Earlier this week I got the word that two North American cable companies are planning to roll out metered broadband service. Unlike Time Warner, which says it is only testing the concept, these two broadband providers are supposedly gearing up to launch consumption-based broadband services.
One of the companies is Canada's Rogers Cable, a not unsurprising development given that late last year Rogers was testing a bandwidth consumption notification system that controversially inserted usage alerts atop customers' Google search pages.
When asked about what I had heard, Rogers spokesperson Taanta Gupta said that Rogers already offers one tier of broadband service that entails a form of metered usage. Rogers offers a (Can) $99.95/month, 18 Mbps download service called Extreme Plus that offers customers 90 GB of usage per month. Extreme Plus subscribers that exceed the 90 GB pay $1.25 for each additional GB consumed.
But, subscribers to other tiers of service aren't currently billed for consumption overages. Rogers offers four other tiers of Internet service, ranging in price from (Can) $24.95/month to $52.95/month, covering monthly bandwidth usage limits of 60 to 100 GB.
When I asked Gupta if Rogers would be implementing metered broadband for these other tiers of service she said "We will not comment on whether we will roll it out [metered broadband] to other customers" beyond the Extreme Plus customer base until Rogers informs those customers of this fact first. She also pointed out that metered broadband is the norm in Canada and that customers who today exceed the bandwidth caps have their accounts suspended.
In fact, Canada's Cogeco already charges $1.00 for every GB that exceeds the relevant tier's bandwidth caps. (Cogeco also offers this handy guide for reducing bandwidth consumption. Among the tips: shut off file-sharing applications, check for viruses and watch out for streaming media.) Bell Canada likewise charges anywhere from (Can) $1.00 to $7.50 for each GB that exceeds the service's cap.
The other North American operator rumored to be readying the rollout of metered broadband is a small but influential U.S. company that operates in only one market (and it's not Cablevision.) This company hasn't returned my calls yet so I can't confirm it.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:09 PM | Print | Comments (0)The 3,000-word devastating and deadly knife that the New York Times threw at Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain tonight centers on McCain's "inappropriate" relationship with Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist for various TV and radio broadcasting companies who is 30 years McCain's junior. The Times and other publications say Iseman is a telcommunications industry lobbyist, but a look at her client list shows that most of the companies she represents are broadcast station owners and broadcast networks, such as AMFM Inc., Capstar Broadcasting, Hispanic Broadcasting Inc. and ION Media Networks.
ION (formerly Paxson Communications) is particularly important because the article has several somewhat disjointed passages depicting McCain and Iseman flying around on ION's corporate jet. I say disjointed because it is very clear that the bylined reporters (Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, David Kirkpatrick and Stephen Labaton) were leaving out even juicier, more damaging stuff. Or the piece was edited by a team of overly cautious attorneys, which could be the case since McCain apparently tried to spike the story last December.
As former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain was actively involved in matters that affected Iseman's clients. The NYT cites letters that McCain sent to the FCC in 1998 and 1999 advocating same market ownership of two TV stations, an issue seemingly important to many of Iseman's clients, although the article mentions Glencairn Ltd. in particular. Glencairn is now called Cunningham and was once closely aligned with Sinclair Broadcasting.
The story between Glencairn and Sinclair was an ugly one, and I didn't follow it, although it seemed that Glencairn was being used as a front man for Sinclair to dodge the now-defunct one-to-a-market TV station ownership requirements. Sinclair was fined $40,000 in 2001 by the FCC for illegally controlling Glencairn.
McCain also introduced legislation to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations. Iseman represented a number of minority broadcasting companies, including Telemundo and Hispanic Broadcasting. Something tells me that many of the things left unsaid in this article relate to McCain's stewardship of the Commerce Committee and to media and broadcasting regulation in particular.
Update: The Paxson angle to the story is getting more and more play. McCain sent two letters to the FCC dealing with Paxson's efforts and application to buy a Pittsburgh TV station. The second letter asked the FCC to meet a specific decision deadline regarding approval of the complex transaction. McCain requested an explanation from the FCC if it didn't meet the deadline. Democratic FCC Chairman Bill Kennard decried McCain's pressure, saying "
It is highly unusual for the commissioners to be asked to publicly announce their voting status on a matter that is still pending." He said such inquiries "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the Commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties."
Update: McCain's staff has released information on his involvement with Paxson, Glencairn and the minority media tax incentives, which the campaign said it provided to the New York Times. McCain offers a lot of timelines regarding his or his staff's contact with the relevant companies.
The bottom-line is that McCain contends he did nothing wrong on behalf of Iseman's companies but was merely advocating appropriate policy on media-related matters. For example, McCain said that he sent the letter to Kennard urging that the license transfer be completed because the FCC was letting the transfer application approval process drag on for 800 days, twice the delay that license transfers usually experienced, and that several other legislators were interested in the proceeding.
Blogs We Read
