It took a few extra days, but Verizon followed fellow incumbent telco BellSouth in deciding to drop a controversial DSL “surcharge,” the Wall Street Journal reports. After offering up a lame rationale for why it needed to continue charging all of its DSL customers an extra fee every month, a fee that was nothing more than a continuation of a no-longer-required FCC-mandated charge, Verizon says it has listened to its customers and will remove the fee from bills.
“We have listened to our customers,” said Bob Ingalls, chief marketing officer of Verizon Telecom, “and are eliminating this charge in response to their concerns.”
Now the telcos’ DSL customers should see a price reduction of about $1 to $3 per month, turning up the heat again on the simmering broadband price war between phone and cable companies.
Update: FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is pleased.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:34 PM | Print | Comments (0)
My post this morning about Comcast’s spam filtering policies prompted a call from Comcast’s Jeanne Russo, who heads the company’s PR for online and phone services. My post was spurred by an article in The Mercury News, which dealt with The Well’s complaint that Comcast is blocking its members’ emails. The Well claims that Comcast is unresponsive to the online community’s attempt to resolve the problem.
Russo firmly defended Comcast’s spam filtering activities, claiming that the company has reduced its inbound and outbound spam by 70% this year. “Spammers hide behind mail hosting companies that do not properly filter their spam,” she said, noting that Comcast’s customers are the beneficiaries of the tightened spam filtering efforts.
In contrast to the article’s allegations that Comcast won’t respond to The Well’s call for help, The Well hasn’t been willing to work with Comcast, Russo said, pointing to the company’s practice of helping organizations implement tools, such as SpamAssasin, that shut down spammers. “We work with organizations that are black-listed to help them reduce their spam.”
Despite several invitations by Comcast, The Well is “one of two companies who haven’t been willing to work with us,” Russo said. The Well’s refusal to talk to Comcast about resolving the issue is a surprise given that “of all of the organizations we’ve worked with, most of them are happy to work with us and are happy to alter their filtering policies.”
Moreover, “if they tell us in good faith that they will work on it, we will remove the block,” Russo said. But so far, The Well has shown no sign of addressing its purported spam issues.
Comcast isn’t giving up, though. “We’re continuing trying to reach out to them,” she said.
Comcast is getting more aggressive in stamping out spam, but so is the rest of the ISP industry. The cable operator is an active member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a technical organization aimed at combatting spam, virus attacks and other forms of Internet abuse. Its membership is composed of virtually all leading U.S. Internet service and email providers.
As for my own company’s experience with Comcast’s spam filter blocking, Russo said that it’s possible that a third-party email provider that I use strictly for mass marketing emails got temporarily black-listed — that’s not something I would necessarily see in my system. In any event, my sole experience with Comcast’s email blockage is typical of most email filtering incidents, Russo said. It was resolved very quickly.
In keeping with Comcast’s goal of working with companies to combat spam, she offered to put me in touch with one of the company’s abuse engineers to find out why I had a temporary email blockage. Given that my problem came and went within hours, and occurred almost four months ago, I declined — but nonetheless appreciated — this offer.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:40 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Courtesy of Dave Weinberger, I came across this item from First Amendment attorney John Mitchell that seems too bad to be true, but it is. Culver City, CA is offering its citizens free Wi-Fi service, but there’s one big hitch: users formally agree to give up their First Amendment rights before using the network.
Buried in the user agreement’s terms and conditions is language that very clearly says that Culver City’s Wi-Fi service is not “a free speech arena” and that the city has the right to block access to sites it chooses and that the user further “waives” First Amendment claims.
It is not the intent of the City or the Agency to allow unlimited access to the entire Internet. Nor is it the intent of the City or Agency to create a traditional or limited public forum ( i.e., a free speech arena). Therefore, in providing this free wireless network, the City and Agency may restrict access to certain sites and communication protocols found to be malicious and inappropriate or terminate your access to this service if you use it to access p*rn*graphic, adult-oriented, hate or spyware matter or websites. By using this free wireless network you are agreeing and acknowledging you have read and accepted these terms and conditions of use, and this wireless network provides only limited access to the Internet. Further, you are agreeing to waive any claims, including, but not limited to First Amendment claims, that may arise from the City and Agency’s decision to block access to p*rn*graphic, adult-oriented, hate or spyware matter and websites through this free wireless network and to this service for accessing p*rn*graphic, adult-oriented, hate or spyware matter or websites.
