Comcast Broadband dispute

February 18, 2009

2009-02-18T17:56:00.002-07:00

It seems Comcast recognizes with competition it stands to loose heavily. And 2009 sounds like a year it hopes to get past quickly.

I can't say I blame them. And it doesn't help with investors leaving them. Companies like my other favorite are divesting themselves of Comcast stock.

Mr. Roberts has earned a new title besides CEO of Comcast. He's been called in many articles I've been receiving recently "The Dark Lord of Broadband". A guy who's as disconnected from reality as I've seen. And just when he thought 2007 and 2008 were going to be banner years for Comcast, people as myself rebelled and called them to the mat. Involving the FCC and other Government agencies. It's been a mess.

Yet there's a stunning disconnect between how fellow chief executives view him and what customers think. They see Comcast as arrogant, unresponsive, and overpriced. The company has managed to place last or close to last in just about every survey of customer service.

By blocking BitTorrent—in effect discriminating against those packets—Roberts had opened himself up to accusations that he was a censor and a monopolist who wanted to limit citizens' access to the Internet. He was painted as power-mad, unable to restrain himself.

"I honestly don't think we're bad people, and we have no evil intentions," he says. "We helped invent broadband."

Let me guess. Comcast gave Al Gore the idea for the Internet now? My how history has changed. Read the article. It was a good read.

I guess they really hate the Internet.

Cable’s costly infrastructure, optimized for hundreds of channels, can’t adjust to a world where entertainment is downloaded. They have to tame the Internet to survive.

People are looking at services which don't require cable TV. From Vuze to Hulu and more. Downloadable content takes control away from these guys. If you follow the money, those customers are bad for business.

Streaming video of everything from classic movies to hit TV programs to screaming music videos of '80s hair bands is available free at online portals YouTube and Joost, as well as Hulu.com (a joint venture of NBC and Fox) and the networking site MySpace, which is owned by the same company as Fox.

And now it seems by 2012 Korea will have an average Internet of 1 Gig putting American Internet providers to shame!

In America we think Charter's 60 Mbps Cable is fast, well in Korea the entire country will have 1 Gbps service by 2012, that's 16 times faster than Charter's fastest 60Mbps highspeed service. Currently, Koreans can get speeds up to 100 Mbps, which is still nearly double the speed of Charter's new 60 Mbps service.

Someday people here will wake up. The Internet is as important as public roads. Don't expect to succeed without improving the infrastructure.

Another reason our economy is a shambles.

January 10, 2009

2009-01-06T18:01:00.007-07:00

Happy New Year!

Two years later I find it interesting that Comcast has been working to resolve some serious issues with their Internet product. Two years ago Comcast really screwed up and created a PR disaster for themselves. So now it seems they are working to resolve a few things, with their product at least.

The Old Comcast vs The New Comcast?

- "We can't divulge to the customer usage limits" vs "You have 250 Gigs a month now"

- "You are responsible for monitoring your usage" vs "We're working on a bandwidth monitor for you"

- "Hello customer service, we can't help you" vs "Frank on Twitter, maybe we're an improvement"

Ok perhaps that last one isn't really an improvement though I've heard stories of some people able to resolve issues with the company where customer services is Epic Fail. Nothing I can confirm and I've asked around. Still the other issues are important steps. Would I consider going back to Comcast?

Are you Crazy!

I don't support companies with pathetic attitudes. Microsoft, Comcast, errr.... you get the idea.

Speaking of Comcast, its interesting how far a company will go to prevent competition. Too scary I guess. Oh and I guess they succeeded in slowing the exodus to a better product in Philly at least.

Ha, wow. This stuff is too rich to make up. We already knew that Comcast was blowing smoke by claiming that it had more HD material (than Verizon) that mere mortals actually cared about, but this is just incredible. A new report straight from Philadelphia makes clear that a practically imminent vote to give Verizon a 15-year lease to wire the city up for FiOS TV has been abruptly halted, and Comcast is largely to thank. Purportedly, lobbyists for the carrier swarmed the council chambers yesterday and managed to convince them to take another month or so to reconsider. Among the issues brought up were that another carrier wouldn't necessarily lead to lower prices and that Verizon would likely wire up higher income neighborhoods first / only. Thanks Comcast -- we bet even Adam Smith would agree that no competition is better than competition you find unfavorable.

This stuff is unreal. Even a fiction writer couldn't make this stuff up. I guess with surveys like this Comcast should be worried. Then of course there are other concerns. Maybe some day they will learn from their mistakes. I almost feel sorry for the company. Hey I'm not stupid. My family and I still remember (and notes help) what happened. Maybe someday they will grow into a company like Amazon.com. Now there is a company we've spent thousands of dollars with and come back regularly.

Comcast's top tier accounts it seems also has 250 Gigs as their limit also. Upgrade to a business account you say? When I spoke with their sales I was told "you get just more bandwidth" with a business account. So how much more? Unless they have announced it and I missed the press release you have no more bandwidth available than a NON Business account. Period. After looking at my notes from two years ago, I wrote a note from a conversation with Sarah (from Comcast's escalation department) that in residential area's you don't have a separate network they can connect you to.

Then of course there is Utopia. If we ever get it in West Jordan we can choose from the basic 100 Gigs a month with upgrades in 100 Gigs increments up to 500 Gigs.

Oh, and before I forget, Comcast is working on the bandwidth meter for it's customers. It's about time they decided to leak this. I'm amused though. I heard about it two years ago and here it is. Yeah, like I've mentioned before. It's interesting the things I learned about the company. I just wish I could talk about it without getting in trouble... then of course I can't prove any of it either other than my notes with dates written :-)

However here is something I suspected would not change. I guess when you have a monopoly (or at least VERY little competition), you can make products that benefit the company and not the customer.

A couple more notes and then I'll quit... for now :-)

Fiber is the future. Rather than running copper wire tech from the 1800's. Comcast either fixes their copper fetish or motley fool's prediction comes true. After all, we're already stressing what copper wire's can do while we have yet to learn how far fiber cables can be pushed. Good thing too since demand for online videos have jumped 34% in the last year alone! I'm sure products such as this are a cause for concern. LG TV's with Netflix movies in HD through the internet. Sounds like us. We stream Internet TV through Mythtv to our TV. It's really cool the content available online.

And people aren't stupid. Read through the Digg.com comments. The people know with all this talk about bandwidth limits that Comcast isn't what they want for Internet service. Here's a few I found after a couple minutes searching.

So too does the number of people being banned from Comcast as "heavy users?"

In a years time I'd be interested to see a comparison of number of videos watched and number of comcast users throttled. Online video is eventually going to stagnate once more ISPs begin to throttle bandwidth.

CONcastic hates Hulu. I mean people now watch TV over IP. Times for the telephone companies to crush cable. I use a digital projector to get a big image when I want to see a movie over the web.

Things are not all bleak. I'm urging everyone to write to President Elect Obama and let him know how we need NII and the fiber to the home it promised under Bill Clinton in 1994. Seems he is talking about renewing our information highway. I'm curious how serious he is and how far he will go.

"In our 21st-century society, having a connection to a fast and affordable Internet is no longer a luxury — it's a public necessity," said Free Press' executive director Josh Silver. "Obama's broadband stimulus must deliver Americans the infrastructure they need for economic growth and social opportunity."

Obama did not specify the cost of the public works program, but various analysts' costs estimates place it from $400 to $700 billion, and possibly higher.

But broadband advocates such as Daily say plans such as his "Rural Fiber Fund" would enable expansion of broadband Internet access for a small fraction of the total cost.

"$30 billion should get the whole job done," Daily said. "But $10 billion is enough to be a game-changer and set the wheels in motion."

Sure why not. The Government has no problem bailing out companies like AIG. May as well spend the money to get home businesses the infrastructure they need to be successful in our flat world. You need to read the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas L. Friedman. A buddy at my last company lent me the book. Very insightful read IMO.

After all, isn't it small businesses driving our economy above all other businesses? Seems to make sense the economy won't recover very easily without a proper infrastructure in place.

November 20, 2008

2008-11-20T17:33:00.002-07:00

Now that the voters have spoken, it's interesting to see more and more we're hearing Government is talking about building a National Broadband policy. There have been many interesting articles the last couple of weeks including this one. I'm curious where this is going. Many have also said it will take $100 Billion to upgrade our infrastructure to Fiber to the home. Fortunately they have over 200 Billion already in their pockets through taxes for over 14 years through the NII.

I'm encouraging people everywhere to write to President Elect Obama and remind him of these facts and to encourage him to influence those in authority to either make it happen or return the money for service not rendered.

I had an interesting email from a blogger recently. Talking about the AT&T caps and sharing this article about it. He had an interesting statement to make which I just have to share with you

Hmmm, Let's see. If I pay for 6 Mbps connectivity, if I used it 24 hours per day for a month, I could download almost 2,000 GB. The ATT plan would give me the first 80 GB
free and then I would pay $1,920/month for the rest? If I only get 80 GB in a month, then I think I'm only getting 240 Kbs connectivity or so. This type of logic is like offering cellphone service pricing where you get unlimited minutes of connectivity but only 5,000 words per month.

Puts it all in perspective as Comcast rolls our their new services. Sure they are offering more than AT&T, so double the numbers and you roughly have an understanding of how bad of a deal it is. Oh and don't forget, you risk reaching your usage cap faster with those speeds. No, you don't get more bandwidth. I haven't heard of any tier services available either. It's pretty silly actually. These caps are like saying you are driving your car too much even though you paid for the car, insurance and the gas. Yes you have a full tank but you should only use 1 gallon then get off the road. Seems many other's agree with this opinion

Here's what Comcast should have said:

"See, we've got this legacy cable business. That wouldn't be so bad if innovators weren't making it easier to stream video over the Web. Microsoft 's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Silverlight helped bring you the Olympics. So did Limelight Networks (Nasdaq: LLNW), and it's also behind Netflix 's (Nasdaq: NFLX) Watch Now service. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is working on chips for Web TV. These technologies will improve over time and, as they do, they'll demand more bandwidth. We're not big fans. In fact, we'd prefer you ignore these innovations and watch TV and video the traditional way, over our cable network."

