Search:  

 
theme to black backgroundlet page decide theme

Latest News rss feed


 ·got some news?
As we've been exploring, Verizon has all-but completed their first wave of FiOS deployment with the exception in major cities where they've recently signed franchise agreements. Verizon has made it clear they want to pause for a while and market the service more heavily to markets where they've installed the fiber to the home service. Cities that were left out of this initial wave (like Baltimore) are of course left wondering when and if they'll see the upgrades.

Click for full size
According to the Washington Business Journal, Alexandria, Virginia is another city that's been overlooked by the Verizon FiOS fairy. City leaders expected to see FiOS deployment shortly after signing a new phone franchise agreement with the company, but network upgrades never arrived. Verizon meanwhile is telling the city they don't know if that will change any time soon:
After Euille inquired about when Fios could move forward in the city, Robert Woltz, Verizon's president for Virginia, sent a response that was dated Feb. 18 but received by the city March 9, explaining that Verizon had enough agreements in place to meet its goals for national deployment. "As a result, we will not be able to add the city of Alexandria to our existing portfolio, and at this point, I do not know when that will change," the letter read.
Verizon of course is in the midst of a massive company refocusing that involves selling off (and neglecting according to unions and regulators) a lot of unwanted copper-based DSL and landline markets. Instead, Verizon's focusing on filling in the FiOS gaps with LTE wireless broadband service, which of course raises a lot of questions about the other 50% of Verizon's copper-based network that has yet to be upgraded. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg has publicly stated he'd like to see FiOS adoption rates hit 40% before deciding on the next wave of FiOS deployment.

14 comments


As we recently noted, Time Warner Cable is a little behind in terms of DOCSIS 3.0 cable upgrades, and has sold faster 50 Mbps broadband service to just 2,000 users in parts of New York City. However, the company is poised for a fairly quick push into a number of additional markets over the next few weeks.
story continues..

33 comments


Most major carriers spend a lot of time complaining about regulation in the telecom sector being akin to puppy murder -- unless of course that regulation can be applied to the other guy. With that in mind, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision have petitioned the FCC to step in and do something about the kind of retransmission fee disputes that resulted in Cablevision customers almost missing the Oscars (gasp) over the weekend.
story continues..

77 comments


According to an FCC announcement (pdf), the FCC will officially unveil our first ever national broadband plan at an FCC meeting next Tuesday, March 16, at 10:30 EST. That's one day earlier than the plan was supposed to be unveiled before Congress, though technically it's about a month behind its originally-scheduled unveiling date.
story continues..

3 comments


The entertainment industry's efforts to impose U.S.-style DMCA copyright law on the globe (and push ISPs toward being network content nannies) has suffered a bit of a setback. EU Parliamant has voted overwhelmingly against the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) to the tune of 663 to 13. According to the EU the agreement, hashed out largely in secret between the entertainment industry and world governments, "flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online." One EU lawmaker put his disdain of the entertainment industry's end-around this way:
"This Parliament will not sit back silently while the fundamental rights of millions of citizens are being negotiated away behind closed doors. We oppose any "legislation laundering" on an international level of what would be very difficult to get through most national legislatures or the European Parliament," added Lambrinidis.
The past few weeks have seen a strong push in the European Parliament to have ACTA negotiations made more transparent, and to ensure that the rules don't force ISPs to impose "three strikes" rules that would require they boot copyright infringers from their networks.

26 comments


The NFL loves their exclusive arrangements and the huge bags of money these make, be it with Electronic Arts (who is the sole publisher of video games allowed to use the NFL brand), or DirecTV (who pays a billion a year to be the sole TV carrier of out of market NFL games). For a while the NFL liked Sprint, who has been paying the NFL about $100 million a year to stream NFL games wirelessly and be the NFL's official wireless carrier. Now the NFL loves Verizon, who just ponied up $720 million to take Sprint's place. Sprint spokeswoman Melinda Tiemeyer tells the Kansas City Business Journal that Sprint chose not to extend the sponsorship because the cost "reached a point where we questioned the return on our investment." Verizon apparently had no such worries.

39 comments


story category Wednesday Morning Links
08:25AM Wednesday Mar 10 2010 by Revcb

comments?


story category Tuesday Evening Links
07:09PM Tuesday Mar 09 2010 by Revcb

4 comments


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.
story continues..

17 comments


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.
story continues..

13 comments


Late last month Cisco began leaking word to media outlets that on March 9, they'd be "making a significant announcement that will forever change the Internet and its impact on consumers, businesses and governments." Given the fact that the country was fawning over Google's new 1 Gbps fiber to the home trial announcement at the time, it seemed like Cisco was getting ready to announce some kind of significant counter punch.

