Most of the country doesn’t have much competition for broadband services. But in some of New York City’s boroughs, particularly Brooklyn and the Bronx, Cablevision and Verizon FiOS fight head to head for residential customers. The battle between the two is often ugly, and with a new lawsuit filed yesterday, it just got uglier. [More]
competition
Cablevision Sues Verizon Over FiOS Ads, Claims Verizon’s Touted All-Fiber Network Actually Isn’t
By 5.20.15
Report: DOJ Has An Eye On Apple As It Makes Moves To Push Free Streaming Music Rivals Out Of The Way
By 5.4.15
Let’s be honest: It would be ideal for a business if it could somehow snap up every customer looking for a certain service. But because we (thankfully) live in a world filled with choices, companies instead must compete with rivals to get our hard-earned dollars. A new report says Apple is preparing to debut its new streaming music service by trying to put the squeeze on competitors like Spotify that offer content for free. [More]
Comcast Decides Competing Against Municipal Fiber Is Just Fine, Brings 2 Gbps Service to Chattanooga
By 4.30.15
While most of us languish away without even a flicker on the horizon of someday getting gigabit speeds or real broadband competition, residents in a handful of cities are lucky enough to have both. This summer, Chattanoogans will join the shortlist of Americans who not only have blazing fast internet, but also a choice of providers. [More]
FCC Proposes Treating Online TV Like Cable TV; Amazon Objects If It’ll Stop You From Binge-Watching ‘The Wire’
By 4.6.15
There’s another internet-related firestorm a-brewing at the FCC. This one is not as broad or as contentious as the now infamous net neutrality ruling, but it is bringing all the big players out to have their say. And what, you might ask, has everyone worked up? It’s the big bandwidth bugaboo of the twenty-teens: online video. [More]
Judge Dismisses Stalking And Harassment Charges Against Ice Cream Truck’s Rival
By 4.3.15
An icy, delicious turf war has finally come to an end, almost two years after one mobile ice cream vendor accused another frozen treats truck driver of bullying him and trying to run him out of town. A judge in upstate New York dismissed stalking and harassing charges against the snow cone truck brought by an ice cream rival back in 2013. [More]
In Atlanta? You Can Soon Sign Up For Internet Twice As Fast As Google Fiber. The Downside: It’s From Comcast
By 4.2.15
Atlanta residents are now well-poised to join inhabitants of metro Raleigh and Kansas City as citizens of one of the nation’s few crucibles of fiber competition. Comcast is setting its sights squarely on Google Fiber today with the announcement of a new fiber to the home offering at twice Google’s speed, and Atlanta is the lucky city getting first dibs. [More]
Apple Continues To Surprise No One, Officially Removes Rival Fitness Trackers From Stores
By 3.12.15
In a signal that the Apple Watch’s arrival is nigh, Apple’s retail stores across the country are apparently ditching other fitness and health wearables. [More]
AT&T Chasing Google, Offering $70 Fiber Broadband To Kansas City Residents
By 2.17.15
A handful of Americans are getting one step closer to actual 21st century, competitive broadband this week, as AT&T has announced that effective immediately, it’s competing to bring fast fiber internet to the greater Kansas City area, where Google Fiber has been dominating all the attention for the last few years. [More]
2014: By The Numbers
By 12.31.14
2014 was a record-setting year in an enormous variety of ways, both good and bad. As we wrap up and head into 2015, here’s a look at what happened, and what we learned, in the 2014 that was. [More]
Comcast Keeps Claiming Competition Abounds, Despite Mountains Of Evidence From Planet Reality
By 9.23.14
In August, as part of the merger oversight process, the FCC asked Comcast and Time Warner Cable for more information about their operations and their plans. In answer, Comcast has submitted 735 pages of documentation. That’s a lot of information, but Comcast’s responses have one key theme: the Comcast/TWC merger will not harm competition, because broadband competition is plentiful… no matter what the rest of us, including the FCC, seem to think. [More]
AT&T: Municipal Broadband Should Be Banned Anywhere Private Companies Might Want To Do Business Later
By 9.3.14
It’s no secret that AT&T and other big ISPs are no fans of municipal broadband projects. There are laws on the books in many states that block the expansion of municipal networks, but the FCC is considering using its authority to override those laws and let communities build networks if they wish. AT&T is also no fan of this proposal. In fact, says AT&T, not only should public networks be barred anywhere there is already a private option, but also they should be barred in any place there might possibly be a plan to build a private option in the future. [More]
Coffee Companies May Have Already Cracked DRM On Keurig 2.0
By 8.29.14
When we say that someone has cracked the DRM on something, usually it means a pirated song, game, book, or movie is about to make its way through the less-than-legal back channels of the internet. But this time, one company is announcing that they’ve cracked the DRM on another company’s coffee tech. [More]
How ISPs “Compete” With Municipal Networks: Lobbying and Campaign Donations That Block Them
By 8.28.14
Say you’re mayor of a small city. Your city is small enough and far enough away from other cities that the big cable companies don’t want to spend what it would cost to run wires through your town, because the amount they will make in return isn’t worth it. That’s reasonable, from a business perspective. So you and the residents of your city get together and come up with a plan to make a public broadband utility instead. Makes sense, right? You’d happily pay someone else to do it for you, but since they don’t want to take your money you’ll do it yourself. Only — surprise! In come those self-same cable companies to block you from doing that, too, and they get your state’s legislature and governor to pass a law against you for good measure, so you can never try again. [More]
Lawmakers Wade Into Fight Over FCC Chair’s Potential Plan To Overturn Bans On Municipal Broadband
By 8.20.14
Not very much happens in Washington, D.C. in August. But even as the city slows down, FCC chair Tom Wheeler continues to make strong noises about using the FCC’s authority to preempt state laws that prohibit the expansion or creation of municipal broadband utilities. And now, some members of Congress are joining him. [More]
Comcast Says that Mobile Data is Competitive, but it Costs $2k to Stream ‘Breaking Bad’ Over LTE
By 8.18.14
Comcast keeps on claiming that mobile broadband is real competition for wired home broadband. But for most users, it’s just plain not. Not only is the speed and reliability of mobile broadband still hugely variable depending on location and time of day, but also mobile data is still clearly not competitive on price. [More]
Barnes & Noble, Google Partner To Take On Amazon With Same-Day Book Shipping
By 8.7.14
The spirit of competition has a tendency to create odd bedfellows. Or so seems to be the case for Barnes & Noble and Google, whose partnership to offer same-day shipping could prove to be a formidable rival to Amazon. [More]
Time Warner Cable Keeps Charging Customers More For Internet Because They Can
By 8.1.14
Time Warner Cable customers have been seeing their bills climbing at a pretty steady clip over the past few years. For all that TWC might complain about needing more negotiating power with content companies, though, the cable half of the equation isn’t the problem. Instead, all that nickel-and-diming comes right from the cord most consumers won’t be able to cut: broadband access. [More]
FCC: Basic Cable Prices Increased At Four Times Rate Of Inflation
By 5.19.14
If you just had a hunch that your basic cable pricing was going up more rapidly than the other things you pay for, you’re probably not mistaken. A new FCC report on the cost of pay-TV services says that during 2012 the cost of a basic cable TV package increased at more than four times the rate of inflation in the U.S. [More]