It's amazing how many articles in the last month have come out against bandwidth caps. The proponents are ignoring something they seem unable to grasp. That's ok. Perhaps in the near future they will become as inconsequential as the buggy whip if technology keeps advancing. Something like this (should it materialize) would make Copper cables and even reduce the need for a public fiber infrastructure. Very impressive IF it appears.

One more note. I found this article interesting.

What Comcast didn’t mention, however, was that it had reached a settlement with McCollum’s Economic Crimes Bureau to pay $150,000 to the state to resolve “concerns over disclosure issues related to bandwidth use policies,” according to an Aug. 29 news release issued by the McCollum’s office. The settlement was the result of a state investigation of Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) in which Comcast “allegedly did not inform consumers of a specific bandwidth limit” for customers to be notified of “excessive use, which could lead to a customer being kicked off the service.

Sounds like the top 1000 customers are kicked off regardless of usage each month if I"m reading this correctly. Doesn't matter whether a customer was affecting the network adversely or not. That wasn't part of the criteria.

When consumers asked Comcast to specify a cap on usage, “Comcast did not provide consumers with a specific bandwidth usage limit, stating that the consumers’ service would be at risk if they remained among the top 1,000 bandwidth users and directing them to the AUP and frequently asked questions explaining the AUP’s excessive use policy,” according to the settlement document.

That wasn’t good enough, as the Attorney General said that “a ‘top 1,000’ criteria, as previously applied, did not clearly and conspicuously disclose to the consumer the specific amount of bandwidth deemed to be excessive under Comcast’s subscriber agreements.”

Personally I'm surprised Florida was the only state to actually take this to court. Sounds like fraud but that's just my opinion.

August 31, 2008

2008-08-31T08:43:00.002-06:00

There has been quite the flurry of articles about Comcast's recent policy change regarding bandwidth. Some hail it as the greatest thing since sliced bread while others condemn it as just another way for the company to force their customers to use less bandwidth. Some are asking if 250 gigs a month is enough.

Comcast says that 99% of their customers use the internet well under this limit. Personally I dispute that unvalidated statement. When my families Internet was terminated for 12 months we started asking around and noticed two others in our neighborhood ALSO were terminated within a couple months. Those are odds I'd love to take to Vegas.

Will this be a good thing for Comcast customers? Time will tell. I have several questions which I haven't found answers to. Perhaps someone here can answer them.

First, Will this limit include Comcast traffic as well as Internet traffic?

Second, Will Comcast customers be able to validate they are using that much traffic when they get "The Call"?

Third, if more than 250 Gigs per month are consumed, is there a higher tier available with more bandwidth?

Fourth, In the event of a mistake, what process is in place to challenge Comcast's findings. Is there an escalation process basically?

Fifth, how much really is too much bandwidth?

Unless Comcast answers these questions I don't see how much has changed other than the bandwidth limit is now stated like all other ISP's. Also, in today's age of Internet Innovation, we see full HD movies coming to the web browser. That's right, Internet providers don't have just P2P and downloads to worry about. From what I'm hearing, P2P has leveled off last year and HTTP traffic is the growing problem.

I decided to check and was stunned to learn TV shows such as Heroes, South Park and other's are all available online. And this was from companies such as NBC.COM, South Park Studios and so on.

Internet bandwidth usage will ONLY increase in the coming years.

Speaking of which, I was pleased to hear our Government is beginning to realize just how badly America is in need of a national broadband strategy. I haven't heard much from the Republican side regarding what they plan on doing however the Democrats seem to be coming around to the idea that it should be treated like Infrastructure.

The Democrats' position on broadband is to treat it more like critical infrastructure--like roads, bridges and the water supply. From the Party Platform: "We will implement a national broadband strategy, especially in rural areas, that enables every American household, school, library and hospital to connect to a world-class communications infrastructure."

It continues: "In an increasingly technology-rich, knowledge-based economy, connectivity is a key part of the solution to many of our most important challenges: job creation, economic growth, energy, health care and education."

At the current rate, we won't catch up to Japan for about 100 years without help.

"We need high-speed Internet for our homes, schools, hospitals, and workplaces," the authors of the report recommend. "Speed defines what is possible on the Internet. It determines whether we will have the 21st century networks we need to create the jobs of the future, develop our economy, and support innovations in telemedicine, education, public safety, and public services to improve our lives and communities."

I recall a speech by President Bill Clinton regarding NAFTA. He mentioned we will be transitioning to a technology economy in the years to come. That was over a decade ago! Without the infrastructure in place, I wonder how we can expect to complete that move? BTW, I've been searching for a reference for that statement. If anyone has found one please share :-)

One more comment about broadband. It seems Comcast isn't alone with the 250 Gig monthly limit. Seems Qwest 'may' also have set limits as well.

We’ve wrote before that ISPs are looking for new ways to manage their network by introducing bandwidth caps and metered plans. Although we’re not in favor of it, we have to applaud Comcast for being open about it. Most other ISPs have similar policies, limiting their unlimited services, but they seem to get away with it. One of these ISPs is Qwest, one of the larger Internet providers in the western United States, who forces customers to accept an invisible 250 GB cap.

Indeed, as we have said before, ISPs should think ahead. To most “normal” customers 250 GB may sound as a lot of bandwidth, but this might be totally different in the future. Making an online backup of your harddrive is pretty much impossible with a bandwidth cap like this, so will HD-streaming. It hinders innovation while it’s ignoring the real problem. ISPs should invest in their network instead, but I guess it’s not only the entertainment industry that finds it hard to adapt to technological change.

So we have a new (capped) future before us. Seems Internet Providers are deciding to limit innovation rather than build out their Infrastructure. I have yet to hear what happened to the NII money from 1994. So after a brief search of tools to monitor usage, I came across this article. Some of the tools looks decent enough.

Personally I like vnstat for linux. It was nice to see Ubuntu had the package already available. After a minute of setup I can see hourly, weekly, and monthly totals. It even gives a 'guess' of what my total consumption of the month may be. I recommend vnstat. And especially if you want a GUI there is PHPvnstat. Creates a nice web page with some nice graphs.

Speaking of Ubuntu. I was surprised to hear of Comcast giving the cold shoulder when a customer mentioned they were running Linux. I'm glad they are running ok now but the response was inappropriate.

the support agent refused to give her the case number, restating the fact that Comcast does not support Linux. He even went as far to say that the company supports Windows, Mac OSX, and even Unix (note that both Linux and OSX are a form of Unix), but not Linux. Needless to say, Mrs. Gorman was not pleased with this response. I would not want to have been the Comcast employee during the resulting conversation. For the next several minutes, she chastised the employee about the evils of discriminating against a customer due to their choice in operating system. Once thoroughly chastised, the employee was more forthcoming with the case number.

I was amused at least. You have to go higher up the food chain until you found someone who understood how lame that statement was. For the record, I ran Linux on the Comcast network for years without issue.

Speaking of which, I've been running Ubuntu on my new computer for the last few weeks without issue. The P180 Antec case, Artic Cooler CPU fan and 120 mm case fans make this computer whisper quiet and yet it's very powerful. I'm running several programs in WINE including Counterstrike Source, Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4. All run just great on my Nvidia 9800 GTX with their proprietary driver. The ONLY problem I've had is chatting in my steam friends list. I'll have to work on that. Otherwise I highly recommend scrapping Windows and moving to Ubuntu.

One more note. I had to share this article with you :-)

It's funny to see Comcast's numbers have changed.

* Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
* Download 62,500 4 MB songs (at 4 MB/song)
* Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
* Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

What I want to know is how many gigs is that in DAT cartridges ;-)

Ok I'm kidding. Still it's unrealistic. Standard definition video's isn't the future boys. Everybody is going high def. And 2 Gigs a movie is low from what I'm seeing.

July 23, 2008

2008-07-23T17:30:00.005-06:00

Well... I've received quite a number of messages about Qwest and their FTTH articles. Seems Qwest has done it again by bending terms a bit. Perhaps it was unintentional. Thing is I spoke with people who work there and they also said FTTH along with an email I received from Qwest as well.

I apologize for adding to the confusion. Since I've been contacting them again asking for confirmation. I'm hearing it's Fiber to the Node which isn't the same thing.

Here is a part of the email I received

Thank you for your recent e-mail inquiry to Qwest regarding the
high-speed Internet upgrades. I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience you have experienced as well as the delay in responding toyour e-mail.

We now offer Fiber to the Node in some areas. The upgrading process has begun and will be completed over the next several months across the 14 state region. I apologize for any misinformation you have received previously.

So there you have it. But I have to ask why? They don't want to provide video service and it seems they don't want to build out the infrastructure they were supposed to have under NII.

It looks like Utopia is moving forward with U-CAN meetings. Basically working with the public and learning more about what's going on with Utopia. Great place to give them feedback. I'll have to see if I can break away to chat with them at the next meeting.

I've received several notes on web sites people may be interested in. I'm checking them out when I have time. One of interest is Internet for Everyone Seems there is a growing interest here in America to make Internet access a basic right along with other services we've pushed the Government to provide. They also have a nice map of where broadband is, and where it isn't. I've contacted them to learn more about their organization and hopefully will be able to give an update. It certainly makes sense as most other developed countries are already moving forward. Leading the way so America can follow. Someday...

One more item and a bit offtopic. I've been working heavily with WINE under Ubuntu Linux (8.04) and have been able to fix the In game voice problem with CounterStrike Source. Until now people have been grumbling that they couldn't hear me so I had to use Vent or type my messages. When I started it up the other day everyone was complaining that their ears were bleeding and to turn the volume down ;-)

Gotta Love Linux!

Soon I'll be free of Windows at home. All my gaming needs handled by WINE or Linux. May even purchase a Nintendo Wii later this year.

It's going to be a good year :-)

July 8, 2008

2008-07-08T23:07:00.004-06:00

Thought I'd share this tidbit with everyone. After over a year it looks like we'll be getting FTTH but of course no install date. That's because it 'may' be Utopia or Qwest installing it.

