and the company says it was impossible to read during approval and proofing, and only became legible when blown up to billboard-size proportions. [
Reuters and
Free Republic]
news from the swamp
Senators
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) recently announced plans to introduce our
wet dream of a cellphone bill. The bill realizes our wildest legislative fantasies: a world where cellphone companies stop inventing official-sounding fees and levying harsh ETFs, and instead allow their customers to take unlocked phones to the company with the best reception according to precise coverage maps provided free of charge.
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net neutrality
Last weekend, AT&T delivered a live stream of Lollapalooza performances on its Blue Room website. Unfortunately, during
Pearl Jam's set,
they muted some politically charged lyrics. Pearl Jam is outraged, and AT&T is backtracking and blaming the company they hired to provide the feed:
"[The muting was] a major mistake by a webcast vendor and completely contrary to our policy. We are working closely with the vendor and the band to post the song in its entirety on this site and ensure that this does not happen again."
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telecommunications
According to a
new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in a ranking of broadband penetration among 30 member nations, the US has slipped from 4th place (2001), to 12th place (2006), to 15th place this year. Corporations, lobbyists and politicians have skewered the report, but this
follow-up piece from Free Press provides a point-by-point rebuttal and confirms that yes, by pretty much every account, the United States enjoys craptastic Internet access.
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verizon
Jeffrey Zeldman used his electrically charged noodle to figure out an excellent way to report a problem line to Verizon, a company that otherwise plugs its fingers in its ears and screams at the top of its lungs to make convolutedly impossible the process of reporting a line fault to them.
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at&t
Thanks to hetereoerotic
Valleywag soulmate Nick for pointing out this ridiculous ad, in which AT&T proudly proclaims that they will compensate your business
fifty whole dollars if an internal flub on their part results in thousands or millions of dollars worth of lost revenue for your business.
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at&t
As you all know, AT&T is currently fighting a class action lawsuit leveled against it by the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, claiming that AT&T has been working with the Bush Administration to secretly spy on millions of Americans without warrants.
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tax
After Andrew S. Fischer discovered that a whopping
40% of his company's telephone bill was comprised of various taxes and service charges, he decided to suss out one of the most egregious contributors: the mysterious
Federal Universal Service Fund.
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Consumerist
