Weekend Open Thread -

Written by adminargon on February 4th, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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We’re headed out for a bit. Please keep each other entertained in the comment section below until we come back to get you.
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Is Dish Serious About LTE or Just Playing AT&T? – New Filing Dishes More Detail On Possible Dish LTE Network

Written by adminargon on February 4th, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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Back in August Dish Network made it clear that the company was <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Dish-Unveils-Plans-For-LTE-Network-115809″>very seriously interested in launching a wireless network, despite previous executive assurances that the company was accumulating spectrum just for fun. Run from a subsidiary, the company is hoping to launch an LTE-Advanced network <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/New-Dish-Broadband-Services-to-Have-Ollo-Brand-117137″>under the brand “Ollo.” Dish is planning to use the spectrum they acquired from DBSD North America and TerreStar Networks, but is waiting for FCC approval.

AT&T doesn’t want the competition and wouldn’t mind gobbling that spectrum up for themselves, and this week has been <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/118131″>pushing for expedited build timeline requirements they know Dish can’t meet. Fierce Wireless directs our attention to a new FCC filing from Dish that combats AT&T’s efforts and holds a little more detail on Dish’s plans. In it, Dish makes several new disclosures, among them that the company will be offering retail — not wholesale — service, and that they’ll be jumping directly to LTE Advanced:

“A new, next-generation LTE Advanced retail network simply cannot be viably built in the S-Band at the pace AT&T suggests…Building a network before LTE Advanced devices are widely available would necessitate the use of an earlier standard, followed by a migration to LTE Advanced once network and consumer devices are available. Such a requirement would needlessly trigger backward compatibility and network modernization issues and costs for Dish’s proposed network.”

The filing also gives better insight into timelines, the company stating that the LTE Advanced equipment for its S-band spectrum they plan to use likely won’t even be available until 2015. So, with LightSquared essentially D.O.A. AT&T could be positioning to crush the only real non-MVNO competitive threat that could surface in the next decade. Or, Dish’s Charlie Ergen could just be playing everybody, never had any serious intent on building a wireless network, and is simply positioning itself for the biggest possible spectrum cash buyout with a specific eye on AT&T. Most likely? It’s both.
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Rogers to End Throttling in March – Now That They Can Just Charge Users an Arm and a Leg

Written by adminargon on February 4th, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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For most of the last decade nobody has exemplified the clumsy, ham-fisted approach to network management better than Canadian cable company Rogers. From crippling encryption and VPNs to <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/116080″>throttling legitimate apps and games like World of Warcraft, Rogers has accounted for nearly <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/115059″>half of all network neutrality infractions in Canada. Recent MLabs data highlighted that Rogers was among the <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/116699″>worst ISPs in the world when it comes to aggressively slowing user traffic.

It was Rogers constant and clumsy throttling of World of Warcraft traffic that finally got the company in hot water with regulators, the CRTC last week <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/118046″>officially ruling Rogers was violating Canada’s new network neutrality rules after years of complaints.

Many of those complaints originated right here in our forums, with anger from Jason Koblovsky, Teresa Murphy and the Canadian Gamers Organization leading to a campaign pushing the CRTC to finally act. In a response to the CRTC, Rogers today announced that they’ll finally stop throttling user traffic starting in March. The move comes on the heels of a <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/117512″>similar December decision by Bell.

“New technologies and ongoing investments in network capacity will allow Rogers to begin phasing out that policy starting in March 2012,” said Kenneth Engelhart, senior vice-president of regulatory affairs in the filing. “These changes will be introduced to half of Rogers existing Internet customers by June 2012 and to its remaining customers by December 2012.”

While that’s certainly a win for users, Rogers spends the lion’s share of their filing taking pot shots at the CRTC and denying any wrongdoing in their implementation of Internet Traffic Management Practices (ITMP). While acknowledging a “few isolated cases of misclassification,” Rogers continues to insist their network management platforms rarely catch legitimate traffic in their net.

Rogers says that “out of an abundance of caution” and “to allay any concerns which the Commission s investigation may have created,” the company has reconfigured their Cisco hardware so that unclassified traffic that utilizes peer-to-peer ports are no longer traffic managed. In other words, Rogers has finally agreed to obey Canadian law but, despite being <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/MLab-Data-Highlights-the-Evolution-of-ISP-Throttling-116699″>universally derided as one of the worst ISPs in the world when it comes to heavy-handed network management — still swears they didn’t do anything wrong.

Either way, users in our forums say they’ll take it. Some argue the glacially-moving CRTC and Canada’s new network neutrality rules are to thank for Rogers’ begrudging change of heart. Others believe Rogers’ moves are motivated by the fact that the CRTC recently allowed incumbent ISPs to <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/117089″>drastically raise (already very high) rates on consumers and wholesalers, making dramatically degrading the quality of the bandwidth delivered less useful. In other words, cue the broadband price increases.
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DirecTV Stops Selling WildBlue – May be Working With Dish/Hughes On New Option

Written by adminargon on February 3rd, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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DirecTV has traveled a <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/80262″>somewhat rocky road when it comes to offering broadband, their effort at <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/24579″>being a DSL provider failing rather spectacularly in 2002. They’ve flirted with several options since then, though aside from some <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-DirecTV-Testing-LTEBased-Home-Broadband-111773″>finished fixed residential LTE trials with Verizon, ultimately settled on just reselling satellite broadband service from WildBlue. Interestingly, DirecTV is sending out an e-mail to customers saying they’ll no longer be selling WildBlue satellite broadband service. More interestingly perhaps is the fact that DirecTV may replace this with a broadband service from HughesNet/Dish:

More interesting, however, is that the company says not offering an internet service “is a temporary situation” for resellers to manage. “Stay tuned for a DIRECTV satellite broadband bundle offering coming soon!” (Original emphasis.) While it is unclear how DIRECTV plans to launch such a service, rumblings from the dealer chain hint at a possible deal with HughesNet. Yes… Hughes. As in DISH’s Hughes.

