Category Archives: bandwidth

They said it would never happen: DSL prices in Ontario drop 18%!

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Hell froze over

Update with correction: TekSavvy’s marketing chief, Tina Furlan, tells me the company has lowered its DSL prices, on average, by $7.50. That translates into a drop of 18%, which I’ve now indicated in the revised title. I went ahead with 28% originally, which is the drop in my own service tier, as explained below. That average is still very impressive in a part of the world where we only ever hear about price increases. I’m assuming some TSI customers will now feel able to move up to a faster service, especially in the uplink, which has always been the choke point in the asymmetric residential last mile. One meg up, which runs typically at about 750 kbps, is just no good for the kinds of data we’re becoming accustomed to, like multi-meg email attachments.

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Anyone who’s ever spent more than 5 minutes reading this page knows I’ve spilt a phenomenal amount of ink over the miserable state of broadband in Canada – not that I’m alone. In addition to some of the world’s highest prices, we put up with unacceptably slow speeds, shitty customer service, off the graph latency, way too little fiber, and marketing that deliberately confuses and misleads. Then an email arrived this morning from TekSavvy. Just before we get to their unbelievably good news, here’s a clip that sums up the status quo like a punch between the eyes. It’s from the US, but don’t tell that to Bell or Rogers (speaking of which, when I ran this at one point, the Google ad was for… Rogers Home Monitoring, yowzer!).

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Shock! Outrage! And other cool facts about the Bell fiasco

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[Was supposed to continue from Oct 15 post on Ms Motzney...] 

What you’ll find in this post instead:

  1. The Bell/Astral decision is (virtually) unprecedented
  2. “Public” benefits now refers to “we the public” – not just dudes who make TV shows
  3. Cabinet won’t intervene
  4. Consumer-loving Bell shocked and outraged

CRTC watchers eat crow. Don’t you hate it when the world changes faster than you can write about it? Thursday’s triumph over Bell is wonderful for consumers; for the thesis I was developing here, not so much. The comments I’ve read – Geist (This Is Not Your Parent’s CRTC); Cartt (CRTC says “Non!”); the Globe (Ottawa says it can’t intervene in CRTC’s BCE-Astral decision); etc – all indicate the Astral decision shows Chairman Blais really does intend to build a consumer-oriented CRTC. I trust he will understand why industry watchers, present company included, had been pretty much unanimous in predicting he’d never, ever turn down Bell on this acquisition. Continue reading →

More Pew Internet futures: whither higher ed in 2020?

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university of sussex library

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Question 2 from the 2011 Internet experts survey

In my previous post, I explained how Pew Internet and its partner Elon University run their global survey of Internet stakeholders (aka experts), on where the Internet is likely to be by 2020. I also provided some links to their resource pages. The survey is now in its 5th edition. Some 800 or 900 participants respond to questions framed in “tension pairs” – opposite points of view on issues currently getting a lot of notice from, well, Internet experts. (Btw, last year that group included the likes of Clay Shirky, Doc Searls, David Clark, Susan Crawford, Howard Rheingold, Craig Newmark and Esther Dyson.) Everyone is then asked to dig up an opinion or two and elaborate. Continue reading →

More broadband baloney: the phony “access” metric vs actual users

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I was approached recently to talk with the Wire Report and CBC Radio about broadband access. One good thing about talking to journalists like Karen Fournier is they tend to be on top of breaking news. You learn some things. In this case, I learned what provincial officials have been going around saying to their lucky citizens about their alleged “access” to broadband.

Turns out many of these officials have the same bizarre ideas about broadband as their federal counterparts, as you would glean from the article’s title: Provinces criticized for reporting 100 per cent broadband access (sub. req’d). It may be ignorance, it may be manipulation, probably a little from each column:

The provinces of Saskatchewan, P.E.I., Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, as well as the Yukon, say they have broadband penetration rates—or access rates—of 100 per cent. Continue reading →

The CRTC needs to connect with Canadians, not consult with them (part 2)

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Leaping onto the social network bandwagon

The consultation site came equipped with some basic Web 2.0 tools, i.e. a video with a YouTube imbed and links to several social networking sites (SNS). With over 500 million people now on Facebook, and the use of other social networking sites (SNS) growing, it would seem there’s a compelling case for having SNS links on any big site. There is. But SNS badges aren’t medicine for a site that’s not reaching its audience.

That’s where the CRTC has run into problems. It has done nothing in creating material for the consultation to expand its audience outside those with a professional stake in regulatory affairs.  Nor has it understood the need to overcome the inertia of demographics.