That's right. I'm not fooling. I received an email plus had a couple of conversations with a couple of buds who mentioned Qwest is serious about bringing FTTH in Salt Lake Valley. Would be nice to see what their roll out plan is. Here is a tidbit from one of the letters I received from them

Fiber to the home is available in some areas of Utah. We have no target or completion date to provide for you at this time, but Qwest is actively upgrading this option. The best advisement is that you re-check with us in the upcoming weeks and months for information regarding the progression of this area of development.

They are talking about 20 Megs up / down which would be perfect for us. We're thinking about moving our business to the web at some point. I have written the code we'll need but it's beta so far.

So Concast - 0 Consumers - 1

How's that for the ending of a story...

Here's an article about the rollout.

I'll post a few more things in the future. Sites I frequent which may be of interest. Also we're thinking of transcribing some of this to youtube. I've had people say they were too lazy (their words) to read about the story however would be interested in a vid or two explaining what happened.

So perhaps we'll roll something like that out. We'll see :D

BTW, it's nice being with an ISP (xmission.com) that has a clue how technology works vs a provider who tries to dazzel people with technical nonsense

To make its case, the group attempts to dispel the "technical-sounding nonsense" put forth by Comcast and its allies. If you've been following this debate at all, you already have a good sense of what Comcast's position is: upgrades are too expensive, BitTorrent traffic would instantly consume any upgraded bandwidth, and the only way to properly manage traffic is to discriminate against specific protocols.

Eve the White House is confused on what is a good broadband policy

Crawford added that what America needs is "access to a general communication structure that is open with universal access," a notion characterized by Russell as a "tragic mistake" and invoked an image of a single, regulated monopoly.

Here's an interesting article on the problem of bandwidth

No, p2p is no longer the single biggest traffic whore, responsible for only 20 percent of total traffic. It's streaming video, like YouTube and Hulu, which is now 50 percent of total traffic. During peak congestion—the times when Comcast will slow you down for hitting the pipe too hard—70 percent of it is http.

Which explains Comcast's flip on network management and why it's a total smokescreen. P2P is no longer the number one leech on networks, it's streaming video across regular old http. So they don't need to throttle p2p exclusively anymore—they need to slow the whole pipe down, hence the new "protocol agnostic" scheme.

Another good article about Broadband

Despite the repeated claims of the current administration that our "broadband policy" is working, the US actually has no broadband policy and no aggressive and inspiring goals (think "moon shot"). The EDUCAUSE model suggests investing $100 billion (a third comes from the feds, a third from the states, and a third from companies) to roll out fiber to every home in the country. Whether the particular proposal has merit or not, it at least has the great virtue of being an ambitious policy that recognizes the broad economic and social benefits from fast broadband.

Here's hoping that the next president, whoever he (or, possibly, she) is, gives us something more effective—and inspiring—than this. It's telling that the current administration's official page on the President's tech policy hasn't had a new speech or press release added since... 2004.

And finally, a thought validated about Concast speeds. What you really are paying for.

Reader Peter is one such atypical customer. He wants to cooperate with Comcast, but he can't get a straight answer as to how much downloading he's allowed to do. He can't even get an estimate. Since he pays for the highest tier of access from Comcast, he figures that he should be able to download more than a "typical" user. Not true, says the Comcast "Abuse" department. Since his internet is "faster" he's simply paying more for the ability to reach the bandwidth limit sooner.

Wonderful.

Thank God FTTH is coming. That would quickly impact that lousy company in my area.

March 8, 2008

2008-03-08T14:46:00.004-07:00

It's been a crazy couple of months. Between the FCC Hearings into Comcast's fake "Network Management" practices and the 2008 Utah Legislative sessions, it's been a crazy roller coaster ride.

I'm sure by now my Representative is tired of hearing from me along with several other Senators and Representatives. They've been hearing what I've had to say along with other's who are interested in an Internet free of MegaCorp manipulation. If we don't tell our politicians what we want then they will go the wrong way in passing crazy bills.

Take for instance Representative Craig Frank and Senator Stephenson's bills on Utopia. While they successfully left committee, they were killed before going to the State Legislature because people called and wrote complaining. Eventually they listened and simply dropped it. Sure there was the risk they would pop up in another bill somewhere.

Which is why many people were involved in searching for anything that might effect it in some way. Now that it's over, it seems we may have dogged a bullet. Time to make good on it by pushing for Network Neutrality and a fiber infrastructure as the NII promised us in 1994. Speaking of which, I thought you all might find this video of interest.

President Bush I understand has suggested we have a broadband strategy and it's working great. I brought this up on a slashdot discussion and it was amazing the arguments (from both sides) that came up. One guy mentioned "It's a very competitive business, ravenously so". The response from another slashdot poster says it all

Yeah, 2.5 options make for a very competitive market. You (or other monopoly) own my phone lines, while my cable monopoly owns my cable lines. High-latency satellite connections, slow-ass dialup (still over the monopoly's lines, BTW), or "unlimited" (5GB cap) cell data plans are the rest of the .5 options.

I think a lot of businesses would be quite happy to have such an absence of competition in their markets.

Even Brian Roberts (CEO of Comcast) once mentioned in an article that they have no competition and don't consider DSL even close to competition. If anyone finds that article please forward it to me. It was I believe in 2005 or 2006 but I can't find it after massive searching.

So can the consumer use the bandwidth he PURCHASED as he pleases? According to the FCC filing from Comcast, you cannot.

The question that many users are probably asking themselves right now is, "But didn't I pay for a certain level of bandwidth? Can't I use it however and whenever I want?" To which Comcast says, simply, "No, you cannot."

The argument here is that "if the most bandwidth-consumptive users are allowed to place whatever burden they wish on the network, whenever they wish, then bandwidth can become insufficient to enable other users... to access all the content, applications, and services that they want at the level of performance they demand and deserve."

From another conversation on slashdot I found this comment of great interest since this guy is in the business of providing Internet Access.

Since I admin a smallish ISP, I can tell you that it's already the next
killer app. We've been monitoring network demographics with NTOP for quite some time.

This past year, we've seen a 10% increase in subscribers and a 60% increse in traffic. That increase is almost entirely http. P2P protocol usage, on the other hand, plateaued last year. It is becoming more and more insignificant.

You can watch 20 episodes of Lost commercial free in "HD" full screen at nbc.com. I watched the Sarah Conner Chronicles [fox.com] (brought to you by Cisco, the irony..) at home last night and monitored my bandwidth consumption, which saturated at around 3Mb. This isn't youtube, the picture is great. It's very impressive, and easy to do. It was a 10 second pluggin install on my Windows machine.

People are rapidly finding this. An informal survey of our CSRs reveals that they are getting increasing volumes of calls where the subject comes up.

Never bet against the Internet, as they say.

And dont forget one of my favorite P2P file sharing sites Vuze.com. Apparently they have major concerns with Comcast's monopoly tactics.

In a conference call, Vuze's general counsel Jay Monahan drew the starkest analogy. What Comcast is really doing, he said, wasn't at all comparable to limiting the number of cars that enter a highway. Instead, it was more like a horse race where the cable company owns one of the horses and the racetrack itself. By slowing down the horse of a competitor like Vuze, even for a few seconds, Comcast makes it harder for that horse to compete. "Which horse would you bet on in a race like that?" asked Monahan.

And yes, I've submitted my testimony about Comcast to Vuze to present before the FCC. I have uploaded a copy of it to youtube to make it easier for people to find it.

From the huge deluge of articles people have been emailing me I found this article interesting. Especially the discussion about how Comcast goes about forging packets. Something I learned is VERY easy in my SANS 2007 Security training classes in Las Vegas last year.

Daniel Weitzner, Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Decentralized Information Group summed up bad traffic management with: “Maybe it’s a bit like the old adage about pornography ‘I know it when I see it’. In this case I know what Comcast is doing is in the camp of unreasonable. These are techniques that hackers would use to deny service to any application on the web, very similar in that regard. It might be interesting to hold a panel of security experts to talk about those kind of mechanisms, I’m certainly not one. But, forging data on the internet is probably outside of the realm of reasonable, and any standards body would deem it to be.”

Representative Mackey is pushing through a bill to preserve the Internet from these silly games. I've written him letters and encourage everyone to pitch in. With the crap going on with screening mail in Washington D.C., he recommends (from his web site) everyone write letters to him at his MedFord address.

Medford
5 High Street, Suite 101
Medford, MA 02155
781-396-2900

So I'm still alive and kicking and getting down to business :-)

Seems a report came out suggesting increasing our Internet Infrastructure even a little would make a huge impact on the economy. With all this talk over a recession, perhaps we should say it's high time to start building.

A broadband stimulus package would pump nearly as much money into the U.S. economy as an economic stimulus package recently passed by the U.S. Congress, said Brian Mefford, Connected Nation's CEO. A proposal being considered as part of a farm bill before Congress would allow immediate depreciation for investment in broadband infrastructure and "provide a jolt to the nation's economy in the near term," Mefford said.

Finally I leave you with this article talking about the Class Action lawsuit against Comcast. From the article

"This lawsuit demonstrates that consumers are rightfully outraged over Comcast's secretive bait‑and-switch tactics," said Markham C. Erickson, the Executive Director of the Open Internet Coalition. "The company's behavior already has attracted the attention of the FCC and Congress. Now the courts are involved. If Comcast doesn't change its behavior, the word 'Comcastic' is going to become a synonym for fraud."

January 20, 2008

2008-01-20T08:47:00.001-07:00

Welcome to 2008! Glad you all had a great Holiday Season but now it's time to hunker down and get serious with building our future. Either Utopia or something else. Doesn't matter to me but ignoring what the rest of the world is doing is just plain silly.

Before I start, it seems the FCC is investigating Comcast's strange behavior with P2P. There are many articles flying around including this one. Oh and if you wish, the FCC is looking for public comment regarding Comcast's behavior here. On the top right corner select "Submit a filing". I strongly recommend everyone submit their opinion of the companies practices. It's the only way change will happen for the better.