Dish is also eager to go beyond just satellite broadband, and is currently working on plans to deploy an LTE network. It seems inevitable that one or both companies start seriously exploring a fixed residential LTE service to bundle with satellite TV. While it still wouldn’t seriously compete with landline broadband, such a service would likely offer faster speeds, lower latency and even more reasonable caps than current satellite offerings.

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New Wireless Provider Ting Unveils Pricing – New Tucows Effort Hopes to Shake Things up a Little

Written by adminargon on February 3rd, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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Several new wireless carriers will launch this year, all trying to do things slightly differently. <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Republic-Wireless-Clarifies-Network-Limits-For-20-Wireless-117498″>Republic Wireless plans to lower prices by offloading most of the daily traffic to Wi-Fi. <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FreedomPop-LightSquared-Promise-Free-Wireless-117417″>FreedomPop promises to offer users a basic free tier of service with low priced data and voice options layered on top. The third upstart is Tucows’ Ting, a <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/117305″>company we explored back in December that plans to auto-upgrade users up (or down) the sliding tier scale to help users find the best price plan for them.

Ting is the first one out of the gate, and their new pricing was unveiled last night for your perusal. As the chart (right) notes, users are given six “size” no-contract tiers to choose from, allowing them to mix and match voice minutes, SMS, and data limits as needed. Voice and SMS rates are incredibly reasonable (500 minutes cost an impressive $9), while data coming over from Sprint’s network is notably less so (2GB will run you $42).

According to Ting, if users consume fewer voice minutes, text messages or bytes than they planned, the user is credited at the end of the month. If they use more than they originally planned, users are billed for the additional amount. Families can all pull from one pool of minutes, SMS or data — something larger wireless carriers have been talking a lot about but failing to deliver.

Another thing Ting gets right for the bandwidth hungry is they don’t impose a “because we can” tethering fee on users who want to use their phone as a modem. Users are allowed to tether and then any data consumed simply comes out of their plan, a logical practice many carriers haven’t been willing to follow in order to charge $15 more — for doing absolutely nothing.

“What people are forced to put up with from mobile service providers just doesn’t make sense. It’s too complicated, too opaque, too adversarial, too expensive and frankly too inhuman,” said Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. “We’re changing that. Ting is a mobile service that makes sense.” We’re curious to see if users agree, or if Ting ultimately finds itself on a very tall heap of failed MVNOs that thought they could change the wireless market by treating customers with respect.
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Cablevision’s Union Woes Grow – As Contracted Bronx Employees Walk Off the Job

Written by adminargon on February 3rd, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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Last week Cablevision employees in Brooklyn <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/118087″>voted to unionize for the first time in the company’s history, a significant move given the fact that just 2-4% of cable technicians are unionized. Following last week’s vote, roughly 120 contracted Bronx technicians briefly walked off their jobs in a “wildcat” strike Thursday protesting a 30% reduction in wages (to $35) for triple play installations. The techs, who work for Corbel Installations and do installations for Cablevision in the Bronx and Westchester. While the techs still say they want to unionize, they ultimately had their concerns addressed by Corbel, seeing triple play install pay rates bumped to $40, with a bonus of up to $10 for each home visited and a $7 payout for multiple-room installations.
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Qualcomm Tackles VoLTE Handoff Issues – One Step Closer to Better Wireless Voice Quality

Written by adminargon on February 3rd, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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Despite the growth of 4G networks, wireless voice traffic continues to travel over the 3G portion of carrier networks until carriers deploy voice over LTE (VoLTE), which should provide users will significantly better audio quality during phone calls. Verizon recently <a href="http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/117976″>delayed their deployment of VoLTE until 2013, in part because incomplete LTE build outs and the inability to handoff calls between 3G and 4G networks mean the user experience would be highly clunky (for lack of a more technical term). Helping a little this week is a Qualcomm announcement that the company has completed the first “seamless” call handoff between an LTE and WCDMA network. Despite the advancement, it’s still not likely VoLTE sees widespread adoption until late in 2013.
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Only Pirates and Terrorists Enjoy Privacy, You Know – DOJ, FBI Memo for Cafes Paints a Very Paranoid Picture

Written by adminargon on February 3rd, 2012. Posted in Internet Service

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Users in our security forum direct our attention to a new flyer (pdf) designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes. The amusing flyer lists a variety of fairly standard privacy tools and practices as signs that the person you’re watching while sipping your half-caf-no-fat-soy-latte may be up to nefarious activities. Among the items the government declares to be signs of terrorist activity include the use of encryption software, use of VPNs or PGP (often common in business), proxies, anonymity portals, and other privacy software. The flyer goes so far as to warn cafe patrons to be away of anybody who is “overly concerned about privacy” or attempting to “shield the screen from view of others.” Be wary, citizen.
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