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Cable Dominated U.S. Broadband in 2013 -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 17:49:40 EDT

While cable has been losing TV viewers to telcos, they're absolutely dominating the overall U.S. broadband landscape. According to new data from Leichtman Research, the seventeen largest cable and telephone providers in the US -- representing about 93% of the market -- acquired over 2.6 million net additional high-speed Internet subscribers in 2013 (a slight slowdown from 2012). These top providers now lay claim to 84.3 million subscribers -- with cable companies serving 49.3 million broadband subscribers, and telephone companies serving 35.0 million subscribers.

Leichtman notes the top cable companies netted 82% of the broadband additions in 2013 -- compared to 88% of the broadband additions in 2012. The firm also notes that the top cable companies added nearly 2.2 million broadband subscribers in 2013 -- 89% of the total net additions for the top cable companies in 2012. Some additional findings of note:

•Comcast added about 1.3 million broadband subscribers in 2013 -- accounting for 49% of the total net additions for the top providers in the year

•The top telephone providers added 480,000 broadband subscribers in 2013 -- 146% of the total net additions for the top telephone companies in 2012

•AT&T and Verizon added 3.3 million fiber subscribers (via U-verse and FiOS) in 2013, while having a net loss of 3.05 million DSL subscribers. U-verse and FiOS broadband subscribers now account for 47% of Telco broadband subscribers -- up from 29% at the end of 2011

You can expect cable's stake of the market to grow as AT&T and Verizon back away further from a significant number of DSL markets they're no longer interested in upgrading.
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Unsurprisingly, Google Voice Getting Integrated Into Hangouts -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 16:00:56 EDT

Those of you who use Google Voice to dodge your cell carrier's voicemail services (like myself) may want to take note: 9 to 5 Google notes that Google appears to be preparing to "kill" Google Voice and integrate most of that application's functionality into Google Hangouts. If you've watched Google integrate Google+ Messenger, Talk, Messaging and Voice into just Voice and Hangouts, this shouldn't be too much of a surprise. It seems safe to assume that most of your Google Voice settings (including your phone number) would remain intact during any such transition -- which the website suggests is still "months out."
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NSA Capable Of Recording, Storing 100% Of a Nation's Phone Calls -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 13:16:02 EDT

While the media's NSA focus has been on metadata (call lengths, times, numbers), much of the coverage seems to forget the agency has long had the ability to record effectively every shred of voice and data that travels over telecom networks. That much was made clear by the allegations of AT&T whistle blower Mark Klein, who noted that the NSA had used fiber splits to collect effectively every bit and byte that touched AT&T's network -- domestic or foreign, regardless of carrier.

With that as a backdrop, it's rather unsurprising to see the Washington Post report that new Snowden documents reveal the agency has the capability to record, store and retrieve "100%" of the phone conversations of a target country for one month. From the Post:

quote:
The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for retrospective retrieval, and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere. In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording every single conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The Post suggests that the system was deployed in at least one country, with several other countries targeted (though that was several years ago). The NSA's Utah data storage warehouse is believed to be one of several repositories for such data collection. RETRO and MYSTIC are carried out under Executive Order 12333, which allows for such wholesale data collection outside of the United States, even if it may collect the conversations of US citizens. The NSA insists to the Post that this country-wide surveillance hoovering is "strictly conducted under the rule of law."
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The Comcast Merger Will Have Benefits, But Are They Worth It? -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 10:07:27 EDT

Most merger supporters are quick to point out that since Comcast and Time Warner Cable don't directly compete, the new $45 billion proposed merger doesn't pose any risks. Except most everyone else generally understands that letting Comcast grow relentlessly larger could come with certain anti-competitive problems in terms of content licensing negotiations leverage, or in such a content and media giant using the (usage capped) connection to the end user's home to bully Internet streaming competitors.

But for all the deal's risks, there are actually a few good things that could result for Time Warner Cable. CNET's Marguerite Reardon this week dug through a few of them, correctly noting that Time Warner Cable has traditionally been sluggish on TV and broadband upgrades, meaning that users should see faster speeds and nicer set top boxes in time courtesy of Comcast, who has been bullish on getting DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades deployed.

Reardon also makes the good point that Comcast is a little less hostile in retransmission fee rate negotiations, which should mean fewer annoying content blackouts for subscribers (though the flip side of that is that Comcast shells out higher rates more quickly; rates passed on to you). If there's a flaw in her argument, it's once again this faith people seem to have that Google Fiber (deployed to all of a handful of actual people) or the phone companies will bring competitive balance to the even-larger cable giant:

quote:
Rather, I would argue that the telephone companies -- AT&T and Verizon Communications -- and to a much lesser extent, Google, are providing more incentive to all cable operators to increase their network speeds. Comcast actually faces less competition in its markets from Google and the phone companies than Time Warner Cable, and the increased exposure to this threat could spur faster improvement in the network.

Except as many of our regular readers know, AT&T and Verizon have frozen any serious fixed-line broadband expansion and are quickly backing away from huge swaths of the country, much of it Comcast territory. What do we surmise will be the impact on Comcast speeds, prices and service when they face even less competition than ever before?

