a series of tubes

You Want Broadband At Home? Fine, British Telecom Wants $70,000

You Want Broadband At Home? Fine, British Telecom Wants $70,000

The Walker family, who live in a 150-person village in England, would like to upgrade their dialup Internet connection to broadband. Unfortunately, in order to do that, British Telecom insists that they would need to install higher capacity equipment for the entire village, and send the Walkers the £45,000 ($69,788) bill.

It probably goes without saying that BT has a monopoly.

ISPs Trying To Scare You Into Buying More Internets

ISPs Trying To Scare You Into Buying More Internets

How much bandwidth does the average consumer need? Well, according to the totally unbiased folks at America’s major Internet service providers, more than they’re probably using now. According to Time Warner, Grandma needs Roadrunner with PowerBoost in order for you to send her photos. And AT&T thinks you need at least 3 mpbs to use Facebook. What? [More]

Comcast Settles BitTorrent Throttling Lawsuit

Comcast Settles BitTorrent Throttling Lawsuit

Comcast has settled a $16 million class-action lawsuit accusing the Internet provider of preventing customers from sharing files via BitTorrent. The suit alleges that Comcast sold users “unlimited” internet access that was, in fact, quite limited. Comcast still admits no wrongdoing, and affected customers will receive up to $16 each as part of the settlement. Ka-ching! [More]

ISPs Threaten Metered Broadband As Net Neutrality Looms

ISPs Threaten Metered Broadband As Net Neutrality Looms

Remember when you called up your ISP and, after an unholy modem screech, were billed for every minute you spent online? (Actually, it occurs to me that many Consumerist readers probably don’t remember this.) If ISPs’ current efforts pay off, we may all soon be paying for every little byte of Internet that we use.

FCC To Propose Net Neutrality Rules Tomorrow

FCC To Propose Net Neutrality Rules Tomorrow

The government is finally cracking down on Net neutrality? Yes, it’s time! Tomorrow, the FCC plans to propose new rules for Internet service providers to prevent them from blocking certain types of traffic.