In the agreement, Culver City says that the Wi-Fi service provides only “limited” Internet access, and by that the city means limited not in terms of time or bandwidth or any other measure of usage, but limited in terms of the type of content that can be accessed. As Mitchell points out, “limited Internet” is an oxymoron.
He also has a few other choice words for this odd (and can it be legal?) set of restrictions.
From a legal standpoint, it is the same as if the Culver City public library were offering you free access to newspapers, but was first clipping out the articles it didn’t like and making you agree not to sue for censorship if you wanted to read what was left.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:34 AM | Print | Comments (0)
It’s starting to look like 1984. “Freedom” means freedom to give up your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness if you want to have free access to the government’s Internet - or “EnterNot,” as the Culver City leadership might call it. I’m a big fan of free, public Internet access, but without the Doublespeak.
Business Week’s Olga Kharif has this interesting piece on Aloha Partner’s subsidiary Hi-Wire, which is gearing up to take on Qualcomm and Crown Castle in the TV-over-mobile phone space. Hi-Wire, which is reportedly ready to sign up its first big customer, plans to use standards-based DVB-H for the broadcast-to-cell-phone service, just like Crown Castle’s Modeo.
Backed by $100 million in funding, Hi-Wire owns the largest chunk of 700-Mhz spectrum in the U.S., more than Qualcomm and Modeo combined. But Qualcomm’s MediaFLO system has already been tapped by Verizon Wireless and is being tested by Sprint-Nextel, so Hi-Wire has an uphill battle. The rumored trial customer landed by Hi-Wire is Cingular, which would make mobile TV technology a three-way race in the U.S.
Still, because it uses standards-based broadcast technology, it’s going to be a lot cheaper to build out a national network for zapping live video to mobile devices — $450 million according to company estimates, compared to $2.2 billion for Modeo. And Hi-Wire has got some deep cable industry ties, with former cable poobahs Bob Hughes, Amos Hostetter and Burt Stanier all investors. A deal with the cable industry, which is just now working out its mobile TV delivery system, could be in the works.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
With local governments launching new muni-Wi-Fi networks at a rapid clip, it was only a matter of time before incumbent telcos and cable operators stopped fighting the municipal broadband trends and started vying to become the network providers for these public ventures. AT&T has apparently seen the light — the nation’s top telco is the lead contender to build the municipal network in Springfield, Illinois.
The Springfield network will offer residents either free, ad-supported Wi-Fi or premium Wi-Fi without ads. For AT&T, not only does the deal foreclose a potential competitor, but it also gives the telco the ability to offer its DSL customers a Wi-Fi option. AT&T will offer wireless broadband service as an add-on to its business and residential DSL options.
Springfield isn’t AT&T’s only muni-Wi-Fi effort. The company also has a partnership with MetroFi for Riverside, CA and is bidding for muni-projects in at least twelve other cities.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:40 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Reuters’ Jeremy Pelofsky has this item about how the FCC is speeding up its auction of Advanced Wireless Spectrum. The Commission has added two rounds of bidding per day in the auction, which has raised $13.6 billion in the past 15 days, and has cut the time of each round in half to 30 minutes.
The goal is to get the heated bidding over with as soon as possible because the auction doesn’t end until all activity ends. After 58 rounds, here’s where the bidding stands:
T-Mobile USA, provisionally had the highest bids for 118 licenses with offers of almost $4.2 billion.
Verizon Wireless is number two, provisionally winning bids of $2.8 billion for four licenses.
SpectrumCo, the cable (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Advanced Newhouse) group that has joined hands with Sprint-Nextel, is number three with $2.3 billion in bids for 133 licenses.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:52 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Yesterday’s announcement that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will join Apple’s board of directors is sparking all kinds of theories about what this alliance of giants means. The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Wingfield and Kevin Delaney have this piece today that posits all kinds of speculation.
Apple might be interested in generating advertising revenue by leveraging Google’s enormous expertise in this area. Steve Jobs and Schmidt share a mutual hatred of Microsoft. There’s already mutual overlap between the two companies, with half of Apple’s board members boasting ties of some kind to Google.
