Comcast, like someone on house arrest who can’t stop talking about how much he loves just staying at home, can’t shut up about its alleged “support” of net neutrality — a support that was forced upon it as a condition of its 2010 acquisition of NBC. Now the nation’s largest Internet service provider is publicly stating that it “agrees” with President Obama’s feelings on neutrality, just not the ones that actually matter. [More]
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Calling BS On ISPs’ Claims That Reclassifying Broadband Will Hurt Investment
By 11.11.14
Yesterday, President Obama came out in favor of reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications infrastructure, meaning that the FCC could regulate it in the same ways it regulates landline telephone service. Immediately, cable companies began shouting that such regulation would cripple investment in broadband. Alas, this is just pure nonsense intended to instill fear and raise the hackles of those who bristle at any form of government regulation. [More]
ISPs to FCC: No, Seriously, We Will Sue If You Use Title II Like The White House Just Asked
By 11.10.14
Earlier today, the battle over new net neutrality regulations took a surprising shift as the White House very publicly recommended the FCC take the Title II reclassification approach. And while consumer advocates are thrilled, the businesses that make their money charging you for internet access are about as pleased as you’d expect. Which is to say: even if the FCC somehow jumped on Title II tomorrow, there’s a long, ugly legal fight brewing. [More]
Comcast Says It Will Credit Bills Of Customers Affected By Outage
By 11.6.14
Twenty-four hours after Comcast’s X1 platform went down for the second time in three days, the company says that it will try to make it up to customers with credits to their cable bills. [More]
Comcast Apologizes For Week’s Second Large-Scale Outage
By 11.6.14
In the wake of its second high-profile TV service outage this week, Comcast is apologizing to affected customers, many of whom had to find out through social media that there was a widespread problem because they couldn’t get through to Kabletown over the phone or online. [More]
Comcast Hit With Second Pay-TV Outage In Three Days
By 11.5.14
Two days after Comcast experienced a widespread outage of its pay-TV service, the nation’s largest cable company has acknowledged that it is once again looking into complaints of no TV service for customers all over America. [More]
NYC Mayor Raises Concerns About Comcast/TWC Merger
By 11.4.14
While 52 other mayors from around the country were recently reminded that Comcast is an important contributor to election campaigns, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City has been busy warning the FCC that the pending merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable is fraught with potential problems. [More]
NY Pols Want Free Broadband For Public Housing, WiFi For Parks If Comcast Deal Approved
By 10.31.14
Usually by this point in the review process of a mega-merger like the one pending between Comcast and Time Warner Cable, there are discussions about things the parties are willing to do or give up in order to make the deal more palatable to critics. But because Comcast and TWC proactively offered to spin off some 3 million customers, and because Comcast already made a bunch of promises and concessions when it acquired NBC back in 2010, there hasn’t been much chatter. But some folks in New York are making known their demands for signing off on the deal. [More]
Study Finds Internet Congestion Really Is About Business, Not Technology
By 10.30.14
Various enormous corporations have this year been at each other’s throats over how well or how poorly internet traffic travels through their systems. A new report indicates that some of the mud-slinging this year is true: interconnection, or peering, between ISPs is why end-users are getting terrible internet traffic. But, they say, it’s business, and not technology, that’s making your Netflix buffer. [More]
Yet Another City Moves To Block Comcast From Taking Over Their TWC Service
By 10.30.14
Comcast’s plans to buy Time Warner Cable are obviously heavily under review at the federal level, and states are reviewing the merger plans with a gimlet eye as well. But thanks to the quirks of the way cable agreements developed, the cities that cable companies serve have the power to allow or block new companies from coming in and taking over. And a city in Kentucky this week became the latest potentially to throw a wrench in the grand Comcast/Time Warner Cable/Charter plan by doing just that. [More]
Comcast Does Something Not-Awful, Teams Up With UPS Store For Easier Equipment Returns
By 10.30.14
From stories of waiting hours in line at a local cable office just to hand back your old cable box to tales of being billed hundreds of dollars for equipment that get “lost” in shipping even though you have tracking info showing they were sent back, one of the most frequent complaints we hear about cable companies is that it’s a huge pain in the derriere to return equipment. Comcast, in its bid to do things that aren’t always horrible and anti-consumer, announced today that its customers can now go the UPS store to return their Comcast stuff. [More]
Comcast Will Pay $50M To End 11-Year-Old Class Action That Sought $875M
By 10.29.14
Nearly 11 years after it was first filed — and after a trip that saw it go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — a class action claim brought against Comcast by cable customers here in the Philadelphia area may finally be coming to an end, and for only a small fraction of what the plaintiffs had once hoped to collect. [More]
Comcast Trademarks “True Gig” Name For High-Speed Service It May Someday Launch
By 10.28.14
It’s not surprising that a company that thought “Xfinity” sounded like a good name for a broadband Internet service and not a strip club with a cheeseball neon sign has come up with an eye-roll-worthy name for the ultra-high speed broadband tier it has yet to reveal. [More]
NBCUniversal Set To Pay $6.4M In Settlement With Unpaid Interns
By 10.24.14
Unpaid internships in the entertainment industry often offer Hollywood hopefuls a glimpse behind the curtain and a foot in the door. But the hours are long and the compensation is nonexistent. Those qualities apparently didn’t sit well with a group of former NBCUniversal interns and now the company is prepared to settle their class action lawsuit for $6.4 million. [More]
Antitrust Experts To FCC: Comcast/TWC Merger Is A Terrible Idea
By 10.24.14
A group of antitrust experts spanning the country, from Harvard to Stanford and plenty of places in between, has asked the FCC to block the Comcast and Time Warner Cable union. In a letter, the experts urge the FCC to act to to “protect competition and consumers” by preventing the merger before it happens. [More]
FCC Pauses Review Of Both Media Mega-Mergers Because Content Companies Won’t Share Confidential Info
By 10.22.14
The slowly-turning wheel of the approvals process for two big media mergers has temporarily ground to a halt, as the FCC today announced delays in their reviews of both AT&T’s planned acquisition of DirecTV and also the Comcast/Time Warner Cable union. The delays in both proceedings stem from the same core issue: media content companies who don’t want their rivals to learn their secrets. [More]
Justice Dept. Digging Deep “In The Weeds” Of Broadband Issues In Comcast/TWC Merger
By 10.20.14
Comcast and Time Warner Cable have been making the case for their merger nearly all year. The two companies talk up their TV programming sides a lot, but most watchers know that the merger — and the future — are really all about broadband, and that market is what Comcast is poised to control on a national scale. That potential dominance has worried not only businesses and consumer advocates, but also has apparently attracted the attention of the Justice Department as well. [More]