You must submit your comments before February 13 I believe so don't delay! Even Vuze is complaining about Comcast's P2P antics. They are one of the biggest P2P services I use. Can't say I blame them for complaining.

After all, it seems Network Neutrality and a fiber Infrastructure are more and more becoming issues for us. Even AT&T is talking about not staying Network Neutral and throttling traffic. Good Heavens! Obviously this is becoming an issue we need to address or risk loosing the Internet for something controlled by megacorps.

BTW, it's been a year since Comcast terminated my families Internet. I've been asked if I'm going back now that it's over. What do you guys think? Stay with an awesome ISP who honestly advertises their limits OR go with an abusive company who doesn't give a crap?

Well.. I wasn't idle. I've been making some youtube videos and finally posted one the other day. Here's my response to Comcast's mailed advertisements over the last few days. And I thought I was on their do no call list (Comcast's not the FCC). Only two days and 170 views. Not bad :D

I guess the real reason why we've had so many hits without really advertising is people are very dissatisfied with the company. So how many are unhappy with Comcast? Well.. it's a guess but I thought this article insightful. The article is titled "The "Tiny Percentage" of Dissatisfied Customers Turns Out to be 44%". That's tiny?? WOW!!

Just realized that other's are getting the message and talking about it. In fact a prediction for 2008 is that Internet surfing will slow. Seems the main complaint is video and audio downloads. From downloading to streaming services. Here's a cool story about the NFL pushing video over Broadband.

It's a big business and nothings been done to address the infrastructure. Other countries are showing just how much of a ripoff our Infrastructure really is as in this article.

Hong Kong residents can now enjoy their own fiber optic connections from Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited… which happen to be a fraction of the price and many times faster than what we can get here. Yes, HK residents can now get a whopping 100Mbps fiber optic connection for a mere $48.50 a month. And that's the entry-level package.

One more note. Seems the bills of Senator Stephenson and Rep. Craig Frank have been killed after leaving committee. Good job to everyone! This could not have happened without everyone's help. The Government is our servant and not the other way around. We still need to push the Community Broadband Act of 2007 to ensure our State Legislature doesn't mess up Utopia.

Utopia proponents aren't here to see it fail. We're here to make this work. Problems can be resolved. In fact it's interesting to see the changes being made now that people are seeing potential issues pop up and questions are being asked by many including myself. Much of the problems have been discussed at FreeUtopia.org. Why not head over there and put your two cents in :D

December 10, 2007

2007-12-10T18:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays!

To start off, I apologize to Steven from Pennsylvania for waiting soo long to post this. Apparently I somehow missed a bit of news about Verizon. Seems they used to advertise Unlimited Internet and were punished for their false advertising by the Attorney General of New York. The amount is a pittance. Only $1 million along with a couple other things like not marketing "unlimited" when it's obviously not unlimited. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I did send a letter to their AG asking if they were looking at also going after Comcast for violating the law. It should be interesting to see if any other AG's (maybe Utah's?) are interested in fraud. There are dozens of us here in my neighborhood who signed up. It should be interesting. And yes, I have filed with them.

I'm told that Qwest may be pushing their Internet Service to a whole new level here. 20 Megs and potentially up to 40 Megs to the home with fiber! With Salt Lake potentially seeing it in the near future. You heard me. It seems Comcast and Utopia are pushing soo hard that Qwest is beginning to wake up and talk about building the Infrastructure American's have already paid for. Yes, I'm talking about the 200 Billion in taxes shelled out to ... where? And don't forget, that's the conservative number here.

After all, without a proper foundation, how can we expect to thrive in the new tech future? I've heard it said many times that Internet Bandwidth is the new currency of the future. Those who have it will do well. I even ran across a new tech term. Internet Brownouts. I had no idea what people were talking about until I read this article. If I read this right, in a nutshell the Infrastructure here in America won't be able to handle our needs in the next 2 or 3 years. Now that's a frightening thought.

Here's another problem. People are using the Internet soo much that web sites were seeing problems on Cyber Monday. So the Internet might be important after all.

So how to solve the "last mile" problem. Seems a guy in Korea already did that. Well.. sorta. Basically instead of the traditional fiber he's worked out a plastic substitute. There are limits. 2.5 Gig bandwidth but that's far better than what copper can dish out if I am comparing the two correctly.

I've been watching a bill crawl around Congress these last few months called The Community Broadband Act. I'm hoping it's as good as it seems. So far I haven't seen anything that worries me. It basically would prevent (for example) the Utah State Legislature from messing with Utopia and giving companies such as Comcast an unfair advantage. I encourage everyone to contact their Congressmen and Representatives. Tell them what you think about this bill.

Found this while researching. Seems Comcast has quite the fan club and it's not the good kind. People want customer service as well as products from a company. It's been very insightful to see how many people are posting and complaining since the company doesn't seem to care.

So is Comcast going the way of the Dinosaur?

For a short time, Comcast will be able to sit on the customer base it has developed and sap money from customers that could receive better products at a more competitive price. But, just like AOL, once people get a taste of where technology is heading, that pile of money will deplete to nearly nothing…unless Comcast can step up, stop functioning like a monopoly, and start being competive.

It goes to show you, when you're a monopoly, you can make products that suit you, not your customers.

November 12, 2007

2007-11-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

The last month or so there has been great debate about what Comcast is doing with Peer to Peer. As I don't use their service I haven't spent much time investigating them however other's have. It's been heavily discussed on Slashdot several times and the Consumerist. All very insightful.

There has even been talk about a lawsuit against the company. This should prove interesting. I'll be watching this with great interest. Especially since In my opinion the company is deceptive in what they are really doing. Yeah I know. Strong words there but I'm not an idiot. I know what an RST packet does. If Comcast wants to spin a story, they should hire a PR department that can spin a better story to those who understand tech. As I understand it, it breaks the RFC and is considered harmful.

In a TCP Packet, RST packets basically close a network connection. One gentleman emailed me the following during a conversation.

RST packets do not slow things down. RESET is an abrupt termination that can be done. This requests an immediate termination of the session and can be initiated by either of the hosts talking. Once a RESET has been received and acted on, there is no subsequent communication by either side either to acknowledge the
RESET or to close the other side of the connection.

I'm not a network engineer but I do have some exposure to how things work. Sounds about right. So rather than slow things down, it basically stops the communication by impersonating the other side.

So the company first denies it was doing anything goofy with torrents, then it said they are slowing things down, now they are defending it saying people who excessively use their network need to be managed. Great company you got there guys. I understand the need to manage network traffic however they need to define the terms of the contract far better before something like this will work. I'm not the only one who has this opinion btw. From the link I read comments such as this

imanogre... When choosing an ISP, most consumers can only base their choice on what the corporation tells you. I have no problem with comcast choosing how to run their network how they see fit, but to lie to their consumers about their product... that in my book is akin to fraudulent business practices.

or this

Simba7... It's my internet. If I pay $$$ for their fastest connection, I better get that speed no matter what I do with it.

Some people are even saying that Comcast is no longer an ISP as we currently define it. 92% of the readers who responded to his poll stated they don't believe Comcast is an ISP either. Very insightful.

Joe sent the following article which suggests this is a symptom of a far larger problem.

There’s an interesting situation that ISPs face — a lot of their consumers who have a broadband want to use their broadband connections in a variety of ways. People are also participating in media distribution in ways that they haven’t in the past … and most importantly they’re also sharing content — they’re acting as distributors. The way the networks have been implemented are in direct conflict with all of those trends and ISPs are going to face some scaling problems as applications evolve that tax those connections. So what you see between BitTorrent and Comcast is actually a symptom of a larger problem.

I've heard some argue that media distribution is the same thing as running a server so Comcast has the right to manage as they see fit. Granting Comcast a monopoly with rules that are poorly defined or not defined at all makes no sense. It's been months since I've looked at the Comcast TOS/AUP. At the time I didn't see anything that even hinted p2p would be a problem.

So now the FCC may be getting involved. Seems there are complaints being filed (yes, I filed one too) left and right over this. Speaking of which, I didn't realize that Comcast was blocking Lotus Notes traffic also. Why on earth would they do that??? So much for their PR statement about not blocking access to web sites or applications.

One more note. I simply had to share this with everyone. From Slashdot -- Enjoy!

When Google calls Comcast (Score:5, Funny)
by sherriw (794536) {snip}
*Comcast phone ringing at head office*

Comcast Secretary: Hello, thank you for calling Com-

Google Big Cheese: This is Google Inc. calling, I want to talk to whoever's in charge. Now.

Comcast Secretary: I don't know who you think you are but-

Google: Go visit google.com right now.

*secretary visits google.com, google recognizes the comcast head office IP range and serves up a pdf of a lawsuit document (Comcast as defendant) instead of the google homepage*

Secretary: Oh my, one moment please I'll transfer you.

Comcast Big Boss: What? I'm busy lining my socks with money and throwing darts at customer photos.

Google: This is Google Inc. You know why I'm calling.

Comcast: *stutters* y-yes, but we have the right to do whatever we need to, to ensure that our networks....

Google: Seriously?

Comcast: Seriously what?

Google: Seriously, you want to mess with us? Are you sure?

Comcast: *Long pause, and painful griding noises of "thinking"* Well... I think you overestimate how powerful you a-

Google: You have a lot to lose 'my friend'. You have 823 employees using Gmail. 138 office locations on Google Maps, 2,345 website pages indexed by the google search engine that recieve a collective 546 thousand search hits per day from Google Search. You currently rank first for the search term "cable internet" and nearly all your press releases are picked up by Google News. Do I need to go on?

Comcast: *speechless silence* ... Uh, um, I- I'll talk to our engineers about getting this straighted up right away... sir.

Google: That's right. And be quick about it. *snaps fingers*

October 25, 2007

2007-10-25T16:27:00.000-06:00

I had the opportunity to attend the meeting at the State Capital today discussing Utopia and it's future. Needless to say I left the meeting and was disappointed with what I was hearing. For blow by blow you can read about it in Freeutopia.org and comment here or there. Jesse did a great job in documenting it with a more complete summary I understand to come soon. I understand the minutes and audio will be available soon.