Today's the day, so what was this Internet-changing, paradigm smashing announcement? According to Cisco, it's...a new router.
story continues..

69 comments


According to the Wall Street Journal, Google continues to expand into, well, everything. The company is working in conjunction with Dish Network to test a Google-powered set top box based in part on the Android operating system.
story continues..

22 comments


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 by $2 a month.
story continues..

131 comments


The "WiMax is dead, it just doesn't know it yet" crowd scored another talking point (even if wrong) against Mobile WiMax this week with the news that Cisco is going to stop developing and building WiMax gear. Cisco does provide equipment to Clearwire for their Mobile WiMax build, but only core hardware -- not radios.
story continues..

10 comments


AT&T's first foray into the business of offering Android-based phones isn't going particularly well, and it's pretty clear the company's general dislike of Google for their positions on competition, network neutrality and open access is spilling over into AT&T handset decisions. Last week AT&T launched their first Android phone (the Motorola Backflip), but pulled Google search from the device in favor of Yahoo.
story continues..

73 comments


story category Tuesday Morning Links
08:26AM Tuesday Mar 09 2010 by Revcb

3 comments


story category Monday Evening Lnks
07:33PM Monday Mar 08 2010 by Revcb

10 comments


According to a new press statement from Verizon, the carrier is seeing peak download speeds of 40 to 50 megabits per second and peak upload speeds of 20 to 25 Mbps in the LTE (Long Term Evolution) wireless broadband tests they're conducting in Seattle and Boston. As we've already discussed however, real world speeds are going to be closer to between 5-10 Mbps downstream. Other than their announcement of peak speeds, there's really nothing new in Verizon's announcement: they're launching the service in 25-30 markets this year, but we still don't know what kind of pricing, caps or overages Verizon has planned for the service. Indications are that Verizon wants to employ some kind of usage-based billing model.

10 comments


As we've repeatedly noted, a cornerstone of reliable 4G wireless broadband quality is going to be adequate backhaul. Most wireless carriers are rushing to improve backhaul ahead of plans to embrace HSPA+ and LTE service, and there's plenty of companies eager to make a profit from providing that needed bandwidth, including Time Warner Cable.
story continues..

25 comments


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 lease).
story continues..

57 comments


·more stories, story search, most popular ..

Recent news contributors

Karl Bode See Profile, fatness See Profile, Morac See Profile, Randy See Profile, MAR_03_2002 See Profile, JSRoman See Profile


Spotlight Cogent Communications

FIBER (Is our guess wrong?)

 We need YOUR review!

 Recent end-user reviews

 Cogent Communications forum
     Speed results

    This week's front page by..

    Review Finder..

    nr Zip/Postcode:

    Just Reviewed by members

    fiber 4.0 'AT&T U-Verse'
    cable 4.1 'Charter Pipeline'
    dsl 4.3 'AT&T Southeast' 2 comment(s)
    wireless 3.0 'Clearwire Wireless'
    cable 4.5 'Videotron'
    dsl 2.5 'Primus Telecommunications Canada Inc.'
    cable 3.6 'Cox HSI' 3 comment(s)
    voip 4.6 'Vonage'
    voip 5.0 'callwithus' 3 comment(s)
    cable 4.0 'Optimum Online'

    Welcome to dslreports.com

    A quick-start guide.

    Reviews
    Our community is always reviewing ISPs, and VOIP services. Chances are high that there are very recent reviews for the ISPs you are interested in.

    Tools
    Tests for speed, tests for stability, tests for quality, our Tools are easy to use and among the best the internet has to offer

    News
    Each day, including weekends, we cover consumer broadband news and information. Check out the most commented or most viewed articles of the week.

    Forums
    Our community talks about practically everything, every day. Use site-search, or go straight to our forum list.

    More..
    Explore the other options on the menu, but for best customization and best results please consider joining the site.

    Forum Topics by..

    ISP DIRECT to member support..

    Covad Direct
    AT&T Direct
    OptimumOnline Direct
    Verizon Direct
    TekSavvy Direct
    Bell Canada Direct
    Charter Direct
    Comcast Direct
    These forums are operated as a trouble-ticket service for members of dslreports.com who are customers of these ISPs. The ISP concerned operates the forum directly within our framework. We will be adding additional ISPs over the next few months.

    The Phish Tracker Project

    We maintain an ongoing database of phish investigations that is seeded by members forwarding suspect phish emails they receive. Please consider helping this project by forwarding your phish emails. More information can be found in the Scambusters forum and the phishtrack database page

    Wednesday, 10-Mar 15:56:45 Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Hosting by www.nac.net - DSL,Hosting & Co-lo | feedback | contact
    over 10.5 years online! © 1999-2010 dslreports.com.