While the folks at AT&T and DirecTV try to claim that their proposed merger is different from the pending marriage of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, both deals have one bit of double-talk in common, with the companies all saying their respective deals will help them be more efficient and save money while no one is willing to commit to passing those savings on to customers. [More]
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After Fire, Comcast Probaby Won’t Make Low-Income Seniors Pay For Burned Cable Boxes
By 6.23.14
The good news was that no one was killed or injured when a fire destroyed an apartment building for low-income senior citizens in Battle Creek, Michigan last week. The bad news is that the seniors’ cable provider, Comcast, can’t rule out that they’re going to charge the residents for the Kabletown-owned cable boxes that were destroyed in the fire. [More]
Here’s Why You Should Think Twice About Using AT&T Or Comcast WiFi Hotspots
By 6.23.14
If you’re a customer of AT&T or Comcast, you’re probably very aware of these two companies’ efforts to create massive networks of free WiFi for their subscribers to use when away from home. But a new report shows just how easy it is for an unseemly character to fake one of these hotspots and steal your information. [More]
New York State Wants To Hear From You About Comcast-Time Warner Merger
By 6.19.14
When I arrived for yesterday’s State of New York Public Service Commission hearing in Albany on the Comcast-Time Warner merger, there were about twenty people sitting along the aisles in a theatre that holds 500. While most Americans are against the merger, not many feel strongly enough to scale the vast poured-concrete fortress of the state university campus to speak out about it. That’s okay, though. Anyone can still make their opinion known to the PSC. [More]
Survey: Over Half The Country Thinks The Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Is A Terrible Idea
By 6.19.14
We here at Consumerist are skeptical at best about Comcast’s bid to merge with Time Warner Cable. From where we sit, the deal looks distinctly anticompetitive and likely to harm consumers. Plenty of other folks agree, but not just lawmakers and advocacy organizations. It turns out, over half the country thinks this is a bad idea. [More]
ISPs Are Mostly Delivering The Speeds They Advertise, Just Not Consistently
By 6.18.14
What does it mean when a cable company advertises “blazing fast Internet” or download speeds “up to 15 Mbps”? Does that mean all the time for everyone, or just an average? And how far from those “up to” speeds can an Internet service provider be before they have some explaining to do? [More]
Comcast One Step Closer To Slapping Its Logo On Top Of 30 Rock
By 6.13.14
Comcast may have its global HQ inside the world’s tallest thumb drive here in Philadelphia — and it’s even building a huge middle finger right next door to reaffirm that Philly is Kabletown USA — but the real real-estate cherry in its portfolio has yet to be adorned with the Comcast logo: 30 Rockefeller Plaza in NYC. [More]
Snooping Sites, Aimless Ads, Sexist Stereotypes: A Look Back At The Week In Tech News
By 6.13.14
It’s a big, busy world, and even with a smartphone in your pocket at all times it’s hard to read everything written about it in a week. Sometimes, useful info slips through the cracks. So, here are five interesting stories from the world of internet and technology news. [More]
FCC To Look Into Data Bottlenecks And Pay-For-Access Deals With ISPs
By 6.13.14
The whole point of net neutrality is that Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon shouldn’t be allowed to actively prioritize or degrade the data they help to deliver; it should all be treated equally. But as we’ve seen with Netflix speeds over the last year, ISPs can passively allow downstream data to bottleneck, effectively telling the largest content providers that they have to pay for more direct access. After omitting this latter issue in his controversial net neutrality proposal, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler announced today that it’s time for his commission to consider it. [More]
AT&T/DirecTV File Merger Docs With FCC, Argue They Need To Merge To Compete Against Comcast
By 6.12.14
The busy summer telecom merger season continues apace. Late yesterday, AT&T filed its paperwork with the FCC, officially kicking off the regulatory process that the company needs to get through in order to buy DirecTV and allow the two to live happily ever after. [More]
Comcast To Finally Refund Woman For 13 Years Of Service She Paid For But Never Received
By 6.10.14
An 88-year-old woman in Florida is on a fixed income, but enjoys watching telenovelas, so she dutifully paid her $29 Comcast cable bill every month. There was one small problem with that, though: Comcast wasn’t providing her with any cable service. The condominium building where she lives provides cable to all residents, through a different company that is not Comcast. [More]
Netflix Speeds On Verizon Do Not Improve Even After Agreeing To Pay Up
By 6.9.14
When Netflix agreed to pay Comcast earlier this year for better access to the Comcast network, the streaming video service’s downstream speeds bounced back almost instantaneously and are now faster than they were a year ago. Netflix and Verizon announced a similar deal in late April, but the latest data shows no signs of improvement just yet. [More]
Netflix Tests Passive-Aggressive Buffering Messages To Call Out Slow ISPs
By 6.4.14
When your streaming video of Charles In Charge comes in pixelated and is regularly interrupted by pauses for buffering, is it the streaming service or your ISP? New messages being tested by Netflix attempt to point the finger straight at the other guy. [More]
Comcast Collects Alarm System Payments For 7 Years, Doesn’t Notice It’s Offline
By 6.2.14
When you pay $30 per month for a security system, you sort of expect to get a working security system. At least, most people would. Not in Comcastlandia, the strange world ruled by the corporate policies of Comcast. A Houston family started alarm service in 2007, and then learned from experience that their alarm system wasn’t working. And hadn’t in the entire seven years that they had been paying for service. [More]
John Oliver Suggests Renaming “Net Neutrality” To “Cable Company F*ckery”
By 6.2.14
In spite of the fact that the current debate over net neutrality is one of the most important issues facing America right now, it’s not easy to get people to give a damn about the topic because it involves incredibly dull, complicated regulatory minutiae. Perhaps this calls for a rebranding. [More]
Netflix CEO Says Comcast Is Coming For “The Whole Internet”
By 5.29.14
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings delivered some pointed thoughts about Comcast’s play for national broadband dominance and the world of net neutrality while speaking at a conference in California this morning. [More]
Comcast Commercial Claims Their Fast In-Home WiFi Can Make Your Offline Game Work Better
By 5.28.14
Comcast’s been irking a large segment of the internet again this week. This time, though, it doesn’t have anything to do with their pro-merger mania, their stance on net neutrality, or the problems with their actual service. The latest kerfuffle is all about a thirty-second commercial — one that doesn’t even seem to get the basics of its own technology right. [More]
Federal Appeals Court Tells Porn Copyright Trolls To Just Stop It Already
By 5.28.14
While you may — and probably do — hate your cable and Internet provider, a number of these companies have been doing one thing right over the last few years, by refusing to hand over user information to copyright troll lawyers looking to extort money out of people for allegedly sharing porn over the Internet. Yesterday, a federal appeals court handed down a ruling that could send a number of these trolls back under the bridges whence they came. [More]
