The FCC has begun their sales pitch for the nation’s first national broadband plan ahead of its formal unveiling next week. As we’ve been discussing, we haven’t been too impressed by the plan’s failure to tackle competition , or its tendency to make proclamations that sound good but are rather empty upon closer inspection . The FCC is back today making headlines about how the agency hopes to help the estimated 100 million... 

According to a new 46 page Illinois study by a state Judge, Verizon’s proposed sale of their networks in Illinois would harm consumers. The $8.5 billion deal immediately infuses Frontier, which has 2.3 million customers, with 4.8 million new residential and small-business phone lines and 1 million broadband connections. Such a huge influx of new customers will restrict Frontier’s ability to offer low-price, quality service —... 

Fresh off a suite of price hikes last fall that included an increase in the cable modem rental fee from $3 to $5 a month, Comcast is notifying customers they’re raising prices again starting April 1. Many Comcast users are being sent these letters informing them that there’s several new rate hikes for broadband and TV services starting April 1, including a hike in the cost of several of Comcast’s lower-priced broadband tiers... 

Making the most of 4G networks fiercewireless.com Rogers Boosts Internet Speeds for Select Markets cable360.net Verizon LTE Blazing Trails for Wireless Broadband pcworld.com Consumers In The Dark Over Their Broadband Speeds npr.org Verizon LTE test speed: 50 Mbps max fiercewireless.com Don’t Blame Your Community: Ad Blocking Is Not Killing Any Sites techdirt.com Four Companies Join for Blu-ray Patent Licensing cable360.net Touchsreen Sales... 

For years we’ve explored the difficulties of cancelling telecom services for the deceased. We’ve seen AOL go so far as to tell relatives that the deceased individual needs to call up and cancel themselves , though more commonly it’s just a pain to cancel the deceased person’s account unless you have the proper paperwork (sometimes the death certificate, sometimes it’s a copy of the account holder’s bills or... 

The weekend’s here, and we’re heading back into hibernation mode. Chat amongst yourselves in the comment section below. read comment(s)  Read More →

T-Mobile is getting ready to revamp their wireless broadband coverage map starting on March 14, according to internal information obtained by TmoNews . As we noted in January , T-Mobile is slowly upgrading their HSPA network, so in many markets it will offer downstream speeds of 7.2 Mbps. They’ve also promised to upgrade the network by year’s end to HSPA+, which theoretically offers maximum downstream speeds of 21 Mbps (though you’ll... 

Verizon really hasn’t announced anything new in terms of their plans to deploy LTE wireless broadband service for a while, though for whatever reason this week there’s a flood of stories focusing on Verizon LTE. We’re not seeing much new info in these stories, which all repeat Verizon’s plans to launch 5-12 Mbps (probably closer to 3-8 Mbps) service in 25-30 markets before the end of this year. There’s still no... 

According to the Chicago Tribune , an AT&T technician installing phone service tripped and fell on the customers premises, breaking his leg. Now normally, a carrier technician should be fully insured and bonded, but in this instance AT&T — for whatever reason — decided to try to make the customer pay the bill — and sent them a letter informing them they owed $2,761.07. The homeowner says the walks were clear, and... 

Cable overbuilder RCN has had a long road since being founded in 1993, which included (if you lived in NYC at the time and remember) posters and subway ads promising a “revolution” in telecommunications. What they delivered was a fairly decent service judging from our user reviews , though the company stumbled in and out of bankruptcy in 2004, and has struggled in a sector ruled by bigger outfits. Today the company issued a statement... 

Updated, reworded, clarified houses vs homes in two instances : As we noted yesterday , the FCC has started their sales pitch for the national broadband plan, which is scheduled to be unveiled in twelve days . Given the plan doesn’t appear to do much about competition for fear of upsetting the nation’s biggest carriers, the sales pitch so far has consisted of focusing on more murky concepts like ” digital literacy ,…  Read More →

Fresh off their wireless ad dispute over Verizon’s 3G coverage maps , AT&T’s now taking aim at advertisements by Time Warner Cable. According to a complaint with the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau, AT&T isn’t happy about a new Time Warner Cable ad campaign running in several of their markets, which suggests that the AT&T network (and AT&T’s VDSL-based U-Verse service) isn’t... 

A company by the name of ID Insight has released their list of the nation’s fastest broadband counties. At the top of the list sits Nassau County, NY, where users see a median download speed of 15 megabits per second and a median upload speed of 4.4 megabits per second. ID Insight says they’re using a system called Broadband Scout, a broadband coverage tool they developed to sell …  Read More →

Canadian cable operator Rogers has constructed what’s essentially the dream business model for broadband executives. They’ve launched a new broadband video portal that’s only available if you sign up for Rogers wireless, TV or broadband service — avoiding a stand-alone service in order to keep users from canceling regular cable. Rogers has also imposed low caps and high overages and the new service counts against your... 

Last fall Virgin Mobile unveiled “Broadband2Go,” a prepaid wireless broadband option that operates over Sprint’s EVDO network (Sprint now owns Virgin Mobile). The service initially offered users the option of buying pay-as-you-go cards in 100MB ($10), 250MB ($20), 500MB ($40) and 1GB ($60) increments. That pricing didn’t impress many people, given users looking for no-contract wireless broadband could nab truly unlimited...