To be clear, this is something that's going to be a problem whether this deal happens or not, but this looming and massive decrease in broadband competition is oddly something most people covering tech have yet to become fully aware of -- and it's something that needs talking about in context of the deal.

What do you think, Time Warner Cable customers? Are better set top boxes and potential access to faster, similarly-expensive broadband services worth the potential monopsony threat Comcast will pose over the longer haul?
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Amazon's Internet Video Device to Launch in April -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:23:39 EDT

Amazon's long-rumored Internet video device appears to be ready for its official unveiling next month. Insiders tell Techcrunch the device will be a USB stick (can we stop using the word dongle, please?), much like the Google Chromecast or Roku's latest device. It will, obviously, be tied strongly to Amazon's Prime video streaming services, though it appears Amazon is also interested in jumping into the gaming arena with a streaming service not unlike OnLive (the company's Bluetooth game controller leaked last week). According to the Wall Street Journal, you'll get a good look at the new device when it ships sometime next month.
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Cord Cutters Find Their March Madness Options Restricted -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:09:03 EDT

March Madness recently began with the selection of teams who would be participating in the college basketball tournament. This year, every game, including the "first four" play-in games will be on TV, split between CBS and Turner-owned channels (TNT, TBS and TruTV).

Recently, the March Madness Live app was released and can be found in the Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store, Google Play, and Windows Store (Sorry Blackberry users, no app for you). Unlike past years where it cost between $3.99 and $10 to purchase, this year s app is free and will air any game on TNT, TBS or TruTV.

Unfortunately for cord cutters, if you do not have a cable subscription then, you will only be able to stream three hours of games (found on TNT, TBS and TruTV) via NCAA.com before being forced to authenticate, similar to NBC's Olympic and Live Extra coverage or HBO GO. CBS Sports has confirmed that any game aired on CBS can be streamed online for free and without any metering or authentication. Don t forget that the initial Final Four games will be on TBS, with a simulcast on TNT and TruTV.

CBS, much like ABC, NBC, and Fox, continue making decisions for no reason other than wanting to punish cord-cutting people who don t want to pay ridiculous amounts for channels they will never watch.

Instead of greater availability, we keep seeing ever-more fractured catalogs and greater restrictions, all in the false belief they're protecting legacy TV revenues from inevitable evolution. Instead, the policies drive users to the very piracy options broadcasters proudly proclaim they're immensely dedicated to thwarting.
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BitTorrent Shuts Down Live Streaming Website -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 08:04:30 EDT

BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen has been trying to monetize his creation for the better part of the decade, and while the man may have somewhat revolutionized file delivery, efforts to build a legal business model around the technology have seen mixed results. Cohen's initial efforts at monetization of his creation began with the now-defunct BitTorrent store, which floundered in 2007 due to a clunky GUI, DRM, and games that came with complimentary spyware.

After admitting these efforts were "pretty bad," the company started focusing on a live streaming platform using P2P. Unveiled just last May, Cohen promised that the concept would be "revolutionary," but our users came away a little less than impressed. Ten months later and BitTorrent Live appears to have not seen the traction the company wanted, and they've sent out a notice saying the BitTorrent Live website will be shutting down:

quote:
After invaluable experience in real deployments, we found that requiring a browser plug-in is daunting to our users. Because of this, we are refocusing the product on mobile platforms Due to the shift in engineering focus to mobile, we are no longer able to support the existing BitTorrent Live web site. We will be shutting it down at noon Pacific Standard Time on Thursday February 27th."

It appears that Cohen's going to instead focus on live BitTorrent streaming for mobile devices, the company stating an app should be released later this year. The company has also placed great hopes on their Sync DropBox competitor, which the company suggests is growing twice as fast as DropBox did early on -- despite being in an increasingly crowded field.

BitTorrent's primary incomes appears to come from ad banners embedded at the top of uTorrent, which again, doesn't seem to be a business model scaled with the impact Cohen had on networking. The company has spent a lot of time of late going to great, sometimes silly lengths to try and remove the association of piracy to its brand name, blocking uTorrent ads for ISP-dodging VPN and Proxy services, while sometimes responding in an over-sensitive fashion to the comments of other companies.

Perhaps it's time for a brand name change?

Update: Fast Company has a good read on BitTorrent's long and winding road for those interested.
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Tuesday Morning Links -

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 06:53:11 EDT

3G/4G wireless network latency: Comparing Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in February 2014 fiercewireless.com
US cable companies add 2.6 mln internet customers 2013 telecompaper.com
Comcast and Time Warner Cable lost 1.1 million video customers in 2013; Pay-TV isn't going away, though, as AT&T and Verizon boost subs numbers arstechnica.com
LightSquared says Charles Ergen sought its destruction to boost Dish denverpost.com
'Broadband' and 'boondoggle' don't belong together startribune.com
Amazon s Set Top Box Will Be A Dongle Like Chromecast, Could Feature OnLive-Style Streaming techcrunch.com
Apple reportedly launching a cheaper 8GB iPhone 5c on March 18th engadget.com
Notice-and-Takedown Gets its Day in Congress eff.org
Australia doubts ICANN is ready to run the internet theregister.co.uk
FCC honcho angry that US classrooms are filled with unused RJ45 ports; says E-Rate program should focus on replacing wired Ethernet in classrooms with Wi-Fi setups theregister.co.uk
Stop the TinFoil Hat Misinformation About ICANN pcmag.com
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Post: AT&T, T-Mobile Over-Billing Prepaid Customers -

