Posted 04/16/09 at 04:34:15 PM by Andy Salisbury

Oh, Time Warner. When you’re not imposing some ridiculous bandwidth caps on your customers, you’re fighting for them in the war against net neutrality! And, while the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it’s nice to know that Time Warner Cable might actually have some.

“Now is not the time, nor is this the appropriate proceeding, to engage in a debate about the need for net neutrality obligations,” two Time Warner lawyers said to the FCC earlier this week. “Debates in this proceeding about new net neutrality regulations would only divert attention from these important goals, delaying the distribution of funds while generating considerable contention when the Commission should instead be fostering a spirit of collaboration.”

According to the two lawyers, the money should strictly go towards broadband deployment. This, in turn, would give them more customers (for them to impose miniscule bandwidth caps upon), and, according to their logic help pump some more of that much needed money into the ailing economy.

Read More

Posted 04/07/09 at 06:06:18 PM by Andy Salisbury

Love it or hate it, there’s no looking over the big possibilities that the stimulus package holds for the future of our nation’s broadband infrastructure – and starting tomorrow the folks at the FCC are going to start discussing just how they’re doing to divvy the cash up.

With $7.2 billion of the total $787 billion allocated from the package, the FCC will begin looking for ways to outfit those living in rural areas with access to high speed Internet. They’ll also start looking at ways to improve the speeds of existing broadband infrastructure.

This is quite the undertaking, no doubt about it! Good thing they’ve got until next February.

Read More

Posted 01/23/09 at 01:52:16 PM by Andy Salisbury

Now that we’ve got Barack Obama in the White House, correct oath or not, the planned $6 billion stimulus package should finally be on its way. But, according to a recent study, most Americans that don’t already have broadband simply don’t want it.

Many Americans don’t see broadband as the saving grace that those that have it do. For example, 19 percent of dial-up users said that nothing would get them to upgrade, not even lowered prices. Of the 25 percent that don’t regularly use the Internet at all (too busy watching mid-day reruns of MacGyver), one third stated that they’re not even interested in going online, whereas an additional 10 percent claimed that they thought it was too difficult.

While many of these statements may hold water today, one can only hope to see what this planned broadband stimulus will bring to the table. Perhaps a healthy dose of cheap, fast broadband is just what the doctor ordered? Plus, it’s difficult to think about all of the modems still making that wretched screech after all these years.

Read More