Even when the site is trying to help, as in the FAQ, the non-expert reader is unlikely to take comfort. Reading suggestions include two CRTC telecomm notices, one of which (CRTC 2010-43) concerns the larger consultation on the obligation to serve. It begins thusly:

In this notice, the Commission initiates a proceeding to review issues associated with access to basic telecommunications services, including the obligation to serve, the basic service objective, and local service subsidy. This proceeding will also re-examine the local competition and wireless number portability frameworks in the territories of the small incumbent local exchange carriers. In addition, the Commission will re-examine the appropriateness of the existing forbearance framework for mobile wireless data services.

Why would anyone put ILECs and the existing forbearance framework for mobile wireless data services anywhere near a site devoted to a vox pop consultation? If the Commission is not making these arcane but important issues accessible to the public, it’s not only doing a disservice to taxpayers; it’s also failing to look after its own relevance as a Canadian institution. Continue reading →

Fine Print, Market Power and the Big ISPs

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This post is a merge-and-rewrite of my earlier 2-parter, Why are incumbents so afraid of being truthful? My thanks to Tim Wilson, publisher and managing editor of Telemanagement, for reprinting this in his next issue – containing opinions with which the publisher does not necessaily agree! I’ll be providing other comment pieces to Tim over the coming months. Telemanagement is a great resource. Check it out here. And past the jump, listen to a terrific speech given earlier this month by Larry Lessig on America’s Internet woes.

The other day I got a piece of unsolicited mail from Bell Canada, promoting its Novatel U998 wireless modem, aka the Turbo Stick. It runs at speeds “up to” 21 Mbps.

The front of the card talks excitedly about “One extra-large, super-fast, anytime, anywhere connection – to go.” The back of the card then throws the Legal Dept’s wet blanket all over the deal, in nearly 200 words of fine print, enough for a short blog post. Sign up now and you’ll get a $20 Starbucks Gift Card – free!

Let’s start with this moronic giveaway, the world’s second most annoying marketing gimmick after Enter to Win. Here’s the math.

The card says you can get the Stick free if you sign up for a 3-yr term (to save the $174.95 retail hardware cost). The minimum plan goes for $30/month – but that’s with a Bell Bundle and without the extras. No bundle: according to footnote #2, that’s $35 over 36 months or $1,260. Then add the $35 activation fee and ballpark the 911 fee at $1/month (“Subject to change without notice”), making the total $1,331. If you don’t happen to know about the paper bill surcharge, add another $2/month for the 36 months: $1,403. Add taxes: $1,571.36.

10 minutes later, an additional $3,000

How do you like that Venti Frappuccino now? The Starbucks giveaway represents 1.3% of the value of what you’re committing yourself to on a 3-year plan. According to the baristas in my Starbucks office, the average customer ticket is about $4 a pop. So this free gift might last you a week, on a deal that commits you to Bell for 156 weeks. Continue reading →

Why are incumbents so afraid of being truthful? (part 2)

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How fast is your broadband?

Six reasons North Americans are going to stay trapped in connectivity hell

#1 – Rates. Retail rates for broadband, wireless and cable-TV aren’t regulated. How about some form of re-regulation of wholesale and/or retail rates? Any such initiatives would land the CRTC in a never-ending morass of appeals to Cabinet or the Federal Court, or both. Too bad incumbents aren’t nearly as good at their day jobs – providing retail communication services – as they are at litigation.

#2 – Competition. Competition is almost non-existent – except the inter-modal competition between the duopoly from hell, the telcos and cablecos. Now even that bad thing is going to get worse. Thanks to its industry-wide DOCSIS 3.0 platform, cable providers are becoming the leading providers of ultra-high-speed connectivity – i.e. in the range of 50 to 100 Mbps. I remember way back in 1998-99, cable led the telcos in penetration, briefly, by a margin of nearly 10 to 1, in both Canada and the US. Now that xDSL is running its course, and FTTx is way more expensive than cable upgrades, Rogers and Comcast may soon start looking like the territorial monopolies they were in the good old days. Continue reading →

Why are incumbents so afraid of being truthful? (part 1)

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The Novatel U998 wireless modem "Up to" 21 Mbps

Passive eyeballs staring blankly at the TV screen from potato-like, humanoid forms draped across the couch are part of the cool business models no longer. Welcome to the Age of the User Experience. Unless you happen to be an ISP.

The other day I got another piece of junk unsolicited mail from Bell, this one promoting its Novatel U998 wireless modem, aka the Turbo Stick. (Apparently you are deemed by Canada Post to have “solicited” a piece of mail as long as it’s addressed to you as “The Resident.”)

The front of the card talks excitedly about “One extra-large, super-fast, anytime, anywhere connection – to go.” The back of the card then throws the Legal Dept’s wet blanket all over the deal, in nearly 200 words of fine print – enough for a short blog post. Just in case you actually read all the footnotes (which among other things make it clear the Stick does not work anywhere), take heart. Sign up now and you’ll get a $20 Starbucks Gift Card – free! Continue reading →