What I don't understand is why the same questions keep coming up over and over again. I mean after reading the minutes from prior meetings, why are the same questions asked? I was thinking perhaps Senator Stephenson was expecting a different answer to the questions. Sorry but I don't get it.

Now here is the amusing part. You WANT to be sitting before reading this. Oh and don't drink a beverage... You'll be sorry if you do :-)

Through the entire 5 hours sitting there, the Chairman (Senator Stephenson) in going through the agenda would bring up the agenda item, there would be a discussion then he would ask for committee comment then ask if there was public comment. Over and over through all 5 agenda items.

Utopia was item number five, just after lunch. So he brings the meeting to order with his gavel, calls Mr. Shaw and Roger Tew of Utopia, talks at length about the same items from last month's discussion, asks for comment then closes the meeting after a brief discussion among the committee members when they can meet again. I was stunned. I missed my opportunity to speak in committee?

Yeah, I thought you might find that amusing. Oh and no, I didn't just leave. Are you kidding? I had the chance to speak with Senator Goodfellow and Senator Niederhauser. I also spoke for nearly an hour with Representative Craig A. Frank.

While we didn't see eye to eye on the issue of Utopia, I believe he understood Comcast terminating Internet accounts without ANY way to either resolve the issue or any guidelines on what is acceptable use was inappropriate and unprofessional. No, he didn't say that and yes, I'm stating what I understood from the conversation.

He did say he was very concerned about Utopia folding in the future and the cities getting stuck with running a socialized internet service. He used the term "socialized" often here but before anyone get's upset just think about it. He's right! Under that scenario that's exactly what would happen. iProvo, remember that? If not google it. We've talked about it ad nausem so no need to rehash it.

He also mentioned that many of these countries installing fiber infrastructures are also socialistic countries. Again, I can't fault him here. Japan I didn't realize was not a democracy. Yeah, I had presumed forever they were but I was wrong. Very wrong (Yeah, I admit it when that happens). Japan is a Constitutional Monarchy. So not a Democracy. Most European countries are also not Democracies. Yeah I know, some are close but there are differences how they work.

I've talked about Australia and learned they are close. They are a Parliamentary democracy. Like the United Kingdom. Very insightful. I really appreciated speaking with him and realize he has important business to be about. Still, this is an issue I've dug deeply into and he was a great help in giving me some additional food for thought.

Do I think Utopia is a bad idea now? No, it's not the "gold vein" going under our houses but I never believed it was perfect either. I did speak with the Mayors of Midvale and Murray (Utopia cities). They were very enthusiastic and were kind enough to give me their insights.. but more on that later.

I still believe Utopia makes sense. I believe there are questions to be answered, just not the same questions answered month after month (I've been reading previous meeting minutes). I also believe we can't ignore what other countries are doing with their Internet Infrastructure. Ok, so they are socialistic and we're not. We also invented the thing and we're finding ourselves more and more unable to compete in the world market with this old copper infrastructure. So what do we do?

A document with several legislative proposals were entertained. Items 1 and 2 were bad. There was a discussion about Utopia having an unfair advantage over private companies but I believe these items basically give these private companies a strong advantage (remember, they are already monopolies or duopolies if you are lucky).

#1 Prohibits new non pledging members from joining Utopia. This means if you don't put any money up (such as a bond) then you can't join. A non pledging city basically says Utopia has to put up the cash as the city won't. Not unusual since that's exactly what private companies do... right? Of course I'm not taking about the tax incentives private companies like this normally receive from Government. It's how municipalities encourage companies to come in... I've been reading about it a lot lately online in AP Press.

#2 prohibits adding a new member until the "build out" is complete. HUH??? So basically if I'm reading this right, when all 14 cities are fully built out, then other's can join? How is any of this better than SB.66? Unless I misunderstood which is entirely possible. Are any other companies under such prohibitions? I doubt it.

So that leaves #3 which says (and I prefer this one), Require vote by registered voters to add a new member. There are details to this of course. But it seems if several cities wanted to join Utopia then each city would have to vote on it. I'm under the impression that Representative Frank was in favor of this and I agree. It solves In my opinion two problems.

One, I've had lunch with a few people working for Utopia cities and they have frequently mentioned residents simply didn't know they had Utopia already available. There is a lack of advertising. The city doesn't tell people about it (is this right?), Utopia is admittedly weak with advertising where they are. From personal experience, I've had trouble getting in touch with Utopia reps calling their main number. Only by being a pain in the butt and calling over and over was I able to get in touch with someone which led me to Roger Black and a couple others. This was over a two month period btw. Yeah, like I said, they aren't perfect :-)

Because of a lack of advertising, people were unaware so the lines sit unused. Representative Frank made an excellent point regarding City Council's committing great sums of money to something that could go broke. No I don't believe that's the case. We're running a home business and there are costs to starting up. Don't I know it!

But when there are only a couple people making policy on something that could adversely impact the city, it's something that should go up to a vote. Representative Frank I felt was making it clear he wasn't in favor of socialistic ventures. I believe this makes the most sense. It get's the word out about Utopia, hopefully people will ask questions, get educated so we can make decisions whether this is something wanted or not. If the city doesn't use it, why install the fiber lines? This I can agree with. At least with a vote we'll have a better idea if it will at least have the minimum needed in signing up and eventually achieve profitability.

So it's not pretty but I'm rooting for number 3. After all, we're a Democracy :-)

As a side note, I was sent this article regarding a Congressman telling Comcast to stop messing with Bittorrent. I've suspected this may be why Comcast terminated my Internet as I've used it along with many other services (IPTV, Internet radio, etc...) in the past.

Here is an interesting quote from the article... and yes, I do agree with it. After all, isn't that what other companies do? You use more you pay more? To Comcast I can only say DUH!

Unfortunately for fans of Net neutrality, the congressman said he was not ready to go down this path and instead stressed market-based methods of fixing the problems. Instead of tinkering with packets, the congressman said that in the short term, Comcast should "simply tier their offerings and engage in a pricing structure that allocates more bandwidth to those who pay more, and less to those who pay less."

I would never have started the blog and this would be a non issue.

I also found this comment amusing

Comcast's name is surely to come up in any future discussion of Net neutrality - which has gone from a theoretical "what if companies did this kind of thing" debate to something more akin to "do you want every Internet company to start acting like Comcast?"

And finally one more quote

However, he said "the long-term answer is to deploy more capacity. That is what municipal broadband and other telecom companies are doing. Ultimately, the cable companies will have to deploy fiber to the house."

One way or another it has to happen. Just imagine a world without public roads? Yeah, I know it's hard but think about it. Who built that infrastructure and why?

Then I believe we will come to agree upon why fiber to the home and business is important. It's the economy of the 21st Century that will be affected by our actions, or inaction.

Oct 11, 2007

2007-10-11T09:45:00.000-06:00

Well, seems Japan is leading the way when it comes to Internet speeds and price these days. Either the Internet is important or it's not. And since our visitors are reading this over some Internet provider, it must be important.

Seems John Kerry is spending some time talking to people about this issue. While I personally have not supported him in the past, I'm curious what he plans on doing about it. I've sent him a letter along with other's to encourage our Politicians to pay attention. We're already in 16th place and falling behind awfully fast. I encourage everyone to contact John Kerry and let him know how important the Internet is to you.

So, is Comcast disrupting Bittorrents? Seems the Jury believes so. Personally I had NO problems with the company over four years as a customer. Now they seem to be purposefully causing havok with torrents. That's sad.

I occasionally had the outage which nobody in my neighborhood had complained about (according to Comcast's CSR's). Two years ago I even had to show the Customer Service Rep how to diagnose a problem I noticed with one of their switches. It took him over an hour just to figure out how to submit a ticket to Comcast Internal! I guess I should have charged them for my time after I spotted the problem :-)

BTW, as I suspected, 200 Gigs is the unofficial Comcast bandwidth limit. Personally I don't see how I could have used even half that. Xmission.com has RRDtool running and my reports have been WAY lower. I haven't broken even half of my monthly allotment (100 Gigs a month). I think they simply don't know how to use the new tools they have in place. But that's my guess why they are stepping up terminations.

Bandwidth is becoming such an issue these days. Received this via email and just had to share. iPlayer is going to be a BIG problem in the coming year. Seems ISP's are complaining it's using too much bandwidth. Based on IPTV tech. I see this as a real killer unless we have an Infrastructure that can handle it. Oh and copper was developed in the 1800's. I don't believe it can handle anything close to what fiber can do. Look around the world. Does anyone see countries really investing in copper?

One last note. I noticed they canceled the subcommitte meeting for next monday. The next meeting on October 25th (and possibly the last) falls on another day I'll potentially be out of state... again. I swear somebody has been leaking my schedule out ;-) Yeah that was a joke.

I took this week off to catch up on pulling house wiring and putting up sheet rock (yeah, I have many skills beyond computers ::grinz::). I'm making calls and sending letters out today to keep S.B. 66 dead. I'm sorry but some technologies must die. I'm sure the buggy whip manufacturers were upset when companies started to sell cars in their region. But that's the way it must go.

September 21, 2007

2007-09-21T18:53:00.000-06:00

My time is short and so much to do. I'm preparing for a business trip so I won't be easily available for the next week. I'll have limited email access though. Don't know how my wife is going to handle it with 6 kids by herself. I'll have to make it up to her when I get back :-)

As much as I need to go, I wish I could stay. I just learned there is a meeting next Wednesday to discuss Utopia in the State Capital. I understand Comcast and other's will have reps there. I certainly have something that needs saying. So I'm writing letters and contacting as many people as I can to get there if possible and sign up for the Citizen Comment period at the end of the meeting. Speaking of writing, I'm finishing up a few letters to several people including Senator Howard A. Stephenson and Representative Frank, Craig A.

Sen. Howard A. Stephenson is the Senate Chair and Rep. Craig A. Frank is the House Chair.

