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Content tagged with "dsl"
Tullahoma Community Fiber Network Brings Jobs to Tennessee
Wright said J2, which specializes in providing high-tech software to law enforcement agencies to handle dispatching, records management and other related functions, needed to have the highest speed, most dependable Internet service available. He said TUB, through its LightTUBe broadband communications service, provides exactly what his company needs to thrive and expand. "What LightTUBe has is top of the line," Wright said, adding that normal cable TV service and higher speed digital subscriber line, commonly referred to as DSL, were not adequate to meet the company’s volume and demand.Sounds like confirmation of the story we we just wrote about AT&T's CEO admitting DSL is obsolete. Congratulations to Tullahoma for making smart investments in its own future.
AT&T CEO Admits DSL is Obsolete
New Video: Community Fiber Networks Better than Phone, Cable Networks
Comparing Broadband Services: Salisbury Fibrant and Wilson Greenlight to Incumbents in North Carolina
This is a video we have wanted to do for a long time. With H 129 threatening community networks across the state, we finished it. It uses information we published in a report about broadband in North Carolina in November, 2010. Our full coverage of H 129 is available here.
Evidence for the Looming Cable Monopoly
The Netflix Techblog has released a graph of performance by Internet Service Provider - which I modified to demonstrate the Looming cable monopoly as identified by Susan Crawford (and recently discussed here by Mitch Shapiro).
The trend is unmistakable. There are 2 distinct groupings - the cable providers all beat the DSL providers (Verizon is in the middle, likely due to its fast FiOS speeds averaging with much slower DSL connections). At the very bottom is Clear's 4G WiMax - you know, the superfast wireless that is the key to fast broadband!
Communities need to read this chart and take a lesson: the future of broadband is not pretty if you do not have a network that puts your needs first. Cable broadband speeds are increasingly more rapidly than DSL, meaning a local monopoly on high speed broadband, with DSL slowly becoming the modern dial-up.
State of Telecommunications Policy in the US Today
Excellent lecture.
Putting Shareholders and Profits ahead of the Community
Broadband Competition is Pathetic, But Even That is Too Much For Qwest
Undoubtedly, Qwest will (if it has not already) disavow this quote and suggest the CSR just didn't know what she was talking about. But they are clearly trying to remove competition - something we have witnessed in the Twin Cities of Minnesota as the good ISPs (for instance, IP House) are slowly strangled because they are not permitted resell the faster circuits. Additionally, I believe allegations that Qwest deliberately allows more congestion on lines they resell than lines where they are the sole retailer. Our office uses IP House and we have never had anything but good experiences with them. But we need a faster services, so we can choose between slightly faster options with Qwest or much faster options with Comcast. We have no choice but to take service from a crappy massive company if we want to maintain productivity. Some would claim that we have additional choices because USIW runs a Wi-Fi network in Minneapolis (subsidized by the City) but the network's speeds cannot compare to Comcast and it is far less reliable than the wired network alternatives (though Qwest's reliability in some areas may actually be worse). I found this story via the Free UTOPIA blog but it links to the original source on Xmission - a UTOPIA service provider and DSL resellter.Customer: "Qwest is trying to eliminate competition?"
Customer Service Rep: "In a way."
If Only George Carlin Were Here
The safety lecture continues... "In the unlikely event…" This is a very suspect phrase! Especially, coming as it does, from an industry that is willing to lie about arrival and departure times!After reading Larry Press' account of ordering DSL from Verizon, I couldn't help but wish George Carlin were still with us and also a giant broadband geek. Larry Press' account on dealing with Verizon should be read in full, but this is what got me thinking:
Last week I ordered 7 mbps service from Verizon, but, after they switched it on, I was only getting about 1.5 mbps. I assume there were tons of retransmission errors due to an overly aggressive modulation scheme. When I called to complain, a Verizon "technician" kept me on the phone … [and finally] got his bosses permission to schedule a "truck roll" to come to my house and fix the problem. The minute the driver arrived, he told me that, at 9,000 feet from my central office, there was no way I was going to get 7 mbps.We have long known that Verizon and similar companies are similarly willing to lie about their available broadband speeds (yah, I know, I'm no Carlin). As I recently testified in a MN House hearing, the Connected Nation maps systematically overstate available broadband (particularly for DSL). And of course they do - Verizon doesn't even know what it can achieve at each premises (thought it damn well should know what it cannot offer 9,000 feet from the DSLAM). The dumb question is: Does Verizon actually maintain a database of what it could really offer, in real world conditions, to each house (or what speeds are actually achieved when they take service).