verizon

Dial up is also back up

16 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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They didn’t get the memo about the logo either.

AOL is bringing 2.2 million dial up Internet access subscribers to the Verizon dance. That legacy business generates more than half a billion dollars a year for the former king of online access, according to its fourth quarter 2014 earnings release.

The persistence of the dial up market has been largely attributed to two factors over the past few days: lack of broadband access in rural areas and the appeal of a low, $20 per month price to low income households.… More

Verizon steers mobile broadband toward advertising and video with AOL deal

13 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Will the network be neutral enough?

As Verizon runs away from wireline – copper or glass – telecoms service, it’s accelerating towards a video and advertising-centric business model. Yesterday it announced that it will buy AOL, assuming shareholders and regulatory agencies agree. It clearly wants AOL’s online advertising platform, although the draw has to be the technology rather than a killer market share: AOL claims less than 1% of revenue in the online advertising business.… More

CPUC considers whether copper ignorance is broadband bliss

12 May 2015 by Steve Blum
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Hey, our customers are cutting the cord, why can’t we chop the copper?

AT&T and Verizon don’t want the California Public Utilities Commission to launch a study of the condition of their rotting copper line networks, and the new president of the commission, Michael Picker, wants to accommodate them.

In 2013, the commission decided to take a look at the core telephone network infrastructure maintained, or not, by AT&T and Verizon, as part of a review of service standards that telephone companies are expected to meet.… More

Gee, I guess customers really do want faster broadband says Frontier CEO


Click for a closer look at Frontier’s proposed footprint in California.

Internet service tiers above the Californian minimum of 6 Mbps download speeds are increasingly popular among customers served by Frontier Communications. That’s one of the nuggets from the company’s quarterly earnings report and conference call on Tuesday. New CEO Daniel McCarthy said that 44% of customers who signed up for either new or upgraded Internet service in the first three months of the year opted for higher speeds.… More

Business as usual so far for Frontier's proposed takeover of Verizon's Californian landlines


Round up the usual suspects.

The proposed takeover of Verizon’s wireline broadband, telephone and video systems in California by Frontier Communications hasn’t attracted an unusual amount of opposition yet. That’s not to say there’s no opposition, just that it’s mostly coming from the usual groups making the usual objections.

Three consumer advocacy groups – TURN, the Center for Accessible Technology and the Greenlining Institute – generally said the companies hadn’t provided enough information to the California Public Utilities Commission, which has to approve the deal.… More

A skeptical eye finds more broadband opportunities

5 April 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for the full presentation.

The California Public Utilities Commission collects a mountain of data from Internet service providers, and does a good job of sorting it out and publishing it in a very accessible way. But as a state regulatory agency, the CPUC can’t arbitrarily decide which claims it’ll believe and which it’ll discount. So it runs tests.

Ryan Dulin, the head of the CPUC division that regulates telecoms companies and manages broadband infrastructure subsidies through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), demonstrated how that works for mobile broadband, running a speed test on his Verizon service during his presentation at a broadband conference for local government officials.… More

Frontier says it'll offer Californians better broadband than Verizon

30 March 2015 by Steve Blum
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Click for a bigger version.

Frontier Communications is formally asking the California Public Utilities Commission for permission to buy Verizon’s copper telephone and fiber-to-the-home systems in the state. It’s part of a bigger transaction that includes Verizon’s wireline operations in Florida and Texas.

The California piece is big, involving 2 million subscriber phone lines plus broadband and video accounts. It should also result in better service for people who live in the rural areas where Verizon is letting its copper rot on the poles.… More

Verizon is all keyed up over common carrier rules

28 March 2015 by Steve Blum
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I gotta give Verizon credit: it posted its slagging reaction to the FCC’s decision to impose common carrier rules on Internet service and infrastructure in Morse code. Sorta. I also gotta make the geek points that 1. the proper code of the “era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph” is American Morse, not the International Morse that Verizon uses, and 2. regardless of flavor, Morse code is a means of audible communication – rendering it via typed out dots and dashes is something only a lid would do.… More

Drilling down on the digital divide in California's oil towns

3 December 2014 by Steve Blum
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Western Kern County is oil country. Once you hit the foothills of the central California coast range, agriculture stops and oil production begins. Several small towns along State Route 33 support the industry and its workers. The largest is Taft, with a city limits population of around 9,000 people in about 2,300 households, plus adjacent unincorporated neighborhoods.

By California Public Utilities Commission standards, nearly all of Taft (and Maricopa to the south) has adequate broadband service: the local cable company, Bright House, offers up to 90 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload speeds.… More

FCC looks at telcos' copper network retirement by neglect, considers forced sales

26 November 2014 by Steve Blum
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Landline telephone companies are backing off from traditional Plain Old Telephone Service in favor of less regulated and more advanced Internet Protocol technologies. When they invest in upgrades, it’s usually fiber and not copper-based. As a result, there’s a move away from copper networks and associated legacy services.

In a notice approved last week and published yesterday, the FCC is looking for comments on how it should regulate that process. One of the questions the commission wants to answer is what do about de facto retirement of copper plant, where telephone companies simply let unprofitable network segments rot on the poles…

There are numerous allegations that in some cases incumbent LECs are failing to maintain their copper networks that have not undergone the Commission’s existing copper retirement procedures…First, to establish whether there is a factual basis for new rules in this area, are incumbent LECs in some circumstances neglecting copper to the point where it is no longer reliably usable?

… More