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:07:36 EDT

AT&T and T-Mobile may recently be embroiled in a marketing battle, but according to the Washington Post, the two companies see eye to eye on one thing: over-billing prepaid mobile customers. According to the Post's Brian Fung, wireless carriers are logging more voice time than prepaid subscriber devices show, something that a number of users have been complaining about for some time. Notes Fung:

quote:
In the case of one AT&T subscriber, the network added as many as 33 seconds to his call after he hung up, allowing AT&T to bill him for an additional minute of usage. The Switch's tests also turned up a similar phenomenon with T-Mobile's prepaid phones.

This isn't entirely unrelated of the annoying industry practice of using extra long voicemail instruction messages to eat more of a subscriber's minutes. On its face and per subscriber it's minor, but apply these kinds of practices to an entire userbase and they're quite profitable:

quote:
It's unclear how widespread the practice is. Nor does it take place with every call. But even an occasional occurrence might have outsized effects. At the end of 2013, AT&T had 7.4 million prepaid customers. T-Mobile claimed 15.1 million. If each of those customers experienced the accounting problem just once per year, it would amount to $740,000 in annual revenue for AT&T. In T-Mobile's case, that figure would balloon to nearly $5 million.

Curiously Verizon's prepaid options don't appear to suffer from this phenomenon, which both AT&T and T-Mobile tell Fung is completely normal.
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Sprint Adds 20 New LTE Markets, 2 New 'Spark' Markets -

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 16:29:44 EDT

Sprint today announced that the company has added another twenty additional LTE markets, as well as another two launch markets for their faster "Spark" network upgrades. According to a Sprint press release, the new LTE launches continue Sprint's focus on smaller markets including Myrtle Beach, SC; Scranton, PA; Ocean City, NJ; Omaha, NE; and Sarasota, Florida. Sprint's Spark upgrades, which the company has promised will provide tri-band devices with speeds upward of 50 to 60 Mbps, is now live in both Provo, Utah and Trenton, New Jersey. Sprint also says that their implementation of higher audio quality HD Voice is now live in Provo, with Trenton coming soon.
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Los Angeles Sues Time Warner Cable -

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:21:45 EDT

Time Warner Cable has always had a somewhat contentious relationship with the city of Los Angeles and its residents, ever since the company's sloppy 2007 takeover of Adelphia's networks there. Los Angeles locals are already annoyed by Time Warner Cable's movement of Dodgers games to its own SportsNet LA channel. On an unrelated note, the city of LA has sued Time Warner Cable for failing to pay nearly $10 million in franchise fees, despite netting $500 million annually from customers in the city:

quote:
The 24-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, contends that Time Warner Cable "blatantly refused to live up to its obligations to the city" to pay franchise fees to operate its cable network over city-owned rights of way while collecting more than $500 million a year from customers in the city. Feuer said the city has been negotiating with Time Warner Cable for several years. "The negotiations haven't been fruitful and we have to do something about that," Feuer said.

Perhaps Comcast will be a less contentious city partner? Los Angeles recently announced they're just starting to take a look at the idea of bringing in somebody else to build and operate a faster broadband network capable of 1 Gbps broadband speeds -- speeds Time Warner Cable has long stated nobody needs or wants.
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AT&T Raises Rates Further On DSL Customers -

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:23:27 EDT

A 1.5 Mbps, 150 GB capped DSL line may cost AT&T very, very little to provide, but that isn't stopping the company from raising rates anyway. AT&T DSL users in the Southeast say they're getting a letter from AT&T informing them the monthly cost of their 1.5 Mbps DSL lines will be bumped from $36.00 to $39.00 per month.

According to AT&T, the changes are necessary to provide the "best possible Internet experience" and to "better align our pricing structure across our entire service territory." Another user points out that in fact all of the company's DSL lines in former-BellSouth territories (many of which are some of the least competitive in the country) are seeing $3 rate hikes:

quote:
Depending on your plan, monthly rates will increase by $3.00 or $3.05 per month. The new monthly rates will be as follows:

•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Lite - $31.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Ultra - $39.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Xtreme - $44.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Xtreme 6.0 - $49.00

AT&T High Speed Internet Direct

•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Direct Lite - $36.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Direct Ultra - $44.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Direct Xtreme - $49.00
•AT&T High Speed Internet FastAccess DSL Direct Xtreme 6.0 - $54.00

Don't forget that AT&T already imposes a 150 GB cap on these DSL lines and charges users $10 per each additional 50 GB. Also keep in mind that AT&T's actually interested in driving many of these customers to cable, as they're slowly in the process of shedding DSL territories they're unwilling to upgrade.
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