Here is their contact information.

Utah Howard A. Stephenson (R)
Email 1038 East 13590 South
Draper, Utah 84020 Office (801) 972-8814
Home (801) 576-1022

Write to the following address to make sure he gets any correspondence.

W115 Capitol Complex
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114
801-538-1035

Frank, Craig A.
825 E 1300 N
PLEASANT GROVE, UT 84062
cfrank@utah.gov

But write to this address for Frank

W030 State Capital Complex
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114
801-538-1029

I heard a rumor that SB 66 may be revived. Bad Idea. Why on earth would we want to push a technology invented in the 1800's is beyond me. Especially when fiber's limits are simply not known and we certainly know the limits of copper wires.

Please tell everyone you know to attend or write. I'll be there in spirit. If someone could take notes and let me know how it turned out I'd really appreciate it.

Sept 16, 2007

2007-09-16T19:28:00.001-06:00

Before I dive into the latest, I'd like to ask if anyone from the New York Metro area has been disconnected by Comcast "for using the Internet too much", to please contact me as soon as possible. Or if you know of someone, I would count it a personal favor to contact me. There is a reporter who is interested in speaking to someone locally.

I have several people in the East coast interested with interviewing but they are a little further than the reporter would like. Simply post a comment on the blog with your email or phone number. I will NOT post it and spread your information beyond what you allow. Thanks!

Ok, so what does the Government say Broadband is?

I was stunned to learn the FCC considers anything above 200K to be Broadband. Most countries these days are looking at a minimum of 2 Megs before something can be called that. My guess is they don't understand this was Broadband when everyone had 2400 baud modems or slower.

Several people I've spoken with the last couple weeks suggested Broadband isn't important. That the US has all it needs and then some. I don't agree. In fact other states (such as Ohio) have signed initiatives to build a fiber infrastructure and countries are getting the jump on us. Australia for instance is looking to build an Infrastructure which 99% will have Broadband within two years! From the Australia article:

The joint venture, known as OPEL, would contribute a further 900 million US dollars to provide broadband of at least 12 megabits per second by June 2009.

"What we have announced today is a plan that will deliver to 99 percent of the Australian population very fast and affordable broadband in just two years' time," Howard said.

An expert group will also develop a bidding process for the building of a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) broadband network, funded solely by private companies, in major cities.

And in Ohio, they seek to save money and build an affordable system available to everyone:

The order directs state agencies to use the Broadband Ohio Network rather than the patchwork of public and private networks agencies presently use, allowing the state to realize cost savings and efficiencies.

“By fully utilizing our state broadband network we will be making efficient, responsible use of our public dollars,” Strickland said.

I wish them well.

One more note, looks like Farmington City Council may not be moving forward soon with Utopia. At least those are the rumblings I'm hearing. I hope in their September 18th meeting they will at least investigate it before making any decisions.

The decision to move from pledging to non-pledging was motivated by risk tolerance; the council just doesn't feel comfortable with being on the hook in the rare instance that UTOPIA can't make the bond payments.

I haven't heard of any cities complaining about money being an issue. Only iProvo is cited as an example of what not to do. Fortunately, iProvo is not Utopia. I've been told they sublease Utopia lines and it's a service the city provides to residents. Utopia doesn't provide services, only the lines. A big difference there.

Personally, I've thought about my future home purchases. It's very unlikely I would consider a second purchase here in West Jordan unless a change in the climate occurs. In purchasing a second home, I'm looking only in cities in which Utopia is available or will be. West Jordan is a great city however the same services can be found in other cities as well. Either the Internet is important or it isn't. Can't have it both ways.

Sept 11, 2007

2007-09-11T16:57:00.000-06:00

I just had to share this with everyone. As I was driving home from work today, I heard a most awesome Clark Howard minute on KSL 102.7 FM. He basically went through the whole issue with Comcast terminating customer accounts for violating their "Invisible Bandwidth" limit. What really amused me was how he reported it, calling the company "Arrogant" and a Monopoly. It felt good to hear his comments. We basically brought this upon ourselves. He then quoted what Japan has for Internet services. Generally about 9 times faster than what we have here in America at a fraction of the cost.

As I understand it, they interviewed people from Atlanta Georgia area several months ago. I don't know who they are but I'm very pleased they came forward with their story.

If anyone was able to record it please let me know. I'd love a copy of it. If only I wasn't driving :-)

I'm getting contacted by reporters in Europe now. I apologize for not keeping up with my email. Articles are popping up in Germany, Italy and other countries and I've interviewed with several of them. There may be an article from France soon. Thank goodness for the Internet. I know a fair amount of Portuguese, a little Italian (still learning it) and no German, there are free tools available. Simply put your Internet address or text, select how you want it translated, then press the translate button. It's simple and does a fair job of translating.

I hear we're in the Washington Post! Several have posted here or emailed me the link (Thank You!) I unfortunately don't know of anyone in Washington DC who was terminated. If you or someone you know in the area has been terminated by Comcast please let me know. I'd love to send your contact information to them with your permission of course.

I've asked several people in recent conversations to come forward and speak with reporters. More and more are telling me they are afraid of retribution. Don't be afraid. YOU are the customer. The more who come forward and complain of this ill treatment the more power we all have to make a change. Whether it's Comcast to give up it's outrageous abuse policies or replace them with a national infrastructure as was pushed in the 90's by Clinton and Gore (NII). Comcast has already terminated services. They can't legally do anything more. It's done. Many have already come forward and even posted here.

Speaking of HighSpeed Internet, I recently came across this article about Japan. At least now I understand part of the reason why they've been able to leap frog America... again. Nothing wrong with competition. But when we deliberately hold ourselves back? Something certainly needs to be done. This is why I'm telling people to contact local Representatives and every Politician until they get a move on.

Another article of interest. Internet pipes in the YouTube Age. Very insightful.

"Unless we ensure an adequate supply of quality bandwidth at reasonable prices, many current and future business models will be stranded, which will have serious implications for economic growth and national competitiveness in the Internet sector," Kleeman writes.

Someone recently posted stating they like to be social and go out, talk with people. I'm fine with that. I do it all the time. However the article very clearly mentions we'll have problems with economic growth without the proper infrastructure. Time to get rid of the buggy whip :-)

One more note. Is Comcast violating the law by filtering P2P?

Many states make it illegal for an individual to impersonate another individual. New York, a state notorious for its aggressive pro-consumer office of the Attorney General, makes it a crime for someone to "[impersonate] another and [do] an act in such assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another." (See: NY Sec. 190.25: Criminal impersonation in the second degree).

Also from the article

Comcast is perfectly within its right to filter the Internet traffic that flows over its network. What it is not entitled to do is to impersonate its customers and other users, in order to make that filtering happen. Dropping packets is perfectly OK, while falsifying sender information in packet headers is not.

I completely agree with this. While I believe they need to manage traffic(QOS: Quality of Services), I'm curious where this would go and if the AG's are looking at investigating the company. I'm curious where the FTC is with investigating the company. It's been many months since I filed a complaint citing unfair business practices. Time for me to follow up.

August 27, 2007

2007-08-27T11:27:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note during my lunch hour...

Breaking News!

We've been Slashdotted!

I was wondering why our traffic was up so sharply. Thank goodness we're running this under blogspot otherwise we'd suffer the usual Slashdot effect. Google Rocks! (Yes, I know they aren't perfect but...). I also appreciate the high interest in the story. It's a problem that nobody in my neighborhood knew existed. My neighbors thought they still had "unlimited use for a flat monthly fee". At least that's what the advertisement said when we signed up.

My mail box is pulverized however. So many responses to read through. Please don't take it personally if I don't respond. Believe it or not, I do have my time away from the keyboard despite some opinions to the contrary :-)

Oh and it seems West Jordan will not be joining Utopia. Just received an email from our Mayor. I'm being told there are no plans as the City Council isn't convinced they should join. Citing iProvo's screw ups. Of course there are other cities doing well (Murry, Midvale, West Valley and so on). I'm curious, any ideas on what would convince a City Council we should investigate Fiber to the home?

Please post your thoughts. I'm curious what other's would do short of trying to replace them (It might come to that unfortunately). I really do believe a Fiber Infrastructure would have kept an abusive company such as Comcast from terminating people's account with next to no warning. A single phone call then your gone is poor customer service at best.

Newsflash to Comcast. There will always be a .001% top users list. There will never be a time where they no longer have a .001% top user list. Ever. If it's only .001% then why are there neighbors down the street terminated for heavy usage? One lady with 9 kids around the block received "The Call" and canceled on the spot. She didn't want to deal with the company after hearing of my experience the month before.

I have some new info that's come in about the $200 Billion American's have paid for Fiber to the home. I haven't reviewed it yet but if any of it's verifiable then I'll post it here in the next few days.

Thanks again for your interest and keep spreading the word! Several calls from reporters have come to me and other's unsolicited because of word of mouth!

Chow

August 22, 2007

2007-08-22T17:22:00.001-06:00

Before I begin. I want to say I really appreciate the high interest and all the comments posted over the last few months. Both Pro and Con. I don't mind a dissenting voice. What a terrible place it would be if we all thought and spoke the same. I would like to say that lately I've received a number of dissenting posts with Adult language in it.

I'm uncomfortable with accepting those posts and haven't figure out how to edit them here (I've looked). If you have an opposing opinion please post but without the vulgarity (FU this and so on). I will reject those posts every time and would like to accept it. Even if I don't agree with it. Thanks!

Now on to our program...

I don't know what to make of it. Comcast says nay, and future ex-Comcast subscribers say yea.

Are they messing with bittorrent? I did find this so I'm willing to bet they are doing something as others have also noticed something going on.

Oh and in response to Comcast's cut/paste bandwidth response, I posted my analysis of their numbers in the February 20th post In an attempt to translate their response into English :-)

Their response makes no sense but I digress. I've already kicked that one around so enjoy!

From the Fedora article

If Comcast is allowed to continue cutting off even one protocol we’ve already lost. Voice your opinion. Contact your local office. Complain. Make some noise. Switch providers.

