Over the coming year Verizon previously announced plans to remove restrictions on the types of cell phones compatible with their wireless service. Moving this direction, allowing consumers to alter their phones’ operating system, is a natural extension of their new open wireless service business model.
Eighty percent of net subscribers use less than ten percent of the overall bandwidth. Do ISPs have a right, in light of this, to put limits on users? Dvorak and the cranks convene.
Rep. Markey’s Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353) ironically does just the opposite, opening a Pandora’s box of bureaucratic regulation and internet governance.
Currently the internet is open and free. There are many options for consumers to get online, some are faster while others are cheaper. In hindsight one of the distinctive differences between the old telephone industry and the internet lays in enormous innovation and competition, possible only in a non-regulatory environment. A critical congressional colleague complains:
If two of my neighbors decide to pirate the whole Star Wars movie collection simultaneously with BitTorrent, tying up the internet to such a degree that I can’t check my e-mail… where’s the justice in net neutrality there? Strict net neutrality could restrain an internet service provider (ISP) from protecting it’s own customers.
Preserving a free internet means thumbs down for HR 5353. Markey has a strange vision that the internet will fail to produce great new ideas without government protection. Government… bureaucracy is where good ideas come to die. This bill will empower bureaucrats to change the internet; and bureaucrats only go one direction, red tape.
Tired of all those negative ads? No, I’m not talking about the latest primary battle between Hillary and Obama.
A boy genius who can do other people’s tax returns struggles to decipher a bill from a phone company
Cable executives frustrated by the quantity of high-definition services offered by the satellite company; they end up turning the meeting into a “blame-storming” session.
Slowskys, a turtle couple overwhelmed by the speed of a cable modem who prefer the generally slower DSL services offered by phone companies.
The big ISPs appear to be in the midst of a marketing war. It’s a sign of vibrant competition between service providers… better service should follow.
Verizon’s FiOS launch (offering super high speed internet and TV service) in South Florida seems to be stumbling over basic customer service issues. A recent customer complaint is the Herald Tribune:
“I have continually been stalled, lied to, deceived and to date nobody at Verizon seems to have a clue what is going on,” Weisenbacher’s complaint reads. “It seems to me that Verizon is deliberately playing games with the general public assuming people will get so frustrated that they will simply drop the issue.” (read full)
Weisenbacher is one of 543 customers filing complaints with the Florida attorney general.
Verizon’s negligence is Comcast’s opportunity
Meanwhile, Comcast offers disgruntled customers a good alternative:
Competitor Comcast has begun offering to pay the termination fees for Verizon customers wanting to return to the Comcast.
“If you have become a Verizon customer and are unhappy, we have some win-back offers that will allow you to recoup your termination fee and come back to us,” said Mark Lipford, vice president and general manager for Comcast West Florida. “It’s interesting for every video customer we lose, we get 37 percent back within 30 days, either because they’re having technical problems, customer service problems or they can’t get SNN 6.”
I’ve heard about the idea of regular cell phones making calls via Wireless-Internet(WiFi) signals for many years, but this is the first mainstream product I’ve seen that actually does it. This thing is neat, check out the video!
These cell phone signal boosters, “femtocells,” designed for home use are one more reason to ditch your landline. The Associate Press explains:
Not only do femtocells improve coverage indoors, where the carrier has a hard time reaching, they reduce traffic on regular, outdoor cellular towers. Perhaps best of all, the carrier doesn’t have to pay to carry the traffic from the femtocell to its network, because the device plugs into a home broadband connection. The so-called “backhaul” traffic, which carries calls from a cellular tower to the wired network, is a major part of the cost of operating a wireless network.
While these gadgets threaten already suffering landline business of Verizon and AT&T, market forces may force them to embrace it anyway. Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin comments, “‘They’re afraid that by deploying these femtocells, at least where they have a landline footprint, they might be putting their landline business at risk’… But that business is at risk anyway – a lack of femtocells may make cellular subscribers keep their landlines for another year or so, but not for long[.]”
Right now Sprint has a competitive lead, already offering them for $49.99 plus $15 a month for unlimited home calling.
