A bit of a brouhaha is brewing in the blogosphere over this ConsumerAffairs.com article about Verizon Wireless’ BroadbandAccess service. Despite company marketing materials that promote the service as “unlimited,” Verizon Wireless, in fact, will disconnect any user that, according to the user agreement, uses the service:
(1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games;
(2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, Voice over IP (VoIP), automated machine-to-machine connections, or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing.
The Wall Street Journal covered this bit of telco blocking in May 2006 article, so it’s not a surprise that ConsumerAffairs.com got disconnected by Verizon Wireless for what the company suspected was non-permissable activity.
“We…found that your usage over the past 30 days exceeded 10 Gigabytes…This level of usage is so extraordinarily high that it could only have been attained by activities, such as streaming and/or downloading movies and video, prohibited by the terms and conditions,” Verizon said in a terse letter.
What is surprising is how inept the company’s PR people are in explaining the contradiction between promoting the service as “unlimited” on the one hand but actually limiting the service on the other hand.
Jeffrey Nelson, Verizon Wireless spokesman, said that calling the service, “unlimited” is not misleading.
“It’s very clear in all the legal materials we put out,” he said. “It’s unlimited amounts of data for certain types of data,” he said.
The milk almost snorted out of my nose when I read that…unlimited but for only certain types of data. Mike at TechDirt all but called Verizon Wireless a liar. (Actually, earlier in his item, he did accuse the company of telling an “outright lie” when it claimed that only a few customers had been disconnected for impermissable data access.)
Ah, it’s unlimited for limited kinds of data. How could anyone possibly be confused? Of course, even that’s false. They’re cutting off anyone with over 10gigs of data — no matter what kind of data it is — by claiming the only way you could possibly use 10gigs in a month is to use prohibited types of data.
Maybe the wireless arm of Verizon, a joint venture with Vodafone and not technically a part of the main company, isn’t aware that a gang of net neutrality advocates are just waiting for the next “horror story” to happen to justify their calls for regulation.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:24 PM | Print | Comments (1)Philadelphia-based cable operator Comcast is riding high — the company is about to absorb a whole bunch of underperforming systems from Adelphia and its Q2 06 earnings results, released this morning, attest to the company’s ongoing financial strength. Overall (including cable systems and programming networks) revenue grew 11% year-over-year to $6.2 billion, while overall cash flow advanced 12% to $2.4 billion. Operating income jumped 17% to $1.2 billion, while earnings per share advanced 16% to $.22.
The cable division alone, the heart of the company, showed even more impressive results. While cable revenue also grew by 11% year-over-year to $5.9 billion, operating cash flow jumped by 14% to $2.5 billion.
Although Comcast reverted to basic subscriber losses for the quarter, which the company attributed to seasonal declines, other subscriber levels showed healthy year-over-year gains, particularly Comcast Digital Voice (CDV), the cable company’s VoIP option. Comcast added 306,000 net new CDV voice customers during the quarter, up from 211,000 added during Q1 06 and only 15,000 added during Q2 05, reflect the ramped-up rollouts of VoIP that Comcast began in late-2004.
During Comcast’s earnings call, President Steve Burke said that new CDV subscriptions continue to accelerate. In Q4 05, the company was adding 10,000 net new voice customers per week, a figure that more than doubled to Q2 06. “Once we set our sites on something, we tend to do it very well,” Burke Said.
Comcast added 305,000 net new high-speed customers during the quarter, up slightly year-over-year, ending Q2 06 with 9.3 million modem subscribers, reflecting 22% of homes passed. Digital cable subscriptions grew by a healthy 350,000 during the quarter, a run-rate 23% higher year-over-year. However, a good portion, if not most, of this digital growth reflects Comcast’s push to get digital boxes in every subscriber’s home via its “digital basic” initiative. Many of those digital customers aren’t purchasing the higher-priced tiers of service, although they are able to buy VOD services.
Revenue and subscription growth was strong enough during the first half of the year for Comcast to up its full-year financial guidance. The company now expects revenue growth of 10% to 11% for the year, up from the 9% to 10% previously projected. Operating cash flow is expected to reach at least 13% growth, up significantly from the previous 10% to 11% range. Revenue generating units, i.e. all individual subscriptions combined, are expected to grow at least 20% higher than the earlier guidance of 3.5 million additions for the year.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:54 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Jeff Pulver is seriously turning his attention to video-on-the-net. Not only does he have a big conference coming up on the topic, but in his blog yesterday he presented a “channel line-up” of sorts providing links to the growing array of video options on the Internet.
The lengthy list covers mostly established media companies, from A&E to Women’s Entertainment Channel. It’s a compendium of literally “television” on the Internet and a very useful starting point for tracking the rise of the web as a video medium.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:54 AM | Print | Comments (0)The FCC released today its semi-annual report on high-speed services (press release here and full report here) and the Commission’s data are suprisingly illuminating.
The report contains the usual litany of high-speed (defined as 200 kbps in at least one direction) statistics. (Click on thumbnail picture at the end for one key table in the report.) High-speed subscriptions, or lines, advanced by 18% during the second half of 2005 and by 33% for the full year to reach 50.2 million by December 31, 2005.
Cable modem service represented 57.5% of these lines while 40.5% were ADSL connections, although for the first time ever, the growth in ADSL lines exceeded the growth in cable modem connections. For the full year, ADSL lines advanced by 5.7 million lines while cable modem subscriptions grew by 4.2 million lines.
The report gives a detailed break-down of what the FCC calls advanced service lines, namely high-speed connections that exceed 200 kbps in at least one direction. Advanced service lines grew even faster, in percentage terms, than the lower-speed options. The number of advanced service lines grew by 15% during the second half of the year and by 48% during the full year to reach 42.8 million by year-end 2005.
While the telcos may be gaining on cable in overall subscription levels, cable beats its telephone rivals in speeds delivered. Cable modem service represented 62.4% of advanced service lines while 36.2% were ADSL connections.
One interesting statistic: around 448,000 of the advanced service subscribers were served by fiber optic connections. Of these, around 213,173 were residential customers (as opposed to small business customers), more than double the 82,831 fiber-based high-speed home subscribers as of June 2005, a figure that in all likelihood reflects the number of Verizon FiOS broadband customers. To date, Verizon hasn’t revealed its FiOS broadband customer statistics. (The FCC, however, claims that it protects the confidentiality of companies by withholding data if the disclosure could reveal company-specific statistics.)
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:04 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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