Until then I’ll be getting these two Comcast connections switched to a competitor. It may be a slower internet (in my area) on DSL, but at least its the whole internet.

I'm afraid it won't matter. I believe we've already shown how the company doesn't address consumer issues. It's bizarre but that's reality.

Comcast has been treating its customers so badly that even Clark can’t believe it. Customers are receiving letters from the company, warning them that if they use their high-speed Internet too much the service will be cut off. But Comcast doesn’t tell people what “too much” means.

It seems change only comes with running it through the courts as in this example. Yes, there are many other's but this one I found particularly interesting. I've wondered why our Attorney General doesn't investigate. Maybe someday (or elect a new one).

For those of you without alternatives I strongly encourage you to speak to your local Government. City Council, the Mayor, your Governor. Everybody. And keep speaking until something is done about it. It's your right and privilege as an American.

August 19, 2007

2007-08-19T10:42:00.000-06:00

Looks like Comcast is making friends today. A reader sent this to me today. While I understand why they are doing it, I don't believe this is the right answer. Bit-torrent relies on upload and download bandwidth being available. Sending RST to terminate the upload (while creative) is only alienating their customers even further. Personally I don't believe they really care. They simply want you to send them their money and read 130,000 email's every month. Or better yet, just send them the money and don't use the service. It's better for everyone that way :-)

Services such as Zudeo would be affected by this stunt. BTW, if you are a Star Wars fan, download "Dark Resurrection" from them(it's in Italian with English subs). It's awesome!

If Bit-Torrent is such a problem, here's another protocol which could finish the job of trashing the Internet. Internet Television is becoming VERY popular especially in my house (along with Internet Radio).

A recent report urges restraint to nurture growth of the Internet. I thought this part of their report was very interesting

The think tank, the New Millennium Research Council, released an 18-page report that called on Internet policymakers to avoid new regulations that could restrict Internet investment by the private sector and to find ways to encourage investment to handle the coming Internet onslaught.

How well has this "Hands Off" approach worked? Any guesses? Just read the above article on P2P for the answer. Oh, and for those who think fiber to the home isn't possible because of all the fiber we'd have to run across the country, check this out

The report said investment in network capacity by ISPs typically involves activating fiber optic cables that are already constructed but still dark; connecting the fiber to higher speed routers; dedicating circuits to Internet traffic; and expanding end user access lines where needed. Notably, 75 percent growth in the average traffic on the world's Internet backbones in 2006 outpaced the 47 percent growth of capacity, the report said, citing TeleGeography Research. That trend had continued for the third straight year.

Dark Fiber in other words. I believe we have the infrastructure already in place for the long runs people frequently bring up. It's the last mile which is the problem. This is why I support Utopia's efforts.

Finally I leave you with this thought.

The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month, he added, at a monthly cost to carriers of $112, a giant leap from the less than $5 attributed to Internet use. If that content were high-definition video, the average user would be consuming more than 1 terabyte per month at a cost to carriers of $560 per month. "Clearly that's not what the average user is going to pay per month for their video service," Kafka said. "That's why we need help."

Now I think I understand the knee jerk reaction and the fear companies such as Comcast display. The future doesn't look very bright without a fundamental change in either the habits of their customers or investment in the infrastructure.

Starting in the early 1990's, the Clinton-Gore Administration had aggressive plans to create the "National Infrastructure Initiative" to rewire ALL of America with fiber optic wiring, replacing the 100 year old copper wire. The Bell companies - SBC, Verizon, BellSouth and Qwest, claimed that they would step up to the plate and rewire homes, schools, libraries, government agencies, businesses and hospitals, etc. if they received financial incentives.

• By 2006, 86 million households should have already been wired with a fiber (and coax), wire, capable of at least 45 Mbps in both directions, and could handle 500+ channels.
• Universal Broadband: This wiring was to be done in rich and poor neighborhoods, in rural, urban and suburban areas equally.
• Open to ALL Competition: These networks were to be open to ALL competitors, not a closed-in network or deployed only where the phone company desired.
• This is not Verizon's FIOS or SBC's Lightspeed fiber optics, which are slower, can't handle 500 channels, are not open to competition, and are not being deployed equitably.
• This was NOT fiber somewhere in the network ether, but directly to homes.

We already paid for it in taxes. So why don't we have it? Does anyone else feel like fraud occurred somewhere?

• Costs to Customers - We estimate that $206 billion dollars in excess profits and tax deductions were collected - over $2000 per household. (This is the low estimate.)

• Cost to the Country - About $5 trillion dollars to the economy. America lost a decade of technological innovation and economic growth, about $500 billion annually.

• Cost to the Country - America is now 16th in the world in broadband. While Korea and Japan have 40-100 Mbps at cheap prices, America is still at kilobyte speeds.

• The New Digital Divide - The phone companies current plans are to pick and choose where and when they want to deploy fiber services, if at all.

• Competitor Close Out - SBC, BellSouth and Verizon now claim that they can control who uses the networks and at what price, impacting everything from VOIP and municipality roll outs to new services from Ebay and Google.

Next time you are told you didn't pay for it, remind them they already grabbed over 200 Billion from Americans under Clinton. It's time to cough up the benefits of our investment.

August 15, 2007

2007-08-15T18:16:00.000-06:00

Apparently companies such as Comcast terminating their customers accounts is a bigger issue than I had realized. This last month I've had a couple of unsolicited interviews with reporters for a couple of magazines about my experience. They were also very interested in speaking with anyone who had similar experiences. I gladly passed along contact information I had permission to give out. Hopefully those worked out for everyone. I'll admit, I felt kinda silly when asked for a photo shoot by one magazine. I guess I asked for it when I began speaking out. It's not me as I've never been comfortable with public speaking.

When the articles pop up I'll post the links here if they are available online. Speaking of which, I received this from Google Alerts just a while ago. No I didn't interview with them... I think :-) Basically the article talks about more and more cable companies running into the lack of bandwidth issue. It's a good article. I highly recommend reading it.

The last section of the article had a link to IPTV. I'm wondering if this is part of the reason Comcast selected me for their ex-customer club. I was getting into this a little before they cut me off. IPTV is sweet and IMO something Cable companies need to fear if bandwidth is an issue.. More products are coming out which use IPTV. It's only getting worse not better. In fact with my VERY high interest in MythTV, I can see fun products such as Myth causing some to panic and over react (Note to Brian Roberts: Get your people Customer Service training. They could use some).

One more note. I've had some people say America's Internet is totally awesome compared to the rest of the world. That may be true in some very isolated parts of the country. In general however we've a lot of catching up to do. Countries such as Japan and Korea beat us when it comes to average Internet speeds. An average of 4.8 vs. 61 Mps is pretty sad IMHO.

The last paragraph says it all.

The sad truth is that broadband connections of any speed can still be hard to come by in some parts of the country. The US consistently ranks relatively low in comparison with the rest of the world in both broadband availability and speeds. We also consistently pay more for our slower connections than those in other countries. As long as the government continues to make decisions that seem to work against consumers in this area—for example, not requiring cable and DSL providers to share their lines—Americans will continue to be stuck with subpar broadband speeds and prices.

I think it's time for me to speak before our City Council again. They might want to learn how far behind we are. Only projects such as FioS or Utopia will catch us up in a timely fashion.

August 2, 2007

2007-08-02T09:38:00.000-06:00

The White City Council meeting went well. The level of interest in Utopia is very high. It seems they will be joining Utopia far in advance of West Jordan if things continue. Both my wife and I attended and had the chance to chat with people. Since White City is a Township, they had a Council member assigned to them by Salt Lake County. We had a wonderful conversation with the Councilmen about Utopia and it's many benefits. They were very surprised to learn of our Comcast termination story and had many questions which I was pleased to answer.

Another gentleman I spoke with made a comment before the meeting if perhaps Comcast or Qwest would be a better choice for the area. He and others were stunned when I mentioned that Comcast is terminating Internet accounts in such a bizzare manner with inadequate notification for violating an undocumented bandwidth limit. Needless to say, it's unlikely Comcast will find much sympathy here.

Jesse (who presented the Utopia idea) mentioned Comcast was plastering the area with an advertisement he said they were loosing money on big time. I found it amusing the ad came only days after S.B. 66 died.

In the meeting I mentioned the one thing the Township needed to remember is once Utopia comes, they must advertise! When I spoke to a tech for the City of Murray I was told people had Utopia fiber and didn't know about it! They were looking to sign up with another service costing far more than Utopia. I'm hoping they will keep that in mind when it comes to the area.

Next we're on to Draper Utah. There has been a great deal of discussion in bringing Utopia there. Also I'm speaking with my City Council again about bringing Utopia here to West Jordan. It's ironic. Roger Black, COO of Utopianet lives in West Jordan and can't get the awesome service his company provides. Go figure.

Just received this notice. I strongly suggest everyone who doesn't wish to give up their legal right to sue Comcast to opt out here. You simply need your name, address and Comcast account number. As far as I can tell it's legitimate.

One more note. Looks like the State of Ohio has decided they want the ability to compete in the 21st Century and more importantly, save money. Now who doesn't want to save more money :-)

From the article

“This is the first step in bridging the digital divide in Ohio, and I look forward to working with industry providers, businesses and our local communities to take additional steps to provide superior broadband access to all of Ohio’s 88 counties,” Strickland said.

Please encourage your local and state Government to bring broadband which will allow American's to compete. America is already in 24th place in broadband penetration and in 7th place with technology and science. We're no longer number 1. I don't know about you guys but I find that disturbing.

July 11, 2007

2007-07-11T16:25:00.001-06:00

Today I'll be attending a Community Council meeting to discuss plans to bring Utopia to the masses. No, not here in West Jordan (though I'm still talking to people about it). I'm visiting White City today (they are just south of Sandy). It should be interesting to hear the arguments, pro and con. I'll update the blog if anything of interest. You never know. Basically I'm there to lend my support for expanding Utopia (now that the legislation has expired).

