Comcast and Time Warner Cable are cable companies: they run their wires to little boxes in our living rooms so we can watch Mad Men and Game of Thrones. But even though roughly 100 million Americans subscribe to pay TV, that’s not what the merger between the two companies is about. The future of entertainment is online, and that access is what’s really at stake in the proposed merger deal. [More]
broadband
White House Wants FCC To Support Net Neutrality, Won’t Order It To Reclassify Broadband ISPs
By 2.18.14
The White House today issued a response to a petition asking the Obama administration to intervene with the FCC to preserve net neutrality. Although the response “reaffirms” and “strongly supports” the administration’s commitment to net neutrality, that support does not extend to telling the FCC what to do. [More]
Data Caps Are The Devil For Residents Of Rural Alaskan Towns; Are They In Our Future?
By 2.14.14
What if you weren’t able to binge watch House of Cards on Netflix earlier this week? It would be agony, right? For residents in some rural areas of Alaska the ability to binge watch their favorite shows, or enjoy that viral video online, quickly drain their pocketbooks thanks to data caps. [More]
Two Big Reasons The Comcast And Time Warner Cable Deal Is Bad For Consumers
By 2.14.14
Yesterday, Comcast and Time Warner Cable announced a $45 billion merger deal. Consumer advocacy groups (and consumers) were less than thrilled about Comcast’s big news, and ardently called on the FCC and the Justice Department to alter or prevent the buyout. [More]
Netflix Streaming Speeds Getting Worse For Comcast and Verizon FiOS Customers
By 2.11.14
Do you have broadband internet? Do you like to watch streaming movies and TV on Netflix? If so, great news: your connection to Netflix is getting faster! Unless, of course, you happen to be one of the tens of millions of Americans who use Comcast or Verizon FiOS for internet access at home, in which case it’s completely the opposite. [More]
Kansas Cable Lobbyists Deny Hatred Of Google Fiber, Will “Tweak” Restrictive Bill Language
By 2.3.14
Cable lobbyists seem to be buckling under the pressure of consumer unrest in Kansas. Last week, the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association announced a protectionist bill that would all but squash some city’s hopes of getting improved broadband service. [More]
Kansas Legislature Wants To Stop Any Other Kansas Cities From Getting Google Fiber
By 1.30.14
The Kansas state legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit municipalities in that state from building out their own municipal broadband networks. Completely coincidentally of course we’re sure, Kansas City is home to the country’s first Google Fiber municipal network. [More]
U.S. Consumers Paying More, Getting Less For Internet Than Europe & Asia
By 10.28.13
While numerous telecoms in Europe and Asia are acknowledging that it’s becoming cheaper and easier to provide TV and high-speed Internet service to consumers, many U.S. providers are continuing to charge high prices for a mediocre product, according to a new report from the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. [More]
Comcast VP Says U.S. Isn’t Falling Behind Rest Of World In Broadband, Probably Can’t Read Graphs
By 3.22.13
Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable talk about delivering “blazing fast speeds” via their broadband services, but critics have long held that the U.S. is falling behind other developed nations in providing high-speed Internet access to consumers. A Comcast VP says this is all a misunderstanding, because she apparently doesn’t know how to read. [More]
Comcast Offers Broadband So Fast, The Promotional Price Ends 6 Months Early
By 3.19.13
Where are six months and twelve months basically the same thing? At Comcast, of course. The cable company/ISP/overlords of all media want to show us all that they have a poor grasp on math. We can laugh it up all we want, but the joke’s really on reader Bubbicito. It doesn’t matter how confusing he finds the deals in Kabletown, because he doesn’t have any other choices for high-speed broadband. He can still vent at Consumerist, though. [More]
Bill That Would Have Banned Public Broadband In Georgia Has Failed
By 3.8.13
Remember that legislation in Georgia that would have forbidden municipalities from building public broadband networks if just a single person in a census block already had access to a so-so DSL connection? The lawmakers have voted — and said thank but no thanks. [More]
Georgia Law Would Ban Public Broadband Service If Just One Person Has So-So Internet Access
By 2.14.13
A number of municipalities around the country, especially in rural areas, are considering public broadband networks as a way to spur development and enterprise. Yet legislators keep drafting laws intended to keep some citizens in the stone age — at least until the telecoms get around to building private networks. [More]
Time Warner Boosts My Speed, Cuts My Bill: I Just Happen To Live Near Google Fiber
By 1.30.13
Rob is a Time Warner Cable customer, and he’s received two really interesting things from them lately. First, a 50% speed boost: they claim to have upgraded the speed of his home Internet connection. That’s neat. Oh, and they’ve also cut his bill, from $45 to $30. Wow! What has prompted this amazing treatment? Years of loyalty and on-time payments? No, not exactly…Rob lives in Kansas City, pilot site for Google Fiber, the gigabit broadband project that’s threatening to make current broadband providers almost care about competing. [More]
Cable Industry Admits That Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Congestion
By 1.18.13
A month after one study called shenanigans on the cable industry’s repeated assertion that data caps and usage-based pricing are intended to relieve congestion, the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association has admitted as much. [More]
See All The Pink On This Map? Those Are The 19 Million Americans Without Broadband Access
By 8.21.12
The Federal Communications Commission (or as we insiders like to call it, the FCC) has released its annual report on the state of broadband deployment in these here United States and while there is improvement in getting to the point where all Americans at least have the ability to access broadband Internet, you can see there is still quite a bit of pink on that map. [More]
Are Phone Companies Becoming The Dinosaurs Of The Broadband World?
By 8.14.12
Back in the dark days when we were all wandering lost and disconsolate on the the Earth, you know, right before the dawn of the Internet, it made perfect sense to link up computers through the phone lines, and hence, pay the phone companies for service (followed by what felt like hours listening to the phone dialing up a connection). But times have changed, as they always do, and it seems phone companies as high-speed Internet providers are on the way out. [More]
FCC Broadband Study Shows Which Companies Actually Come Close To Meeting Advertised Download Speeds
By 8.2.11
Today, at — of all places — a Best Buy in Washington, DC, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the results of the agency’s Measuring Broadband America study, which looked to put a more accurate number on what consumers should be expecting from their broadband providers. [More]
Verizon Monopoly Means No Home Broadband For Me
By 3.30.11
If you ever wonder why Internet service provider monopolies are a bad thing, just ask reader Icanhas. For some mysterious and intriguing reason involving pineapples, he can’t have cable. So his only option for broadband Internet is Verizon DSL, which isn’t accepting new customers in his area. Why? Well, they’re putting all of their resources toward FiOS. When will FiOS be available in Icanhas’s area? Not anytime soon. [More]
