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from: Media - Space - Place - Network

FCC En Banc: Annals of the Battle for the Last Mile
February 26th, 2008
Fred Johnson

Harvard Law School was “Markey Country” today as Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey defended net neutrality in his opening remarks before the FCC’s Public En Banc Hearing on broadband network management practices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Markey declared the US “no country for old bandwidth” and hung around to observe, with the rest of us, the FCC, “en banc” and securely enclosed in Harvard space droning through a tedious day of testimony and q&a, comfortably surrounded by an audience packed with polite but bored Comcast employees trained to provide applause on cue.

from: TechBlog

February 27, 2008
Choosing the lesser of two evils: Comcast or AT&T?

I've been a cable-modem user ever since the service first launched in Houston as Time Warner's Road imageRunner. Despite occasional outages and a relatively high price, I've stuck with it, mainly because it's fast and simple to set up and use.

from: Cable 360

February 25, 2008
Comcast Faces Capitol Class Action
By Jennifer Rinaldi

The law firm of Gilbert Randolph has filed a class action suit against Comcast in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of its client, Dr. Sanford Sidner, and all DC citizens who have subscribed to Comcast's high-speed Internet service over the course of the past three years.

Comcast Threatens the Open Internet – FCC Hears Complaints
Last summer, users of Comcast internet services reported cut-offs and significant decreases in their download speeds when they were sharing large content such as video, audio and data files using a peer-to-peer sharing application known as Bit Torrent (www.bittorrent.com).

The leaked Time Warner memo of January annoucing a Texas trial to meter cumulative bandwidth usage for new subscribers and charging a levy for excess consumption should be met with outrage and derision. If implemented nationally, such metering will result in another layer of tiered internet access and turn the web into something resembling a cable TV package, both in escalating cost and eventual loss of content diversity.

from: NY Times

N.Y. Attorney General Subpoenas Comcast on Broadband

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 26, 2008

Filed at 3:34 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The New York attorney general's office has requested information from Comcast Corp. on the company's handling of Internet traffic.

from: The Times

Losing public access TV harmed right to free speech

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 | No comments posted.

One by one, the Comcast public access TV studios in Mishawaka, Portage, Merrillville and Hammond were shut down. The significance about the Hammond studio was that live, call-in, powerful programming took place on a weekly basis.

Note: it looks like Comcast may have more channel slamming planned for the future, hopefully they will leave PEG channels alone after their spanking in Michigan .

from: Broadband Reports

Comcast's $35 Digital Conversion Dongle
Prepares order for 25 million of them...

from: Times Free Press

Telecoms compete EPB set to challenge Comcast for local customers

By: Jason Reynolds
TimesFreePress Audio

In the past, Comcast only offered cable programming and EPB just sold electricity.

Now, Comcast offers telephone and Internet service as well, and EPB is poised to offer the complete package of video, telephone and Internet service.

from: Ars Technica

Cable and telcos side with Comcast in FCC BitTorrent dispute

By Matthew Lasar | Published: February 19, 2008 - 04:57AM CT

The race is on to get the last word in on the Comcast/BitTorrent controversy. With ten days left to file, telcos, trade, and advocacy groups are sending the Federal Communications Commission their statements on whether Comcast and other ISPs purposefully degrade peer to peer traffic, and if so, what to do about it. Not surprisingly, the debate pits broadband content providers and advocacy groups against the big telcos, cable companies, and their trade association backers.