I never would have done something like this a year ago. It's amazing how poor customer service can get someone really motivated. Speaking of which, a recent post from autoguy mentioned Comcast is working with customers when bandwidth issues arise.

Comcast has issued an official response claiming they will try and work with their customers regarding this very issue. Not so in my case, regardless of the extensive effort I made to work with them. They threatened me with a 12 month suspension of services.

If anyone has seen such a response could you please email the link to me? I'd like to examine whether it's an improvement or just CYA. Also, I strongly recommend that anyone receiving "The Call" begin moving email's and your address book over to something like gmail. So far people are usually terminated regardless of what they do within 30 days. At least that's what I've gathered in speaking with former Comcast HSI customers.

I recently came across freeutopia.org. Very well kept and up to date site discussing Utopia, Internet and other items along that route. Might be something of interest to check out.

One more note. There are only 4 more days left to comment to the FCC regarding Net Neutrality. Take a few minutes and let them know your thoughts. Also check out this cool YouTube video about the internet and Net Neutrality.

June 25, 2007

2007-06-25T18:57:00.001-06:00

I received a number of letters from various Politicians the last few weeks. It's interesting as many say the same thing. Politicians are aware of a growing concern by their constituents that the Internet is in trouble. Yet they seem to move rather slow in fixing the problem. If we had our roads privately held and problems were cropping up every week, we would see decisive and immediate action. I'm not talking about the infrequent pot hole here.

People in and out of Utah are contacting me stating they received "The Call" and asking what can they do. I'm asking everyone whether a resident of Utah or not to contact Senator Hatch, Senator Bennett and Representative Chris Cannon. Tell them how you feel about the problems with monopolies (in some cases duopolies). Don't forget to remind them it's important for our future as a country to have high speed Internet everywhere.

Finding your Senators and Representatives is easy. Tell him how you feel. In many cases you can easily send them a letter quickly online from their web site (the web sites are usually linked to their name, try it). It's your right and privilege to tell them what is on your mind. After all, America just dropped in broadband penetration from 12th place to 24th place. We're losing ground fast. Countries such as Australia understand how important the Internet is.

I think Orrin Hatch is closer to understanding that people are being harmed and discriminated by some private companies.

So, without further comment.

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about network neutrality legislation. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

As you are aware, S. 215, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, was introduced by Senator Byron Dorgan on January 9, 2007, and referred to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. S. 215 would amend the Communications Act of 1934 to establish certain Internet neutrality duties for broadband service providers, including not interfering with, or discriminating against, the ability of any person to use broadband service in a lawful manner. This law is intended to promote competition and ensure consumers are not harmed by the actions of large telecommunications companies.

As a longtime advocate for competition and fairness to consumers, I believe competition yields several important advantages to consumers, including lower prices, higher quality services, and more responsive customer service. Our nation has always placed a premium on the many benefits made possible when companies compete on a fair playing field.

I believe it is important for telecommunications providers to ensure they do not and will not discriminate against consumers. I am hopeful the Federal government will not be forced to take too active a role in prescribing what can and can't be done on private networks around the country as I believe in fostering competitive integrity in the offering of broadband and video services. However, telecommunications companies are deregulated and are therefore subject to antitrust laws which regulate anti-competitive behavior in the U.S. Should these laws prove to be ineffective at protecting consumers, I will not hesitate to take action, especially if market imbalances begin to manifest themselves. Again, thank you for writing.

Sincerely,

Orrin G. Hatch.
United States Senator.

May 31, 2007

2007-05-31T17:40:00.000-06:00

In the middle of my push for Utopia Fiber in West Jordan, I came across this tidbit on the Save the Internet web site. Apparently companies like Comcast want to be the "gatekeepers of the Internet". Personally that worries me greatly. We already can't trust them to be fair with their customers. Every week I'm hearing from somebody in the U.S. who has been disconnected for violating their fuzzy Abuse policy. NOW they want to discriminate against web sites who don't pay more for service they are already paying for?

It's been argued that companies such as Google (for example) are not paying their fair share of the bandwidth they are using. I beg to differ. I've spoken with a few buddies working at Google and it's certainly not a free lunch (unless you mean lunch at their wonderful cafeteria). Companies and customers are paying for the services offered. This is basically another excuse to hike the rates without calling it a rate hike.

Do you want to "trust" an abusive company with the Internet? Contact the FCC and let them know what you think by June 15th (end of the public comment period). It's important they understand that a common carrier shouldn't be allowed to restrict what web pages you visit or how fast they might load compared to a competitor who paid extra.

One more note. I've received an interesting email from my Representative Chris Cannon about his views regarding the Internet. It's basically the opposite of what I've been hearing from him these last few years. Here is part of the letter I received.

Thank you for contacting me regarding the important issue of Net Neutrality. I appreciate your letter, and it is a pleasure to respond.

Currently in Congress there is a heated debate as to whether or not legislation should be enacted to prevent phone and cable companies from charging for preferential network access. As you may know, "Net Neutrality" refers to the idea that access to the Internet should be on a free and open basis for all.

The Internet continues to be a vital source of economic growth. The idea of a free and open Internet is what has allowed it to prosper and flourish into the fertile breeding ground of innovation it is today. It is my belief that Congress should stay out of the way of innovation and allow the Internet to continue to grow without the restrictive hands of over-regulation and control. For this reason I voted in favor of HR 5417, the Internet Freedom and Non-Discrimination Act, and for an amendment on the House floor that strengthens the anti-trust laws against those who attempt to degrade or impede legitimate Internet content.

In my time in Congress, I have led the way in keeping the Internet free of taxes and have always been a proponent of its ability to launch and sustain businesses of all sizes, but mainly small businesses. In addition, I am a cosponsor of HR 1684, the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act of 2005, a bill that would make permanent the ban on state taxation of Internet access, to make sure your email is never taxed, and that you will not be taxed on your connection to your Internet service provider.

I am proud of the fact that Utah is one of the nation's technological leaders, and I assure you I will vote to protect Utahns in their freedom of choice in their Internet access and that I will fight for the founding principles that have made the Internet the success it is today.

BTW, HR 5417 can be viewed here.

Seems we have more in common than I thought :-)

May 11, 2007

2007-05-11T18:09:00.000-06:00

Just received an amusing email from the BBB today. I couldn't resist sharing. Basically Comcast sent them another response and mailed a copy to our house now. I'll bet nobody could guess what the company said. Any takers??

No, don't hold your breath. Comcast apparently isn't able to do much more than cut and past their reply over and over again (and over and over and over....). It's quite funny actually. You would think a company able to push 150 Mps across a copper wire would be capable of something a little more ... original?

Before I get into that, here is their response

And here is mine.

So now I have a list of compromises. The middle ground is NOT getting the answer and resolving the issue. We'll see what the company does. Any guesses??? :-)

I'm curious if the company will improve as a result of this. The Abuse department I hope has some understanding of how dangerous Social Engineering can be. Ever hear of a guy named Kevin Mitnick? Yeah, it's a bigger problem than people realize.

People get a phone call and wonder if it really is Comcast calling. I've heard some say this could potentially turn into some way to scam people. Call around and ask for personal information. Hey, don't look at me that way. Comcast is the one who said Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited anymore. None of this has made sense from the beginning.

Ok. So I've received a bunch of email's about Comcast's latest test over copper wire. They did accomplished something very impressive. I doubt anyone will see 150 Mps but at least they are starting to catch up with the fiber. I hope nobody is really kidding themselves. Copper is 19th century tech and we're talking about moving into the 21st Century with fiber. They are basically investing in technology which really doesn't have a future. Fiber is the future. The potential is much higher. When a gig connection is made over a cable modem then I'll change my opinion :-D

May 5th, 2007

2007-05-05T12:28:00.000-06:00

We're at 25,000 visitors! Thank You all for your interest in this issue and getting the word out. According to Sitemeter, we have visitors from Australia, Germany, the UK, Brazil, Thailand, Japan and Israel to name just a few countries. I've received links to articles around the world. This is quite the accomplishment after nearly 4 months of operation. With people such as you spreading the word, we may make a positive change yet.

So here we are. The next 30 days with DSL. This month I needed to pull down more iso's than usual. I'm developing some code and needed to pull down RedHat AS3, AS4, and AS5. Binaries and source. That's on top of our normal usage. So here are the screen shots.

Here is the usage chart.

And here are the numbers.

Why do I show these? Because I was very suspicious when the Abuse department stated we were using 250-300 gigs a month. I simply couldn't believe we were hitting those numbers. I only wish I was monitoring it at this level back then. I have spoken with a couple dozen people who have captured their usage. In every case so far, the Abuse department's quoted numbers do not match what terminated customers monitoring software reported. Since Comcast doesn't provide any way of monitoring usage, you simply have to take their word for it. This reflects poorly on the company. With as much money as the company made last year, they can spend a few bucks and figure this problem out.

BTW, If I don't respond to an email or post please don't take it personally. I do have 6 kids and a wife to spend time with. Not to mention my employment and after hour activities keep me busy. I'll do the best I can to respond.

UTOPIA UPDATE

There are also a few other things of interest I've been working on. I'm trying to get together with the City Council's and especially the Mayor's of cities with Utopia. At least a couple of them to discuss how things are going. I'd like to copy what they did in the City of West Jordan. I've heard plenty of scary stories about iProvo. With 14 cities adopting Utopia, I figure somebody had to do it properly. Once I have something to report I'll post it here.

A little over a month ago I had a pleasant chat with Jason Porter and Pete Ashdown, CEO of Xmission.com. That conversation I felt was very helpful. Pete is very excited with Utopia and we walked away with a laundry list of things to do. More on this in upcoming posts.

I really appreciate Jason's help these last few months. In researching why we are not allowed to join Utopia at this time, Jason discovered the following legislation which spells it out. Fortunately part of it goes away after July 2007 (yes, this year). I've been sending letters to the legislature and my representative. I strongly recommend everyone to do the same. Make them aware of what they could be getting themselves into and encourage competition.

Here are a few other links Jason provided. Very insightful.

If you have a story, please feel free to post it here or email me.

Keep up the great job of getting the word out!!