Mr. Schmidt’s election deepens existing high-level personal ties between the two companies. Genentech Inc. CEO Arthur Levinson sits on the Google and Apple boards, while former Vice President Al Gore and Intuit Inc. Chairman Bill Campbell, both Apple directors, are longtime advisers to Google. Mr. Schmidt’s appointment means half of Apple’s eight-person board of directors has a formal relationship with Google.
Om agrees that both companies are out to get Microsoft. Microsoft’s widely anticipated mobile media device and potential iPod-killer, Zune, is coming out soon. Google’s got online office productivity efforts that are designed to weaken Microsoft Office’s grip on the market. Both companies have online video ventures.
Don Dodge says that not much will happen unless there’s pent-up market demand for something. Unless money changes hands or there is a customer-driven need, the strengthened ties between Google and Apple are merely…nice.
Could Google and Sun cooperate on a StarOffice product to compete with Microsoft Office? Could Google and Apple cooperate on an iTunes product to compete with Zune? Could Google and Mozilla cooperate on a product to compete with Internet Explorer? Sure, there are lots of synergies smart people could imagine. But unless there is pent up customer demand…it isn’t going to matter.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:53 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Elise Ackerman at The Mercury News has this piece today about how Comcast has been blocking email from The Well as spam and how unresponsive the nation’s leading broadband provider has been in resolving the problem. That’s funny, because my company’s email (emediadynamics.com) has been blocked as spam by Comcast too, although I got a quick resolution — more on that at the end.
Comcast says that it’s just protecting its members from unwanted missives.
Mitch Bowling, who heads Comcast’s online business, said a significant volume of spam has been coming from The WELL. He said it was the fourth time The WELL has been flagged for forwarding spam. “At this point we need some good faith from this company that they are going to try to get better” at filtering out spam.
“They don’t understand what is going on,” Williams [Gail Ann Williams, director of communities at Salon.com, which owns The Well] said. “They are not paying attention. I would love to have someone to talk to.”
EFF’s Danny O’Brien also experienced a Comcast spam blocking problem for a server that he set up for a community in Oregon.
Danny O’Brien, activist coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group founded by three members of The WELL, said the incident highlights the hazard of using blacklists to fight spam.
“The problem is Internet service providers acting as go-betweens, between outgoing e-mail and incoming, and making their own decisions that aren’t clear to their end users,” he said.
What gives with all the blocking? My own experience with Comcast’s spam blocking was puzzling but brief. In May, my emails from emediadynamics.com to comcast.net addresses were bouncing back as spam and I reported the incident to the company’s “abuse” personnel.
Within hours I received the following notification that the spam blocking had been lifted.
Please do not reply to this message.
This is to notify you that your request for removal from the comcast.net blocklist has been received.
The following IPs were found within your request. Below each one, we’ve included the results of our research.
- 65.109.239.61 -
The IP you previously provided has been removed from the Comcast.net blocklist.
After review of the blocking, the IP you submitted was found to have been blocked due to the fact that the majority of the traffic from that IP contained content indicative of spam. If you are not aware of the traffic that could have caused this, we recommend a review of your outbound mail logs and ensuring that all computers connecting to through the submitted IP are clear of any security exploits.
- 69.251.237.181 -
The IP you provided is recognized as a Comcast.net residential network IP. Comcast.net subscribers are not permitted to directly connect to the mail system for delivery. If you are a Comcast Commercial Services customer and need support, please contact support_biz@cable.comcast.com.
Thank You
Comcast Network Abuse and Policy Observance
Here’s the odd thing: I had no evidence on my end that the emediadynamics.com email address was being used for spam. No spammers seemed to have hijacked the server and no bouncebacks came flooding in to indicate that “the majority of the traffic from that IP contained content indicative of spam.”
Clearly Comcast has a problem with the scripts it uses to identify spam, which is an annoying problem at the minimum. With the problem rising to the level of coverage in The Mercury News, it’s time for Comcast to investigate its own problems.
Update: After a conversation with Comcast, I have a better appreciation for how the company’s spam filtering policies could have temporarily blocked my email. Moreover, Comcast claims that it has been trying to work with The Well, one of two companies that hasn’t been willing to show the operator it is making good faith efforts to thwart spammers. See updated post here.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:18 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
